ISIG in the News 2009

Public Services
EXCLUSIVE: The debate e-government needs
With the government's new ICT strategy due to be published very soon, Jerry Fishenden, co-founder of the Centre for Technology Policy Research and visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics, gives his view on the pros and cons of the recently leaked draft government ICT strategy

Financial Times
India to keep top spot in outsourcing, says report
India will remain a dominant force in IT and business process outsourcing for two decades, while China will struggle to match its success, says an authoritative study on the fast-growing industry.
Ilan Oshri, one of the report's authors and associate fellow at WBS and the London School of Economics Outsourcing Unit, said India would maintain its lead for at least 15 years as its top companies had established a global footprint.

November

Eldis
Learning through networking and information exchange: how NGOs can increase their impact
How can international NGOs (INGOs) use networking, learning and information systems to increase their development impact? What is the state of their systems for accessing and processing information? How could they become more successful in sharing and learning information?
Author: Shirin Madon; London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

BBC
ID cards available to people in Greater Manchester
Alan Johnson used his ID card instead of a passport to travel to Brussels
The scheme is said to cost £5bn, although the London School of Economics estimates it will cost between £10bn and £20bn.

Silicon
'Completely unworkable': The plans to track your web habits
Government proposals to monitor all web communications are technologically unworkable, according to the organisation that switches the majority of web traffic for the UK. Experts from the London School of Economics criticised the IMP on technological grounds in June.

17 November

Channel 4 News
Professor Peter Sommer, LSE, discussed the story about T-Mobile customers’ details being sold to rivals.

Silicon
UK ID cards rollout hit by delay as launch date revealed
The controversial ID project has hit another delay, with the government missing its own deadline to get the cards into the hands of Manchester residents.
Dr Gus Hosein, senior fellow at the London School of Economics and co-author of a book on the ID card scheme entitled Global Challenges for Identity Policies, said the scheme has been plagued by over-optimistic deadlines.

Yahoo UK
Youth will find ID cards 'handy'
The scheme is said to cost £5 billion, but the London School of Economics believes the figure to be between £10 billion and £20 billion.

BBC
ID cards 'good for going to bars'
ID cards will be useful for picking up parcels, the government says.The scheme is said to cost £5bn, although the London School of Economics estimates it will cost between £10bn and £20bn.

BBC Radio Scotland
Scotland Live
Professor Ian Angell, LSE, discussed the Governments call for online communications to be stored.

World News Australia
Experts shocked at Google Dashboard
Professor Peter Sommer, an Information Systems academic at the London School of Economics, said that even he was 'astonished' what the company was keeping , advising all Google users to check what is kept on them.

October

Financial Times (Business Education)
Tools for school
Forget the college scarf or the new bicycle: what students arriving on masters in management courses this autumn really need is a mobile communications device Carsten Sørensen, a senior lecturer in information systems at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), says mobile and internet technology allows staff to speak to students "when and where it matters". LSE's 9,000 students are effectively nomadic, with one thing in common: they all have mobile phones, he says.

Euroinvestor
Contact Centres Face New Challenge as Attrition Costs Fall by £800M, Reports CCA
A reduction of £800 million in the cost of staff attrition has helped UK contact centres deliver major improvements in customer service but they will face tough new challenges when the recessions ends warns CCA, the industry champion of global customer service standards.
It will feature a unique CCA International Business School session on November 5 featuring the world’s foremost thinkers on customer experience. Speakers include Dr Carsten Sorenson from London School of Economics.

September

Computer Weekly
FBI database holds records on 1.5 billion people
More than 1.5 billion government and private sector records about US citizens and foreigners are stored in an FBI database, declassified documents have revealed.
Peter Sommer, professor of security at the London School of Economics, said huge amounts of information are collected by commercial organisations as part of 'legitimate customer profiling'.

22 September

Computer Weekly
Expert challenges UFO hacker's $700k bill
The US inflated the $700,000 bill for damages it slapped on UFO hacker Gary McKinnon by stuffing it with costs incurred for patching the gaping holes the hacker had exposed in its computer security, according to a document filed with the Supreme Court. The US had not taken reasonable steps to protect its security and now expects McKinnon to pick up the bill, said an expert witness statement made in McKinnon's ongoing appeal against a US extradition order.
Peter Sommer, professor of security at the London School of Economics, said damage assessments of computer security breaches should consider "whether the victims have taken reasonable steps to limit the damage".

The Royal Academy Of Engineering
Public health authorities seek young people's views on ethics of new NHS medical record
A new play exploring privacy and security issues around the use of electronic patient records begins a national tour of schools this week.
Breathing Country was developed in consultation with an advisory panel consisting of:
-Gus Hosein, Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics ...

Daily Telegraph
Insure your car or face fine, even if it's off the road
Motorists who leave a car uninsured face fines of up to £1,000 even if the vehicle is locked in a garage or kept on a drive without being taken on the road. Gus Hosein, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and policy director at Privacy International, said: "It doesn't make sense. "If a car is not being driven, why does it have to be insured?"

Computer Weekly.com
CIOs cut costs with no plan to innovate out of recession
The lesson we can draw here is that companies cannot simply save their way back to recovery," said Alexander Grous, a researcher at the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics, who has studied the link between IT investment and business performance extensively.

Technology Digital
IT lessons from a recession
A recent survey of 300 European enterprise IT decision makers and research from the London School of Economics (LSE) says the companies who will be better equipped to capitalize on any future recovery are the ones investing in IT.

2 September

Computing.co.uk
Innovate with IT to thrive
Dr Alexander Grous from the LSE's Centre for Economic Performance, who has studied the link between IT investment and business performance, said: "The lesson we can draw here is that companies cannot simply save their way back to recovery. Innovation deficits are extremely hard to redress. Organisations that recover best are those investing in areas of the business that can deliver long-term returns — areas such as IT.”

August

Civil Service Network (registration required)
Shared services on the fast track Wednesday
In November, the children’s department will begin accessing shared services provided by the Department for Work & Pensions. Matthew O’Toole finds that the slow-moving shared services agenda is finally...
tion” plan designed to make corporate services more efficient and data more reliable. It’s a point echoed by Professor Leslie Willcocks, an outsourcing expert at the London School of Economics.

Information (Denmark)
Den digitale nomade spejder efter en lejrplads
Carsten Sorensen commented, pointing out that existence as a digital nomad does not only come with advantages in terms of flexible working arrangements, as is most often emphasised in the media. The closer relationships between the body and mobile ICT leads to more paradoxical relationships, for example constantly questioning long established boundaries, most famously that between leisure and work. This can in turn easily lead to increased tensions between the digital nomad and their surroundings.

Businessweek
British Web-Tracking Scheme 'Unworkable'
Aside from its Orwellian privacy implications, a British government plan to log and monitor all Web traffic has been called technically impractical
Experts from the London School of Economics criticised the IMP on technological grounds in June.

6 August

The Asian Age
National ID: Is it feasible?
The government of India recently set up the National Unique Identification Authority to provide a unique identification number to all citizens.
Independent studies done in the UK for the implementation of its national identity card showed the costs to vary between £10 billion to £ 20 billion (a study by the London School of Economics).

Seattletimes
Cubicles foreign to digital nomads
Carsten Sorensen, a London School of Economics professor who studies nomads, said people working away from an office often feel pressure to work harder to protect their freedom.

Southern California Public Radio - AirTalk
Office nomadss
Larry Mantle talks to Carsten Sorensen about the number of people that are now working wirelessly. Wireless technology makes it possible for people to communicate and work anywhere in the world, from coffee shops, to poolside. Is there an economic impact? Surely. But what is it? And what does it mean to the social dynamic of the "workplace"?

July

Yahoo UK
Information commissioner concerned over electronic snooping plans
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has expressed concerns over the collection of communications data proposed in the government's interception modernisation programme. Last month a report by academics at the London School of Economics concluded that the government's data collection proposals represented a "phase change" in the relationship between the citizen and the state, and would place an undue burden on communications service providers.

Los Angles Times
With wireless devices, telecommuters cut the cordd
Carsten Sorensen, a London School of Economics professor who studies nomads, said people working outside an office often feel pressure to work harder to protect their freedom. This can make working as a nomad "both heaven and hell" and even lead to burnout, he said.

SmartBrief
Working closer to home offers abundant benefits
Carsten Sorensen notes in The Washington Post article above that to ensure they can sustain these advantages, teleworkers often drive themselves a little harder than they otherwise would.

Washington Post
Digital Nomads Choose Their Tribes
Carsten Sorensen, a London School of Economics professor who studies nomads, said people working away from an office often feel pressure to work harder to protect their freedom. This can make working as a nomad "both heaven and hell," he said, even leading to burnout.

The Independent
Cyber attack targets include White House and the Pentagon
A powerful internet attack that overwhelmed computers at US and South Korean government agencies for days was even broader than initially realised: targets included the White House, the Pentagon and the New York Stock Exchange and other official websites in the most widespread cyber offensive of recent years.
The attacks will be difficult to trace, said Professor Peter Sommer, an expert on cyberterrorism at the London School of Economics. "Even if you are right about fact being attacked, initial diagnoses often wrong," he said on Wednesday.

Pueblo Chieftainn
North Korea eyed in cyber attacks
The attacks, which began over the July Fourth holiday, affected several government Web sites in the U.S. and South Korea.
Peter Sommer, an expert on cyber-terrorism at the London School of Economics, cautioned against coming to quick conclusions as any instigator would disguise where the attacks were coming from. ‘‘Initial diagnoses are often wrong,’’ he said.

and at

Cape Times (South Africa))
New cellphone laws slated
Experts have lambasted new laws to collect information about prepaid cellphone users, citing their "severe" privacy implications.
Gus Hosein, a senior fellow of human rights watchdog Privacy International and at the London School of Economics, described the retention of users' information as "an absolutely useless policy that introduces more problems than it solves"..

Sunday Scotsman
Gerald Warner: ID card debacle reveals power-hungry nature of our politicians
The real purpose of ID cards was to make us pawns of government
This enormous database, designed to store unprecedented amounts of information about everybody in the country, has not been cancelled. It is the National Register that has already swallowed vast sums of money: the government admits to an overall cost of £5 billion; the London School of Economics calculates the true cost will be between £10bn and £20bn.

Guardian
Legal challenge to web child abuse inquiry
Professor Peter Sommer, a leading expert in computer crime, said: "There were very high levels of correlation between people having subscribed to that website and people being found in possession with child abuse images.
"In the incitement cases they did not just use the details on the database as a reason to prosecute. They went to the individual's bank to confirm that transactions had taken place, they checked whether the individual had ever complained that his card had been used fraudulently. They did not charge everyone they investigated."

Guardian
Fight against ID database must continue
Letter from readers critical of Labour plans to continue with an ID database despite scrapping plans for compulsory ID cards. One write notes that the LSE estimates the database will cost £20bn.

1 July

Silcon.com
ID cards: 'A project nobody wants and the nation can't afford'
Ian Angell, professor of information systems at the London School of Economics, told silicon.com: "This isn't a cancellation exercise, it's treading water. [The government] can't scrap it because too much credibility is tied up in it. This is trying to keep the whole thing alive at a minimum cost."

Al Jazeera UK News
Carsren Sorensen commenting the Chinese Government's decision to delay the mandatory installation of the Green Dam Youth Escort software on all new computers

June

Daily Mail
Compulsory ID cards to be scrapped as Government performs humiliating U-turn
British citizens will never be forced to carry ID cards, the Government announced today. The cost of the cards per person was given as £77 in 2004, then as £93 in July 2005. But research by the London School of Economics put it at a massive £230 a head.

PC Magazine (UK)
Sharing information – the best way to beat cyber crime
Police need to focus on ways of sharing information to improve chances in fight against cyber crime As Lord Carter's Digital Britain report tries to promote an all-digital world, there is also a darker opportunity for less-than-honest people to enrich themselves through the digital economy. To combat the growing threat of cyber crime, new approaches are needed.
Furthermore, the fight against cyber crime was being hamstrung by a failure to collect proper data on its prevalence, said Peter Sommer, visiting professor at the London School of Economics. The Crown Prosecution Service rarely charges under the Computer Misuse Act, preferring to use other fraud-related laws, or child protection legislation.

DocuTicker
UK: Briefing on the Interception Modernisation Programme
Source: London School of Economics: Policy Engagement Network, Information Systems and Innovation Group
In this briefing we aim to provide some depth of understanding of the nature of the Home Office's latest proposals on communications surveillance.

ComputerWeekly.com
Businesses can give police headstart in busting cybercriminals
But few organisations outside the financial and public sectors have any kind of forensic readiness programme in place, said Peter Sommer, a professor at the London School of Economics.

19 June

Independent
Is the writing on the wall for the Government's ID card scheme?
Dr Edgar Whitley of the London School of Economics estimates that the true cost of the Government's proposed ID card scheme will end up between £10bn and £20bn.

Daily Mail
It's worth every penny
Letter in response to Digital Britain report criticisms, which comments that a recent London School of Economics study suggested that up to 280,500 jobs could be created or retained by the next generation broadband networks. No online version available.

ZDNet UK – UK
Gov’t web-monitoring plan is unworkable.
Professor Peter Sommer and Gus Hosein, an LSE visiting fellow, published a report on Wednesday that criticised the government scheme. Sommer told ZDNet UK that the requirements are technologically impossible, due to the way data is transmitted on the internet.

ITProPortal - London,UK
LSE launches scathing attack on government web surveillance plans
Tagging the plan as “overly intrusive and unrealistic”, the LSE Policy Engagement Network asserts that the plan won't be useful unless legislation put in place to support the technology. It further suggests that the public will also need to be persuaded about the significance of such a monitoring system if they are to compromise their privacy.

ISPreview UK – UK
Governments UK Broadband ISP Snooping Plans Branded Unworkable
Professor Peter Sommer of the Information Systems and Innovation Group at LSE says: "The Home Office are right to be concerned about the impact on investigations of the ways in which criminals and others may use the internet. However they are wrong to think that this can be done by light tinkering with existing legislation.

Financial Times (Digital Business)
Does business understand technology any more?
Peter Whitehead comments on Social IT; includes quotes from David Elton, an IT specialist with PA Consulting, who says that says research with the London School of Economics had uncovered two banks now using blogs to communicate.

Financial Times
Home Office delays ID card contract
Edgar Whitley, a leading IT expert at the London School of Economics Identity Project, a research unit, said yesterday that he had heard "rumours two or three weeks ago that ID card production was being kicked into the long grass",

The Financial - Tbilisi,Georgia
The Home Office internet surveillance proposals won’t work says LSE study.
The briefing by the Policy Engagement Network at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) examines a consultation document released by the British government in April 2009 on their Interception Modernisation Programme

Guardian
Plan to monitor emails will not work, says LSE
The Home Office's revised proposals to monitor all text messages, email and internet use will have poor safeguards, prove very costly and not even work, London School of Economics researchers have found.
Professor Peter Sommer, of the LSE, said: "With internet technology you have to collect everything then throw away what the law does not allow you to have. We think … that distinction will be impossible to interpret."

BBC
Q&A: Identity cards:
New Home Secretary Alan Johnson says he is pushing ahead with plans for the introduction of identity cards in the UK.
The Home Office has estimated the scheme will cost £5bn but the London School of Economics says the true cost will be between £10bn and £20bn.

PC Pro
LSE attacks Government's snooping plans
The Government's proposed powers to monitor every email, SMS and browsing session in the UK are impractical, claims the London School of Economics. In the report the LSE Policy Engagement Network explains that the scheme will not work unless legislation is brought in to back up the technology.

Register - London
MPs launch probe of massive net snooping project.
The LSE's academics today questioned whether the government had fully appreciated the legal and democratic implications of Interception Modernisation Programme. They said thousands of planned Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) probes to harvest data on web browsing, email, VoIP calls and instant messenger conversations from inside ISP networks would blur the legislative and ethical lines between communications data and communications interception.

16 June

ComputerWeekly.com – UK
Costly Big Brother plan won’t work warns LSE.
Home Office proposals for a "Big Brother" capability to monitor the internet will not work and have poor safeguards against privacy, according to a study by the London School of Economics.
In a briefing to be published by the LSE's Policy Engagement Network on 17 June, LSE academics and others will say that Home Office proposals for an Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) will need new laws if it is to boost the ability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to collect and analyse the internet activities of all UK citizens.

FDI magazine News
Offshoring navigates an uncertain course
As markets the world over undergo dramatic shifts, the offshore outsourcing industry is trying to get to grips with how this will affect its prospects, write Michael Mainelli and Leslie Willcocks. Comparative London School of Economics and Political Science research indicates that offshoring and outsourcing markets will remain dynamic for BRIC and non-BRIC destinations.

Times, 02-Jun-2009, page 51
If you decide to outsource something like IT, beware the threat of a long-term tangle
Leslie Willcocks, director of the outsourcing unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science — which produced the report Outsourcing in difficult times: Releasing cost but maintaining control with Logica, the IT and business services company — says that when the recession hit, companies initially deferred making decisions, so some contractors waivered fees in a bid to get contracts signed.

May

29 May

New York Times
Fending Off Attacks in Cyberspace
Personal Privacy Is the Issue
Comment by Gus Hosein, visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics.
When we think cybersecurity we far too often think about government assets falling prey to shadowy malicious hackers. We forget that the information held within many of these systems is our personal information.

naidar (Spain)
España desciende tres puestos en el ranking del Global Technology Report presentado ayer en Bilbao
Ayer tuvo lugar en Bilbao, primero en el Euskalduna, con una veintena directivos y agentes socio-económicos relevantes de Euskadi y luego en el Guggenheim, la presentación del Global Technology Report 2008-2009 de la mano de la Directora del Report, la Dra. Irene Mía, y la Economista, Dra. Ciara Browne, ambas del World Economic Forum y con la presencia del profesor de la London School of Economics and Political Science, el Dr. Carsten Sorensen.

Yahoo UK
ASA chief to be next privacy watchdog
The new head of the privacy watchdog has been confirmed as Christopher Graham, who last week quit as chief executive of the Advertising Standards Authority to prepare for his new role.
But Peter Sommer, an information security expert at the London School of Economics, said that this was not a fundamental requirement. Its not absolutely necessary, provided that there is appropriate technical expertise available to him, he said.

Contractor UK
UK IT stimulus can create 700,000 jobs
Around 700,000 jobs could be created and retained in the UK economy if the government injects £15billion into the nation’s digital and IT infrastructure. If injected via direct spending, tax breaks and regulatory reform, the £15bn would be enough to revive the British economy, said report authors at the LSE and the ITIF. The London School of Economics and the Information Technology and Innovation Fund counted 188,000 jobs in smart transport systems, and 235,000 jobs in a smart power grid.

Employment4Students.co.uk
700,000 jobs from investment in digital technology
Those of you interested in graduate IT jobs in London will welcome a recent report by the London School of Economics. The LSE have predicted that a £15 billion investment in digital technology could create and retain up to 700,000 jobs in the UK.

Info4Security
TSSI hits out at UK ID card launch
Identity specialist TSSI has criticised the government’s announcement of the launch of the ID card scheme in Manchester.
“The estimated cost of the project to the Home Office is about £5 billon, but Dr Whitley of the London School of Economics estimates that the last four years has already seen astronomical costs of between £10-20 billion. So it seems to me as though the government has bitten off more than it can chew.

More 4 News 20.00
Interview with Peter Sommer re gaining second hand data from hard drives

BBC News – UK
Manchester 'launch' for ID cards
Dr Edgar Whitley of the London School of Economics has been warning about the cost of the scheme - which he has estimated at £10bn-£20bn - for the past four years

Seeking Alpha - New York
Companies Willing to Take Offshore Outsourcing Risks
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Outsourcing Unit published a report titled “Beyond BRIC”. The Outsourcing Unit researched on the state of outsourcing in non-BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries and global outsourcing trends.

Public Service - Staffordshire, UK
700000 jobs from tech investment
The report was produced by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the Information Technology and Innovation Fund (ITIF) and revive the British economy.

PC Magazine
IBM puts the smart (grid) money where its mouth is IT giant promises up to £2bn worth of additional financing for partners rolling out smart grid and broadband technologies
IBM is to provide up to $2bn (£1.3bn) worth of new financing for smart grid roll outs and other technology projects supported by president Obama's economic stimulus package.
Last week, the company also commissioned with the London School of Economics, which predicted that a £15bn UK investment in digital networks such as broadband and smart grids would provide a greater economic boost than investments in traditional infrastructure.

Top 10 Broadband - London,London,UK
UK broadband investment 'would create jobs'
Research published by the London School of Economics and Political Science alongside the Information Technology and Innovation Fund suggests that improving the country's digital infrastructure could be considerably more beneficial than other projects such as transport networks.

Photovoltaic Technology Developments and Solar News
Dr. Adolf Goetzberger becomes ‘European Inventor of the Year’
The founder of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Freiburg, Germany, Dr. Adolf Goetzberger has been honored with the award of being named ‘European Inventor of the Year’ in the category of Lifetime Achievement.
The jury included Jonathan Liebenau of the London School of Economics; Jürgen Dormann, former CEO of ABB; Emma Marcegaglia, entrepreneur and head of Confindustria, the Confederation of Italian Industry; and Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker, Secretary General of the European Research Council.

4 May

Guardian
Let's not believe the worst in this swine flu media panic
Mike Cushman, of the Department of Management at the London School of Economics and Political Science, replies to an article by Ben Goldacre in which he downplayed the media's role in "overheating" the swine flu story.

Gradplus.com
IT jobs could be created with investment, says LSE
Produced by the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Information Technology and Innovation Fund, the report said that funding for broadband, ...

April

ZDNet UK
Investment in tech could help the UK reinvent itself
A London School of Economics report suggests that a 15 billion pound (US$22.1 billion) investment in broadband, smart grid and intelligent transport technology could create 700,000 jobs.

Computerworld
Government could create 700,000 jobs with 15 bn digital investment
The government could generate 700,000 jobs by investing £15 billion in digital infrastructure, according to research from the London School of Economics and the Information Technology and Innovation Fund.

also on:

Times
Investing in digital infrastructure now means jobs in future
Jonathan Liebenau, Reader in Technology at the LSE, and Robert Atkinson, founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, discuss a joint report by their respective groups which identifies "the jobs potential of three infrastructures of the future: next generation broadband; intelligent transport systems; and smart power grids." They argue that investment in these systems will retain or create jobs, "while at the same time laying the groundwork for long-term productivity growth, enhanced international competitiveness and significant improvements in quality of life."

Virgin Media
Digital funding 'could create jobs'
Multibillion-pound investment in digital technology could help revive the UK economy and create hundreds of thousands of jobs, according to a new report.
Productivity would be boosted and small firms helped to retain or create jobs if money was invested in broadband networks, "intelligent" transport systems and a "smart" power grid, said a study by the London School of Economics (LSE).
Jonathan Liebenau, reader in Technology Management at LSE, said: "Our report shows that in this severe economic climate the right investment in ICT infrastructure would have a significant effect in creating jobs now and in stimulating productivity and innovation for the future."

Press Association
Digital funding 'could create jobs'
Multibillion-pound investment in digital technology could help revive the UK economy and create hundreds of thousands of jobs, according to a new report. Productivity would be boosted and small firms helped to retain or create jobs if money was invested in broadband networks, "intelligent" transport systems and a "smart" power grid, said a study by the London School of Economics (LSE).

VNUnet
Digital network investment can aid UK recovery
The London School of Economics has produced a report detailing how investment in digital networks has the potential to repair the UK economy more than any other physical infrastructure spend. An investment of £15bn in broadband networks, intelligent transport systems and a smart power grid could create 700,000 jobs according to the report, which was partly funded by IBM.

Business Green
LSE: Smarter grids could provide 700,000 UK job boost
LSE claims £15bn in broadband, smart grids and transport management systems would provide greater economic stimulus than spending on roads and bridges

This Is Business East Midlands
Digital funding 'could create jobs'
Multibillion-pound investment in digital technology could help revive the UK economy and create hundreds of thousands of jobs, according to a new report.
Productivity would be boosted and small firms helped to retain or create jobs if money was invested in broadband networks, "intelligent" transport systems and a "smart" power grid, said a study by the London School of Economics (LSE).
Jonathan Liebenau, reader in Technology Management at LSE, said: "Our report shows that in this severe economic climate the right investment in ICT infrastructure would have a significant effect in creating jobs now and in stimulating productivity and innovation for the future."

News, Alpha FM
Item on LSE report suggesting investment in digital infrastructure

Staines News
By-elections due as four councillors quit
BOROUGH by-elections will be held on June 4, after four Runnymede councillors stepped down from their posts this spring.
Professor of Information Systems at the London School of Economics, Ian Angell, is a published author and was previously a lecturer of computer science at Royal Holloway, University of London. He was elected to his role in 2007, but due to increased work commitments at the School of Economics he felt it was better for him to step down.

Guardian (G2)
'No one is ready for this'
Report on the possibility of a sustained, organised "cyber-attack" quotes Peter Sommer, a computer security specialist and visiting professor at the London School of Economics, who says: "Defence against cyberwarfare is extremely difficult. Only the very unskilled leave pointers to their identities and locations."

March

Zawya
London School of Economics launches 'Beyond BRIC'
Study of offshoring in non-BRIC countries shows Egypt as a new growth market. The ITIDA commissioned study was presented at the launch by Professor Leslie Willcocks, Director of the LSE Outsourcing Unit. Also present was Dr Hazem Abdelazim, CEO of ITIDA who spoke about Egypt's continuing progress as a global offshoring location.

Channel 4
Parliament reveals lack of digital security
The parliamentary IT system has suffered a virus attack, joining millions of other computers that have fallen victim to the Conficker computer virus.

Most experts recommend automatically updating anti-virus systems daily. Peter Sommer, Professor of Information Systems at the London School of Economics, told Channel4 News: "Having a virus checking programme without it being frequently updated and protecting you against all threats is quite frankly a waste of time."

16 March
Digital Identity Forum - podcast
Carsten Sorensen, LSE
Carsten Sorensen in an expert on emerging working practices and organisational forms fuelled by innovative information and communication technology. His currently studying the organisational use of mobile services and initiated the mobility@lse research network in mobile interaction aiming at drawing together academics and practitioners. In this podcast, he talks about some of the key trends in mobility, particularly in terms of corporate structures, and the demands that they place on identity infrastructure and management.

Legalbrief (subscription, only) - Durban, South Africa
... and won't be subverted in some way is very naive,' Ian Angell, a Information systems expert at the London School of Economics, is quoted as saying…

Channel 4
Dispatches: How they Squandered our Billions
Professor Leslie Willcocks interviewed as part of programme investigating how the government is squandering billions of pounds of taxpayers' money

February

Talking Outsourcing
A Spot of Pyramid Selling
This morning, the well-known London School of Economics academic Professor Leslie Willcocks outlined some of his thoughts on fourteen non-BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economics, with some emphasis on Egypt for this audience in Cairo.

26 February

This Is Local London
Chesham says no to identity cards
CHESHAM residents said no to identity cards at the end of a debate on the government proposals this evening.
· Recent research by the London School of Economics suggests the scheme would cost £19billion – equivalent to £800 per person.

The Times
Google Latitude to allow you to track friends and families every move
" It's about the little white lies. You might be skiving off work, and now your boss might be able to see that you're at Twickenham instead of at home," said Ian Angell, of the London School of Economics.

Times
Can't find your husband or the children again? Google them
Millions of people will be able to track every move by friends and family through their mobile phones, thanks to "Latitude" , a new feature launched by Google yesterday. “It’s about the little white lies. You might be skiving off work, and now your boss might be able to see that you’re at Twickenham instead of at home,” said Ian Angell, an information expert at the London School of Economics. “You’ve already got mobile phone technology where husbands and wives track each other in secret. Google is so pervasive that this will become the rule rather than the exception.”

January

10 January

eweek
Euro-Police Hacking Goes Out of Control
The European approach to computer search throws civil liberties out the window and invites police to install malware on suspects' computers with no outside controls.
The BBC quotes Professor Peter Sommer, a cybercrime expert at the London School of Economics, pointing out that evidence gathered through such hacking can face admissibility problems in court. Normally great care is taken to preserve the "chain of custody" of evidence to show that it has not been tampered with. The controls which establish this are absent on the user's computer where the user, or perhaps some other hacker, could gain access to it.

BBC radio
Professor Peter Sommer, an expert on computer security and visiting professor in the School’s IS Integrity Group, commented on Home Office proposals to keep details of emails sent and received.

9 January

Independent
Compensation clause in ID card contracts angers Tories
Estimates of the cost of the card scheme over its first 10 years vary from £5bn, quoted by the Home Office, to £19bn, calculated by academics at the London School of Economics.

6 January

Ars Technica
Constable HaX0r loose in the UK? Well, yes and no
You can imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever, if that's your thing. But despite a spate of overheated headlines flowing out of the United Kingdom this weekend, you probably don't need to imagine it just yet. The impression created by the flurry of press reports is that police there have s...

· But as Peter Sommer, a cybercrime expert at the London School of Economics, explained to the BBC, it typically won't be. If spyware is installed by physical intrusion, it's subject to the same standards as any other physical search; if done wholly remotely, the oversight rules remain the same as for...