New model for e-governance

A new report by Accenture notes that leading governments are moving beyond using traditional technologies to strengthen their relationships with citizens, and modifying conventional models of service delivery in innovative new ways, states Brittany Ballenstedt.

The report, called 'From e-government to e-governance,' stressed the importance of spurring innovation within the government workforce, largely by encouraging employees to take greater responsibility for the efficiency and effectiveness of information workflows, business processes, programmes and delivery channels.

Accenture also encouraged agencies to enable their workers to take risks, generate ideas and share learning.

With few interruptions - and the current downturn serves as an interruption - private equity has experienced a boom period over the past decades, says the Financial Times.

In parallel, the role of financial risk management has steadily increased. But the intersection of the two is still 'terra incognita', into which most investors in private equity have not yet ventured.

They may be in for a rude awakening: quite soon, regulators will be knocking at the doors of all institutional investors. It is expected that a lack of understanding about the management of risks and determination of regulatory capital for private equity portfolios will become a significant and growing obstacle to attracting funding to this asset class.

Veteran IBM executive Pat Toole was recently named corporate CIO at IBM and given broader responsibilities than his predecessors, states Computerworld.

IBM's corporate CIO had focused on strategy and governance while working with the CIOs in the company's business units. In the new arrangement, Toole is responsible for IBM's overall IT strategy and operations; handling IBM's emerging strategy for cloud computing.

Toole says the broader charter will enable large-scale IT transformation, such as a current project to revamp IBM's SAP application infrastructure to match global processes.