Discoverse

How to Balance the Finnish Government Budget

[I posted the following in Finnish on a Facebook comment thread of one of my favorite reps in the Finnish Parliament. I thought the topic was interesting enough to share in my blog. I have enhanced and added to the original comment to build the right context.] 

To win the fight against slow bankruptcy of the government through destructive spiral of debt, we need to use drastic measures rather than slow and late tax increases and spending cuts. Given the current dire situation, I think Finland's best chance to win is in aggressive pursuing of rapid digitalization and automation of all possible administrative tasks. I am not only talking about back-office automation, but also offering of all possible government services online as soon as possible. We already have a good start with electronic tax filings and some other government services, but there are plenty of things that can still be completely automated.

An aggressive digitalization strategy would have the following positive effects:

1. Every Finnish citizen would learn to use e-services and computer technology early on because of this broad commitment by the government. Access to computers for poor and elderly can be offered in specific locations, including public libraries.
2. Finnish software developers would have plenty of new, government financed projects, contributing to the building and nurturing of local software engineering talent. However, this time around, government sourcing managers should be tough enough to require top notch software quality and state of the art technology.
3. Finland would remain at the forefront of government usage of technology, which would provide an opportunity for Finnish e-government application startups to succeed in international competition. This will be made possible by the hard-nosed sourcing managers that accept only state of the art technology.
4. Algorithms combined with online services will eventually eliminate the need for many, many government workers, drastically reducing the operational cost to run the government, both at municipal and state level.
5. High speed internet access for all citizens would remain a priority for the telecommunications regulators and lawmakers, which would help to push and keep the whole country in the cutting edge.

What do you think? How big of an impact can we make with this approach?

How To Manage Privacy in a Transparent World

Today, I had a fascinating discussion with a friend of mine. We were having discussion about Facebook, and how we now live under the constant surveillance of multiple entities. Credit card companies, social networks, email providers, advertisers, store chains with their loyalty programs, governments and analytics tools, mobile phones... they all watch our behavior. The amount of data we leave behind creates an astonishingly clear trail. In front of the data and algorithms, we are completely naked.

And now to the fascinating part: My anonymous friend said that he decided to fight back. He had long since given up on the idea that someone can stay invisible under the all-seeing eye of the internet. So he turned it around.

More than a year ago, he started sharing stories and links on his social profiles that had absolutely nothing to do with him. He started randomly clicking on ads that did not reflect his personal desires. He visited web pages that he wasn't a single bit interested on. Eventually, he created scripts that make random posts at random intervals from various sources to disguise his awake hours, location and other private information.

In summary, he exists as himself everywhere in the web, but none of any analytics tools, cookies, programs and algorithms have any clue who he is, where he hangs and what he wants. It is simply impossible to know him without being his personal friend.

This is where we have arrived. The only way to fight the constant surveillance is to create enough noise to disguise the signal of our behavior. There's no other way to hide anymore.

Robert Scoble interviews Walkbase

Alf Rehn speaking at AaltoVG

Entrepreneurship stories before BBQ.

Mini Seedcamp in Stockholm

Panel on funding options. As it is Scandinavian, everyone is related somehow.

One of the most fascinating studies I've read

As of late I've been highly interested in the data-driven future of applications and how intelligent algorithms will win over user interfaces just because they remove the need for user interfaces. This article in WSJ about using phones to understand and predict human behavior is a testament to a future where machines will predict what we want to do.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704547604576263261679848814.html

Bill Nguyen explains Color

SAI has a good interview with Bill Nguyen. I agree with Bill that AI is the next frontier in the battle for relevance and winning user experiences.

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Color Founder Bill Nguyen: Why You're All Wrong And This Really IS A $41 Million Idea:

http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-bill-nguyen-qa-2011-3?op=1

Donna Novitsky talking about entrepreneurship

Aalto Venture Garage seems fairly packed today.

Social Games Panel at Google

Massive crowd. The event was organized by Peanut Labs - Kudos to Nomi, Ali and others for putting it together!

Mikko

I don't understand US carriers' 4G hype

Every self-respecting smartphone maker, maybe with the exception of Nokia, released new 4G phones last week at CES 2011. There was a bubbling hype around the new "superfast" data networks enabling new levels of productivity and entertainment to ever-so-mobile people.