Important Terms

Application program – a piece of software which helps users to carry out given tasks by providing helpful functions, for example programs for word processing, spreadsheet analysis and graphics editing, web browsers and specific applications of individual public administrations. Application programs differ from operating programs as the latter only enable the operation of a computer.

Authentication – the process of determining whether someone or something is, in fact, who or what it is declared to be. In the virtual world, it refers to verifying the digital identity of a person in a communication or transaction with the purpose to confirm that the identity provided belongs to the person he or she claims to be. Thereby, a certain attribute of a user certifies authorised access to systems or data.

Black Technologies – different means used by the mass media to purposefully shape the negative/ positive opinion of society about a particular person, institution, process, etc. To discredit e.g. some organisation, a newspaper could publish articles intentionally providing wrong information about the organisation's activities, while emphasising the right behaviour of their competitors. This could destroy the good name of the company and prevent it from winning some important competitions.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) – (re-engineering) is an approach to modernise and restructure main business processes in organisations with the aim to improving effectiveness, efficiency, service performance (productivity), and quality of products and services, whilst at the same time reducing costs and effort, and exploiting the potentials of modern ICT. BPR requires profound reconsideration of functions and radical redesign. Motivators are a rapid reaction to market changes and responding quickly to changing customer needs.

RSS – (most commonly translated as "Really Simple Syndication" but sometimes "Rich Site Summary") – is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works – such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship.

Certificate – In practical terms, a certificate is a digital identity card or a digital certification provided with a digital signature. A digital certificate from a certificate authority enables a person to prove his or her authenticity and to verify that a public key does indeed belong to its owner. Certificates are not only issued to identify and authenticate persons but also the organizations, servers, application programs etc. in a network. A certificate has a given validity and can be revoked or disabled by a certificate authority.

Chip Card – The term Chip Card describes different forms of plastic cards with an embedded microchip. Two types of chip cards can be distinguished: cards which simply store information (memory cards) and cards which are able to store and process data (smart cards or integrated circuit cards (ICC)). The latter are used e.g. for authentication (see signature card) or for electronic payment

Computer-supported (or computer-mediated) Communication – the computer supported forwarding of messages between two or more persons. These are, for example, eMails, posts on bulletin boards or chat messages. Characteristics of this kind of communication are: independence of the communication partners from their locations, the communication is mostly text based, the communication partners do not have to know each other and a communication between several persons is possible.

Controlling – describes systems, concepts and instruments for the controlling and coordination of operative and strategic management in an organization. Controlling supports the management unit by delivering relevant management information to control and steer an organization. Thus it also supports decision-making processes.

Data protection – an emerging need, which is addressed in several initiatives to provide a range of measures to protect personal and sensitive data from unauthorised public access, and to control the flow of such sensitive data and information.

Database – an electronic memory for saving and managing a large amount of data. It is concertedly used by different programs and users and provides fast access to stored data.

Dimension – a variable depicting two opposing extremes on the future of eGovernment in 2020 and is a particular type of issue. For example, in the dimension "trust in government", one extreme is "distrust in government" and the other extreme is a "high trust in government". A dimension has at least two opposing topics, (i.e. denoting the extremes) and can contain further topics along the scale.

Effectiveness – the extent to which an organisation or programme accomplishes its mission, goals, and objectives, especially from the perspective of key stakeholders. It is part of the three Es (Economy, Efficiency and Effectiveness). If Economy means spending less (reduce input), and Efficiency spending well (more output for a given amount of input), Effectiveness is spending wisely, that is use input in such a way as to maximise the likelihood of achieving a maximum outcome.

Environment – a dimension which indicates that the future can either be stable or disruptive. A stable environment can be characterised by economic growth, a balanced world order, living in harmony, prosperity and welfare. Whereas in a disruptive environment all kinds of crises, terrorism attacks, cyber wars and other types of unexpected incidents occur. Also, religious tensions and a large social divide exist in an instable or disruptive environment.

Gap – is defined as a mismatch between the issues (dimensions or topic of interest) in the state of play and future scenarios, or a lack of recognition of issues that are not in the state of play but required in the future scenarios.

Information architecture – a component of an organisations enterprise architecture and refers to a snapshot of an organisations systems and information landscape. Thereby the interdependencies and information flows among system components, and the interfaces between them are described.

Information Overload – describes the circumstance where too much information is available and provided, and due to this overload, the right information cannot be identified and/or accessed quickly any more.

Information Society – describes an economic system and a form of society which is heavily influenced by, and based on information and communication technology (ICT). The attaining, storing, processing, spreading and use of information and knowledge plays an essential role in all areas of life.

Information Technology (IT) – the collective term for all technical processes and devices for automatic electronic data processing. It used to be called data processing or electronic data processing (EDP).

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) – the collective term for all technical processes and devices for electronic data processing and for the support of communication over electronic media. ICT extends the term Information Technology (IT) to include electronic communication.

Networked governments – refer to the concept of governments being fully inter-linked with their partners and constituencies via modern ICT in order to fulfil their public duties. A key precondition thereby is full interoperability at all levels.

Online Services – the collective term for all kinds of service offers which can be used over the Internet. It also includes basic (or trivial) services which only provide access to the Internet and to the available content.

Open Source – software which is freely available. Arbitrary copying, use and distribution of the software is permitted. The source code is also freely accessible and visible for users and can be changed, passed on and published by other developers.

Openness – refers to the quality of an organisation, programme or society which encourages broad participation and multiple view points, and accepts new ideas and external influences.

Project Management – refers to the planning, orchestration, organization and controlling of all activities relevant for a successful project implementation, including coordination and leadership of the project team.

Standard – mostly used for common, well-known and generally approved rules for engineering approaches and solutions in specific contexts. When used as a synonym for norms, the expression refers to a set of legally approved rules which have undergone an official evaluation procedure at an (international) standardization organisation (ISO, ITU, W3C, etc.).

Usability – the degree to which users are able to use a system with the skills, knowledge, stereotypes and experience they can bring to bear.

Weblog (short: Blog) – derived from "web" and "log" and means an Internet logbook or web diary. These are web pages which are regularly updated with articles by one or more authors (so-called Bloggers). The articles are sorted by date and categories and are usually about a certain topic. Reader are often able provide feedbackcommenting on articles and discussions.

Unit VI. Environmental Organizations.

"Our objectives have never been clearer - slow climate change, reduce toxics in the environment, protect our oceans and fresh waters, stop deforestation, and save species."

Dr Claude Martin

• Do you know any organizations which try to solve ecological problems? Can you name some of them?

• Read the texts about environmental organizations and find out the main goals of their activity, their main principles, the spheres of activity and the structure or type of organization.

• What are these organizations similar in? What are the differences?

• Do you know such organizations in your country, city, town? How do you find their work? Are there any visible results of their activity in your area?

Text 1. Greenpeace. Origins.

Greenpeace is a non-governmental organization for the protection and conservation of the environment. Greenpeace uses direct action, lobbying and research to achieve its goals. Greenpeace has a worldwide presence with national and regional offices in 46 countries, which are affiliated to the Amsterdam-based Greenpeace International. The global organization receives its income through the individual contributions of an estimated 3 million financial supporters.

The origins of Greenpeace lie in the peace movement and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament generally, and particularly in the Don't Make A Wave Committee co-founded by Jim Bohlen, Patrick Moore, Paul Coté, and Irving Stowe, followed by an assortment of Canadian and expatriate American peace activists in Vancouver in 1970. Taking its name from a slogan used during protests against United States nuclear weapons testing in late 1969, the Committee had come together with the objective of stopping a U.S. nuclear bomb test codenamed Cannikin beneath the Aleutian island of Amchitka, Alaska. The first ship expedition, inspired by the voyages of the Golden Rule, Phoenix and Everyman in 1958, was on the chartered West Coast fishing vessel, the "Phyllis Cormack," owned and sailed by John Cormack of Vancouver, and called the Greenpeace I; the second expedition was nicknamed Greenpeace Too. The test was not prevented, but the voyage laid the groundwork for Greenpeace's later activities. While the boat never reached its destination and was turned back by the US military, this campaign was deemed the first using the name Greenpeace.

Bill Darnell has received the credit for combining the words "green" and "peace", there by giving the organization its future name. Irving Stowe, Paul Coté and Jim Bohlen are co-founders of Greenpeace. Coté and Bohlen traveled to Anchorage to speak to legislators (many of whom were also against the testing) about the activities of Greenpeace. The two men said that they were highly amused at the surveillance placed on them by the American government. The Alaska Fish and Game Department protested loudly about the destruction of the sea lion population and many other species of sea life. The Phyllis Cormack stationed herself outside the testing zone to observe the results of the tests. After the initial underwater tests, the United States Congress voted against further underwater testing. Robert Hunter was a media guru and spiritual and organisational leader. Ben Metcalfe became the first Chairman of the Greenpeace Foundation and with his wife Dorothy managed the media for the first few years. Dr. Patrick Moore was the ecologist of note and served for nine years as President of Greenpeace Canada as well as seven years as a Director of Greenpeace International. Rod Marining's campaign saved the entrance to Vancouver's Stanley Park. He was on the first voyage to Amchitka and was a board member during the 1970s. Paul Watson was involved in the early days of Greenpeace and led Harp Seal Campaigns and Josh Norris, and Lyle Thurston was the medical doctor on the first voyage and served on the board during the 1970s.

In 1972, the Greenpeace Foundation evolved in its own right to a less conservative and structured collective of environmentalists who were more reflective of the counterculture and hippie youth movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The social and cultural background from which Greenpeace emerged heralded a period of de-conditioning away from old world antecedents and sought to develop new codes of social, environmental and political behavior.

The focus of the organization later turned from anti-nuclear protest to other environmental issues: whaling, bottom trawling, global warming, old growth, nuclear power, and genetically modified organisms.

On its official website, Greenpeace defines its mission as the following:

Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning organisation that acts to change attitudes and behaviour, to protect and conserve the environment and to promote peace by:

• Catalysing an energy revolution to address the number one threat facing our planet: climate change.

• Defending our oceans by challenging wasteful and destructive fishing, and creating a global network of marine reserves.

• Protecting the world’s remaining ancient forests which are depended on by many animals, plants and people.

• Working for disarmament and peace by reducing dependence on finite resources and calling for the elimination of all nuclear weapons.

• Creating a toxic free future with safer alternatives to hazardous chemicals in today's products and manufacturing.

• Campaigning for sustainable agriculture by encouraging socially and ecologically responsible farming practices.

Text 2. Greenpeace Structure.