The New Nation - Internet Edition

The Olympic spirit fraternity

THE Beijing Olympic Games, the 29th event of its kind, came to a close on Sunday with a spectacular and dazzling farewell and handing over of the Olympic Flag to the Mayor of London, the venue for the next Olympics. The Beijing Olympics will be remembered for various reasons. China came out in a big way as a powerful sporting nation. Beijing Olympics showcased China's past three decades of phenomenal development in all fields. The whole world acclaimed China for the excellent arrangements made for the great event.

More than ten thousand athletes from 204 countries took part in the meet. They displayed their excellence in more than three hundred sports events. Eyes of sport lovers from all over the world remained glued to Beijing during the 16 days of the games. They observed the setting of more than forty new world records and a number of new Olympic records. For the first time an Asian country emerged a sport super power against giants like USA, Russia and Britain. China grabbed 51 gold medals to top the list of winners. The Beijing Olympic saw an outstanding achievement and personal record of winning eight gold medals by Michael Phelps. He broke the previous record of seven gold medals by Mark Spitz at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Usain Bolt from Jamaica is another sports sensation who set three world records in another unprecedented feat of personal achievement.

Beijing Olympics sailed smoothly in an atmosphere of peace and friendship. They displayed man's tireless efforts to unleash immense potential and achieve perfection. Sport is probably the only field of competition where both winners and losers share glory. Every success in sports is a source of joy for all. Let this spirit of fraternity last forever.

Post-Musharraf Pakistan

THE coming months will show whether there is anything positive to be noted about Pakistan now that the former strongman's influence on that country has been conclusively removed. Even before his resignation only days ago, the retired General was having a largely restricted presence in the corridors of powers. The country has been governed for about nearly six months by a coalition of his opponents who seemed to be only united on Musharraf's ouster and little else. Now that the presidency is vacant and up for grabs, the coalition partners are engaging in fresh conflicts. There is even premonition that the coalition could break up over the issue.

Meanwhile, nearly six months of economic governance by Mushrraf's successors, is also proving to be rather shabby. Faith in the country's economy is eroding. Foreign investors are feeling nervous and the local businesses are no better. Pakistan is running the highest rate of inflation in South Asia, some 24 per cent. Strategically, the country is turning lonesome with the US fearing more dangerous instability. Islamic militants are getting stronger. They staged their worst attack recently near an arms factory belonging to the army.

Thus, the post-Musharraf forces need to urgently pull up their socks and learn to coexist under a cooperative framework. More significantly, they should cobble together an agenda and accomplish tasks unitedly under it at the fastest, to provide credible and good governance to the country and also to secure it in the strategic sense. In sum, they must have a minimum effective plan going to save the country from getting a label as one without controls. Above all, Pakistanis need unity and resolve to overcome their predicament through united endeavours. A stronger Pakistan is also very much needed for the sake of regional peace and security.

Protecting clients banking information

Dr. M. S. Haq

It is a true story. One of the clients of Standard Chartered Bank, Bangladesh (SCB) visited yesterday (around 10:30 am of 23 August 2008) the bank's Dhanmondi branch at Road 2, Dhaka - 1209. The purpose was to obtain a certificate pertaining to deduction of taxes at source for the period between 01 July 2007 and 30 June 2008 - both days inclusive. Interesting though, I have had the opportunity not only to accompany the client to the branch but to observe, and to participate in, transactions that took place between SCB personnel and us (the client plus me) on two occasions and between SCB personnel and me on one occasion - all on the same day in connection with the above matter.

The client, after initial conversations with the receptionist, decided to see the branch manager - but it was his off day. She then asked for the next-in-command. We were asked to see him in a corner 'room'. We found the gentleman (I mean, the next-in-command) talking to perhaps one of his clients in that room. The room was shared by another bank official and that official also had a client. The layout and the structure of the room were such - we were able to overhear most of the conversation inside the room at that time. It instantly occurred to me: how much vulnerable the safety and security of clients and their bank information were, to the hands of say, criminal-s, who might be loitering in the branch premises perhaps in the guise of customers, for an instance?

It appeared to me, among other things: the structural insufficiency (in terms of say, physical structures) associated with the room or rooms similar to that room in banking environments of above nature or similar to above nature could be instrumental in inter alia: affording the criminals an easy access to physical profiles of clients and their account related information; creating or enhancing (or both) opportunities for them to plan and execute a variety of criminal acts - both inside and outside of say, that branch; and strengthening or sustaining (or both) covers for SCB insiders associated with those acts - if and as applicable. I wrote - in certain national dailies of Bangladesh - about possible risks and threats associated with the structural insufficiency at SCB and at other concerned banks on one or two occasions in the past. I also took up the matter with SCB's heads of corporate affairs and human resources in person and over the phone on more than one occasion, again in the past. But results in relevant areas are yet to be visible to me and to whom it might concern.

It is expected SCB and other concerned banks will consider the matter seriously this time and contribute positively to inter alia ongoing local and national efforts towards improving what I would call banking health and banking welfare at client levels. Measures such as and as appropriate: re-locating strategic work stations in less crowded areas of for example the SCB branch; making those work stations sound proof; and improving client interview processes for say, higher operational productivity (efficiency + effectiveness) than that at present; could do the needful in the matter of banking health and the banking welfare.

Now let us go back to the story. When the second-in-command saw us through the transparent partition of the room and came to know we had been waiting for him, he requested us to take the seat outside of the room. We went to the empty office of the branch manager and waited there for him. After a while, he came to the branch manager's office. We informed him we needed the certificate (mentioned above) that day (23 August 2008) due to certain incumbencies. He told us it would not be possible for the branch to issue the certificate that day and added the type of certificate the client had requested for, is issued normally a day later from the day of request. For the client, it would imply inter alia she could - based on her application of 23 August 2008 - receive the certificate on 25 August 2008 and not the next day due to an intervening holiday on 24 August 2008. On our query, he informed us the SCB service charge for the certificate was Taka 575 plus VAT. When we raised our concern before him about the high charge for a service of above nature, he then called someone over the phone and confirmed to us subsequently - Taka 300 plus VAT was the charge.

On our query as to why the certificate could not be issued that day given urgencies attached to it - he first told us none of the branch personnel including him had - on that day - an access to information needed for the certificate. We then asked him about the Gulshan - 2 branch, he repeated the same thing. At one stage of the discussion - we asked him - could we see the staff member responsible for the preparation of certificate? He then informed us the staff member was busy in preparing the pending certificates. It was then only clear to us - accessing information was not a problem. Thereafter, on our repeated requests and our readiness to pick up the certificate before the closure of the branch that day, he agreed to issue the certificate and asked us to pick that up at 1 pm from the concerned staff member - whom he introduced then to us. The client thanked him for his cooperation and we left the branch immediately after that.

At about 12:37 pm I arrived at the branch (a bit earlier, though) for picking up the certificate. The concerned staff member was with a client at that time. After a few minutes, he delivered me the certificate duly signed by the authorized person. I thanked him for that. But when I was glancing through the certificate, I discovered a minor mistake in the client's address. I requested him to correct it and issue a new one. He expressed his inability to do that because the bank's prescribed letter head had been exhausted. I accepted his inability but requested him to assist me in checking the accuracy of account numbers indicated in the copies of certificate. Fortunately, I brought along the client's account number. In the checking process, we discovered wrong account numbers and wrong figures. The concerned staff member corrected those mistakes; printed new copies of the certificate, using the prescribed letter head; and delivered again to me the duly signed copies - the entire operations took less than 15 minutes.

It will not be out of place to mention here, the client had, on receipt of the certificate from me, discovered another mistake. She brought the matter immediately to the attention of one of the staff members - who was about to leave the office for the day - over the telephone. The staff member requested her to bringing back the copy of certificate to the branch for correction on the next working day - 25th day August 2008. Further, despite the fact, the format of bank's certificate was similar to what the client had requested for previously, the second-in-command could not advise her properly in that respect.

A brief analysis of above facts would reveal inter alia several developmental areas for SCB at structural, non-structural and other levels. A change management strategy supported by a solid strategy implementation and monitoring regime will be required for, among other things, supplementing and complementing existing efforts towards dealing with those developmental areas, per se. The strategy should focus on inter alia measures such as and as appropriate - presented not in the order of priority and importance:

1. improve organizational culture reflecting especially on ethics of banking at client-product interface levels;

2. enhance physical human security at bank-client transaction levels - a few recommendations have already been made in pertinent paragraphs of the article. Develop and implement early warning security system with the help and support of other banks, the country's law enforcement agencies including inter alia RAB, and concerned others. If the system does exist at this point in time then strengthen that system for more reliable and just-in-time services;

3. improve product knowledge and product familiarities at respective levels of leadership and operation. In that respect, improve foreign exchange management at certain branches of SCB.

4. upgrade human resources development activities for say, facilitating intra-bank leadership successions (I mean, at various levels of leadership) in a more impact-oriented and return-oriented manner than that at present. In that respect, ensure higher level professional selling skills development opportunities for say, aspiring and promising intra-bank leaders;

5. maximize the return on investments in areas such as entrepreneurial skills development, organizational skills development, organizational learning, and management of uncertainties for sustaining and enhancing the bank's comparative, competitive and other advantages at local, national and other levels through the foreseeable future;

6. identify the cause, effect and causality relating to neglect of work and implement remedial measures in relevant areas;

7. intensify war on poor quality of services on a continuous basis;

8. minimize, if not eliminate wastage for bringing down the bank's service charges and enhancing the bank's reputational costs - used in a positive sense, to mention a few;

9. promote public-private partnerships in the banking sector with or without the help and assistance of for example, Bangladesh Bank in pursuit of for example cultivating corporate culture in the above sector. Explore possibilities for transforming the bank's relevant operations into the World Bank type operations in areas say, poverty reduction and better governance - using for example the SCB's social responsibility window; and

10. subject the bank's servo-mechanism (used in an engineering sense) to regular and periodic maintenance programs - as required - in pursuits of coping with swings of demand and supply in areas say, client services at any given time;

SCB and other banks should accelerate efforts - at individual, collective and other levels - towards inter alia reducing the gap between the product rhetoric and the product reality in a meaningful and sustainable manner and to the satisfaction of all concerned. Further, I will be failing in my duties if I do not mention here how much pleased we are with the services provided to the client so far by Gulshan 2 branch of SCB. I wrote about that along with certain measures for improvement - in a number of national dailies of Bangladesh - at least on two occasions in the past and shared the copies of write ups with SCB for information, and action - as appropriate. The client had recently conveyed her appreciation about the performance of Gulshan 2 branch to one of SCB's high officials in one of the meetings with the bank. Let us work towards improving, sustaining and promoting the outcome of country's banking sector through the foreseeable future.

Digital war on poverty

Jeffrey Sachs

THE digital divide is beginning to close. The flow of digital information - through mobile phones, text messaging, and the internet - is now reaching the world's masses, even in the poorest countries, bringing with it a revolution in economics, politics, and society.

Extreme poverty is almost synonymous with extreme isolation, especially rural isolation. But mobile phones and wireless internet end isolation, and will therefore prove to be the most transformative technology of economic development of our time.

The digital divide is ending not through a burst of civic responsibility, but mainly through market forces. Mobile phone technology is so powerful, and costs so little per unit of data transmission, that it has proved possible to sell mobile phone access to the poor. There are now more than 3.3 billion subscribers in the world, roughly one for every two people on the planet.

Moreover, market penetration in poor countries is rising sharply. India has around 300 million subscribers, with subscriptions rising by a stunning eight million or more per month. Brazil now has more than 130 million subscribers, and Indonesia was estimated to reach 120 million. In Africa, which contains the world's poorest countries, the market is soaring, with more than 280 million subscribers.

Mobile phones are now ubiquitous in villages as well as cities. If an individual does not have a cell phone, they almost certainly know someone who does. Probably a significant majority of Africans have at least emergency access to a cell phone, either their own, a neighbour's, or one at a commercial kiosk.

Even more remarkable is the continuing "convergence" of digital information: wireless systems increasingly link mobile phones with the internet, personal computers, and information services of all kinds. The array of benefits is stunning. The rural poor in more and more of the world now have access to wireless banking and payment systems, such as Kenya's famous M-Pesa system, which allows money transfers over the phone. The information carried on the new networks spans public health, medical care, education, banking, commerce, and entertainment, in addition to communications among family and friends.

India, home to world-leading software engineers, hi-tech companies, and a vast and densely populated rural economy of some 700 million poor people in need of connectivity of all kinds, has naturally been a pioneer of digital-led economic development.

Government and business have increasingly teamed up in public-private partnerships to provide crucial services on the digital network.

In the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, for example, emergency ambulance services are now within reach of tens of millions of people, supported by cell phones, sophisticated computer systems, and increased public investments in rural health. Several large-scale telemedicine systems are now providing primary health and even cardiac care to rural populations.

Moreover, India's new rural employment guarantee scheme, just two years old, is not only employing millions of the poorest through public financing, but also is bringing tens of millions of them into the formal banking system, building on India's digital networks.

On the fully commercial side, the mobile revolution is creating a logistics revolution in farm-to-retail marketing. Farmers and food retailers can connect directly through mobile phones and distribution hubs, enabling farmers to sell their crops at higher "farm-gate" prices and without delay, while buyers can move those crops to markets with minimum spoilage and lower prices for final consumers.

The strengthening of the value chain not only raises farmers' incomes, but also empowers crop diversification and farm upgrading more generally. Similarly, world-leading software firms are bringing information technology jobs, including business process outsourcing, right into the villages through digital networks.

Education will be similarly transformed. Throughout the world, schools at all levels will go global, joining together in worldwide digital education networks.

Children in the United States will learn about Africa, China, and India not only from books and videos, but also through direct links across classrooms in different parts of the world. Students will share ideas through live chats, shared curricula, joint projects, and videos, photos, and text sent over the digital network.

Universities, too, will have global classes, with students joining lectures, discussion groups, and research teams from a dozen or more universities at a time. This past year, my own university - Columbia University in New York City - teamed up with universities in Ecuador, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, France, Ethiopia, Malaysia, India, Canada, Singapore, and China in a "global classroom" that simultaneously connected hundreds of students on more than a dozen campuses in an exciting course on global sustainable development.

In my book The End of Poverty, I wrote that extreme poverty can be ended by the year 2025. A rash predication, perhaps, given global violence, climate change, and threats to food, energy, and water supplies. But digital information technologies, if deployed cooperatively and globally, will be our most important new tools, because they will enable us to join together globally in markets, social networks, and cooperative efforts to solve our common problems.

Cyberwar is a frightening prospect

WHEN Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, it brought back memories of Soviet-era military conquest - a reminder of the cold war.

But whether by accident or design, the fight for South Ossettia appears to have given us a taste of the future as well, with Internet attacks on Georgian computer systems resulting in theories about 21st-century warfare spilling out everywhere. The BBC said the situation represented a tvirtual echo of battles being fought on the ground, while Slate.com's Evgeny Morozov even enlisted as a Russian cybersoldier to see what was really happening. But while the past fortnight has seen plenty of conjecture, there's been very little hard evidence about the conflict that's taking place in cyberspace. We do know a few things, though. After the military situation escalated, some prominent Georgian websites came under attack - though right now we cannot quite be sure where the strikes came from.

We also know that the Georgian government enlisted the help of the regional experts in Estonia (themselves hardly bosom pals with Russia) as well as using the might of Google as a deterrent by shifting some important government websites on to Blogger.com.

Everything beyond this has largely been the product of rumour or chin-scratching - which, in turn, has led to some backlash. Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, is scathing about the idea that online battles can have a big role to play in war. tIt's worth remembering that in this 'cyberwar', the most serious consequence is that a website becomes temporarily inaccessible to viewers, he wrote on his blog. tIt's a war being fought with paintballs, not with live rounds. In some ways he's right to be snooty - after all, when people are dying, a blocked web connection is pretty insignificant.

But the long-term threat of online attack, particularly on countries that try to use the net to leapfrog the developmental cycles that the Western world takes for granted, is growing. Remember: if the low-cost, global-reach approach of the Internet helps governments to accelerate economic development, it also leaves them too reliant on the public system. That's a potentially perilous situation - just look at Estonia, which saw its entire banking system struck by a denial of service attack last year. As enemies probe for weakness, we're only going to see more of this in the future.

I think the real problem isn't understanding the damage a cyberwar could cause, but in grasping what it really looks like. It's an odd concept because even in these days of international terrorism, we're still used to the idea of military coordination. Instead, many of these strikes seem to be cases of so-called thacktivism: gangs of angry nationalists and script kiddies who launch ad hoc strikes on their tenemies as part of a propaganda push.

And the troubling thing is that this sort of collective grassroots movement - a sort of click for victory campaign - isn't the hi-tech descendant of the local militia, but the inheritor of the Internet's worst excesses.

Because while it's easy to imagine Internet conflict in terms of the wars we're used to in history - grand struggles between two opposing sides - this isn't organised conflict. In fact, it's hardly even guerrilla warfare.

It, like the fringes of the Internet, is pure chaos - peopled by bullies. Indeed, the angry cybernationalists of Russia and elsewhere have less in common with their nation's armies than they do with the other griefers who make online life a misery. They're the geopolitical equivalent of the childish tanonymous collective who swarm over messageboards and websites - a mob of untraceable louts who cause havoc for no real reason other than they can. Think of them as unruly, unhinged and unrepentant - just like the worst trolls you've encountered.

Right now we think we can understand them because they're fighting nationalist wars, when the truth is that in the future they could turn their gaze in any direction they feel like. And that, above all else, is what makes cyberwar a truly frightening prospect.

-Guardian News Service