Good morning

Could someone help me understand a tech issue that has to do with Swiss e-government, please?

*ePower initiative*

From 2001 to 2004, the Swiss federal chancelry worked on a national "Guichet Virtuel", www.ch.ch, which was meant to become interactive, allowing citizens to do some administrative transactions online. Early this year, the federal chancelry gave up the transaction possibility, too costly, entrusting it - and its cost - to cantons and boroughs.

In reaction to this decision (? - or using this decision as an argument, I'm not sure which) - a group of politicians and IT industrialists started working on the "ePower für die Schweiz" (ePower for Switzerland) initiative <http://www.epower-initiative.ch>. There ws a first discreet meeting on May 30 2005, and a second more public one on Sept. 19 to officially launch it, with an endorsement from Federal Counselor (=minister) for economy Joseph Deiss.

The ePower initiative has several worrying features, for instance its 1st and 2nd "basic requirements" for Swiss ePower and e-government: - a single digital identity that functions both in [sic] virtual and real identity - a strict separation between state and private sector, where the state only deals with its "tasks of sovreignty", while the actuation of e-government is done by the private sector.

*ePower Unisys and Google*

Now Unisys <http://unisys.ch> also sells e-government services, and it
was associated with the ePower initiantive on the ePower site at first. There are traces of this if you search for "unisys epower" without quotes in Googl.

The first 2 hits lead to pages of the ePower website, one in German <http://www.epower-initiative.ch/de/1.2.0.phtml> and one in French <http://www.epower-initiative.ch/fr/1.3.0.phtml>.

But neither page mentions Unisys anymore. The only trace is the Google description: "Unisys hat E-Voting in der Schweiz vom nationalen Pilotprojekt zum internationalen ..." i.e. "Unisys [transformed (? the verb is missing) e-voting in Switzerland from a national pilot project into an international...")

*ePower Unisys and Google cache*

If you try to retrieve the original pages in Google cache, there is a text in German superimposed on first words of the page (both for the French and the German pages), which makes it difficult to read. But the source of the page gives it in clear, before the actual "head" of the page. My translation (1):

"This is an intermediate saving of http://www.epower-initiative.ch/de/1.20.phtml (2) , as it stood on Dec. 11 2005 06:51:19 GMT. The Cache contains a snapshot of the site that was taken during its web transformation. Under circumstances [sic], this page was changed in the meantime. Click here [link] in order to reach the present page without highlightings. This cached page may refer to pictures that are no longer available. Click here [link] in order to only show the cached text. In order to make a bookmark or a link to this page, please use the following URL: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:fsopIwXtAJ0J:www.epower-initiative.ch/de/1.2.0.phtml+epower+unisys&amp;hl=de.
Google has no relation with the authors of this page.
The following search words have been highlighted: epower. The following search words appear only in links pointing to this page: unisys."

This meta-tagged text appears both with google.ch and google.com

*Questions*

- Is this kind of meta-tagged text a normal occurence in Google? (I had never seen it before)
- Did Google add it?
- How come it is only in German?
- Was it written by a human being or is it a bot message?

I am asking because other pages and PDF files connecting the ePower initiative and Unisys have recenntly disappeared too. Whether it is because the connection was actually severed or because it was embarrassing, I don't know.

Thanks for your patience - and for your answers.

Claude

Claude Almansi
Castione, Switzerland
www.adisi.ch




(1) Source text for the translated passage above:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<BASE HREF="http://www.epower-initiative.ch/de/1.2.0.phtml";><table border=1 width=100%><tr><td><table border=1 bgcolor=#ffffff cellpadding=10 cellspacing=0 width=100% color=#ffffff><tr><td><font face=arial,sans-serif color=black size=-1>Dies ist der <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/de/help/features.html#cached";><font color=blue>Zwischenspeicher</font></a> von <b><font color=#0039b6>G</font> <font color=#c41200>o</font> <font color=#f3c518>o</font> <font color=#0039b6>g</font> <font color=#30a72f>l</font> <font color=#c41200>e</font></b> für <A HREF="http://www.epower-initiative.ch/de/1.2.0.phtml";><font color=blue>http://www.epower-initiative.ch/de/1.2.0.phtml</font></a> nach dem Stand vom 11. Dez. 2005 06:51:19 GMT.<br>

<b><font color=#0039b6>G</font> <font color=#c41200>o</font> <font color=#f3c518>o</font> <font color=#0039b6>g</font> <font color=#30a72f>l</font> <font color=#c41200>e</font></b>s Cache enthält einen Schnappschuss der Webseite, der während des Webdurchgangs aufgenommenen wurde.<br> Unter Umständen wurde die Seite inzwischen verändert. Klicken Sie hier, um zur <A HREF="http://www.epower-initiative.ch/de/1.2.0.phtml";><font color=blue>aktuellen Seite</font></a> ohne Hervorhebungen zu gelangen.<br>

Diese Seite im Cache bezieht sich eventuell auf Bilder, die nicht länger zur Verfügung stehen. Klicken Sie hier, um nur den <A HREF="http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:fsopIwXtAJ0J:www.epower-initiative.ch/de/1.2.0.phtml+epower+unisys&hl=de&lr=&strip=1";><font color=blue>Text im Cache</font></a> anzuzeigen.<br>Um einen Link oder ein Bookmark zu dieser Seite herzustellen, benutzen Sie bitte die folgende URL: <code>http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:fsopIwXtAJ0J:www.epower-initiative.ch/de/1.2.0.phtml+epower+unisys&amp;hl=de</code></font><br><br><center><font size=-2><i>Google steht zu den Verfassern dieser Seite in keiner Beziehung.</i></font></center></td></tr>
<tr><td>
<table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td><font face=arial,sans-serif color=black size=-1>Diese Suchbegriffe wurden hervorgehoben:&nbsp;</font></td><td bgcolor=#ffff66><B><font face=arial,sans-serif color=black size=-1>epower&nbsp;</font></B></td></tr></table> <font face=arial,sans-serif color=black size=-1>Diese Begriffe erscheinen nur in Links, die auf diese Seite verweisen: <B>unisys </B></font>
</td></tr></table></td></tr></table>

<hr>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

<html>
<head>

(2) http://www.epower-initiative.ch/fr/1.3.0.phtml in the cache for the French page
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