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Appendix 2: Glossary
- ADSL
- Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. A technology for delivering a high bit rate link to customers over ordinary copper wire. Data rates can reach 8Mbps from the exchange to the customer and 640bps in the other direction.
- Authentication
- Determines a user's identity, as well as determining what a user is authorised to access such as secure electronic information held in financial databases. The most common form of authentication is user name and password, although this also provides the lowest level of security.
Source: Google Search: define:Authentication .
Date of access: 31 March 2004. - Bandwidth
- The data transfer capacity of a telecommunications channel, usually expressed in terms of the number of bits per second that can be transmitted (a bit being one unit of information). Narrow bandwidth would correspond to a dial-up modem with 2400 to 56,000 bits per second while broadband can extend to more than 10,000 times this rate.
- Broadband
- High-speed data transmission capability. The OECD defines broadband as in excess of 256,000 bits per second in both directions. The term is commonly used to refer to Internet access via cable modems, DSL (JetStream, for example) and increasingly, wireless technologies (WiFi).
- CAB
- The Citizens' Advice Bureaux provide New Zealanders with information to address problems and questions they may have.
- Community
- There are a number of ways of defining communities and together they make up the interconnected systems of society. Some approaches include:
- geographic communities, such as suburbs or towns that are often referred to as "the local communities";
- communities of interest, identity, or circumstance such as the business and its various industry sectors and the research communities;
- the non-profit and voluntary sectors, which are also known as the community sector;
- ethnic and cultural communities;
- communities of interest such as those for hobbies, sports or politics; and
- communities of circumstance, such as youth, parenthood, senior citizens or the disabled.
- Connectivity
- The ability to use an electronic network to send and receive information between any locations, devices or business services.
- Creative Commons
- Founded by Lawrence Lessig in 2001, the Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organisation devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to legally build upon and share.
The Creative Commons allows copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the public while retaining others, through a variety of licensing and contract schemes, which may include dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems that current copyright laws create for the sharing of information. The project provides several free licences that copyright holders can use when they release their works on the Web.
Source: "Creative Commons" at Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia .
Date of access: 26 March 2004. - Data
- A set of one or more items of information inside an information technology system that is stored, processed or transferred.
Source: Deeson, Eric, Collins Dictionary of Information Technology, William Collins, 1991. - Digital divide
- The term "digital divide" was coined in the 1990s to describe the perceived growing gap between those who have access to and the skills to use ICT and those who, for socio-economic and/or geographical reasons, have limited or no access. There was a particular concern that ICT would exacerbate existing inequalities. A number of areas of specific concern were identified both here and abroad, namely that people could be disadvantaged by their geographic location, age, gender, culture and/or economic status.
- Digital literacy
- The ability to use digital technology, communication tools or networks to locate, evaluate and use and create information. See also Information literacy.
Source: Ministry of Education, Interim Tertiary e-Learning Framework 2004. - Disruptive technology
- This term was coined by Clayton M. Christensen to describe a new, low-cost, often simpler technology that displaces an existing sustaining technology. Disruptive technologies are usually initially inferior to the technology that they displace, but their low cost creates a market that induces technological and economic network effects that provide the incentive to enhance them to match and surpass the previous technology. They create new industries, but eventually change the world. Examples include the internal combustion engine, transistors and the Internet.
Source: "Disruptive Technology" at Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia .
Date of access: 26 March 2004. - E-crime
- Electronic crime covers offences where a computer or other ICT is used as a tool to commit an offence, is the target of an offence or is used as a storage device in an offence.
- Source: New Zealand Police: Services: E-Crime Unit .
Date of access: 22 March 2004. - e-GIF
- The E-Government Interoperability Framework is a significant tool to enable agencies to work together electronically in a spirit of collaboration. It allows agencies to focus on the business of integrating their services for people without having to decide on competing technology standards. In the e-government context, interoperability relates specifically to the electronic systems that support business processes between agencies and between government and people and business. It does not mean that a central agency will dictate common systems and processes. Interoperability can be achieved by the application of a framework of policies, standards and guidelines, that leave decisions about specific hardware and software solutions open for individual agencies or clusters of agencies to resolve.
Source: E-Government Unit, New Zealand E-Government Interoperability Framework (NZ e-GIF) - Version 2 - 4. About Interoperability .
Date of access: 31 March 2004. - E-health
- Involves the electronic enablement of the health and disability support services in order to:
- empower individuals and their families to manage their own health and participation better;
- improve the co-ordination and integration of care delivery to individuals; and
- allow population health initiatives such as mapping notifiable diseases to occur in a timely fashion.
Source: Ministry of Health, Advice to the Incoming Minister of Health. - E-learning
- Learning that is facilitated by the use of digital tools and content. Typically, it involves some form of interactivity, which may include online interaction between the learner and their teacher or peers.
Source: Ministry of Education, Interim Tertiary e-Learning Framework 2004. - E-science
- Defined as science that is performed through distributed global collaborations that are enabled by the Internet. E-science uses very large data collections, computing resources and high-performance technologies.
Source: e-Science Definitions .
Date of access: 31 March 2004. - Electronic Rights Management Information (ERMI)
- A set of systems for identifying content, protecting copyright and tracking the usage of electronic information.
Source: Ministry of Education, Interim Tertiary e-Learning Framework 2004. - GDP
- Gross domestic product is a measure of the size of the economy of a particular territory. It is defined as the total value of all goods and services produced within that territory during a specified period (most commonly, per year).
Source: "Gross Domestic Product" at Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia .
Date of access: 24 March 2004. - GIF
- The Growth and Innovation Framework was released in February 2002 to set out the government's sustainable economic growth objectives. The framework laid out what the government and the private sector must do to achieve higher sustainable economic growth.
Source: Ministry of Economic Development, Growth and Innovation Framework.
Date of access: 25 March 2004. - Health Level Seven or HL7
- Health Level Seven or HL7was founded in 1987 to develop international standards for the electronic interchange of clinical, financial and administrative information among independent health care oriented computer systems, such as hospital information systems, clinical laboratory systems, enterprise systems and pharmacy systems. HL7 is an application protocol for electronic data exchange in health care.
The HL7 protocol is a collection of standard formats that specify the implementation of interfaces between computer applications from different vendors. This communication protocol allows health care institutions to exchange key sets of data among different application systems. Furthermore, the HL7 protocols are not rigid. Flexibility is built into the protocol to allow compatibility for specialised datasets that have facility-specific needs.
Source: PAHO: Health Level Seven: Standard for Electronic Data Exchange in Health Care Environments .
Date of access: 13 May 2004. - ICT sector
- In New Zealand, the ICT sector is an agglomeration of the communications sector, including telecommunications providers, and the information technology sector, which ranges from small software development firms to multi-national hardware and software producers.
Source: Ministry of Economic Development, Growth and Innovation Framework. - ICT Taskforce
- The ICT Taskforce was established in response to the government's Growth and Innovation Framework. It has four related goals, which are to enhance the existing innovation framework, develop skills and talent, increase global connectedness and focus effort for maximum gain.
The Taskforce comprised a tightly focused group of New Zealand ICT business leaders with relevant commercial experience. It reported into the growth potential of New Zealand ICT and identified the collective private sector and government contributions needed to achieve this potential.
Source: ICT Taskforce, Breaking through the Barriers.
Published June 2003. - Infomediary
- An information intermediary is usually a public librarian or Citizens' Advice Bureaux volunteer who provides face-to-face access to and assistance with government information. Infomediaries help alleviate equity concerns that may arise in connection with e-government where inadequate levels of information literacy, lack of access to technology, matters of trust and confidence or personal preferences make face-to-face delivery preferable.
- Information
- This term has many meanings depending on the context. For example, it is often related to such concepts as meaning, knowledge, communication, truth, representation, and mental stimulus. See also Information Society.
Source: "Information" at Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia .
Date of access: 26 March 2004. - Information literacy
- The life-long ability to locate, evaluate, use and create information. See also Digital literacy.
Source: Ministry of Education, Interim Tertiary e-Learning Framework 2004. - Information Society
- A term for a society in which the creation, distribution and manipulation of information has become the most significant economic and cultural activity. An Information Society may be contrasted with societies in which the economic underpinning is primarily industrial or agrarian. The machine tools of the Information Society are computers and telecommunications, rather than lathes or ploughs.
Source: Information Society - A Whatis Definition .
Date of access: 25 March 2004. - Innovation
- The creation, development and implementation of a new product, process or service, with the aim of improving efficiency, effectiveness or competitive advantage. Innovation may apply to products, services, manufacturing processes, managerial processes or the design of an organisation. It is most often viewed at a product or process level, where product innovation satisfies a customer's needs and process innovation improves efficiency and effectiveness. Innovation is linked to creativity and the creation of new ideas, and involves taking those new ideas and turning them into reality through invention, research and new product development.
Source: Economist.com | Business encyclopedia | Dictionary (premium content - access is login restricted).
Date of access: 25 March 2004. - Intellectual property
- Very broadly means the legal rights that result from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary and artistic fields. Countries have laws to protect intellectual property, for two main reasons: to give statutory expression to the moral and economic rights of creators in their creations and the rights of the public in access to those creations; and to promote, as a deliberate act of government policy, creativity and the dissemination and application of its results, and encourage the fair trading that contributes to economic and social development.
- Intellectual property is traditionally divided into two branches: industrial property and copyright. Industrial property includes inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs and geographic indications of source and copyright includes literary and artistic works.
Source: WIPO Intellectual Property Handbook: Policy, Law and Use .
Date of access: 25 March 2004. - Inter-modal competition
- Refers to competition between dissimilar technologies, such as ADSL and wireless technologies. Intra-modal competition refers to competition between similar technologies.
- Interoperability
- The ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged.
Source: Software Engineering Institute, Interoperability - Definition .
Date of access: 25 March 2004. - IP
- The Internet Protocol is a network-layer protocol that contains addressing information and some control information that enables packets of data to be routed between hosts on the Internet.
Source: Cisco Systems Inc., Internet Protocols (IP) .
Date of access: 31 March 2004. - ITU
- The International Telecommunications Union is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland and is an international organisation within the United Nations where governments and the private sector co-ordinate global telecom networks and services.
Source: ITU Overview - Purposes .
Date of access: 26 March 2004. - Kiwi Share
- A contractual agreement between the Crown and Telecom that enables the government to meet its social objectives in telecommunications. The Kiwi Share was established when Telecom was privatised in 1990. Kiwi Share requires Telecom to maintain a local free calling option for ordinary residential telephone services; charge no more than the standard residential rental for ordinary residential telephone services; and continue to make ordinary residential telephone services as widely available as at 1 November 1989.
It was renegotiated in 2001 to become the Telecommunications Service Obligation (TSO).
Source: "Government Announces Updated Kiwi Share Obligation" - Media Statement from Hon Paul Swain, Minister of Communications - 18 December 2001
Date of access: 24 March 2004. - Knowledge
- Is built up from interaction with the world, and is organised and stored in each individual's mind. It is also stored on an organisational level within the minds of employees and in paper and electronic records. Two forms of knowledge can be distinguished: tacit, or implicit knowledge, which is held in a person's mind and is instinctively known without being formulated into words; and explicit knowledge, which has been communicated to others and is held in written documents and procedures. Organisations are increasingly recognising the value of knowledge, and many employees are now recognised as knowledge workers.
Source: Economist.com | Business encyclopedia | Dictionary (premium content - access is login restricted)
Date of access: 24 March 2004. - Knowledge society
- A society that creates, shares and uses knowledge for the prosperity and well-being of its people.
Source: Ministry of Education, Interim Tertiary e-Learning Framework 2004. - Local loop unbundling
- Broadband is considered important for economic growth and productivity. Most OECD governments have based their policies for expanding broadband infrastructures and services on the development of competition based on a framework that ensures fair and non-discriminatory conditions of access to network resources and unrestricted competition for provision of services.
- Many countries have expanded their established regulatory telecommunication frameworks to ensure that new entrants and Internet service providers can compete with incumbents in offering broadband access and services. In recent years, a number of OECD countries have required the incumbent facility-based operators to offer local loop unbundling (LLU) to new access seekers. Unbundling, as a policy, is built on the recognition that incumbent carriers have a dominant position in the provision of local communication access by virtue of their control over the local loop.
Source: OECD, Developments in Local Loop Unbundling
Date of access: 24 March 2004. - Mbps
- Millions of bits per second or megabits per second, a measure of bandwidth or the total information flow over a given time, over a telecommunications medium. Depending on the medium and the transmission method, bandwidth is also sometimes measured in the Kbps (thousands of bits or kilobits per second) range or the Gbps (billions of bits or gigabits per second) range.
Source: Mbps - A Whatis Definition .
Date of access: 31 March 2004. - Microprocessor
- A complex microcircuit (integrated circuit) or set of such chips, that carries out the functions of the processor of an information technology system; that is, it contains a control unit (and clock), an arithmetic and logic unit, and the necessary registers and links to main store and to peripherals.
Source: Deeson, Eric, Collins Dictionary of Information Technology, 1991. - Moore's Law
- In 1965, Gordon Moore predicted that ongoing technological development would result in exponential growth in the number of transistors per integrated circuit and that this trend would continue indefinitely. Over nearly 40 years there has been roughly a doubling of the density of transistors every couple of years, as predicted by Moore's Law.
Source: Intel Research - Silicon - Moore's Law .
Date of access: 25 March 2004. - Next Generation Internet
- Next Generation Internet is a term used by governments, corporations and educators to describe the future network and the work underway to develop it. The future Internet will be so pervasive, reliable and transparent that it will be taken for granted. It will be a seamless part of life much like electricity or plumbing. However, getting to this will involve exploring technologies and network capacities that are in advance of offerings from commercial providers in terms of bandwidths, communications protocols and services.
Source: IBM, Next Generation Internet .
Date of access: 26 March 2004. - OECD
- The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development comprises 30 member countries sharing a commitment to democratic government and the market economy. Its work covers economic and social issues, from macroeconomics to trade, education, development and science and innovation.
Source: OECD, About OECD.
Date of access: 23 March 2004. - Print-disabled
- In terms of section 69 (4) of the Copyright Act 1994, a person has a print disability if he or she is blind, or suffers a handicap with respect to visual perception. For the purposes of the Digital Strategy, the term is taken to cover the use of ICT devices.
Source: Copyright Act 1994, Section 69 (4). - Radio frequency
- A location or band on the radio frequency spectrum, such as 800, 900 or 1800Mhz.
Source: International Telecommunications Union, World Telecommunication Development Report 2003: Access Indicators for the Information Society. - RFID
- Radio frequency identification first appeared in tracking and access applications during the 1980s. These wireless systems allow for non-contact reading and are effective in manufacturing and other hostile environments where barcode labels may not survive. RFID has established itself in a wide range of markets including livestock identification and automated vehicle identification systems because of its ability to track moving objects.
Source: AIM - The Global Trade Association for Automatic Identification: Technologies: RFID .
Date of access: 31 March 2004. - SMEs
- Small and medium-sized enterprises. There is no official definition of an SME in New Zealand but it is usually taken to be a firm of up to 50 full-time equivalent employees (FTEs). SMEs in other countries tend to be much larger than those found in New Zealand (up to several hundred FTEs). New Zealand SMEs are typically individually owned and managed, with few if any specialist managerial staff, and are not part of a larger business enterprise. Firms with fewer than 50 employees constitute 99% of New Zealand enterprises, and account for approximately 49% of total output.
Source:OECD, Small and Medium Enterprise Outlook, 2002, Paris. - Spam
- Unsolicited bulk email that is largely commercial in nature.
Source: New Zealand Police: Internet Scams and Frauds .
Date of access: 22 March 2004. - TSO
- Telecommunications Service Obligation. See Kiwi Share.
- WSIS
- The World Summit on the Information Society was endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly. Resolution 56/183 (21 December 2001) endorsed holding WSIS in two phases. The first phase took place in Geneva in December 2003 and the second phase will take place in Tunis in November 2005.
The objective of the first phase was to develop and foster a clear statement of political will and take concrete steps to establish the foundations for an Information Society for all, reflecting all the different interests at stake.
The second phase involves a process of monitoring and evaluation of the progress of feasible actions outlined in Geneva and a concrete set of deliverables that must be achieved by the time the Summit meets again in Tunis in November 2005.
Source: World Summit on the Information Society: About WSIS .
Date of access: 26 March 2004.
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