Industry news

South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has achieved savings and improved reporting since employing a new accounts management system from Real Asset Management’s (RAM).

The Trust which has a large number of assets spread across a wide area employed RAM to deliver a unified system across different sites.

The accounting technology delivered “an increase in overall efficiencies and time savings" according to the Trust.

Since the deployment of RAM’s management system (known as Asset4000), the Trust has been able to quickly access increasingly detailed reports, ultimately increasing the overall accuracy of financial reporting.

NHS launches £100 million fund for innovative IT

Augmented reality (AR) services are set to become the next big thing within enterprise level business processes.

Research firm Gartner has highlighted AR technology as being poised to become the next big thing in enterprise services, with the technology having practicality in employee training, service workflow, real time decision making and in business processes.

The visualisation technology, which is perhaps most publicly known as being used within Google Glass, is being seen as an enabler of many other services, particularly their use within a mobile environment.

Gartner analyst Tuong Huy Nguyen said: "AR leverages and optimises the use of other technologies such as mobility, location, 3D content management and imaging and recognition. It is especially useful in the mobile environment because it enhances the user's senses via digital instruments to allow faster responses or decision-making."

"AR is most useful as a tool in industries where workers are either in the field, do not have immediate access to information, or jobs that require one or both hands and the operator's attention."

Data discovery to become a main focus

French based telecommunications company Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has been awarded a contract to deliver communication and collaboration services to Fingal County Council, one of Irelands largest county councils.

Alcatel-Lucent will provide a Unified Communication and Collaboration solution which is designed to reduce the council’s communication costs while improving mobile working to 1,200 staff situated across 22 different sites.

The contract will see the provision of support services for new communications equipment as well as mobile services designed to allow users to use their mobile phones as they were desk phones.

The move to outsource 70 per cent of the probation services is to exclude the management of high-risk criminals according to leaked guidance from the Ministry of Justice.

Experts have expressed concern that by leaving high-risk offenders, who in some cases are publicly notorious, will leave the public sector probation service stuck with providing high risk services with added media attention, while the private sector benefits from low risk offender.

The leak comes as the House of Commons discusses the possibility of a vote in both houses before probation privatisation can go ahead.

Justice secretary, Chris Grayling, told a justice committee last month that: “The aim is to have those two teams in place by April and to have started the process of migrating cases so they are properly allocated across those two groups, but without an absolute requirement to do so by 1 April”.

“We need to make sure public safety is guaranteed. If a particular offender is in the wrong group but there is a good reason for them staying with the current offender manager, they will do so."

Labour calls for deadline on prison improvements

Prison privatisation plans scrapped

Outsourcing firm Capita has been awarded a five-year contract to operate the London congestion charge programme, with the option or a further five-year extension.

The contract is expected to generate revenues of around £145 million, which will start in November 2015.

Services to be provided as part of the contract includes BPO, IT and contact centre services.

The congestion charge scheme was originally designed and created by Capita back in 2003, but the company lost the contract to IBM in 2009.

Capita shares drop following the departure of CEO

Capita awarded nine-year IT contract with Croydon Council

David Higgins, new chairman of the High Speed 2 (HS2), has said that he is looking to reduce the cost of the HS2 project in order to increase political support.

The comments made on BBC Radio come as the HS2 scheme faces heavy criticism from both within the media and parliament regarding the cost, impact and practicality of the planned route.

The Labour party has indicated that they would be more cautious in their approach to HS2 and allocation resources to the programme.

Despite the criticism PM David Cameron has hailed the project as a keystone in modernising UK infrastructure and growing the economy.

Report recommends cancellation of HS2

100,000 jobs to be created by HS2

Local authorities have been given access to a £1 million fund by government in order to transform services.

The fund was established by a joint partnership between the Cabinet Office and Local Government (CO) Association (LGA),

Authorities which are successful in applying for funding will receive specialist support to transform services according to the Cabinet Office: “by combining the best of the public, private and voluntary sectors through partnering, mutualisation, or other innovative forms of commercial model.”

The funding comes as government seeks to increase local government efficiencies and the ability of government to generate savings from procurement.

CO Minister Francis Maude said: “we must transform the way services are delivered and break down the old binary choice between in-house and outsourced delivery”.

Local authorities failing to collaborate on procurement

Calls for shorter public sector procurement processes

The City of Sydney is looking for a new datacentre provider as part of the cities move to a complete infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) model.

Sydney council has placed a tender notice for two new datacentre facilities as part of a five year contract with options for future extensions.

The tender notice specifies that the new facilities must provide increased security, 24 hour access, future expansion capacity and green credentials through reduced power consumption.

Sydney city currently operates two data centre facilities, with a new provider needing to establish compatibility with these existing facilities with high speed links between all facilities.

The tendering process is expected to be completed by the end of March.

Global IaaS service launched by Telefónica Digital

HCL awarded council SAP contract

G4S and Serco have been criticised by the government’s spending watchdog for failing to provide adequate housing to vulnerable asylum seekers.

The National Audit Office has revealed that the government will seek to recover £3million and £4 million G4S and Serco respectively in the form of rebates.

Both outsourcing companies have been involved in providing services to Compass, a outsourced system set out by the home secretary to provide housing to asylum seekers.

A G4S spokesperson said in response to the report released this Friday: "We agree with all recommendations made and many of these have already been implemented as part of our on-going commitment to service improvement."

The UK government has revealed plans for a workforce management framework, worth anywhere between £200 million and £1 billion.

The project will be rolled out to the NHS initially before being expanded out to other public sector departments.

The brief tender is looking for a framework supplying management software amd e-rostering services, with expectations that a preferred bidder will be announced later on in 2014.

Francis Maude calls for SMEs to put pressure on the government procurement process

Cabinet Office plan for new procurement service