E- Government

E-government

 

E-Government, also known as electronic government, refers to government’s use of information technology to exchange information and services with citizens, businesses, and many arms of government. The implementation of the E-Government has improved internal efficiency drastically, the delivery of public services or processes of democratic governance and a by far improved accessibility of public services.
 

E-government tends to be thought of as "online government", However, there are non-Internet electronic government technologies that can be used in this context such as home telephones, fax, PDA, SMS text messaging, MMS, Bluetooth, CCTV, tracking systems, road traffic management, identity cards, smart cards and other NFC applications, TV and radio-based delivery of government services, email and online community facilities. Polling station technology is also being used, additionally, non-online e-voting is being considered now also.

 

The main website accessed by people in the UK to report situations, look up information or to aware yourself of any possible problems is: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/index.htm

Direct Government is an online website, which allows citizens to find out information about the government and what is occurring in their local area at the time. This is known as e-presence, which is present on the internet and allows any person in the country to access the website whenever they like, and can research any information. This e-government website has all the public services in one easily available place. The most popular searches made by citizens are for jobs, car tax, driving theory tests student fiancé, and what the job seekers allowance is.

 

The direct government website has helped citizens find out various types of information about their government. Their home page has numerous links on a variety of different topics which are available to search, these come of use as they may be what citizens are looking to find out about which makes the search even simpler. This website gets updated every day, to allow new information to come through, the website has to have such regular updates considering the information is changing constantly, such as the jobs available to you, these could be taken already and people need to be aware of this as soon as possible, otherwise the website is holding false information.

 

The website is for people of all ages, this allows students find out heaps of information about careers they might be interested in, any finance issues, and even about university’s or colleges if they are looking into further education. Almost any information can be found and accessed which could relate to you depending on your age, interests and questions. If your older and need to find out about pensions or planning your retirement, this website provides that information. Additionally if you’re a parent and need to find out detailed information about local primary schools, money or tax benefits, this is available to you also. This website also holds health and safety information to ensure your safety in any situation.

 

The government used to hand out leaflets many years ago, these leaflets contained all the information about recently updated and new topics within the government.  Now e-government has been introduced these leaflets have been declined completely, this is because of the advanced technology today, all information that the public may want to know can be posted on various websites all across the internet. Today we also reasonably frequently get television information adverts come up on screen to aware us of any new interesting stories to research on a given  website to access more information. These stories can include things such as; changes in policy, changes in law or even to convince people to research their legal rights.

 

E-government, defined as the use by government of information technology internally and to interact with citizens, businesses and other governments, this has been developing in Britain for over a decade, in fact, since the first computers entered large transaction processing departments such as the Post Offices, in the 1950s.

 

E- Petitions

E-petitions are a simple, personal way for you to influence and state your opinion to the government and Parliament in the UK. You can create an e-petition at any time and about anything that the government is responsible for which causes you to have a very strong opinion on the matter. Then if your petition receives at least 100,000 signatures, it will be highly considered for debate in the House of Commons.

Before a petition is made you should always proof read over a previous petition that has been made by someone else to give you an idea of the arguments people propose. Once you have done this, if you still feel confident you are open to the opportunity of creating your own petition. Then when you have created you petition it will be sent off and checked by the government department. Your petition will only be open for up to one year, if by this time it receives 100 000 signatures or more, the next move will be, being send off to the house of commons to debate.

 

Renewing car tax online

If you are an owner of your own vehicle, it is required for you to pay car tax to the DVLA for your vehicle and display a tax disc in the front window of your car. To be able to do this online you’ll need to be the registered keeper of the vehicle. You can renew your tax any day from the 5th day and onwards within that same month the tax is about to expire.
You can pay car tax online if you are the registered keeper of the vehicle and your personal details such as your name, address and vehicle details are up to date with DVLA. In order to pay tax your insurance has to be valid at the time when tax needs renewing. Your vehicle must have recently passed its MOT, Goods Vehicle or Passenger Service Vehicle test; this is needed to ensure the vehicle is still safe and legal to be on the road. These must all be valid when the tax disc starts. When Paying online, if you use a credit card there’s a £2.50 service charge, whereas, if you use a debit card there will be no charge.

It is also possible for car tax to be paid for a dealt with through the service of post offices, but you will need proof of who you are once again as well as proof that you are the owner of the vehicle you are paying tax for, all of you legal documents are the best items of proof when paying for tax. You’ll also need the surname, date of birth and National Insurance number of the exemption certificate holder along with the certificate serial number.

 

Submitting Tax Online

 

The main objective of E-Filing is to facilitate the electronic submission of tax returns and payments by taxpayers and tax practitioners. Taxpayers are given the opportunity to use the internet now to receive, complete, submit and pay tax returns through trustworthy and secure payment gateways on a 24-hour daily basis.

Taxpayers, accounting firms and tax practitioners who wish to file their own tax forms, or who file tax forms on behalf of their clients, are able to register with the system via the Internet. No specific software is required, just a simple web connection and the standard Windows operating system.

This process does sound reasonably complicated yes but in practice it is actually both simple and fast. There is no set time for this service, as it is placed on the internet it is therefore available to you at any chosen time by you and with no extra cost, the entire service is free. The idea of submitting tax online is coved by Legal framework; this is the Income Tax Act, 1962. If you ever get confused or stuck with what to do next there is a well supervised Call Centre and Support Desk to guide you through the process.

 

Local area- demographic

Demographics refer to the main characteristics of the population of humans in a given area that behold the most importance. This usually refers to the features of the population such as gender ratio, death rate, birth rate or growth rate. Demographics are essential to the government as it requires for them to know how to budget and distribute its resources among the people.

 

But when referring to the government, demographics means what information is new today that has an impact on our life’s or how we live our lives. These can include the prices of houses. This is important to us because if house prices are rising rapidly and our wages either remain the same or are decreasing due to recession they we instantly become limited to what houses we can afford, this has negative impacts on families, people need to be aware of this because it could change where they have to live and the size house they will have to live in, or whether or not they can afford to continue living the same house. Demographics could also be referring to crime rates, these are important as people need to be aware of the crime rate in their local area to ensure their own safety and the safety of others around them such as young children. It is also a necessity today to know who has been elected as you new local MP, considering they will be the person to make the changes and decide what is good for local citizens, it is important you agree with what decisions are made.

 

 

Metropolitan Police Service

 

The Metropolitan Police serve a big part in the government system online and have their own website; this website allows citizens to access important information which could of use to them. The website enables you to learn about historic and famous crimes, crime mapping, online crime, your local police service, crime prevention and feedback from others. On the website is gives you safety precautions to do around your house, your schools, your working environment or when you’re out around the town.  The website provides information about crime which you can talk about and read for yourself. These crime cases on the website provide information in great depth to ensure you know the full details, these crimes could have been shown on the news on television, or you may hear of an incident in your local area from a neighbour and want to know the full story and details to ensure you own safety.

 

National Health Service

The National Health Service (NHS) is an important part of the government as well; they also provide their own website for the public to browse. The NHS is here to ensure the health and safety of the general public no matter what the problem is.  The website various different sectors all to do with your health these include; symptoms, services, help lines and health checkers. This type of information is helpful as people are able to write about their own symptoms and find out what is wrong with them. You could say it is like visiting the doctors online, but the only disadvantage is you are not able to receive any medication which has been chosen, such as medicine. The website also allows you to find your local doctor, dentist, pharmacy and hospital; this is possible to do at anytime of the day as the NHS website is available 24 hours a day, every day.

 

 

Greg Clark- Tunbridge Wells Local MP

Greg was born in Middlesbrough in 1967. He went on to study Economics at Cambridge University and was awarded his PhD at the London School of Economics.

Before entering politics, Greg worked for the Boston Consulting Group which is one of the world's top business strategy firms and works for clients in various countries around the world including the UK. Greg was Special Advisor to the Secretary of State for Trade & Industry from 1996 until the General Election in 1997 and was then appointed the BBC's Controller, Commercial Policy.

Before becoming an MP, Greg was Director of Policy for the Conservative Party from March 2001 for three of the Leaders called, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard. This was before being elected to Parliament for Tunbridge Wells in 2005. Greg was responsible for two landmark policy papers in Energy and Climate Change policy: "The Low Carbon Economy" and "Rebuilding Security", which set out how a Conservative Government will make Britain a leading player in the low carbon economy. Greg was Shadow Minister for Teesside from 2006-2010.

In May 2010, Greg was appointed Minister of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government and in July 2011 he was appointed Minister for Cities. In September 2012, Greg was appointed Financial Secretary to the Treasury.

He has been elected for the following:

• MP for Tunbridge Wells, May 2005 onwards.
• Member of Public Accounts Committee, 2005-2006
• Shadow Minister for Charities, Social Enterprise and Volunteering, 2006-2008
• Shadow Minister for Teesside, 2006-2010
• Shadow Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change, 2008-2010
• Minister of State, Communities and Local Government, 2010-2012
• Minister for Cities, 2011-
• Financial Secretary to the Treasury, 2012-

 

It is now possible today to follow your local MP on twitter and receives updates on a daily basis on what matters are occurring within the government. They also tweet useful information regularly.

 

 

Reporting problems to your local council online

The government provide a series of different websites of which you have to option to research and complain about problems in your local area. There is advice given as to what you should to resolve these problems, such as consulting the person who is causing them, or even just reporting any problem that needs sorting drastically to the police. There is descriptive information given about numerous different problems that may occur in any area, such as; abandoned vehicles, air pollution, dog nuisance, flooding, litter, mobile phone masts, noise, pest control, raves, streets and pavements, traffic management and parking, waste disposal. Also if there are any physical problems which are causing major inconvenience in your neighbourhood such as potholes, paving slabs or current roads works then you need to consult your local council to sort it out as soon as possible as these can be very dangerous.

 

Health Protection Agency

The Health Protection Agency is an independent UK organisation that was set up by the government in 2003 to protect the general public from threats to their health, usually caused from infectious diseases and environmental hazards.  It does this by providing advice and information to the general public, this information is provided by health professionals such as doctors and nurses. From April 2013 the HPA will become part of Public Health England.

 The Agency identifies and responds to health hazards and emergencies caused by infectious disease, hazardous chemicals, poisons or radiation.  It gives advice to the public on how to stay healthy and avoid health hazards, provides data and information to government to help inform its decision making, and advises people working in healthcare.  It also makes sure the nation is ready for future threats to health that could happen naturally, accidentally or deliberately.

 

Advantages of E-Government

There are advantages while implementing an electronic government. The main advantage of an electronic government this will be to improve the efficiency of the current system. That would in return save money and time, but would also facilitate better communications between governments and businesses.

In addition, moving away from a heavily paper based system to an electronic system would reduces the need for man power, meaning the process could be handled by less employees and therefore to reduce labour costs.

The society is moving toward the mobile connections. The ability of an e-government service is mainly to be accessible to citizens despite their location throughout the country brings the next benefit of an e-government service which could be potentially the most important.

Disadvantages of E-Government

The main disadvantage of an electronic government is to move the government services into an electronic based system. This system loses the person to person interaction which is valued by a lot of people.

With much technology based services lies technical difficulties, such as the typical ‘the server has gone down’, this problems with the service provided because of the technology.

The ability of being able to use the computer correctly and know what you are fully doing today is rare for the older generation, users who do not know how to read and write would need assistance, and an example would be the senior citizens.

Even though the level of confidence in the security offered by government websites are high, the public are still troubled over security, fear of spam from providing email addresses, and government retention of transaction or interaction history.

Security issues on E-government

Passwords

Although passwords are commonly used in relatively low risk environments such as social networking sites, they are inconvenient for the high value transactions and communications that travel across the Internet. Passwords are easy to break and guess, and users often write down or share passwords with other people who are not always trustworthy, but most of the time people forget them. In addition, different applications require new IDs and passwords. Passwords alone cannot provide required security services, most of the time a user ID is needed along with them. Therefore they do not ensure privacy as they cannot guarantee the safety of stored or transmitted data; and they cannot legally prove that a party participated in a transaction as anyone could get hold of a password.

Personal Identification Numbers (PIN’s)

Any user must provide an personal identification number (PIN) which is known as an access token, security is stronger than with a password alone. However, a PIN alone cannot provide important security services such as privacy, data integrity, and non-repudiation; this is because they are so obvious to guess as they usually just consist of your name and date of birth.

Digital Certificates

Digital certificates are the preferred technology over passwords and PINs for securing electronic transactions of any type. Digital certificates serve as a unique, unforgettable online security, authorizing the identity of each device or device user and identifying privileges and attributes for authorized access to private online information.

Education

Online Education allows people of any age to research and learn about topics available to you on the internet. It enables schools and higher education’s to use these websites to help students revise for tests or exams and to achieve a better understand on the topic.

 

Impact of the internet on students

Since the internet first became available there have been some very dramatic changes on people’s life styles. Those who are experienced with using the internet on a daily basis would some become helpless if it was to disappear. The internet has a huge impact on the life of a student as the usage of educational websites is very high. Also the World Wide Web holds millions and millions of pages of useful information which comes of great use to students who need to find something out fast without having to search through numerous books.

Work is so much easier to access on the internet, all the updated information you need is available to you at any time of the day no matter of your whereabouts. When doing work online you have the option to save what you are doing, people tend to saves their work in their personal documents, but when this is done on a schools system it is possible to get to work at school via remote access on the internet. This is possible at the school I attend, and we use a software programme called ‘Frog’, this allows us to access our own school drives as well as the schools drive if we need help or to access something the teacher has set.

 

Internet is always kept up to date and new descriptive information is being uploaded all the time. This is a much better option to use as your source of information in comparison to text books. Text books tend not to be very useful today, they are not up to date but instead are years old. You can now receive really good contemporary information from the internet which comes in much greater use then general text books.

 

Although the internet is extremely useful today, it does have some disadvantages also. Surfing the net leads to distractions, if you are sat at home doing research you may see something that interests you or catches your eye and you instantly get drawn away from what you are doing, and then begin to focus on what you spotted. The World Wide Web contains thousands of social networking sites, if you are on a computing device it is almost certain that you will get tempted to sign into one, and then instead of getting on with homework for example, the average person could spend hours on social networking sites talking to friends or admiring blogs. Therefore using the internet to acquire information is not always the best idea, and if you are a person that becomes easily distracted by the littlest thing then it is probably better that sticking to researching using books from libraries or text books provided by schools.

 

Mobile phones today are so advanced that the average phone has access to the internet, especially Smartphone’s, they have the fastest speed rate of connecting to the internet as that is what they’re designed to do. Therefore the internet on a phone can be used to activate information if needed. But if this is the case there distractions are also a possibility, a phone receives text messages and calls all the time, especially if you are a student that is a teenager. There are also games on a phone that are there in case the user gets bored, and when having to do work, of course boredom is going to occur. So just switching to using the phone normally is going to be the case most the time, instead of sticking to using it for research.

Mobile phones are also banned from examination rooms, this is because all of what I mentioned above, they cause distractions and the candidate would not focus fully on their exam paper and the question answering. But also as there are so many Smartphone’s about and millions of people now have then, students in exams would have the opportunity to browse through the internet and find the answer to questions on the paper, this is called cheating and would result in disqualification.  Therefore no electronic devices are now allowed in the exam rooms at the specific time of the exam and throughout.

 

Fact: The e-Learning Foundation says that children without access to a computer and the internet in the evening are being increasingly disadvantaged in the classroom. Research suggests that 1.2 million teenagers log on to revision pages every week and those using online resources were on average likely to attain a grade higher in exams.

 

Educational Websites

 

BBC Bite size is an educational website that was launched in 1998 and run by the BBC. It offers free online study support resources for school students in the United Kingdom. It is designed to provide help and support for students with both school work and exams. Bite size is available on a variety of devices including the web and mobile phones. The website offers help with the 3 main subjects, including English, Mathematics and all sciences, this is because these subjects are considered more important to receive a good grade in, therefore detailed explanations of information on each subject is provided. All three of these subjects are split into subcategories to help find what you are looking, also so there is a selection to choose from to revise.  These subjects are selected from the curriculum Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3 and GCSE. There are a series of tests available to you for each subject on BBC Bite size that are there if you feel it is necessary for you to practice what you have just revised and so you can test your own knowledge. These tests help you get an idea of how well you are doing and what level you are working at as feedback is given. There is always an immediate response as feedback is given to aware you of what you did right and wrong and what parts of a subject you seem to be struggling with, this is of a great benefit for the student because it means there are now aware of what they need to study and practice more of to improve.

 

Other educational websites such as My Maths and Sam Learning tend to be linked to schools, so that each student can log into the chosen website using their own personal login and password, so that their information can be accessed and checked. My Maths website allows students to practice particular maths questions online that they may be struggling with in school lessons, or simply just want to revise for an upcoming test or exam. My Maths gives the student immediate feedback of questions they done with the mark they received and how well they done.  The website also allows them to have homework set, so that each student can do a topic on maths and the information of how well they done is shown on the teacher’s login. The information says who has completed the homework and what their grade is on that specific homework. Another online education site similar to My Maths is called Sam Learning, the website has logins and passwords for each student and students can compete with friends to get the highest scores on different work sheets on a range of topics. These worksheets get set by the teacher for the student to use as a revision guide, Sam learning is made to be competitive, this is so learning becomes slightly more fun for the student but is beneficial as it makes them want to do well and get the best score possible.

 

When I was doing my GCSE’s I personally used all of these websites for revision and help when I was at home. I used Bite size to help me with my English as it holds a lot of useful information that came of great help to me during my literature exams. My Maths helped me to achieve highly in maths, I used the website on a daily basis so I made sure I didn’t forget anything. Also my German teacher set me work on Sam learning every lesson so the revision was on going.

 

Wikipedia is a collaboratively edited, multilingual Internet encyclopedia. It is supported by Wikimedia Foundation who of which gains no profit from the website. It has 23 million articles worldwide, but over 4 million in the English Wikipedia alone, have been written by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site, and anyone has the option to upload at any time possible, it has about 100,000 active contributors today. Wikipedia can be very useful because it is available at any time and holds nearly all information any person might need, however it sometimes holds false information, this is because anybody can post so we can never be sure whether or not people are being one hundred percent truthful or correct.

Students around today are constantly using Wikipedia to find the answer to anything, this is a disadvantage for students when they are required to complete homework, considering all they tend to do is copy and paste the information provided, and this means a whole class of students will end up handing in similar homework’s. This goes to show that Wikipedia makes for lazy research as no real work is done, all the information is handed to you. Another disadvantage about Wikipedia is, it promotes plagiarism, this is caused from people constantly taking the information provided and using it as this own when really it has just been copied, and this enhances copyright.

 

I tend to stay away from using Wikipedia as my source of information as I cannot fully trust what is being said, so I see it as being unreliable.

Wall wisher is an educational website that is beneficial for both the student and teacher. Wall Wisher is an online notice board marker; it acts like a normal whiteboard in a classroom would. It allows you your own virtual space where you can post short text notes in the same way that you could write onto a whiteboard in your classroom using a board pen. But this notice board can be shared between people all over the world. As well as text notes you have the option of adding images, videos and links to other websites. It’s a convenient and easy way of getting to a shared space which holds lots of information to collect ideas from people for a brainstorm, or to post resources for a topic your studying. Students could ask questions about a topic which you or another person can then answer.

 

Online Exams

Online examinations are usually available for much older students taking master degrees and university degrees. This is because they can be most trusted with this form of examinations and will take them seriously and get them done on time and efficiently.  An online exams and test that are taken online are also assessed and marked online as well. If it is a test there will be instant feedback once you have completed the test, this gives you a brief idea of how well you are doing with that topic and may give you ideas of how to improve at the very end also.

An Online examination is a new technique to conduct an examination through the internet. This has become quite popular because of its high rate on convenience and time efficiency. The formal and most popular examination system is such a long procedure in order to conduct a single exam. Therefore an advantage of taking an online examination is it saves much more time then a formal exam, this is mainly because examination officers do not need to be hired to conduct the examination, and this is very costly and extremely tedious. It would be much simpler if all exams were taken place through the use of the internet, it would require a recruiter to just send a mail of the exam to the candidates. Lots of companies are gladly taking this modern system to account instead of using the tedious written examination system. The main advantages of online examinations are the low cost as it just simply requires emailing the candidate of what their account login is, there is no posting required. You will get a control panel, using this control panel you can find out your examination date and time. There is minimum effort needed, minimum employee deployment, saves time, instant results and near enough immediate feedback, as well as no staff required to mark papers.

Using this system the recruiter can conduct examination in India and abroad. They can select candidates for their organization within very short time span. The recruiter can upload their own questions from their control panel either they can conduct the examination by our uploaded questions.

Forums

 

There are a number of forums available to students, such as student room. Student room is a webpage for students of any age to be able to discuss their courses and problems with other students from various schools across the globe. You can talk to these other students about just about anything and you will never have to worry about seeing this person. You can ask for help off people to get a better understanding of a topic, or you may just chose to talk about courses and topics to share issues with people to make yourself feel better, sometimes its better to understand that you are not alone and you not the only person who is struggling.  

If there is not another student to talk to about something you don’t understand you also have the option of consulting an expert about you problems online to help with your studies. Such as teachers, there is now the ability to communicate with teachers via email on most forums. They can give you help, advice and ever e-mail you practise question papers of topics you need to study further. Teachers can submit marks online to let you know how well you done and what you need to improve on still.

YouTube

YouTube is an online public communications site, founded in February 2005, YouTube allows billions of people to discover watch and share original videos created by the public. YouTube provides a forum to allow people to connect, inform and inspire others across the nation. The site allows for registered users with an account to upload videos for anybody to view. Anyone who goes to the site can view the videos that are posted on this site. The videos vary in quality depending on the maker.

Google picked up on the wave of all the public communications, and purchased the popular site known as YouTube. The purchase price was 1.65 billion dollars.

When making a video to post on YouTube just about anything is possible, you have the option to post whatever you desire. Any person can also watch just about anything on YouTube depending on the content of the video, some have age restrictions. There is a high amount of intriguing videos out there on YouTube that are very interesting and entertaining in the eyes of some people. There are educational videos, entertainment such as trailers for films, comedy, action, music which is free to listen to at any time, marketing and so much more.

YouTube updates regularly, this is good because people are constantly searching for new and recent information. New videos are being posted each and every day by thousands of people; there is a constant flow of updates occurring. This is why people turn to YouTube to try and find out things, also because it comes with a graphic video included, such as news reports.

Teachers in schools are at a great advantage when having access to YouTube during school times. When teaching a subject, showing students demonstrations using videos instead of constantly talking at them tends to engage the student into the topic more and gets them interested and wants to discuss the video afterwards, this is because of the high rate of new technology used by students today, they are used to watching videos and spending hours sat at a computer.

There are several advantages of using YouTube, such as, if you own a business, YouTube is a great for the advertisement of your product; this can be done for little cost. This is also a great way to run ongoing information about new products or services to the same people and new people who may be interested.

If you create music to post music, this is a great way of reaching the public. You can put your video out there at next to no cost. After the video has been posted, you can access it online and see the public’s thoughts and opinions. You will also be able to start a circle of your music, so that when you put a new song out there, the people who have recently been interested in your music can follow still.

YouTube is an extremely popular site available today; a vast majority of the public is using it daily, especially students. When school students are sat at home attempting to do their set work it is easy to get distracted, either by social networking sites or music. YouTube contains millions of music videos available to anyone, therefore when any person decides to listen to music on here they automatically get distracted by either the video, lyrics on screen or simply just the changing of song selection every few minutes. This means a consistency of concentration is broken which results in less work being done and probably at a rather poor quality due to the lack of effort. This is a disadvantage for both student and teacher as grades will drop which reflects badly on the teacher.

How does using Information Technology in the classroom help you?

I.T in the class room is very useful considering it allows students to type up work, learn new things and develop new ideas and skills, when they eventually leave school, what they learnt during school time may become of great use in their jobs, especially if they are working with computers. Personally I think using I.T is helpful and saves a remarkable amount of time, it is much easier to type up things rather than to write information down in a notepad which could easily get misplaced. Computers save work easily instead of trying to find the work you have wrote out. Having I.T in the classroom enables the students to interact with one another, but also research things that they are unsure of.

I.T has allowed me to learn a lot about computing, I have developed many new skills, which will contribute to helping me find a job when I leave school. All students today have been given an advantage towards finding jobs in the technology business world.

 

 

E- Commerce

Electronic commerce, commonly known as E-commerce, is the buying and selling of products or services over an electronic system such as the Internet and other computing networks and devices. E-commerce includes the use of such technologies like using electronic funds transfers, supplying chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange, inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern e- commerce around today uses the World Wide Web at least at one point in the transaction.

Online Shopping

Recently shopping online has become popular because of vast arability of internet. Online shopping is one kind of E-business where any consumer can directly shop using the internet. Most people around today use such advanced technology and are familiar with online shopping. 

Online shopping is the process or purchasing goods or a service from selective merchants on the internet. The world wide web had emerged quite  recently, therefore merchants have become open to the idea of  selling products online, this is now an easier option for shopping to those who surf the internet frequently.

These consumers buy a variation of products through the internet since this has become available; in fact they can purchase just about anything ranging from household appliances to food groceries. It is also now possible to purchase many forms of insurance.

The reason many people choose to conduct online shopping is purely because of the convenience. My parents are a prime example, they dislike having to go to food super markets every week, therefore they make use of online shopping on a regular basis. The reason they choose to shop in this manner is to save driving to an actual super market and going through the process of parking, walking around the whole shop to locate every individual item they require.

When shopping online it requires a consumer to log into their account, add the needed items into their virtual shopping cart and then resume purchasing when ready. The biggest advantage to online shopping websites is that they are available 24 hours a day.

There may be a great convenience to online shopping, but some people actually enjoy the experience of the shopping process and the physicality of visiting a store. This means there is a small amount of disadvantages to shopping online for some people, consumers like to touch the merchandise, try on clothes and being around other people. Additionally the merchandise is not always delivered on that same day the order went through, the consumer has to wait a certain amount of days. This is not a problem when purchasing items from food super markets; you have the option whether you need it delivered for that particular day.

Shopping online does require you to enter in personal details in order to make a purchase. Some people worry about identity theft because of their fear of credit card information being compromised. This discourages the participation of some consumers involving online shopping.

There are a number of advantages for the customer when shopping online the three main reasons being it saves time money and there is no need to travel anywhere. There is always a much larger range of options to choose from as the website can hold more items then an actually store can fit. You have the opportunity to make comparison in prices between products on other websites to just and find the best deal. There are usually search bars on a transactional website so it is much easier and quicker to find what you are looking for. On most websites there is usually a section to leave you own personal review on products, this means to are able to see what other people make of the products you are interested in. On any music website there is the option to listen to sample of music to get an idea if you want to purchase that particular song, this is encouraging to potential customers.

The seller and company also benefits from having a transactional website. The automatically open their selves to a wider customer base. Which means the profit will rise as more and more people with purchase their items because it is more convenient. Setting up a website is inexpensive and well worth it because that company with gain customers and the company will become better known. A website can hold many more products which equalizes into a higher volume of sales. A website does not require staff to operate daily and it’s cheaper than buying a store as you have to pay for the space in a store and still cont advertise all you products this is known as reduced over heads.

Amazon

 

Amazon.com is an e-commerce company based in Seattle, WA. Amazon was one of the first big companies to sell goods over the Internet and is now the world’s largest online retailer. The company was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and then launched in 1995. They started out as an online bookstore and then quickly diversified by adding other items, such as VHS tapes and DVDs, music CD's, software, video games, electronics, MP3s, clothing, furniture, toys and even food items.  It is now a multinational electronic commerce company. The massive technology core that keeps Amazon running is entirely Linux-based. Amazon is a transactional website that allows customers to purchase their products and is continuing to progress with their business, it has four software development centers worldwide. These centers are constantly creating new features for their business, and developing technology to help support them.

Amazon.co.uk is the same but a slightly better website than Amazon.com, it was launched in 1998. Since then Amazon has continued to provide different services for their customers. Today the site provides a fast and effective service, for the customers in the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Japan, China and Canada.

Amazon uses technology to improve the efficiency and competitiveness in comparison to the average high-street store in several ways such as being an online service only which therefore means that Amazon don’t require to rent shop flooring and staff, being an online service also means that customers have the opportunity to buy as many products as they wish relying on the delivery only. This is beneficial because caring bags of shopping is no longer needed as everything is delivered straight to your door. Being an transactional website only means that Amazon can have direct access to their customers via email which gives them a competitive edge. Being online also helps Amazon by easy advertising across the web to people which automatically means there gain a much larger customer base.

Amazon warehouses operate by direct link from the internet and the millions of customers that Amazon process. There are 7 Amazon warehouses allocated in the UK.

Amazon has 5 delivery options these including, free super saver delivery, first class, scheduled evening and Amazon prime delivery. When using Amazon prime the customer pays £49.99 a year to receive any product throughout the year delivered the next day, this can work out to be much cheaper than paying delivery charges on each item and is much more convenient as you are aware as a customer as to when your purchases with arrive at your doorstep.

Customers can purchase products from Amazon even if they are not in stock from the nearest warehouse, Amazon then informs the customer that there will be additional amount of time needed for the item to be delivered.

Amazon enforces a large computing system in each warehouse to make sure easy location of each product on each shelf on each row of the vast warehouses that Amazon hold. Amazon does not give any sort of order to their products on the shelves in the warehouse. As soon as the product gets put onto the shelf in Amazon the exact point on the shelf and unit it was placed in within the warehouse is added to the warehouse database, therefore whenever a product is requested the products code is simply entered and the exact shelf and the exact unit for this item is located.

Online Banking

Online banking is the practice of conducting bank transactions or paying your bills through the internet. Online banks are banks that you primarily use on the Internet. Online banks allow you to have more choice and flexibility. You can compare difference banking site offers on a computer, and you often get more competitive rates from online banks. They often claim that they do not have the expenses associated with brick-and-mortar banks, so they can pass the savings on to you.

Online banks allow you make various commands such as opening an account or funding an account. Transferring money between accounts is available. If you require paying a bill then this can be done through and online banking system using the bill paying service. If you are struggling with money then online banks allow you to take out a loan that of course has a fixed amount of interest. Overdraft lines of credit are accessible.

What are the advantages of online banking?
 

For the online customer the convenience rates are high.  No longer do they have to sit around waiting for the post to arrive with their bank statement in to be able to check their account balance to see if there has been an issue. Account information can be accessed anytime, day or night, and can be done from any place. A few online banks update information in real-time, whereas others do it daily. Once information has been entered, it doesn't need to be re-entered for similar subsequent checks, and future payments can be scheduled to occur automatically. Many banks allow for file transfers between their program and popular accounting software packages, this is to simplify record keeping.

Since bills can now be paid through the internet this automatically eliminates writing checks and posting the payment in the mail.

Since the cost of operating an online banking service is minimal, this is also the same for the customer which is another positive reason for using the online service; there are no extra costs for items such as stamps.

Online banking also eliminates paper waste which is not just beneficial for the service and the customer but the environment as well.

There are also a number of disadvantages to online banking. By now having this available on the internet there is a huge reduction of customer personal interaction within the bank, since all the transactions are handled by the customer over their internet account. There is no personalized banking service which allows the customer to interact with the bank.

When you are entering your personal details into the online banking set up process there are usually instructions you have to follow to ensure the safety of your personal details. But there is always the chance of you account being hacked and your confidential information being shared and exposed. But most banking websites have good security systems to ensure such guard thefts are avoided. If you account does get hacked it is the banks problem and responsibility to sort it out. You can access your online banking account by entering your personal identification and your password. You have to be sure not to tell anyone your password and make sure you don’t use an obvious one that is easy to guess or your account is open to a series of risks such as transferring funds or causing financial problems. Whereas when you are visit the bank personally your account is handled by the bank staff which means your confidential information cannot be viewed by anyone. All your instructions are given in writing which requires your personal signature; therefore there are less chances of fraud.

The advantages of online banking outnumber its disadvantages and therefore this form of banking has become very popular with the customers as it is extremely beneficial and offers a lot of convenient.

Online catalogues
 

An online catalogue is a direct alternative to a physical product catalogue on a transactional website. Rather than being made of paper and distributed to your customers by mail, your customers can view your products online by visiting your internet based webpage. An advantage for the company is they don’t have to worry about distributing new catalogues every season or when a price changes, websites are much easily obtained, allowing for

online catalogue's are far easier to maintain than a paper back catalogue as you can update ‘sales’ add new models and products at any time of the day, this removes the need to the produce a new catalogue as you take the base of the old one and add and remove products as they arrive or depart, this also saves a lot of money on printing costs due to not having print a new catalogue with each new product or selection of products.

However disadvantages are that companies cannot send round an online catalogue to people’s houses as a form of advertising, as it is only a virtual copy, vs a paper copy, as well as this unless a company decides to show costumers new, updated, or reduced products on the site product awareness of said products will not as high thus possible sales won’t be at a maximum. This for say clothes sales people would prefer to have a paper catalogue so as to be able to point something out to a shop assistant without the need to try and describe the product if they were unable to find it in a store.
lastly one other disadvantage of an online catalogue is that for older generations those where using a computer is not a common daily occurrence and technical knowledge is limit navigating an online catalogue is going to be a far more perplexing <!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]-->task than flicking through a paper copy of a the same catalogue.

This is an example of a selection of online catalogue's available to anyone.

Credit cards

A card issued by a financial company giving the holder an option to borrow funds, usually at point of sale. Credit cards charge interest and are primarily used for short-term financing. Interest usually begins one month after a purchase is made and borrowing limits are pre-set according to the individual's credit rating.

 

How is a Debit Card different to a Credit Card?

 

A Debit Card works using the money you have in your bank or building society account. So when you spend using a Debit Card it comes straight out of your account. You'll see the details on your bank account statement.

An advantage of owning a credit card is you can use it worldwide as they are accepted in millions of places at home and abroad, so they are very handy in any language. There are often fees or charges for using your credit card overseas, so check your credit card agreement before you go.

Fraud

Fraud happens when somebody lies or deceives you in order to cause you harm, usually by costing you money. Millions of people fall victim every year. Fraud is a complex kind of theft. Fraud is sometimes called a 'con'. You can be defrauded if somebody steals your credit card, and uses it to buy items, or if someone hacks into your bank account and takes your money. Other types of fraud include fake investment projects, when you give money for something that never happens such as when you purchase an item form a transactional website but you never physically receive your purchase. And identity fraud which is when somebody pretends to be you in order to buy things that they never intend to pay for.

Fact: Fraud costs the country at least £14 billion each year; nearly £265 for every person.

Identity theft

Identity theft, also know n as identity fraud is when multiple types of information about you such as your name, National Insurance number or address are stolen and used by somebody else to get credit or cash illegally.

Although you with most likely will be oblivious to this and therefore might not find out this has happened to you until your credit report shows credit cards you do not have, or if you receive bills for accounts that you do not own.

You should always take action right away if you think you may have been a victim of identity theft. If debit or credit cards, online banking or cheques are involved, your first step should be to contact your bank or credit card company immediately.

How to protect yourself from becoming a victim of fraud:

Be alert when using your debit card or credit card and make sure nobody stands close enough to see your pin-code when being entered to purchase items in store.
 

Refrain from keeping your pin-code written down in the same place you keep your cards, make sure you keep it in your personal diary and keep it in a safe place somewhere at home.Never send money in response to unrequested letters, emails or phone calls.

Always shred or burn any documents that have your name, address, and other personal information to ensure no one has any possible way of getting hold of them.

PayPal

PayPal acts like you personal digital wallet where you can securely store all your chosen payment options, such as your bank account and credit card. When you want to make a payment, you don't have to pull out your credit card or type your billing info every time.

How to use PayPal?
 

It requires you to click on the PayPal checkout button, log in to your PayPal account, and select your preferred payment method. It will then complete the payment process without sharing and of your personal information with merchants and sellers.

There are several advantages to using PayPal instead of other commonly used transaction methods; one of these being any payment is sent directly from one recognized bank account to another account. Another, being able to use PayPal makes actions immediate and convenient as the Payment is deposited directly into the seller's account. However, a down side to using PayPal could be, if by any chance PayPal does become unreliable and any person has attempted and succeeded to hack your account along with your personal details, it is extremely difficult to recover the payment in any case of fraud.