Influence of IT on our lives Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Influence of IT on our lives - Essay Example Sheltering information has been at the center of all industries and concerted efforts have been made in order to conserve the critical data that gives an edge in today's globally influenced economies. IT has seriously influenced our lives and its impact is being felt on medicine, business, engineering and now even on the activities of governments. It is being increasingly utilized to ease the way in which work is undertaken and at the same time to simplify the activities of information manipulation and preservation. In this fast paced world demands are increasing with expanding populations and shrinking time frame has placed huge constraints on governments, which finds itself strangled in the dominance of technology. The need of the hour therefore is to expand the role of IT in the public sector and to make use of the precise technologies at the right time. Debates have been held throughout the past decade to analyze the role of IT implementation in the UK governance. In the meantime continuous research has been conducted by UK administration and a number of developments have been made that marked the expansion of IT in the UK's Public sector. Huge budgets have been streamlined towards this issue and the first step for IT enhancement was the development of an online portal that was aimed at providing information to the UK nationals through other web links. Unfortunately the idea was not successful with the English population but it registered the foundation for public sector IT development in the country and it was followed up by the launch of an entirely functional website in 2004.These websites have aimed at automating tasks such as billing and tax paying, and have helped UK citizens in saving the most valued resource of time. A number of accusations have been made regarding the insufficient utilization of resources and UK government has been charged for blindly depending on the wave of Information Technology instead of focusing on the needs of the people. In a report published by the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) UK, the government was advised to ensure that IT innovation was lead by the needs of the publi c rather than by blind faith in technology. A number of recommendations were also made and the government was primarily asked to concentrate on issues like service quality, user satisfaction and time saving. A Manifesto for a Digital Britain has been adopted that are structured around policies of modernizing, recognizing and delineating in order to modernize Britain's public institutions and economy. Various developments have hence been made that are focused on providing the right things to the public these include the vehicle licensing website, the chip and spin technology and the congestion charge to enable automation of the public sector. Chip and PIN Chip and PIN is the name that has been taken for the new EMV Card Payments System designed to supplement and ultimately substitute magnetic stripe payment cards in Europe. It was designed by Europay, Mastercard and Visa, and the specifications for this new technology are managed by EMVCo, a company specially created for that purpose. Chip and PIN has been regarded as the biggest change that has occurred to the payment methods and it is being claimed to be the simplest