E-Government

E-government

E-government is when governments do the work online or electronically, that’s where the ‘E’ comes from in E-Government as in ‘Electronic’

Due to the increase of households getting access to internet to the point that almost everyone has internet these days, the government has found a new way to expand and has found that moving electronically has greatly increased the simplicity of work, as well as decreasing the amount of paper work.

There are currently 473 different government departments that range from Ofstead to Healthcare services. Most of these departments have become available to get in contact with through the internet now, which is why the amount of people using the UK E-Government service has increased.

One way that people get in contact with the government is when people pay for tax through the HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) using the Government Gateway website.

Another new recent change to a part of the government is the way that people pay for their road tax, which hasn't changed for the past 60 years. People used to be able to pay online for their road tax disk and receive their tax disk through post, but now people still have to pay online, but do not receive their road tax disk at all, but update the police database to tell them you have paid your road tax. This new system has decreased a lot of paper work that people had to physically review as well as decreased the amount of people working. However for some people this is a bad thing as it results in less jobs for people, on the other hand it does decrease the amount for human error in the forms being physically reviewed.

The gov.uk website is currently working on combining all the different departments under its website, for example the Ofstead website is a separate website, is soon to be combined and be under the gov.uk web address.

Each town has its own county council which usually has its own website, there, people can keep updated on any events in the local area or look up the different garbage collection days. You are also able to do things like request a new bin online, as it might have gotten stolen or broken. All these things you would normally have to go to a council and do in person. I haven't personally, but I know that my parents have recently requested a new bin online as the one we used to have had a broken lid, apparently the process online has been reasonably easy, and the bin was delivered the next week.

Another reason why people might come into contact with the government is when people vote, this has allowed a larger amount of people to vote for the next PM, as most people these days are busy with work and do  
n't have time to physically go and vote. However some people think that because of this, theories of conspiracy and hackers being able to completely change the results

E-Government can also use the internet to share information, for example with the recent outbreak of Ebola, the government has issued information on how the UK is currently working on preventing the outbreak of Ebola in the UK, and what to do in case of an outbreak. The government is also able to share download links to forms for different things online, that you would have to normally have to go to your local council to get the specific form.

Some E-Governments have incorporated an E-Petitions system on their websites. There, people can set up different petitions and get people to vote for different topics for the government to review.

Online Education

Online Services: Education Online.

With an increase of people being able to connect to the internet these days, has sparked a network of teaching and online education resources. Resources being available for students as well as teachers that ranges from past papers to online tutors.

Most teens and children in this age are able to learn how to use computers from when they are very young and are raised with the idea of computers, and develop computer skills that are very useful and can be used at a later stage in their life, unlike the older generation, where computers appeared when they were at a later stage in their life where they had to learn separately how to use computers leaving most people struggling.  

 

BBC Bitesize

Some resources available for students are websites like Bitesize. Bitesize is run by the BBC and is used quite a lot by students that take multiple different subjects; bitesize offers small online activities that visually explain things to as well as small tests that students can take at the end of small units. This means that it is suited for both visual learners as well as audio learners.

However some teachers believe that it isn’t the best online resource for some subjects as the small tests that they do at the end of units, are not aimed at the different exam boards which the students would later take for their real exams.

 

MyMaths

Another popular resource that schools use is MyMaths. This is an online resource that specialises in maths and contains all the different units in maths, not only for KS3 and KS4, but also all the A-Level maths units as well. Students can login to the MyMaths website using login details that the school has, then are able to use their own personal login given to them by their maths teacher, to access any online homework that their teacher might have given them on a specific subject. This is also a useful resource for teachers as they are able to give out maths homework on there,  as well as the option to monitor and log the marks that they students got in the online homework.

 

Student Room
Student Room is another online website that is sometimes useful to students. Student room originally started off as a chat room for Students in the UK doing their exams, may they be GCSEs or A Levels. With its success, it turned into a forum that is more organised and split into the different discussion topics about different subjects, past papers and revision for future exams. It also tends to have teachers roaming the different discussions topics for their subject that they are teaching and offer advice or extra help for revision.

 

Learning New Skills on The Internet

The internet does not only provide help with certain subject, but also allows you to learn new skills like learning a new language or learning how to code.

One popular website designed to teach people how to code in different coding languages from scratch is a website called ‘CodeCademy’. People find this website to be very good at teaching as it treats people as if they have never  seen or written computer code which most people haven’t. The way that It teaches people is setting small examples of code and explaining how It works, then setting small activates where people have to read the code, fix the issue and complete the activity, which then leads to small challenges to get people to write their own code from scratch to do a certain objective, while still offering advice and small tips to get the people do most of the coding by themselves at an early stage. Teachers are also able to acquire past papers and mark schemes to get students more used to real exam questions, and the mark schemes that contain the answers can be used to make sure that students can get the most amount of marks out of each question, as well as to see how the exam board wants the answers laid out.

 

Teachers Resources

Teachers as a whole can find the internet very useful and tend to incorporate it in lessons with small fun activities to get the children engaged in class more, but also to help with class teaching specifications for teachers to know how to layout their lesson time, but also to become a teacher in the first place. Everyone that wants to become a teacher for a certain subject has to pass an exam that has to be taken online first. One procedure that the exam incorporates to make sure that people do not look up the answers online while they are taking the exam is to make the questions timed to prevent people doing that. At the end of the exam, the marks are submitted online to the company that deals with the exams, there they are able to get the test papers marked through their system and submit a total for the test to see how many marks they got and the grade for the test.

 

Sources: My knowledge and Memory

Online Banking

How Banks Work
Banks started off by just simply storing money in vaults and keeping it safe for people and allowing them to be able to take the money out at any time. What the bank then does is turn the money that you put in to your account into data that is added to your bank allowance. This allows banks to use your physical money that you put in to make more money from it.

When you are getting paid by your employer, the employer in charge of the salaries sends
information (string of data) to the bank to subtract the total being paid from their account, and add the data to your allowance in your account, which means that the money in your account is not physically being put into your bank account, instead it’s all just data.

Because of this, these days physical money is becoming less of a thing that people have, with less and less money being stored in local banks and all of the physical money being stored in a central bank and having it all done electronically. When physical money is turned into strings of data it also means that it can get transferred easily which means that people now days can go online easily and be able to transfer money to others without any physical interaction of giving the physical money to the other person. However people believe that because of this, other people that may have gotten your bank account details can easily send all your money to themselves.

Online Banks
With businesses moving online without having physical shops open, some banks have done the same, one example of a bank that has done that is called ‘Egg’ which is a former British internet bank setup in Derby. It was only possible to operate an Egg bank account over the internet or through their call centre as they did not have any physical banks open. Because of Eggs online presence meant that they could offer much better bank deals than other places as they did not have to spend money on physical banks and staff and work the bank from an office.

Online Bank Security
Some people may argue that online banking is safer than physical banking however some people disagree. Banks have trouble these days persuading people that online baking is safe even though with today’s threats of security like ‘phishing’ where people get send letters and emails from people pretending to be banks to try and get your private bank information, as well as the threat of hackers breaking into banks and stealing bank information or through a special method that they use to duplicate your bank website and enter fields that ask you for your card pin and other information that only you should know and not even your bank.

Some banks try to win over customers with extra security features like a special handheld card reader that you place your card into, type in your pin and receive an 8 digit combination of numbers that you need to log into your bank account.

Online Currency
The newest addition to online money banking is the addition of an online based currency called bitcoin that does not have a physical form and is entirely made up of numbers and letters. With bitcoin, you were actually able to earn bitcoins by a process called “mining” which means that you turn your computer into a small server and have your computer perform complex algorithms of code for other companies, by doing this you were given a small amount of money in the form of bitcoin.  

It is much cheaper for banks nowadays to work online as well as much more convenient for customers to work online instead of physically having to go to a bank.

E-commerce

E-commerce Introduction

E-commerce is an online transaction that takes place on the internet. This system allows people with internet access to buy physical goods and have them delivered straight to them. When buying online, an online transaction takes place between two people, where the buyer pays the provider for the goods that they want. All this is done electronically without any physical money being involved or the buyer and provider seeing each other.

Online shopping

One of the most used and most well known platforms for shopping online is Amazon which advertises products from other companies through their system where customers can easily find them.

Amazon originally started off as a book seller online buy later branched off to sell millions more products today for them to make more money. Amazon started off as on online company and still remain today as an online business with no actual physical shops.

Another well known online shopping that plenty of people use is Ebay. This website works in similar fashion to Amazon, where they do not actually have their own products, but are simply a way to connect the buyer and seller to make a purchase and an online transaction. You can not only buy things on Ebay but you can also sell your items on there to make money. Ebay however has one difference between Amazon that it uses their own invention called 'PayPal'

This is a system that buyers can use to securely use to transfer money to the seller. The buyer pays using paypal, this means that the money is first sent to paypal, where they take a small percentage for the transaction and then send the money to the seller, this is so that the seller does not have a direct contact with the buyers private card information.

When using online shopping, trust is a very important factor, as most people do not feel safe buying online and entering their private bank account details to make a purchase. That is why both Amazon and Ebay include a 'Feedback' feature where previous customers are able to leave a review of how trusted the buyer or seller is. Feedbacks are really important for business now days, as customers will always go with sellers with the most positive feedbacks for example if they see one seller with a rating of 99.8% positive rating and another seller with 99.5% (which is still very high) they will choose the one with the rating of 99.8% and most people probably won't buy from the other seller. This system ensures less fraud will occur with online transactions between people.

Click and collect and home delivery

With the increase of business going online, some companies have incorporated a system called 'Click and collect' that allows people to order and pay for their shopping online, and then simply being able to go into store to get your shopping which is already packed for you ready to pick up, this has proven to be a convenient method for busy people that do not want to walk around the store getting their shopping and then standing in line to pay for their produce. A company like Argos also use this system as it saves the company money on delivery costs.

Something called a 'Brick and Click' is when a physical store like Sainsbury's has moved part of their business online, where people are now able to order their shopping online and then having it delivered straight to their door the same day. This type of shopping has also been very convenient for people that do not have time to do their shopping but can simply order their shopping online and do not have to carry it to the house themselves as the driver will pick up your shopping literally you front door. However some people do not like this system as they believe that the people in store picking up their order can miss out some items that they might have ordered online, or may just be out of stock but still get charged for these items.

Companies find that moving their business online can boost sales as it reaches a larger amount of people, people that do not have time to go out shopping but would rather order their shopping online which proves to be much more convenient. In addition to this, with more and more companies going online, this removes the need for physical shops, which could directly link to more shops closing down which leaves more people unemployed.