[LINK] Governance of the Internet of Things

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

The European Commission is conducting a public survey ..

 http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/dispatch?form=IoTGovernance


The Internet is gearing up for the next technological revolution: 
communication with and among objects. 

How would you envisage the "governance" of such an "Internet of Things" 
(IoT)?  

Details: (and following is their short questionnaire)

The Internet of today offers access to content and information through 
connectivity to web pages and to multiple terminals (e.g., mobiles, TV). 

The next evolution will make it possible to access information related to 
our physical environment, through a generalised connectivity of everyday 
objects. 

A car may be able to report the status of its various subsystems using 
communicating embedded sensors for remote diagnosis and maintenance; home 
information about the status of the doors, shutters, and content of the 
fridge may be delivered to distant smart phones; personal devices may 
deliver to a central location the latest status of healthcare information 
of remotely cared patients; environmental data may be collected and 
processed globally for real time decision making.

 
Access to information relating to our surrounding environment is made 
possible through communicating objects able to interact with that 
environment and react to events. 

This makes possible new classes of applications such as smart homes with 
automated systems to monitor many aspects of daily living, smart grids 
and intelligent energy management, smart mobility with better control of 
traffic, or smart logistics with the integrated control of all processes 
in the entire distribution chain. 

There are endless examples of this evolution of networked devices, also 
known as the Internet of Things (IoT).

The Internet of Things holds the promise of significant progress in 
addressing global and societal challenges and to improve daily life. 

It is also a highly promising economic sector for sustainability, growth, 
innovation and employment. 

But it is likely to have a profound impact on society, in areas like 
privacy, security, ethics, and liability. 

The policy challenge is to assess the right trade-off between the 
potential economic and societal benefits and the control that we want to 
retain over an environment where machines will gather, exchange, process 
and store information automatically. 

The effects on our private and public space require that people and their 
governments debate the appropriate governance and management of the 
Internet of Things in the future. 

To this end the European Commission envisions a recommendation addressing 
the main issues, of which a number are outlined in the questions below.

The purpose of this consultation is to solicit the views of a wide range 
of stakeholders and the public at large ...

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Cheers,
Stephen