Summary of ideas submitted in the Technology category…

• Ireland and Scotland should announce a joint approach to web 2.0, ICT and other “technological infrastructure” requirements.
• Ireland has a higher potential to create electricity from wind than most countries in the world. Use smaller wind farms to power the local area only and don’t bring into national network. Locate the largest wind farms offshore or on uninhabited islands, Wind farms in Donegal could feed into Northern Ireland grid as this is nearer.
• Ireland is one of the most ideally suited countries in the world for tidal (wave) energy- the ESB should look into investing in tidal energy.
• Ireland needs to migrate to fibre-to-the-home technology (FTTH).The government must work constructively with eircom to ensure that they are encouraged to place fibre in their existing ducting to connect each home and business to the existing eircom fibre backbone. It will have to be done sooner or later, and we might as well do it sooner while, labour is cheap during the recession
• Ireland should become an innovator in discovering new ways to extract oil.
• Ireland should develop a space programme and think about putting an Irish person into space.
• Ireland should initiate a strategy to update our broadband system using Fibre or LTE access technology. This would enable businesses to access 100 Mbps broadband.
• Irish brainstorming groups should be set up to swap IT knowledge based skills and develop innovative ideas.
• It should be Government policy to only buy IT etc from organisations committed to continuing to do business in Ireland.
• Launch a nationwide scheme to make the population technologically savvy
• Launch text alert system to reduce queues for public sector services.
• Maintain a film rights register, fees etc and film information (media format, lengths) - for world cinema. The rights and location change hands quickly, thus could piggyback on the above.
• Make Ireland a global centre for the delivery of online medical education.
• Make Ireland energy self sufficient. The technology is now here to turn every house in Ireland an energy generator with photo volvic cells solar panels heat exchange systems domestic windmills
• Make Ireland the pioneer in getting rid of road signs and replacing them with electronic displays inside the vehicle.
• Make people more aware of funding opportunities from the EU for research and development.
• Many aircraft fly over this country every day. Large inscribed web addresses e.g. www.achill.com on beaches or mountainsides where people passing overhead might be prompted to visit the website with a resultant purchasing of some item or service.
• Met Eireann should provide a text/alert web service. If a cold snap or heatwave is imminent, the text message can advise the recipient to manually adjust their heating/cooling system.
• My proposal is to put together a syndicate of Irish investors who will invest money in start-up companies coming out of universities or the technology sector through a competitive selection process.
• Offer support/consultancy in standard software packages such as QuickBooks. If you have been made unemployed after years working with a particular software package, offer your services as a consultant. If made redundant look for work, not just a job
• Offer tax incentives to any business which moves its applications and data to cloud computing.
• Online gaming seems to be an area with huge potential for growth. The first students in “Computing with Games Development” will graduate from Tralee IT this June. These graduations (and all other relevant graduations from all other Irish colleges) should be advertised internationally.
• Organisations throw out a huge amount of PCs and related IT equipment each year. This could be used by the government to help retrain people.
• Place a levy on mobile data traffic
• Provide free basic language training in Irish and English online for all citizens. Tuition would involve simulations, videos, audio files. The tuition could be supported by test centres for those who wish to certify their level of attainment.
• Provide free, nationwide Wi-Fi.
• Provide incentives for companies constructing Tier IV Data Centres to locate in Ireland. Allocate in a way that will strengthen the existing peering and network capacity in Ireland.
• Reduce the cost of line rental from the highest in Europe to the EU average to restore our competitiveness. Assign National Broadband Scheme (NBS) to relevant Wireless ISP’s in each area of the NBS areas most of whom can deliver a superior service at a lower price to businesses.
• Reduce the VAT rate on online transactions and promote online companies who wish to set up in Ireland
• Re-examine the criteria agencies like Enterprise Ireland and the IDA use to evaluate which high tech companies they can support. The criteria should be: ‘will this investment create high value jobs?’ Computer games companies are not classed as carrying out R&D and thus cannot claim grants even though this is a huge growth area globally.
• Release all the aerial photography from the ordnance survey database. The local authorities could use open source mapping and eliminate the need for expensive web software.
• Remove the computer infrastructure departments (maintenance & procurement) from all individual public sector organisations and merge them into a single agency that looks after public sector procurement requirements based on the best international practice.
• Replace DSL lines for broadband usage with ‘white spaces’.
• Roll out broadband to rural areas via the electricity grid (BPL).
• Save money on the public sector phone bill by using VOIP technologies such as Skype or JaJah. Calls between Skype users are completely free and calls to land lines are very cheap (especially internationally).