Industry news

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has said that despite “inconsistencies”, the UK is still a “world leader” in digital services.

The comments during a brief to the Cabinet Office come as the UK’s digital strategy becomes a year old since its 2012 launch.

While discussing the UK’s position as a digital leader, Francis Maude pointed out the comparison between the launch of the U.S. Healthcare.gov website and the UK GOV.UK domain.

Mr Maude, said: “We have got international recognition. When the Obamacare website got released to universal criticism it was interesting that quite a lot of the commentary said: why didn’t they do what the British government is doing?” He added, “They did it the old fashioned way. We have gone from crap at this stuff to being recognised as a world leader.”

While the digital strategy has seen wide change within the public sector, the program has been delayed, with the final transition of departments to the GOV.UK domain now being extended from a deadline of March 2014 to July 2014.

Government Digital Services executive director Mike Bracken said: “we should feel more proud of a year that has seen services improved, taxpayer money saved, civil service digital capability boosted and a greater variety of partners and suppliers working with government.”

Calls for shorter public sector procurement processes

Public sector procurement facing ‘crisis of confidence’

High profile IT projects will be pressured to deliver increased visibility in 2014, as businesses look to protect against IT failures according to predictions for next year.

Data analytics company ExtraHop has revealed that its top predictions for next year are that businesses will look to develop insight into IT programmes in order to protect against service disruption after publicised IT industry failures, including downtime for the U.S. Healthcare.gov website and IT systems used by RBS and NatWest.

ExtraHop predicted that businesses would move to treat their IT services with the same managed approach employed across other key areas. Businesses are also increasingly likely to employ a variety of analytics sources in order to monitor applications.

Jesse Rothstein, CEO, ExtraHop, said: “As these technologies become more sophisticated and line-of-business stakeholders demand rapid adoption, IT teams must take an operations-oriented, business-minded approach to deployment and management. In this way, IT organisations can ensure business-critical performance, availability, and security.”

IT spending to break £75 billion barrier

IBM acquires analytics firm for network monitoring

IT services supplier Fujitsu has announced the creation of 192 jobs in Northern Ireland.

The jobs will be situated in the company’s new Business Services Centre in Derry, Northern Ireland, with the new roles including business support, HR, finance and administration positions.

The job announcement comes as Fujitsu announces funding of £12 million for Northern Ireland, over the next three years. The funding will be used to create another business Services Centre at its current Timber Quay site.

Greg McDaid, client managing director of Northern Ireland at Fujitsu, said: “This Business Services Centre will now form an important part of our overall strategy to achieve business growth in this region and the choice of Timber Quay is a reflection on the highly skilled and motivated workforce as well as the excellent telecommunications infrastructure that we know exist here.”

Fujitsu pledges to attract UK SMEs

E-payment provider Worldline and fraud prevention company ReD create a strategic partnership in order to enhance Worldline’s payment and fraud protection services.

ReD under the partnership will make its real-time fraud prevention services available to Worldline’s merchant customers throughout the world – in France, Benelux, Germany, UK, Spain, India and other Asian countries.

Manish Patel, regional president EMEA, at ReD, commented: “We are very pleased to formalise our partnership with Worldline as we have been working alongside each other, supporting joint merchant customers in France, since our successful entry to the market last year.”

Xavier Brucker, Head of Multichannel Payment, from Wordline added: “We have a strong commitment to providing the most advanced and innovative solutions to our customers.

Integration of the ReD Shield solution and expertise will enhance our fraud prevention services for Merchant Services online payments globally, so we can offer our clients personalized protection adapted to specific regulations.”

HMRC tenders for supplier for fraud prevention and credit check role

A report carried out by the National Audit Office (NAO) found that the Department for Communities and Local Government’s (DCLG’s) failed to gain enough information on contract costs, such as analyzing what outcomes would be delivered, even if the DCLG’s scheme had not been in place.

The scheme involved the department paying local authorities for the number of troubled families that authorities brought to the help scheme.

The scheme seeks to help families into work and bring children back into school, in order to reduce the strain on social services.

The NAO report said that while the payment-by-results scheme had helped to increase focus on achieving outcomes: ““There is a lack of information on costs and the non-intervention rate (the level of outcomes that would have been achieved without the programmes). Without this information, there is an increased risk that the outcome payments will be set either too high or too low.”

The report added: “Whilst payment-by-results has benefits, both departments could have done more to understand its risks. Neither department is likely to achieve all the potential benefits of using payments-by-results. And performance varies significantly between the best and worst performing local authorities and the best and worst performing contractors.”

NAO warns public sector on out-dated ICT risks

A report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has found that the Border Force IT systems are ‘inadequate’ and that development plans are ‘unrealistic’.

The report stated that IT systems risks collapsing and that targets for passenger checks are unlikely to be achieved due to the current state of Border Force procurement.

The report identified that the Border Forces’ use of the e-Borders programme as a at risk area, given that the e-Borders scheme has already come under criticism earlier in the year.

The PAC report called for the Border Force to underline how it would deliver new IT services required to meet targets, including the carrying out of exit checks on 80 per cent of passengers by 2015.

"There are worrying gaps in the intelligence data available to the Border Force and its IT systems are not up to the job”, said PAC chair Margaret Hodge MP said.

Immigration minister Mark Harper, said: "It will take time to transform Border Force and fix all the problems we inherited but I am confident that we are making the right changes. None of the issues raised in this report come as a surprise and they are already being actively addressed.”

Home Office awards contracts for visa applications services

UK e-borders scheme criticised

European aerospace giant EADS has undertaken a restructuring programme which will see a reduction of jobs of around 5,800 in order to create job savings.

The announcement of cuts also included the announcement of the selling of the EADS headquarters in Paris.

The majority of redundancies will be situated in defence and space departments and come as European spending has fallen as countries look to reduce spending.

The move is likely to meet heavy opposition from unions, with union giant Force Ouvriere having already announced its plans to resist the plans.

Shareholders have reacted positively to the announcement with shares rising after the announcement.

UK moves ahead with outsourcing MoD hardware procurement

BAE move to increase ties to EADS after the end of merger talks

UK graduates do not have the rights skills for big data jobs according to a new survey of senior executives.

Only 1 in 10 UK firms looks at graduates when recruiting for big data roles according to a new report carried out by OnePoll on the behalf of Teradata.

72 per cent of respondents said that graduates were not considered because they lacked the necessary skills for a role in big data projects.

60 per cent of respondents said that it was difficult to find workers with the right mix of skills as IT education has struggled to keep pace with developments in the IT industry and the rise of big data.

The survey revealed that businesses are increasingly looking for candidates with technical skills over business skills.

Skills gap result in undervaluing of Big Data

Customer data on the wane

Unify, formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications, has announced a new flexible licensing model in order to meet increasing consumer demand for flexible services.

The new service is being advertised as driving improved costs savings, and allows customers to add user licences at a fixed price.

The new licensing model provides a simple program designed for ease of use with a clear pricing structure.

Brian Riggs, Principal Analyst at Ovum, said: “Unify’s new licensing should increase customers’ interest in purchasing UC solutions, as well as make it easier for them to select the package that makes sense for them.”

Frederic Simard, Vice President, Pricing and Portfolio Commercialization for Unify said: “Enterprise Licensing continues our commitment to make it easier to do business with Unify and provides customers with a selection of relevant, user-centric packages with no hidden costs or surprises and the flexibility to accommodate future business needs.”

Vodafone looking to the future after selling its stake in Verizon Wireless

NHS England has created a £100 million fund, in order to promote innovative technology to improve patient care.

The fund known as the Nursing Technology Fund, will be used to support the development of mobile and digital services, with a focus on increasing the flexibility and mobility of technology available to health staff.

The funding for technology is seen as a way to increase efficiencies by reducing administration including the amount of paperwork that NHS employees have to complete, and improve the quality of care services.

Jane Cummings, chief nursing officer for England, said: “Demands on the NHS have changed dramatically over the years and it is vital that as a health service we change and modernise so our patients get the best possible care”.

The health secretary, MP Jeremy Hunt, said: “Nurses and midwives chose their profession because they wanted to spend time caring for patients, not filling out paperwork. New technology can make that happen. It’s better for patients too, who will get swifter information, safer care and more face-to-face time with NHS staff”.

NHS Shared Business Services announces legal services framework appointments

NHS trust requests increased funding for paperless transformation