"NPR’s C.E.O. Was a Right-Wing Target. Then the Real Trouble Started" https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/business/npr-katherine-maher.html?unlocked_article_code=1.A1A.Z4iA.05DHGW3mmCRC&smid=nytcore-android-share #publicservice #US
"$1 billion over the next five years to build up Canada’s artificial intelligence and quantum computing ecosystems while embedding AI technology more deeply in federal government operations."
This money should go to Canada Post instead.
Why are we giving our money to private AI corporations making record profits instead of a government-owned service essential to Canadian small businesses?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/federal-budget-quantum-ai-computing-9.6966549
@Em0nM4stodon Public administration in Germany is investing in machines that control and operate specialised case software for printing paper documents. I have stomach pains from laughing and crying at the same time. That means no digitalisation, no AI, no resource savings, no interfaces, only automation, so we are in the middle of the 4th industrialisation, in the middle of the 1960s.
#digitization #publicservice #civilservices #verwaltung #ÖffentlicherDienst #merz #digitalisierung #neuland
Deutsche Bahn (DB), a state-owned company under control of the gov of #Germany, is telling me when i try to buy a ticket or to log in (!) that "Your browser's behavior resembles that of a bot."
Suggestion is:
- change browser (!)
- change network (!!!)
or
"If you are using a VPN client, anonymization tool, [iOS stuff], or third-party antivirus software, please temporarily disable it."
#German gov. suggests giving up on privacy protection?
-> DPA complaint?
@llnz
> the UK equivalent (creatively named National Grid) is a private company, so it could be worse
Oh believe me the Ruthenasiacs would have hocked ours off too if they thought they could get away with it. As with the roads and water infrastructure, and the surviving bits of the public education and health systems, there were dedicated and militant anti-corporatisation campaigns to stop them.
But as long as it's a corporation, that risk is still there, and with this government ...
#HatTip to the Water Pressure Group in Tamaki Makaurau, as a notable example of the grassroots anti-corporatisation campaigns of the nineties and noughties. They engaged in a bunch of nonviolent direct action to resist the commercialisation of public water supplies, and networked with other "water warriors" around in the word. I vividly remember the retired fire engines they bought to protests;
OMG someone said the quiet part out loud! I wonder how much money the public of Aotearoa gave BorgSoft over the last 5 years? How much we will fork over during the course of the next 5? How much of our sensitive government data is stored in systems that are legally obliged to give the US government full access on request?
The strategy laid out towards the end of the linked article is bang on.
Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden
boosted
Can the Fediverse be provided as a public service?
Watch Ian Forrester's FediForum keynote in which he is sharing his experience exploring this question at the BBC and beyond.
https://spectra.video/w/tvmXjF6zcAfVXPrcUuVc3T
/cc @cubicgarden
Can the Fediverse be provided as a public service?
Watch Ian Forrester's FediForum keynote in which he is sharing his experience exploring this question at the BBC and beyond.
https://spectra.video/w/tvmXjF6zcAfVXPrcUuVc3T
/cc @cubicgarden
Well, I finally got around to evaluating the #ManageMyHealth portal;
https://managemyhealth.co.nz/about-us/
When my GP suggested I sign up with it, I presumed it was a public service offered by Te Whatu Ora, like My Health Record;
https://www.tewhatuora.govt.nz/health-services-and-programmes/digital-health/my-health-record
So what do I think of Manage My Health? Not impressed. This is a privately-owned, for-profit digital platform, that I can't be certain isn't #DataFarming patients who sign up with it.
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Tristan Nitot✓
boosted
"Public services are inefficient"
Nope, neoliberalism fools us by dismantling public good, and blame it after. "Break it, blame it, sell it".
#neoliberalism #publicgood #services #publicservice #publicsystems
"Public services are inefficient"
Nope, neoliberalism fools us by dismantling public good, and blame it after. "Break it, blame it, sell it".
#neoliberalism #publicgood #services #publicservice #publicsystems
I suspect I'm not the only person trying to put in a late night submission in the RSB. The Parliamentary website is going slooooowwww ...
EDIT: I'm glad I draft my text on an EtherPad and copypasta it, rather than typing it onto the web form ; )
Again, I must protest that the official website for making Parliamentary submissions has hard dependencies on proprietary scripts served from domains owned by Goggle; google.com and gstatic.com
So a known DataFarmer has a number of potential backdoors into a system that is recording people's contact details and political views. Considering the role tech corporations are playing in the new USAmerican fascism, the wisdom of this is even more questionable.
"These agencies, these universities, these governments ... they've got so used to having a FB account, or an InstaGram account, that I don't think they can see how peculiar it will look to people in the future, that the PM's address is Justin@hotmail.com. Why would you put public information on a thing you don't own, when we now have the tools to get away from that."
@paige, 2025
https://video.fedihost.co/w/rnNZ3FxnH977sFUDpQTwC7
(2/2)
If you look into the "comms" budgets of NZ public services, you'll find that every year they give huge pots of money to corporate platforms, to "promote" public service messages to kiwis using them. At the same, they've been considering making those same companies give money to legacy news media companies, instead of funding public interest journalism (FDNBB), and now they're cutting funding to public media.
This is absurd.
(1/?)
#SocialMedia #PublicService #GovernmentCommunications #FDNBB
How #ElonMusk Executed His Takeover of the Federal Bureaucracy 🧵
It started as banter at a fund-raising dinner for Vivek Ramaswamy's presidential campaign in 2023. #Musk indicated to guests that he believed that #technology was the key to gutting the federal bureaucracy.
#law #regulation#CivilServants#CivilService#PublicService#Technocracy #broligarchy #plutocracy#NeoReactionary#NRx#Technofeudalism#Trump#USpol
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/musk-federal-bureaucracy-takeover.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=p&pvid=6140EDB3-F386-416C-A435-30BAE8B243F0