Industry news

UK government has signed up to a World Economic Forum (WEF) initiative to fight cyber-crime and aid the growth of e-commerce.

Over 70 companies and governments, spanning 25 countries have now joined the Cyber Resilience initiative. It plans to “promote awareness, understanding and action” to combat cyber risk across the globe.

Foreign secretary William Hague, who inked the treaty on behalf of the coalition government, said: “Cyberspace must be secure and reliable so that it is trusted as a medium for doing business but at the same time free and open to evolve and innovate naturally. Governments should support the key role of the private sector in creating a trusted and open place to do business both at home and abroad.”

Councils including Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea are being led by Westminster City Council in deploying a borough wide ICT procurement framework.

The contract up for tender is for a complete ICT service including an integrated service desk solution and data centre services. Westminster has placed a service delivery deadline for November 2014 with later dates set by the other councils.

The procurement process is expected to begin in April with the service framework divided into three parts. The contract cost has yet to be announced.

Transport for Greater Manchester has placed tender for a £15 million contract to create an intelligent transport system.

The system will provide real-time updates on road conditions including travel hotspots and will provide management systems and a control platform.

The system will also be able to integrate data from a variety of separate sources in order to provide a open-source detailed real-time information.

French based IT giant Capgemini will recruit 100 IT apprentices with permanent positions on offer to those who complete the placements.

The scheme which includes an 18 month programme for GCSE equivalent level students and a five-year A-level equivalent sponsored degree are part of a Governmental scheme to increase apprenticeships within the IT sector.

The new batch comes after 44 apprentices were hired in 2012. Brian Sinclair, head of fresher recruitment at Capgemini UK, said: “Last year's apprentice intake has been a huge success with our clients and our managers".

Sinclair said: "This year, we want more of the hardworking students from Britain's industrial heartland for roles based in the West Midlands”.

The ICO has fined Sony £250,000 for failing to prevent a significant data breach of its PlayStation Network Platform in April 2011.

Information of millions of users including payment details, names, addresses, email addresses, dates of birth and account passwords were compromised.

Sony responded to the breach by rebuilding the whole PlayStation network infrastructure.

The ICO found that a failure to keep the network up-to-date resulted in an avoidable data breach. David Smith, deputy commissioner and director of data protection, ICO, said: ““If you are responsible for so many payment card details and log-in details, then keeping that personal data secure has to be your priority”.

Glasgow has won £24 million in funding in the form of a government grant to create smart cities.

The grant was awarded by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), set up in 2007 to develop and promote innovation led by technology.

The grant will be used to develop better services including application of advanced real time analytics and bid data, allowing for the gathering of information relating to events from traffic incidents and CCTV footage to missing bin collections.

Scott Cain, the TSB's project leader for Future Cities, said: “Glasgow has some quite extreme challenges - it has the lowest life expectancy of any city in the UK for instance - and the hope is that if we bring together energy, transport, public safety and health it will make it more efficient and a better place to live".

Other smart cities are to include Birmingham, Sunderland and London.

The National Audit Office (NAO) confirmed ICT public sector savings of £316 million, generated from saving initiatives including contract renegotiation.

£64 million of the savings were generated from shared ICT including the Public Service Network, new initiatives enacted in 2012 are expected to increase ICT savings in the coming months.

While the NAO confirmed the success of the success of the government initiatives, more evidence needs to be provided to show evidence of progress in other areas, including innovation generation and increasing SME participation in favour of the dominance of large suppliers.

The success of rival companies such as Samsung has seen Apple to struggle, with the company posting the slowest profit growth since 2004.

Profits fell below analysts’ expectations with Apple falling 11 percent in New York trading yesterday.

Apple forecasts sales of $43 billion for the second fiscal quarter despite fears that the company is struggling to create a new innovative product after years of rapid growth since the introduction of the iPhone.

Meanwhile Samsung has capitalised on its success of the Galaxy series of smartphones, reporting profit growth on 89 percent, while Google’s Android handsets have become the most popular device worldwide.

Markets in Egypt, Turkey, South Africa Colombia, Indonesia and Vietnam are seeing high levels of growth and are predicted to outpace both Russian and Brazil in growth during 2013.

Global predictions made by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) also placed Mexico and South Korea and Europe within the analysts list of countries to watch over 2013, with countries within the Eurozone gradually moving away from economic stagnation.

Alasdair Ross, global product director at the EIU, predicted that the UK would struggle to move away from recession in comparison to Eurozone countries

A House of Commons Public Administration Committee, has heard from consultancy director and public procurement review author Colin Cram, on how the UK has benefitted from EU regulation with regulation being used as a scapegoat.

Colin said: “There can be improvements, but we have to be very careful we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”.

A separate co-author of a report into public procurement, Jon Hughes, said: “a lot of people hide behind the EU rules and regulations. There is no reason at all why we cannot simplify a lot, why we cannot speed up a lot and take a lot of bureaucracy out.”