E-Government

E-government is the use of technology to deliver government information and services to citizens. E-government allows people to communicate and interact with city employees through using the internet. Examples of ways citizens can use e-government is through the internet and mobile phones.



http://www.headstar.com

There are benefits and disadvantages to e-government. First I will talk about the benefits. E-government is ultimately meant to offer public services to citizens in an efficient and cost effective manner. One of the benefits of e-government is that it is a more efficient and easier method of the government getting the public involved in political campaigns. This would in return save money and time. E-government also provides better accessibility of public services to the public. Another benefit of e-government is that it is all done electronically when it used to be done through a lot of paper work. This means that the files are easier to organise and completing the paperwork online will also save much more space. Another advantage of e-government being an online service is that the companies will not have to hire as many employees, therefore they will save money on this aspect of the company (wages etc.) and will have more money to spend on more important factors. A major benefit of e-government is that it is available through mobile phone connections. This essentially means that the e-government service will be accessible to citizens wherever they are, irrespective of the location or area they are in. This allows people to always have the information they need.



http://archive.ict.govt.nz

However, there are also disadvantages when it comes to e-government. The main disadvantage of e-government is actually moving the government systems into electronic systems, because it massively reduces the person to person interaction which many people value. Another disadvantage is there can be problems within the electronic system. An example is if the services go down or stop working, people will temporarily be unable to find out the information they need until it is fixed. One disadvantage is that some people do not fully understand how to use a computer, or do not have access to the internet. This will mean these people will not be able to access as much information as others who do have access to the internet.

Activity 13 - Investigate Online Banking

Online Banking

In this blog post I will be investigating online banks and will be comparing two of them. The two banks I will compare are Santander and HSBC.

Online banking services are an extension of the automated branch systems that banks brought in from the 1970s to the 1990s. They use computerised systems to allow customers to access and manage their own accounts using an internet connection., rather than having a bank clerk do it. The major piece of technology which allowed people to do this was Internet access with encrypted security technology. For online banking it is vital that only the customer and the authorised bank staff can access the customers account and no none else is able to, or people will easily be able to steal money from other people. Through online banking, banks can offer more to their customers such as finding their balance and making a payment at any time of day or night.

Online banking targets people who have busy lives and may not have enough time to go to the bank every time they need to withdraw money. An example of people like this are single mums. This is because they will need to work and look after their children and will not have enough time to go to the bank everyday to take money out, and if they can take the money out at home it will be much easier for them.

Now I will discuss how the two banks I'm investigating do online banking and I will discuss which one has the most advantages and is better. Both the banks HSBC and Santander provide an online banking service to their customers.

First I will discuss HSBC's online banking service. HSBC provide their customers with a "secure key". This is a key where the customers will type their pin number into it and it generates a secret code which you put into the website, and this will lead to the customers online bank account. This is an easy and safe method of accessing an online bank account and is useful to everyone who has a busy lifestyle or does not have much time in the day. This card is also small and portable. This helps people because it allows them to take it wherever they need to and if they ever need to see their bank details they can. All of he information in this paragraph is from http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/customer-support/online-banking-security/secure-key.

 However, reviews from http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews3218.html#Reviews show that the bank is poor. The reviews from this website are from past customers and the overall rating was 1.9/5 (just under 2 stars). This is a very poor rating and quotes from the website are that the bank is "poor" and "everything take forever".

Now I will discuss Santander's online banking service. The Santander website says that they are committed and will protect your online savings. The website says that the way they protect peoples online bank account is they use two areas: freely accessible and secure. In the freely accessible areas anyone can view it and this area contains all the general information about Santander's products and services. All of the customers personal details are kept in the secure areas.  In these areas people have to enter a personal password and security number to access the information in there. The secure areas is where people will access all of there bank account details and where they can access there bank. All the information in this paragraph is from http://www.santander.co.uk/csgs/Satellite?appID=abbey.internet.Abbeycom&c=Page&canal=CABBEYCOM&cid=1210606981284&empr=Abbeycom&leng=en_GB&pagename=Abbeycom%2FPage%2FWC_ACOM_TemplateA2.

Reviews from http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews190544.html show that this bank is also poor.  Santander got a rating of 1.2/5 (just over 1 star). This is a terrible rating and some quotes from the website say "worst bank" and "rubbish".

Overall, both the banks I have investigated say they are great on the websites, but then reviewing websites say neither banks are good. However, I believe that HSBC is the better of the two banks and I would recommend this one. This is mainly because of the online banking service it provides. As customers use a key card, it is easily accessible and very quick. It is also safe.

Independent Banks in the UK:

The five independent banks in the UK are: HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking, Barclays and Standard Chartered.



Activity 11 - Weather

The Weather on Tuesday (02/10/2012)

 

The weather forecast is quite accurate but not fully correct. This is because the weather forecast said it would start raining at 20:00 and finish at 01:00, where it started raining at 18:00 and then stopped at 19:00 and then started again at 22:00. This shows that the weather forecast on the same day as you are on is almost fully correct but there are small mistakes in the forecast.

The Weather on Wednesday (03/10/2012)

The weather forecast here shows the weather for Wednesday and it was not correct. The forecast says it was going to rain between 12:00 and 14:00 but it did not rain at all. The rest of the forecast is correct. The results here show that the weather forecast is getting less accurate the further away you look at it from a certain day. This is because this forecast is taken on the same day that Tuesday's was and this one is less accurate.



The Weather on Thursday (04/10/2012)

The forecast shown here is very vague compared to the previous ones. This is becasue it gets harder to predict the weather the further away it is from the date you are predicting from. Although it is harder, in this instance the weather forecast shown here is correct, as it was sunny through Thursday and rained at night. 

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The Weather on Friday (05/10/2012)

 

The forecast shown is even vague and less detailed than the on for Thursday. The forecast is mostly correct, except for the afternoon as it stopped raining. It is not a surprise that the forecast is wrong here as it was measured three days before this date.

The Weather on Saturday (06/10/2012)

The weather forecast here is nearly right. The forecast for the morning is wrong as it didn't rain but it is right for the rest of the day. 

Overall I think the results given by the weather forecast on http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/ was quite accurate, although there were some mistakes. The main problem with the website was that during the later stages of the week the forecast became even more vague, and this factor will make it hard for people to pre-plan what they want to do.