E-government

The legacy factor: paralysed by history How old operating systems and long contracts are holding back departments and making them vulnerable to cyber-attacks | Page 6 biztechreport.co.uk

The power behind decisions

SEPTEMBER 2014

E-government

KEEP CALM AND TRUST US

That’s the view of Mike Bracken, the man at the centre of the UK’s E-government transformation | Pages 8-9

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Business Technology · September 2014

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E-government

Opening shots Shane Richmond

T

HE recent publication of private photos of Hollywood actresses, apparently stolen from Apple’s iCloud service, has got a lot of people worried about the security of cloud computing services.

The concern reached so far beyond tech circles that one tabloid felt the need to explain iCloud to its readers. (It turns out it’s not an actual cloud.)

Imagine for a moment if the leaked data had not been photos of naked celebrities but instead a list of everyone in Britain who had been prescribed medication for a mental health condition over the last 12 months or even just a spreadsheet of names, addresses and National Insurance numbers. The media outrage would be deafening.

The promise of E-government is huge, extending from simple things like opening up public transport data to more complex ones such as using data analysis to assign medical resources or policing.

Then there are the potential cost savings and the ability to speed-up our interactions with government. All of that is to be welcomed.

However, there are real security concerns.

The iCloud photo theft is not an isolated incident.

Days after it broke, Home Depot, the US DIY chain, revealed that its payment card processing system had been breached, affecting perhaps tens of millions of customers. News of data breaches seems to come on an almost weekly basis.

An E-government system would be a tempting target for hackers, given the potential to harvest

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Caught on camera!

How Hollywood’s A-listers revealed a flaw in security information that would be useful for identity theft and perhaps even bank details. But hacking is not the only risk. Human error can have massive repercussions where private data is concerned. In 2007, two computer disks containing the personal details of around 25 million people – every family in Britain then claiming child benefit – went missing in the mail. The disks, which were being sent from HMRC to the National Audit Office, were never found and the government advised those affected to monitor their bank accounts for signs of fraudulent activity.

As the HMRC incident shows, government databases are nothing new but the growth of E-government will make them more visible and raise fears that the data will be stolen or shared with the government’s commercial partners. These fears will make uptake slower and perhaps even delay the roll-out of services entirely. Earlier this Twitter: @ year the roll-out of a new NHS data-sharing scheme shanerichmond

in England was delayed because of public unease.

Government and service providers need to be proactive about addressing these concerns.

Individuals and businesses need to be informed about what data is being collected and who can see it. Existing data protection laws make this available if you ask but we need data accounts – like bank accounts – that we can check whenever we like.

Second, some of the cost savings from bringing in E-government should be invested in a system of data breach recovery. If you fall victim to a government data breach then you would be given identity theft protection and online monitoring, for example, for a year after the breach.

We won’t be able to eliminate data breaches entirely, any more than we’ll be able to build offices that can’t catch fire or be broken into.

But government and the companies who build E-government services can take measures to reassure a sceptical public.

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By Tim Adler

EUROPE WILL have fully interoperable and transparent E-government by 2050, according to EU officials. This future government will blur the lines between us as individuals and how we interact with officialdom.

Governments will poll us about shaping policy and voting will be done through our televisions. All interactions that have traditionally taken place physically with government will disappear. Telemedicine and technology-based state education will be as natural as electronic tax returns and online banking are today. The same will apply to voting, discussions with other citizens and having your say in parliament.

Anti-Big Government tech evangelists such as US thinker Tim O’Reilly see the State being whittled down, replaced by continually self-improving feedback loops of data. O’Reilly’s ideas, which are gaining traction here, envisage all government services and programmes being monitored – from easing traffic on motorways to how well policies are performing. The word cybernetics, after all, means “the science of governance”.

The reality is that Europe’s governments have failed to meet those EU targets already.

Europeans are already meant to be able to see official data about themselves online.

Involving the public in decision making is already meant to have happened. Digital services enabling European citizens to study, work, live and receive healthcare anywhere in Europe are meant to be in place next year.

Vasilis Koulolias, director of digital government developer eGovlab, says: “Four years into the five-year E-government action plan, e-services still suffer from several gaps in user-centricity, transparency and single market mobility – making interoperable services available to citizens in other states.”

Koulolias argues that Europe making official datasets available to business would be hugely beneficial to the EU economy.

“Savvy businesses are using public data to predict consumer behaviour, segment marketing campaigns, improve efficiency, even rate retirement plans,” he says.

What role business plays in digital government is contentious. Some

Although the EU predicts a fully operational E-government system by 2050, many countries have so far failed to hit targets

Amin Amiri turned around shipping firm Eldapoint, thanks largely to its location in a resurgent Liverpool

E-government experts argue that the UK government’s history of awarding big IT contracts to large tech companies is the reason why the derelict hulks of big IT projects litter the landscape such as the National Programme for IT in the NHS, which was abandoned in 2011 and cost the taxpayer around £10 billion.

The government has reversed its strategy and now awards IT contracts to smaller, more agile software developers, opening up the market to hundreds of SMEs. Big Tech has hit back, pointing out that some of these small developers will be out of business when things go wrong. Better stick to Big Tech firms that you can be assured will still be around, Tim Gregory, UK president of tech giant CGI Group, has warned.

However E-government worldwide represents a tremendous business oppor t u n it y for compa n ies once governments open up their data to whoever wants to use it. McKinsey Global Institute predicts that the use of open data could add $3 trillion (£1.8 trillion) in value to the global economy. Savvy businesses are using public data to predict consumer behaviour, shape marketing campaigns, developing life-saving medicine and spot gaps in the market for new goods and services.

Digital government will be the way most of us interact with the authorities going forward. E-government is the future face of government.

■ TIM O’REILLY INTERVIEW – Page 5

Estonia shows the way for Ukraine ESTONIA IS FUNDING E-government in western Ukraine despite the turmoil elsewhere in the country. Russia’s neighbour is the most advanced provider of E-government in the European Union, exporting its knowhow to Georgia, Oman and Qatar.

The €500,000 (£398,000) Ukrainian

E-government project is being cofunded with Swedish development agency Sida. “The current situation is Ukraine is complicated,” says Foreign Minister Urmas Paet.

Estonia, with its 1.3 million inhabitants, is the most advanced exemplar of E-government in the world.

It established the first E-government in Europe, holding Cabinet meetings online.

It has also encouraged citizens to sign official documents using their smartphones, vote via laptop and even pay for beer by texting. Some 99 per cent of banking is done online.

E-government

3

Local services are lagging, says MP Onwurah THE GOVERNMENT has largely ignored local digital government in favour of central E-government, says shadow Cabinet Office minister Chi Onwurah. “We need to increase collaboration and reuse,” he says. “Costs are high with systems either duplicated or customised for each authority.”

Labour says that only one third of local government websites are mobile friendly and that E-government services need to be opened up to communities.

But Labour rejects criticism that its proposals are just a digital version of the Conservatives’ Big Society.

“This is radically different from the Big Society that cut services to communities and then asked them to do it,” adds Onwurah.

“This government sees digital as a cost cutter, while we believe that as well as cutting costs, digital can transform the power relationships between people and government.”

Onwurah and Labour’s policy chief Jon Cruddas recently undertook a threemonth review into the future of E-government, concluding that that local services still lag behind central government.

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E-government

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How healthcare organisations fasttrack their approach to procurement INDUSTRY VIEW

A

cross the public sector, organisations are struggling with a common problem: how do you continue the drive to improve frontline services while simultaneously overcoming a rapidly evolving raft of challenges?

Internal reorganisation, restricted budgets and a climate in which the handling and storage of sensitive data is of paramount importance have presented public sector organisations across the board with a complex set of issues to contend with. Money has seldom been tighter, demand has never been so high, yet the logical solution – leveraging technology to speed delivery and drive savings – is rendered increasingly complex by the need to comply with strict data regulations.

Yet despite this scenario healthcare organisations around the UK are adopting fresh approaches to technology procurement and delivery that are improving infrastructure, increasing deployment speeds, cutting costs and enabling greater focus on the services that really matter.

When it came under pressure to deliver

a best-of-breed, highly secure datastorage and management solution for more than three million Yorkshire NHS service users, West and South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Commissioning Support Unit needed to act quickly. While looking for a solution capable of complying with the stringent security standards covering patient information, the organisation also wanted a more flexible approach to procurement with lower upfront costs.

“Creating a new data solution that would serve the needs of GPs and surgeries spread across the region offered multiple challenges. Clearly security was a primary issue when handling data, but we also needed a solution that would work within the unique confines of the reorganised healthcare market,” said John Wilshaw, of the West and South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Commissioning Support Unit.

“Perhaps most of all, we needed a solution we could rely upon. The ultimate goal is to develop a data-as-a-service model, ensuring NHS decision-makers, the doctors, the commissioners and the consultants have instant access to the right data at the right time.”

Working closely with the CSU’s inhouse team to create a solution tailored

INDUSTRY VIEW

F

inancial challenges have been endured across the public sector for some time. These have forced some organisations to be more radical and think the previously unthinkable. When forced into saving money, you look for radical solutions that change the way you do business, rather than cut into muscle.

As many reach the point where their IT infrastructure needs a large investment they realise that IT is not their core business purpose, but the business of delivering citizen services is. At this point organisations such as Capita have the solution because they have already made many of these investments so NHS Trusts, as well as other government organisations, are saved the upfront capital expenditure.

One way to save money has been firstly to put back-office IT functions online and, increasingly, add front-end services such as renewing parking permits, library books and council tax. While some parts of the public sector are reaping the benefits of cloud, others have yet to take this step.

Many who have embraced cloud have actually seen customer satisfaction increase through online service delivery because everybody has become so used to buying things online that we want the same thing from public services. So, cloud is delivering this nirvana of saving money and delivering better services.

Other public sector organisations, for reasons of culture and security, have been much more challenged in adopting cloud technology. Capita envisages that we’ll start to see an increased pace, in the health sector for example, over the coming years to take advantage of technology and services which will have a major impact on delivering better patient

to its needs, solutions partner SCC delivered an IL3-rated on-demand PAYG data solution, Sentinel powered by IBM technology, to Yorkshire’s 500-plus GP surgeries. Enabling flexible provisioning and top-rated security for relatively little upfront costs, the project has enabled one of the UK’s leading commissioning support units to deliver top-rated data storage services in record time.

Designed and delivered in record time, the CSU’s data storage and management solution drew upon SCC’s industry-leading healthcare expertise to meet every one of the organisation’s unique challenges.

In addition to substantially reducing capital costs, the project also enabled it to offer the service to disparate clients on a highly flexible basis, opening up

Time for the public sector to embrace the cloud

potential new revenue streams without the need for upfront investment.

“Built on the foundation of a toprated UK data centre that guarantees the integrity of sensitive patient data, individual trusts are now able to procure storage on a PAYG model, avoiding upfront capital expenditure and regular technology refreshes,” said SCC’s Kelvin Ayre, Cloud Sentinel – general manager. “In addition to enabling the introduction of a more cost-effective and responsive business model going forward, the move enabled the CSU to fast-track its approach to data guidelines, applying proven pre-approved solutions to save time and resources.”

0121 281 8618 www.scc.com/sentinel

services. To enable this next step Capita offers two cloud-based solutions: Capita Private Cloud, which provides secure, UK-based storage removing concerns around sensitive data going offshore. Delivered via this secure cloud is Capita Productivity Hub that offers Microsoft tools such as Exchange, Lync and SharePoint integrated with the standard Microsoft Office suite.

Storing sensitive patient or citizen data on a secure, UK cloud, rather than on physical files or in a less secure on site data room, overcomes the security and sovereignty issue. It is not only more secure but it allows greater agility and mobility.

Capita ensures 24/7 services, providing peace of mind to its users that their data is protected.

The cloud also means software is always up-todate, while server space can be bought on a pay-asyou-use basis. This has huge implications for the way health and government meet capacity demands such as clinical research projects, seasonal issues or council tax periods because cloud provides more, or less, capacity when it’s needed.

Cloud will become the norm. It will be the way of working and, as cloud services mature, we will see more mission-critical functions being hosted on the cloud.

Business managers and IT directors must grasp this opportunity and work collaboratively to transform the way services are delivered. Far from relinquishing control, letting a specialist provider manage an organisation’s IT infrastructure can be a critical step in freeing up funds and management time to focus on the core business purpose – delivering cost effective services to citizens and stakeholders.

ITS@capita.co.uk www.Capita-ITS.co.uk/Cloud

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The inner geek

Measure by measure BEFORE he made Star Wars, George Lucas directed a sci-fi thriller about a couple fleeing from a blank robotic future. Right at the film’s climax, the robot police call off their manhunt because it has exceeded its budget allocation.

Filmed on location in San Francisco in 1969, THX-1138 seemed a bleak dystopian satire. But this kind of realtime cost/benefit analysis is seeping into actual government today – and especially in policing. Chicago police already use data to track crime in real-time.

“We are just at the beginning of a big data algorithmic revolution that will touch all elements in society. Government needs to participate in this revolution,” technology evangelist Tim O’Reilly tells me. Fittingly he is speaking on a cellphone while driving across Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

O’Reilly’s big idea is that regulation can change based on real-time feedback from data. For example, motorway speeds are already adjusted on the M25 based on live traffic conditions. And the Bank of England is able to adjust interest rates each month based on what the economy needs. O’Reilly believes we are at the start of seeing the concept applied on a wider basis.

“Adopting that across government would be revolutionary in policy making,” says O’Reilly.

O’Reilly came up with the idea of algorithmic government after seeing how the internet has disrupted retail, publishing and the music industry.

Intrigued by the way hackers had disrupted government, he hosted a Government 2.0 summit in 2009.

“My idea was, ‘Gosh, what if government regulation is more like that?’”

For most people, the word regulation implies dusty tomes filled with legalese.

5

WE ENABLE PEOPLE TO DO BUSINESS.

Moz & Bradders

By Tim Adler

E-government

Algorithmic regulation is an idea whose time has come, says Tim O’Reilly

SCC.COM

George Lucas’s dystopian sci-fi thriller THX-1138 envisages elements of real-time government, as advovated by Tim O’Reilly (below)

O’Reilly uses the word in a looser sense – a constantly adjusted mixture to optimise performance, whether it’s the fuel-air mix in a car engine or doctors regulating doses of medicine.

Statute books gathering dust have no chance of coping with the light-speed trades of modern financial trading, for example, O’Reilly argues.

“New financial instruments are invented every day and implemented by algorithms that trade at electronic speed. How can these instruments be regulated except by programs and algorithms that track and manage them in their native element, in much the same way that Google’s ‘regulations’ manage the constant attempts of spammers and black hat SEO [search engine optimisation] to game the system?

“You think how many policies are created without any feedback effect, and you have to ask, is that the most efficient way

BY PLANNING, SUPPLYING, INTEGRATING & MANAGING THEIR IT.

to do things? What’s the point of doing something five years after the effect?”

O’Reilly is staggered at the way governments launch initiatives and even IT projects without building any feedback into the process. Constant feedback could, for example, have avoided the launch disaster of the Obamacare website, which was unable to cope on launch, he argues.

“One of the big ideas in Silicon Valley is that you build systems as you go, you build as you use them, you build them by measurement – whereas government policies are set in stone at the outset, and don’t involve any measurement or learning. We have this idea of political regulation being a set of hidebound rules and we have this idea that regulation is shackling things. Whereas an email spam filter is just a constantly improving regulation system.

“Government is way behind the curve – we spend billions of dollars on programmes with little idea as to their ef fectiveness. T he f irst step is measurement.”

He tells the story of meeting one US government official who had no idea how effective his modest online army

veteran jobs board website was, despite its $5million cost.

“I told him that if he was in Silicon Valley, he would have been shut down,” O’Reilly says incredulously.

There’s something refreshingly libertarian about O’Reilly, whose disdain for big government comes across in our phone call.

The next step, he says, is for the feedback loop to go live.

“Right now it’s not really real-time – the thing that I’m recommending is a move to something more real-time. If you look at the capabilities of the private sector, that’s done in real-time.”

In some ways, what O’Reilly propounds is a technocrat fantasy – a utopian world of infinite feedback loops endlessly correcting themselves, remov ing t he need for human intervention.

Yet his ideas are gaining ground – especially in Britain, where algorithmic government is looked on favourably by the Coalition.

“It’s time for government to enter the age of big data,” he says. “Algorithmic regulation is an idea whose time has come.”

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Paralysed by history Legacy technology is stopping departments from reaching their full potential.

Tim Adler reports

think we should change the benefits system – it’s paralysed by legacy systems and their inability to build something that will work.”

Mike Bracken, head of the GDS, has spoken of big IT vendors “doing a number” on government, bamboozling civil servants into signing unwieldy long-term contracts.

Sarah Lawson, head of IT and information security at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, says she was shocked by how outmoded some NHS IT systems are.

NHS managers were resistant to change, she says, claiming that systems still worked and they did not have the budget to upgrade. Lawson argues that such outmoded IT infrastructure leaves hospitals vulnerable to attack and security breaches. Lawson says: “Like an old car, they’re easier to break into and they cost more to maintain – there may not even be patches to fix it or even people who understand how these systems operate anymore.”

Bracken says: “We’re hampered by how much was spent on outmoded and out-of-date legacy IT systems brought in by previous administrations.”

At one point, 84 per cent of the budget was being spread between just seven tech giants.

GDS has taken a conscious approach to support smaller businesses and start-ups.

GDS launched its own framework last year to get smaller, agile suppliers into the government supply chain, opening up the market to around 250 additional suppliers – including small businesses. It will not sign a contract with a supplier for more than two years.

Crown Commercial Service is working with GDS to assess suppliers based on their ability to write code and understand user needs – as opposed to their ability to fill out lots of paperwork and give slick presentations.

Tim Gregory, UK president of tech giant CGI Group, told ComputerWorld UK last year that the government “is making life difficult for IT vendors”. “The first time one of these SMEs [small and medium enterprises] doesn’t deliver, when something goes pear-shaped, there will be no safety net. There’s no point in a government organisation trying to sue them, there’s nothing to sue. It will be gone.

D

IGITAL government is being “paralysed” by legacy IT systems and contracts with big IT companies, according to one government adviser.

Some parts of the NHS are still using 20-year-old operating systems, making them vulnerable to cyber-attack. Sensitive personal records are being compromised because of the unwillingness of hospital IT managers to upgrade.

Government departments are also hamstrung by expensive IT contracts with big tech suppliers.

Some contracts have years to run, hampering plans for digital government, say experts.

The Government Digital Service (GDS) has thrown open its doors to start-ups and smaller companies, widening the talent pool – to the unhappiness of larger tech companies.

But some contracts have years to play out, GDS admits. And big IT companies are not taking this lying down. Technology companies have been lobbying Labour to reinstate big IT contracts should it win next year’s election. (Chi Onwarah, shadow Cabinet Officer minister, says the government is still in thrall to big providers. The public sector paid £4billion to four outsourcing firms in 2012.)

“IT systems are crucial to government and these legacy contracts have paralysed them. Big chunks of the private sector are responsible for the paralysis of digital government in the UK,” says one government insider.

Government plans to launch Universal Credit last year were put on ice when the programme hit major IT difficulties.

“Universal Credit was a flagship programme on which ministers have laid their political careers.

Why is it paralysed? It’s not because people don’t

Skills shortage tears holes in security GOVERNMENT IT departments are struggling to find enough cyber-security experts to work in Whitehall.

The government has higher security standards than most private companies because of the sensitive data it handles, especially when it comes to defence and health. Government websites are also constantly under attack from malware and other internet threats – which are increasingly waved through because they look so innocuous.

Rashmi Knowles, chief security architect at RSA, a company whose

password identification software is used by Britain, says governments should assume they are under attack all the time. “The government is always facing incidents on the network but it doesn’t have the resources to investigate them properly,” he says.

Surprisingly, Knowles’s answer is not to outsource cyber-security to the private sector. Rather, too much analysis is done by hand, and government needs to do more data analysis automatically.

Increased automisation would free up employees to look at the top 10 per cent of networks “incidents”

– traffic spikes or data pulses out of the norm. Monitoring is key, she says, to recognising things out of the ordinary.

Knowles says: “Security is about three things – people, process and technology. By technology I mean educating citizens about their own security behaviour, while process is about having the right security procedures in place – not taking data out of the building on a loseable USB stick, for example.”

Knowles suggests not throwing more money at cyber-security, but spending budgets differently. Most government cyber-security budgets

are spent on prevention, with just 10 per cent each on monitoring and response such as installing a preventative patch or notifying citizens of data theft. Knowles suggests the money be split equally.

Sarah Lawson, head of IT and information security at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, says cyber-security as a profession may appeal more to women because it plays to their strengths. Only 20 per cent of her time is spent on tech issues, she says – the rest on communicating security issues and training people. “The role plays to a woman’s strength of being

able to think and communicate strategically,” says Lawson.

Private companies face a similar shortage. Symantec’s Ilias Chantzos says: “The skills problem runs across the board – it’s not limited to government. These are sought-after skills. Everybody knows we need more cyber-security experts.”

GDS admits it faces skills shortages alongside everybody else. “All companies are facing skills shortages in this area. What government can do is make this an attractive career with different routes down a digital career path,” says GDS boss Mike Bracken.

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E-government

7

Why, in my book, E stands for exasperating…

Keil Hubert

I Blazing the E-government trail in Singapore

By Tim Adler FOR A COUNTRY that has a reputation for controlling its population, Singapore has certainly embraced the concept of transparent digital government.

The tiny country topped the Waseda University World E-government rankings for three consecutive years between 2009 and 2011.

In 2010, 87 per cent of people said they were satisfied with overall quality of government services.

And 93 per cent of Singaporeans would recommend others to interact with government the same way.

Today the thrust of digital government is about involving citizens, co-creating policy and helping Singaporeans access official data. The Data.gov.sg portal has published 8,800 data sets taken from some 60 government ministries and agencies.

Having put 1,600 official services online, Singapore may have valuable lessons for how the UK’s E-government develops.

The Singapore E-government Masterplan, which runs up until the start of 2015, has shifted from “government-to-you” to a “government with you” collaborationist approach.

Peter Ong Boon Kwee (pictured, right), head of the civil service at Singapore’s Ministry of Finance, says: “In today’s increasingly interconnected world, greater collaboration is key.”

The government describes public consultation as “a critical tool” that officials can leverage when shaping policies or developing other initiatives. Consultations are published on the Ministry of Finance website (which oversees E-government), and

people get email alerts when a new consultation is launched. The government is now planning to launch quickfire polls as a way of gauging feedback to policies in the time-honoured tradition of what British politicians call “flying a kite”.

“There is a growing pool of Gen-Y and digital natives who are keen to voice their views, and participate in the development of policies that affect them,” adds Ong Boon Kwee. “How can we effectively tap into this collective voice and intelligence of the crowd to improve our service delivery and policymaking process?”

Last autumn Singapore launched an official private cloud, known as G-Cloud, where government agencies can purchase computing resources on a pay-as-you-go basis. This allows them to upscale or downsize operations based on actual need, rather than being tied into expensive fixed contracts.

The G-Cloud has been developed with SingTel and Hewlett Packard.

Singapore will use this commercial cloud solution before upgrading to its own private cloud.

Another new digital government feature is a one-stop-email inbox Oneinbox that stores every official email you get from government. No more hopping around various sites. Launched in April, Oneinbox will also make it far easier for the government to contact Singaporeans living abroad. The government plans to roll out the same service to business soon.

And Singapore has also streamlined online identification so that clients only have to know their national identity number and a password.

Singapore is now exploring internet television as the next platform to communicate with its citizens.

WANT TO believe in the future of E-government.

I really do. Unfortunately, my experience with government services delivered over the web has been mixed, and I don’t see how they’re likely to get any better, and I think we’re demanding more than government agencies can realistically deliver.

I have seen successes. I adore what my local Tollway Authority has done with its integrated account management solution. When I drive to Dallas on one of its pay-per-trip motorways, a scanner reads the tag on my car and silently bills my account. My phone has instant access to my toll charges, and politely alerts me when it’s time to top off my account. Simple, efficient, accurate, and stress-free.

Kudos, NTTA. My veteran’s healthcare, on the other hand, has been a dispiriting mess. When I retired from the military, I made a complete copy of my medical records and handcarried them to my nearest Veteran Affairs clinic. It took me three days of queuing to turn in my records to a disability evaluation counsellor.

We entered all of my service-related injuries into a central tracking system. “Rest assured,” he advised, “we’ll have this sorted in 90 days, and you’ll be able to track your progress on the web.”

That didn’t happen. Instead, seven months after I completed my application, I received an old-fashioned letter informing me that I needed to log into their “new” eBenefits application to update my case. Once I got access, I discovered an entry saying that the VA had lost all 500 pages’ worth of my medical records and were going to drop me from the system. I wasted a week uploading files at an hour per page submitted. In the end, I had to send another photocopy of my medical records via certified post – and I have no confidence that my case will be processed correctly.

This is the core problem with E-government: a small and narrowly focused application (like the tollway account management app) can be reliable and successful.

The smaller and simpler the service is, the fewer bugs there are, and the

fewer interfaces are required. When you attempt massive solutions (like the veterans’ benefits case manager app), the overwhelming complexity of the project’s components eventually dooms the effort.

This isn’t just a problem for developers. Even when programmers get the core application running correctly, the sheer number of access options that are expected makes it nearly impossible to keep it running. For perspective, we expect commercial businesses to do business with us via dozens of different browser versions and platform-specific apps, and in dozens of language-specific versions each.

You want to check your bank balance from an iPhone running the Cyrillic version of Safari for iOS? You probably can – because your

Governments simply can’t match the private sector when competing for technical talent bank can afford to hire the best programmers on the market to make that possible.

Governments simply can’t match the private sector when competing for technical talent. That’s why so many E-government services only function on a traditional PC, and often only run right on one obsolete browser version running on one obsolete operating system (usually IE6 on Windows XP).

The alternative is to contract out E-government development to the private sector, but governments rarely have the technical expertise in-house to adequately design the solutions that they need contractors to build. Last year’s Healthcare.gov fiasco is a great example.

I submit that smaller is better when it comes to E-government services: focus on solving one problem very well instead of trying to automate complex processes that normally require thousands of bureaucrats to accomplish with hundreds of paper forms. keil.hubert@gmail.com

Business Technology · September 2014

8

E-government

By Tim Adler

R

ATHER than a telescreen sinisterly watching you from the corner, the future will be about citizens communicating with government through the screen. Government today wants to open up its vast datasets, using technology to make people’s lives easier – not monitor them remotely.

Increasingly, how we interact w ith government over the internet is the public face of Whitehall. Mike Bracken, head of the Government Digital Service (GDS) – launched in 2011, based on the recommendations of Lastminute.com founder Martha Lane Fox – is

Mike Bracken’s vision of government interaction is far more citizen-centric than that in George Orwell’s 1984 (as depicted in Michael Radford’s film adaptation, right)

the man in charge of this digital transformation.

Lane Fox recommended that a central service bring together existing government websites, enable access to official data and enable dayto-day transactions, such as renewing a car tax disc, easy online.

Previously, the government’s online presence was a jumble of competing ministries and quango websites, but things are rather different today.

Last month, The Washington Post called GDS and its citizen-centric technologies “the gold standard in the global world of digital government”.

Bracken points out that government – along with every other sector – is having to deal with digital disruption. Elsewhere, publishers complain that Amazon wants to drive them out of business, direct sales to airlines have closed many high-street travel agents, while online music sales helped drive HMV into bankruptcy – and government is no different. “After a period of resistance, most institutions find their organising principle has changed,” says Bracken. “Most institutions have resisted digital disruption and then come to terms with the new landscape.”

Indeed, GDS could be seen as the digital disruptor of government. The slow-moving Civil Service, resistant to change, has found it hard to adapt, says Digital Technology Board member Kip Meek. And, rather than closed-off monolithic Whitehall departments, the thrust is for government to become an open platform like Amazon or the iPhone, which Apple freed up to thousands of app developers.

GDS opened for business in December 2011, having recruited more than 500 employees.

Its first priority was setting up a platform for government, bringing together all websites under the gov.uk domain. The beta version of gov.uk launched in February 2012, migrating more than 120,000 web pages and thousands of pieces of content to the central site. “Because

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BIG BRO

IS WATCH

Online identities are the new challenge, now that gov.uk is up and running

CHAIRED by digital champion Martha Lane Fox, the government’s Digital Advisory Board meets twice a year to offer advice.

However, its real value may be in the informal discussions it has with the Government Digital Service (GDS).

Board member Kip Meek (right), senior adviser to mobile operator Everything Everywhere, says: “The technology board is not a formal board like a plc. Rather, it’s an ad

we move through alpha and beta versions, going live really just means switching off the old sites,” Bracken explains.

Once GDS had got the gov.uk domain up and running, it turned its attention to transactional government – buying or registering for services through the internet. Bracken says that the government had 717 different ways that people could transact with it – a two-way exchange of either a physical or digital service, either in person or through the web. Together they

hoc sounding board for one-on-one contact between board members and GDS.” Meek, who used to be chief policy officer at Ofcom, sees the technology board’s role as helping GDS grapple with issues on a day-to-day basis.

“Maybe Brent [Hoberman, co-founder of Lastminute. com] knows a better way to interpret or access data, or maybe Laura Wade-Gery from Marks & Spencer has a good idea when it comes to questions of privacy and accessing personal data,

accounted for 1.4 billion transactions each year.

GDS decided to concentrate on 25 of the most popular services, such as driving test applications or registering a birth. Of these 25 “exemplar” services, which account for around a quarter of all government transactions, 17 are in beta stage (meaning they are being tested with users), and three are still being built (alpha stage). Five services have now gone live, including online voter registration in June and patent renewals in August. This transformation will mean that

based on her commercial experience,” he says.

The board was established in April 2012 and members include executives from Facebook, eBay and online retailer Asos. And now that the gov.uk domain is established, and more government services are available online, GDS needs to make sure people registering online are who they say they are.

Five companies – the Post Office, Verizon, Experian, Digidentity and Mydex – are being used to independently verify citizens’ identities online. Put simply, the government will rely on brands

you can now view your driving record or update your PAYE status online whenever you want to, or claim your carer’s allowance or organise your tax bill at home.

The UK government is now three quarters of the way through this two-year project to make the most-used government services “digital by default”, with each department putting forward three or four sites. As well as providing better services for millions of users, the initiative is expected to deliver £1.2billion in savings over

Business Technology · September 2014

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E-government

OTHER

HING YOU such as the Post Office to vouch for the identity of the person accessing services online. After all, why reinvent the wheel?

The Cabinet Office plans to appoint a second round of providers for its Identity Assurance Programme (IDAP) in November.

The contracts will be worth up to £36million. Identity providers are also paid each time a user registers with them.

HM Revenue & Customs was the first department to use identity assurance, which launched as a private beta in February.

“In the past the government

has always struggled with the question of online identity. The government has thought about identity in terms of identity cards – however, what the GDS is developing is much better. For Meek the work of the GDS cannot be underestimated.

“I believe that the big potential for GDS, as more government services go online, is to bring down the cost of government dramatically.

“I regard the work of GDS as increasingly important for the future of Britain – and of course, the work is not complete yet.”

the course of the current parliament. GDS points out that the cost of a digital transaction is onefiftieth of what it costs face-to-face.

Last month GDS unveiled a user research lab that allows researchers to monitor how users interact with digital government. Techniques include recording facial expressions to measure how absorbed a person is online, tracking eye movements and charting how somebody moves their mouse cursor. It expects all 25 “exemplar” services will have completed their

“The focus of digital government is user services and needs, not policy” – Mike Bracken, GDS

digital migration by March 2015. And, having brought together the websites, next Bracken wants to open up official data. “The next thing is trying to get to grips with data,” he says. “We now can show the workings of government, and start to drive policy and service decisions.”

Big Brother it isn’t. However, one insider warns that because digital government is being developed centrally, there is a danger that civil servants are too removed from the process, not having enough say in how services are developed.

“When you take things out of people’s hands, they don’t think in such an innovative way,” says this insider.

Bracken disagrees with those who suggest that developing everything in-house distances civil servants. “GDS has created a new compact with the user. Everything we do is driven by user need, because we’re listening to them all the time. We’re highly responsive to what §users want rather than taking a somewhat self-serving view of the world from what civil servants’ needs are and then projecting them onto the public.

“We’re in the business of digital transformation of government. The focus of digital government is user services and needs, not policy. It’s not a hierarchical top-down view. It’s a much more reactive way of working. We’re improving people’s lives through digital services.”

ExpertInsight

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9

Meeting the digitalby-default service standard INDUSTRY VIEW

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he government’s 2012 digital strategy requires a transformation of local and central government service delivery with the eventual goal of moving all service delivery online. But, as you consider a way forward, you must ask what technology tools can support this transformation and, critically, which technology partners can act as provider and adviser for the transition.

To make the transformation from paper to digital, consider underscoring ways to replace paper with digital versions. Digital versions can be created through electronic forms, routing digital documents and using automated process that can originate on a website. Paper documents can be converted to digital documents and stored and retrieved easily. In this way, the digital transformation can meet a key requirement for online service and paperless work.

However, the benefits extend beyond this goal. Paper slows process and presents challenges for accessing information quickly, impeding the effort to base service decisions on accurate and timely information while reducing process efficiency within departments. Moving to a paperless environment means that all public services can be made more efficient and cost-effective.

Eliminating paper provides the foundation for better service for those who do, and who don’t, use digital services currently.

As departments plan a way forward, there can be no argument that efficient and cost-effective operation is a key goal of the digital strategy but embracing organisational and technological change can be daunting.

Transformation can only be successful if you are able to bring department users along with you. Departments need experienced technology providers who can support technological and human change with secure and robust cloud-based solutions and exemplary technical support and service.

For more information on the technologies and partners that can support you in this effort, visit OnBase.co.uk

Business Technology · September 2014

E-government

ExpertInsight

10

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Why the global giants want to invest in Turkey INDUSTRY VIEW

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hanks to its geographical location at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the MENA region, its 76 million population, more than half of whom are under the age of 30, along with its young, dynamic and welleducated workforce, Turkey has emerged as a safe harbour for international investors.

Its vigorous economic growth has made Turkey one of the most attractive destinations for foreign direct investment (FDI) in the world. Turkey has received a tremendous amount of FDI over the past decade, attracting around USD 135 billion, more than USD 11 billion of which was in ICT sector, constituting 8 per cent of the total FDI. As a result of Turkey’s investor-friendly policies in the past decade and the availability of appealing investment opportunities in the ICT sector, global giants have shown great interest in Turkey. For instance, Ericsson, Huawei and Vodafone Group have all established their regional R&D centres in the country.

In addition, many global companies relocated their regional headquarters to Istanbul; namely Microsoft manages 80 countries from its office in Istanbul. Similarly, Intel, VeriFone and Ericsson have their regional headquarters in Turkey, managing 67, 30 and 22 countries respectively.

Moreover, the ICT industry in Turkey has been one of the top contributors to investments in various industries over the past decade, including infrastructure investments in both public and private sectors. Turkey has more than 200,000 km fibre optic cable infrastructure, which is expected to grow very rapidly over the next years, and population coverage ratio of broadband services is 98 per cent in the country.

This rapid growth in the ICT sector has paved the way for the improvement of e-government services in Turkey. Turkey’s e-government gateway was launched on December 18, 2008.

The portal ( www.turkiye.gov.tr ) provides citizens and enterprises with a single point of access to e-government services. More than 18 million registered users can now reach 137 public institutions and organisations and access 1,005 e-government services as of July 2014.

Currently, there are 12 types of services for citizens as follows: 1. Income tax: declaration, notice of assessment 2. Job search services by labour offices 3. Social security benefits 4. Personal documents: passport and driver’s licence 5. Vehicle registration (new, used, imported ones) 6. Application for construction permit 7. Declaration to the police (eg, in case of theft) 8. Public libraries (availability of catalogues, search tools) 9. Certificates (birth and marriage): request and delivery 10. Enrolment in higher education/university 11. Announcement of moving (change of address) 12. Health-related services (interactive advice on the availability of services in different hospitals; appointments for hospitals)

As for services for businesses, there are eight types that are currently available: 1. Social contributions for employees 2. Corporate tax: declaration, notification 3. VAT: declaration, notification 4. Registration of a new company 5. Submission of data to statistical offices 6. Customs declarations 7. Environment-related permits (incl. reporting) 8. Public procurement Turkey has been aligning its related policies with EU standards in ICT and its infrastructure and capacity is rapidly improving day by day. In line with this dynamism in the sector, Turkey offers vast opportunities with its dynamic and rapidly growing domestic market for international investors. Its ICT spending is projected to increase in parallel with the positive GDP trend in the future.

ICT spending in hardware, software, IT services and telecommunications sectors in Turkey is forecast to reach USD 25 billion by 2016. Owing to its young population and people’s incremental interest in new technologies, the ratio of internet users is expected to rise to 47 per cent by 2017, up from the current level of 42 per cent. Similarly,

mobile phone subscriptions and 3G usage are expected to increase, reaching a 3G coverage ratio of 91.3 per cent by 2017, up from 88 per cent in 2012.

It is apparent that Turkey offers ICT investors many opportunities in a promising future. Turkey’s ambitious vision of 2023, the centennial foundation of the republic, envisages ambitious targets for the ICT sector in Turkey. These targets include: • Reaching 30 million broadband subscribers • Providing internet connection for 14 million houses at a speed of 1,000 Mbps • Increasing the sector’s share in GDP from 2.9 per cent to 8 per cent • Becoming one of the top 10 countries in e-transformation • Having 80 per cent of the population computer-literate • Increasing the number of companies to 5,500; employees to 65,000; and exports to USD 10 billion in Technology Development Zones (TDZs) • Increasing the ICT sector’s size to USD 160 billion, with a market growth of around 15 per cent per year info@invest.gov.tr www.invest.gov.tr

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E-government

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Inspector Dogberry Applications for the new role of chief executive of the Civil Service have just closed.

On the face of it, it sounds very much like a job for a top dog – bringing together the 400,000-strong Civil Service under a single, effective leadership rather than a federation of departments all reporting to their own Sir Humphreys.

An end to internecine

fighting and rivalry between government departments then – instead, everybody united for a common good.

But it turns out the job has less clout than first thought. The job ad sought an individual to “lead” the Civil Service, but not, it transpired, to manage it.

Permanent secretaries, the most senior civil servants in their departments, will report not to the new CEO but to Sir Jeremy Heywood, the

ExpertInsight

Nearly a third of European Union citizens are not interested in E-government, according to Eurostat.

On average, 28 per cent of internet users have no interest in requesting services from public authorities online. The Czech Republic, Ireland, Latvia and Romania are the most indifferent to online e-services. And just 8 per cent of internet users aged between 65 and 74 use online government services. Lack of one-on-one contact is the reason most often cited, followed by data protection and security issues.

Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands and Sweden have the most active citizens when it comes to completing forms online.

cabinet secretary. And the CEO will have to report to three bosses: Sir Jeremy, Treasury chief secretary Danny Alexander and Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude. “The job description for the newly created position of chief executive shows that the new role will not be a chief executive in any sense normally recognised in either the private or public sectors,” says Peter Riddell, director at the Institute for Government. Sounds like a dog’s dinner to Dogberry.

Oh dear. Britain is back in the doghouse. For all the talk of the UK empowering its citizens by opening up government services to them on the internet, the country has actually fallen to eighth place in the United Nations’ biennial E-government index. Two years ago it was in third place. Once again South Korea is the number one country in the world for opening up government services on the internet, with Australia in second place. Back in 2012 Australia wasn’t even on the list.

Singapore, ranked 10th in the 2012 index, is in third place. And those normally forwardthinking Scandinavians – Denmark, Norway and Sweden – have dropped off the list completely.

A GP on your PC Government plans for doctors to diagnose patients by email could put their health at risk while failing to save money, warns a leading GP. The Department of Health has invested millions in pilot schemes assessing the effectiveness of e-consultations – through Skype or email – despite the misgivings of some doctors.

Emma Richards, an honorary clinical research fellow at

11

site, read the Government Digital Service blog, run by the team leading the digital transformation.

By Matt Smith, web editor

The World Bank blogs.worldbank.org/category/ tags/e-government The World Bank takes a look at e-government in this section of its blog, reporting on the different ways in which governments are using technology to improve their nations. Recent posts examine how open data can be used to reduce poverty and grow economies.

www.wri.org/blog Technology policy analyst David Osimo runs this blog, which considers whether each aspect of e-government is a step forward or not. Some more recent posts on the site put infographics and metro map diagrams under scrutiny and explore the EU’s data economy.

IBM Institute for Electronic Government www-01.ibm.com/industries/ government/ieg

GOV.UK www.gov.uk Launched in 2012, the GOV. UK site is now home to all 24 ministerial departments and 331 other agencies and public bodies.

For an insight into what goes into the running and evolution of the

Imperial College London, argues that online-only consultations could create a digital divide between tech-savvy patients and the elderly or patients unable to afford internet access. That is on top of an email diagnosis being unable to pick up visual clues about a patient’s condition. Dr Richards wrote that email consultations potentially create a “’digital divide’ of widening health inequalities”.

Benchmarking E-Government in Web 2.0

From the potential of mobile technology to new approaches to economic development and city building, IBM’s experts at the IEG look at all areas of e-government and how technology can be used to improve the way countries are run.

Walkanomics (Free – Android/iOS)

This app, which tells you how ‘walkable’ your street is, is a great example of a practical use for openly available data.

HMRC (Free – Android/iOS)

Calculate your income tax, get tax-related guidance, and find the form you need with this free app from HM Revenue & Customs.

Sunderland City Council: improving customer experience and reducing costs INDUSTRY VIEW

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underland City Council employs around 6,000 staff, serves a population of around 280,000 people and delivers in excess of 700 different services. In 2014, the council was awarded Microsoft’s UK Digital City of the Year, an award that recognises the city that has most improved the lives of its citizens, developed their potential and met their changing needs for integrated, digital public services.

In 2013 the council embarked on a programme to improve the accessibility, quality and consistency of the services it provided to its citizens. This included reducing the complexity of processes in order to eliminate avoidable contact and offering services online wherever possible, to provide choice and greater convenience for customers. Liz St Louis, head of customer service and development at Sunderland City Council, explains: “What drove us was listening to our customers and realising that we needed to change to meet their growing expectations.”

The council carried out a rigorous procurement process and chose a Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution from public sector Dynamics CRM specialist

Optevia. The project has transformed the way the council interacts with its citizens. St Louis explains: “We now have immediate and comprehensive information about our customers and the services they require, enabling us to co-ordinate access to the range of social services we provide.”

such as faulty streetlights or illegally dumped materials. This simple process is quicker and more convenient for customers, and because a precise location has been specified the council can respond more promptly.

Convenient access to services

Customer services advocates can now respond quickly to customer enquiries and resolve issues rather than just acting as message takers. This is especially important in adult social care, where it is important that a consistent response is provided at the first point of contact.

St Louis explains: “We are now responding much faster to customers and helping them at a time when they are vulnerable. For example, we are able to book appointments with occupational therapists there and then or carry out self-assessments on the phone.”

St Louis concludes: “Since implementing Dynamics, we are delivering accessible, high quality and consistent services to our customers and being rewarded with record levels of customer satisfaction.”

The council has recently published its schools admissions process online, allowing parents to create, store and submit applications for their children.

St Louis explains: “The response has been amazing, with 80 per cent of all applications being received online.

Even more interesting is the fact that 44 per cent of applications are being made outside normal office hours, when parents are at home after work. This is great for the parents and it’s saving us money too, by not having to print thousands of forms. We also benefit from having much earlier access to the data, which means we can determine which schools are over or under-subscribed and quickly take the appropriate action with parents.”

A safer environment Integrated mapping technology allows customers to pinpoint problems

A speedy, consistent response to vulnerable customers

+44 (0) 845 838 7670 enquiries@optevia.com

IndustryVIEW

12 • Business Technology · September 2014

INSIDE TRACK

Turkey’s smart-class project puts it at the head of its field

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urkey offers appealing opportunities with special governmental projects in the ICT sector. Turkey’s hi-tech education initiative, the Fatih Project, is full of opportunities for technology companies with its large scale and huge market value.

Spanning over four years, the Fatih Project envisions utilising hi-tech devices to increase the quality of public education by equipping students in pre-school, primary and secondary education with tablet PCs and classrooms with interactive smart boards. The project is estimated to create a market of about USD 7 billion in size over the first four years.

The Fatih Project presents opportunities in such a scale that a technology firm can potentially leap ahead of its competitors.

Around 12 million tablet PCs would be distributed to students nationwide within the first four years, to be followed by 1.5 million units per year afterwards. The project includes installation of smartboards in 620,000 classrooms. Global investors can both contribute to and benefit from such a promising project.

The Ministry of National Education’s Fatih Project proposes a “smart class” project to be put into practice in all schools around Turkey.

With this project, 42,000 schools and 570,000 classes will be equipped with the latest information technologies and turned into computerised education classes, also known as smart classes. The main attributes of the Fatih project might be explained as follows: • The Fatih Project plans to transform every class into a smart class in all primary and secondary schools around Turkey.

• The Fatih Project is slated for completion in five years and will cost approximately TRY 3 billion.

• The project provides various ICTrelated business opportunities for investors in the software and hardware industries, among others. info@invest.gov.tr www.invest.gov.tr

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How Video as a Service is set to revolutionise healthcare

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he ability to remotely assess, diagnose and treat patients using telehealth solutions can significantly increase efficiency within healthcare organisations, enabling clinicians to deliver the highest quality of care to the maximum number of people.

Patients benefit from more immediate access to care and support, when and where they need it.

Imerja’s cloudbased Video as a Service (VaaS) solution, built with state-ofthe-art video technology from Polycom, offers a convenient way to communicate, regardless of patient or clinician location. With numerous applications, VaaS has already been deployed across multiple disciplines with great success.

The Cumbria and Lancashire Telestroke Network is a prime example. Designed and implemented in partnership with Virgin Media Business and Polycom, Imerja’s solution provides the first out-of-hours remote stroke service of its kind, allowing 24/7 access to expertise and treatment. Approximately 4,000 people in the region suffer a stroke each year, and this innovative solution has dramatically reduced morbidity and mortality rates,

saving the NHS an estimated £8million in its first year.

VaaS has also been implemented in renal care, speech and language therapy, paediatric neurology, cancer and orthopaedic services, resulting in substantial cost and time saving benefits, as well as improved access to care.

The speech and language therapy unit at Blackpool’s Victoria Hospital found that VaaS provided a more immediate, effective assessment service at just 4 per cent of the current cost, saving around £860,000 a year. In addition to immediate benefits, VaaS helps reduce the need for ongoing care by ensuring prompt and appropriate treatment, saving time and money downstream.

GPs and A&E departments are under growing pressure due to high demand for care and lack of resources.

Modern, innovative solutions like VaaS can significantly improve access to services, reduce costs and importantly improve patient outcomes, all at the click of a button.

Ian Jackson is managing director at Imerja 0844 225 2888 www.imerja.com

Business Technology · September 2014 • 13

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WE ARE living at the beginning of an age that could be as influential as the Enlightenment.

The internet will transform the way we interact with government, immersing citizens in the Ben process of policy creation, as governance Fowkes, increasingly becomes more participatory. senior As a whole the UK government consultant, has traditionally been slow to involve Delib citizens in policy decisions. However, there are increasingly pockets of government that have seen the light.

One bright spot is the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy, a factgathering exercise as to how Parliament can harness the internet and become more accountable. To do so, Parliament must get its digital house in order. The Mother of Parliaments has the potential to be the antidote to the old boys’ network. One idea would be to enable the public to question the Prime Minister at the despatch box during Prime Minister’s Questions.

The digital overtake

How to stop staff and consumers leaving public sector organisations behind

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echnology is supposed to be an enabler, a critical tool helping the public sector to drive efficiency, wring maximum value from budgets and improve front line services.

Yet across the UK organisations are falling victim to the digital overtake, where savvy young employees own better tools and faster connections than the businesses they work for.

A strangely anachronistic scenario, it is a source of frustration that translates directly to lost productivity throughout the public sector.

In a nutshell, mobility enables savings on travel, time, phones, lines, infrastructure and administration while also providing the potential to reduce office space overheads by 30-50 per cent.

That leaves many organisations asking the same question: how do you leverage your best asset – people – empowering them to work from whatever they want whenever they want, without compromising budgets, compliance or security?

Many companies are still focusing on controlling handsets and laptops, but while mobile device management (MDM) remains a subset of the mobility movement, the fact is that this is not about the device – it’s about the data that turns it into a business enabler and the people who use it.

People no longer live in a world

where wired life is tied to a specific machine. They access the information and services they want from multiple devices – depending on the functionality required – with a single digital identity accessible via any handset, tablet or terminal they choose to use.

This is the new digital culture, and in organisational terms barriers to such behaviours translate directly to inefficiency, stilted collaboration and wasted working hours.

At SCC, our experience confirms this. One major community healthcare provider we worked with to boost the mobility of its 3,000 clinicians generated time savings equivalent to £15million, equivalent to having an additional 400 staff on the payroll. The move reduced admin, infrastructure and risk for the trust concerned, improved patient safety and enabled a more cost-effective business model.

Which begs the question: what’s stopping the majority of public sector organisations following suit? The answer, in many cases, is historic.

The need to comply with policy and secure sensitive data – always a paramount issue – traditionally made enabling the use of multiple and varied devices highly problematic, and in hundreds of organisations across the country, natural prudence has seen ICT departments fall behind the

technology curve. Today, however, migrating organisations to mobile, flexible infrastructures is easier than ever before. Government end-user device guidance supports the use of smart devices, and services like SCC’s G-Cloud MDM system make the process of provisioning access to corporate services, business applications, email and intranet services from iPhones or iPads straightforward.

Achieving secure, cost-effective connectivity, mobile access to PSN services and complying with data regulations up to the official tier and business impact level 3 (IL3), is no longer either risky or expensive.

Instead, strategic goals including improved collaboration, efficient feedback, flexible decision-making and streamlined customer engagements have become achievable.

Mobility creates an environment in which people can deliver more value to organisations and directly affect their bottom line. It enables people to work cleverly, naturally and appreciate the difference they make to a corporate culture.

Used intelligently, mobility can be applied, right now, to make an immediate difference, and that’s a challenge the public sector must rise to.

0121 281 8618 www.scc.com

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It’s all about getting people closer to decision making that affects their lives.

Happily civil servants and politicians have a real willingness to open up government. There is a lot of hope and a lot of possibility. The kind of transformation I am talking about is probably a decade away, and we’ve come a long way already.

We are just feeling our way at the start of the process but so far it’s a very positive beginning.

he consequences of crime, and supporting vulnerable people, are significant. It costs this country many tens of billions of pounds. With that comes heartache for communities and families, much of which is played out on the front pages of our news services daily. It’s often held up as a failure of the system with professionals blamed for not delivering justice effectively.

It’s not just one system of course, there are many systems at play here.

Imagine addressing complex needs across offenders, victims, patients and interrelated families, gangs, crime groups and locations. While there will occasionally be problem staff, it’s the technology and old ways of working that let them down. Work has evolved from a sole agency delivery model through to a thematic delivery model, giving rise to an increased need for multiagency working. But until now, there were not the tools to do that part of the job well.

Smart leaders are recognising that working on multi-agency initiatives together in one secure cloud platform, developing a shared approach, offers big benefits. Cloud enabled change is helping to reduce demand, driving down total cost and delivering better services in some of the

IndustryVIEW

My view Feeling our way to e-democracy

Life-saving cloud: delivering criminal and social justice better, together most challenging areas. An example is organised crime where we are supporting numerous forces and their partners in a battle that costs society £24bn per annum.

Small margins make a big difference, and pam, our powerful cloud software platform, offers a solution for criminal and social justice. pam is the only service of its type that is PSN-accredited and capable of holding sensitive subject information for partners to share and work on together.

We go beyond the generic collaboration products that only offer part of the solution in today’s market by working closely with organisations to develop cost effective solutions on the platform that truly reflect their needs.

01273 704500 www.pam-it.com

14 • Business Technology · September 2014

William Gladstone It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

IndustryVIEW

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The future Wireless for sound business success

How has open data shaped your world?

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ireless access points are a perennial feature of many public areas, warranted by high levels of demand. It is this demand that is prompting wireless system advancements with intuitive features coming to the fore. However, up-to-date infrastructures are a necessity to deliver the capabilities of a performance wireless solution.

Camden Lock Market is a renowned attraction, popular among tourists and Londoners alike. Originally opened in 1972, Camden Lock Market has diversified to become a hub of creativity and one of London’s key areas of commercial real estate.

In 2013, Camden Lock Market embarked on a technology advancement initiative. Senior management wished to evolve the market by embracing new technologies, including public wireless access, wireless PDQs for card payments on stalls and the improvement of overall management processes. An investigation of the market’s technology infrastructure showed it to be too obsolete to support the plans, so a

complete overhaul was commissioned.

Camden Lock Market required a technology partner to manage the project. In early 2014, OryxAlign, a managed technology services and solutions provider, was enlisted as the estate’s IT support partner. OryxAlign proposed an expansion of the existing Cisco Meraki solution with new high-powered and intelligent wireless access points and switches. Fibre-optic WAN connectivity was also installed, improving overall speed and stability of the network.

OryxAlign engineers installed a network of Meraki wireless access points (WAP) across the market estate, dispersed strategically according to volume of visitor footfall. The WAPs were meshed together and the network infrastructure configured, with each device working in synchrony.

Considering the volume of visitors, stall owners and management, OryxAlign recognised that multiple SSIDs were required to secure the networks and split the services accordingly. Via the Cisco Meraki interface, multiple SSIDs for the business, including visitor, management, stall operators and PDQ machine operators were created.

The multiple SSIDs allow OryxAlign to track the usage of each group and implement the necessary restrictions as per senior management instruction.

Since July 2014, Camden Lock Market visitors, stall owners and senior management have had access to high-performance wireless across the estate. Senior management have implemented a stall allocation system, and wireless card machines are being rolled out across each stall.

OryxAlign continue to partner and support Camden Lock Market in the delivery of its technological vision.

020 7605 7890 oryxalign.com

In focus Why PLCs are looking to government for digital inspiration

M

artha Lane-Fox challenged the government to perform a “revolution not evolution” of its digital services. It has risen to the challenge, saving hundreds of millions of pounds already and setting the bar for the corporates who previously outpaced them.

Richard Stobart of Unboxed Consulting says: “For the first time, our enterprise customers are looking up to our government customers in the digital transformation space.”

What does government know that corporates don’t?

Simple. Government knows that the world no longer accepts clunky digital

products that don’t deliver expected value. They treat the move to digital services as strategic transformation not pet projects. They focus obsessively on user needs. They work on culture not just code.

The Government Digital Service (GDS) has led the change, setting the digital service standard, changing

the way projects are led and financially controlled, hiring the best people and pioneering exemplar services.

GDS understands that the truly astronomical cost savings are captured, not on a shoestring, but by people who really know how to do agile. They’ve invested in training the civil service, acting as a consultancy, giving

ready access to experts at a competitive price via g-cloud, providing a clear online ‘handbook’ and working with SMEs – new, hungry talent.

Deliberate risk taking and transparent communication has reduced consequences of making an error, leading to rapid learning and huge cost reductions.

What’s more, their open standards approach allows sharing across organisations, multiplying the impact.

The US led the information age but the UK is leading the digital product age.

Richard Stobart is founder of Unboxed Consulting hello@unboxedconsulting.com

We’ve come a long way in open data. From identifying millions of pounds in potential savings in public services to supporting businesses that employ hundreds of people and attract thousands of pounds in new contracts, the Open Data Institute (ODI) is making a big impact.

Now we want to hear: how has open data helped to shape public services around the world? Which businesses have used open data to improve their products and boost their revenues?

We’d like you to join us and explore these issues at the ODI’s second annual summit, hosted across central London between November 3-4. The summit brings together inventors, businesses leaders and thinkers to celebrate the power of open data.

It begins with a training day, offering a hands-on experience. Participants will learn a broad range of new skills, from data visualisation and mapping to how to make a business case for open data.

The summit itself will feature diverse speakers, from the ODI’s co-founder and inventor of the web Sir Tim Berners-Lee to BBC journalist Maggie Philbin. Talks will focus on how open data can solve innovation challenges for business, humanitarian relief efforts and government transparency.

It will conclude with a gala dinner, where the winners of the first Open Data Awards will be announced, celebrating outstanding people, governments and businesses who have used open data to benefit society.

The open data movement is growing.

Don’t miss your chance to see it in action and help shape its future: register today at http://summit.theodi. org/#tile_registration

www.theODI.org

Business Technology · September 2014 • 15

AN INDEPENDENT REPORT FROM LYONSDOWN, DISTRIBUTED WITH THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

The debate What is the future of E-government?

Ian Blackburn

Neil Mellor

James Rigby, Chief Executive SCC

Chief Technology Officer Skyscape Cloud Services

The intelligent use of technology which encourages citizen engagement can simplify routine tasks, improve where we live and cut costs. However, it’s vital not to lose sight of what the customer wants for E-government to succeed.

Citizens want E-government to be available immediately, and on their favourite device, regardless of where they are. That means that E-government has to be designed for mobile devices, because this is where the web lives now.

“Responsive” web sites designed to work on mobile devices are attractive, but they often lack the immediacy, the features and the clear purpose of a properly designed app. Compared with a website, an app is often a better user experience, the absolute key to encouraging interaction.

Behind the scenes, the vital component is the intelligent integration and routing of the information captured, because that’s where the big savings are. Properly designed E-government with clever, crossboundary, integrated applications is destined to grow, because it’s what people want.

If E-government means just replicating existing services online it doesn’t have a future, it’s not what users need. Straightforward transactional services work well online, like licence or passport renewals, and GDS has made good progress here. But citizens need services delivered to meet their often urgent needs, not designed around the organisations delivering them.

Take a complex service in high demand, such as dementia care. These needs aren’t one-off, standard or transactional; they’re complex, individual and persistent. They must be met by cross-agency response – online, over the phone or in person. They must be more sustainable, less costly and improve user outcomes. Public service delivery demands better collaboration, common approaches to information sharing and analytics, proactive cross-agency response and integrated, consistent multi-channel access.

The PSN is a good step towards delivering this, but it takes more than technology. It means changes to processes, practices and cultures. That’s the future of E-government – meeting this much tougher challenge.

The future of E-government is dynamic, flexible and highly cost-effective. Nobody can predict what new applications or developments the future might bring, but we do know that public sector ICT will be defined by function rather than scale.

As the government’s recent decision to put out a tender to procure infrastructure for a crown hosting service (CHS) – which will consolidate hosting services across Whitehall departments with the aim of saving £530m – demonstrates, the era of vast, inflexible public technology projects is over.

This is part of the SIAM tower model, the government’s strategy for moving away from large IT service management contracts handled by a single major outsourcer. Instead, favouring an approach where separate IT components – such as hosting, applications development, security and desktop support – are contracted to different providers.

With the cloud first policy, this will lead to competition, enabling a richer variety of players to compete for contracts, introduce different dynamics, provide fresh perspectives and deliver more value for money.

From a political perspective E-government is re-badged as “digital”. The fundamental intent is the same: if a citizen transaction with government can be digitised, then it should be digitised.

The digital revolution has been described as the “third industrial revolution” and its reach is global. It will change the way we work, the way we interact, whether socially or as a citizen, and it will change the way we live our lives The UK government has started to deliver agile, highly cost effective digital services that meet the needs of the citizen.

As more digital services come online, citizens will expect better experience as the norm, and government will expect its suppliers to be better, faster and cheaper.

This is a digital revolution that is here to stay, irrespective of which political party is in power. There will be challenges, not least around data privacy, digital inclusion and in growing government’s digital skills base but, as a digital world leader, the UK government is in an excellent position to overcome these.

www.bbits.co.uk

http://psngb.org/

www.scc.com

www.skyscapecloud.com

Founder & CEO bbits

Director PSNGB

Simon Hansford

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