Switzerland, a country known for finance, banking secrecy and a love for referendums, held its first vote via the Internet on Sunday.

The vote was held by the town of Ani?res, in the canton of Geneva, to decide whether to spend money rehabilitating two buildings, including an inn. For the record the voters approved the measure, 451 to 284. Of the votes 323 were made over the Internet, the rest by post or in person.

In breaking new ground, Switzerland is once again demonstrating that top-down government - a government that issues decisions once they are elected every four or five years - is becoming a dinosaur. The use of the Internet makes garnering citizen opinion on most issues even more of a viable possibility, especially in small places like Bermuda.

The e-voting system seems to have encouraged participation from people who often abstain. In Ani?res, two citizens out of three voted, up from the usual one in two. About 22 percent of the e-voters in the Ani?res election described themselves as occasional or regular abstainers, according to Swiss Radio International. Registered voters each received a 16-digit pass code in the post. They used the pass code to access the system. They then had to input another pass code and answer a number of personal questions before they were able to vote. Geneva tested the system by asking Hacknet, a company that uses hackers to test online security systems, to try to enter it. The company failed to break in over the six-week period they were given to do the job.

Under Switzerland's system of government, anyone can cause a referendum to be held by gathering a required number of signatures.

For national issues that figure is either 50,000 or 100,000 signatures, depending on the action required. This usually means that on average each citizen votes five times a year, whether on the local, cantonal or national level. Government has said it wants to use the Internet not only for voting, but also for gathering the signatures needed to hold referendums. The government has also mandated the cantons of Zurich and Neuch?tel to test e-voting when votes are next held there.

How far has Switzerland plunged into the Internet game? Government has allocated a budget of US$22 million for the period 2000 to 2004 for the development of electronic government systems, with part of the sum reserved for e-voting.

Last week TechRepublic magazine (www.techrepublic.com) published a feature on the seven statements chief information officers (CIOs) should not make if they want to survive in a company.

CIOs and the people they deal with should recognise some of the statements. My favourite is statement number five: “The TCP/IP stacks are interfering with the Microsoft APIs, causing a general protection error - that's why your e-mail isn't working.”

TechRepublic notes that there is always a technical reason for why something isn't working, but getting too scientific will only confuse users and clients unfamiliar with these terms.

CIOs should talk to non-IT executive to understand just how much detail they want.

“Remember that being a CIO is not just about technical competency - it also involves being an effective communicator,” the magazine stated.

Other forbidden statements include: “I'm over budget, and the fiscal year just started;” or “We need more bandwidth - again”.

Why? CIOs should factor in the growth of the company's computer network and the increasing needs of users when making their budgets.

Since Apple released its new Safari Web browser on 7 January, about 500,000 people have downloaded the software. Safari accounted for about 21 percent of user traffic on Apple's site in the first eight days after its release. Safari is still in beta form and works only with Jaguar, Apple's latest version of its OSX operating system. According to Apple, Safari launches 40 percent faster than Microsoft's Internet Explorer and loads pages up to three times faster. One key reason the browser has become so popular is its pop-up ad blocker that suppresses pop-up ads, pop-under ads and any other Web page that a user does not request. Go to www.apple.com to download the software.

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