Three hours after I gave my name and e-mail address to Michael Fertik, the CEO of Reputation.com, he called me back and read my Social Security number to me. "We had it a couple of hours ago," he said. "I was just too busy to call."

In the past few months, I have been told many more-interesting facts about myself than my Social Security number.

Every remembrance that I have from a usual visit to my bank in the nineties, when I had started managing my own (small) bank account, always begins with a large standing queue.  But, suddenly, everything changed, and my dark remembrances were transformed into an “easy as click” sensation.

The National
Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace aims to set the
benefits, overall strategy, goals and objectives of the government's
plan to improve how users (and even
devices) are authenticated onto the Internet. The plan, so far, calls
for very limited government involvement in the development
of the identity infrastructure.

The report Envisioning Digital Europe 2030 is the result of research
conducted by the Information Society
Unit of IPTS as part of the CROSSROAD Project – A Participative Roadmap
on ICT research on Electronic
Governance and Policy Modelling (www.crossroad-eu.net).

As more organisations turn to the cloud, the need for an effective set of industry standards is becoming ever more pressing.

There is a clear divide between those who argue for implementation of cloud standards and those who argue against. At the heart of this debate is a clear need to balance the benefits of having a standard with the call for a sustained pace of innovation.