Posts tagged "Government Computing Network"

PSN’s pivotal year: connectivity and services frameworks coming in months

Programme director of the Public Services Network Craig Eblett on PSN’s future in health and local government’s challenges for the ‘network of networks’

This year will be a “pivotal year” for the PSN, the public sector’s network of networks, according to the programme’s director Craig Eblett.

Eblett, who took over from previous PSN head John Stubley six months ago, is now shepherding the project through a year that will see key connectivity services such as GSi and GSx moved towards being PSN compliant, as part of an ongoing framework deal with Cable and Wireless.

There are more significant milestones ahead for PSN in 2012, however: the two frameworks that will govern the PSN – one for connectivity, one for services – are also shortly to be released.

While the first has missed a deadline set by Stubley, to be released late last year, both are set to be launched sooner rather than later: “Those will be in place in March, April, maybe early May, but I’m trying to hold it to April,” Eblett told Guardian Government Computing.

Work is ongoing on an implementation plan for the frameworks. The government will be gathering opinions on how to make best use of the frameworks from customers, the commercial crown representatives and, from this month, with suppliers too.

Local government may have its share of well-known early adopters – Hampshire and Kent among them – but it’s equally where the PSN is likely to meet resistance.

It’s this resistance that the Cabinet Office will be aiming to tackle in the coming months. Once the frameworks are out, the department will be running a series of regional events to spread the PSN word to the public sector at large and try to clear up the confusion that remains around the PSN.

“There is still misunderstanding about the PSN despite all the excellent work we’ve done in terms of getting that message out there. There’s still more we can do to make it crystal clear what PSN is and is not,” Eblett says.

“It’s a massive challenge – it’s the whole of the public sector trying to move in its entirety to PSN. You’re going to have organisations and people and suppliers in different places on that transition journey.”

NHS vs PSN

The NHS has also historically shown reluctance to move to the PSN. Progress may not be fast, but it is coming, says Eblett.

“We have some excellent engagement with Connecting for Health (CfH). They’ve established a project inside CfH for what comes after N3, including transition to PSN. Just like any other central government department, we’re working with CfH. We will make available our commercial and technical experts and accreditation experts to work with them to say, ‘How best can we move you from your current infrastructure and architecture and contracts into a PSN environment?’

“We’re honestly keen to make some good progress there, but we’ve got to realise it’s a hugely challenging area. These are really big organisations in their own right, with big contracts with the suppliers, and these things don’t turn on a twopence bit. But I’m really satisfied with the engagement we have with CfH. They’re heading in the right direction.”

CfH’s engagement has been ratcheted up in recent days: a recently released PSN transition plan shows a likely convergence between the PSN and the health service’s own N3 network, or its successor N4, in the future. The Department of Health is currently evaluating options for making the current N3 network PSN compliant, and is planning to publish its plans at the start of the next financial year.

It will begin examining PSN use case scenarios this quarter, around the same time that the PSN services framework is to be published, giving public sector bodies the options of buying offerings including LANs, contact centre, conferencing and mobile data services.

The PQQ phase has now finished, and the framework is now into the invitation to tender stage. According to Eblett, 72 suppliers are being invited to tender for the services framework – notably lower than the maximum 109 that the original tender document predicted. Of those 72, a significant chunk will be invited to tender for more than one lot, with 10 to 15 suppliers taken through for each lot.

The services framework has seen something of a perhaps unexpected peak among SMEs.

“If you’re aware of the PSN and the context around it, you’d probably assume it’s for the big four or five suppliers,” says Eblett. He adds that “even on PSN connectivity, 25% of those suppliers are SMEs”, and on services, “it’s 34% of suppliers” going through to the invitation to tender stage of the procurement.

The PSN has the weight of expectation on its shoulders, having been marked out in the Govnerment ICT Strategy to generate £30m of savings in central government this financial year, and £100m the next – targets which Eblett reveals will be exceeded in the first instance, and that he still expects to reach in the second.

“I think we have to recognise that we don’t have all the answers today,” he says of the public sector’s transition to PSN. “It’s a complex and challenging programme to deliver and it’s going to take time and effort and energy to deliver, but we’ve got things in place – the right engagement, the right people in place – and we’ll get there.”

The local government push

While the public sector and its suppliers are still waiting for the crucial frameworks, Eblett believes the PSN is now past the tipping point.

“The engagement that we’re getting from suppliers and customers tells us this is to going to go through now. We’re getting really good signals from both customers and suppliers, there’s real enthusiasm for it,” he says.

“I think in September, we were right at the tipping point. What I was seeing was a push from non-central government and I found this quite unusual. They were actively pushing it, they’ve already established a local government chief information officer steering board for PSN that’s up and running now. We get some excellent engagement through that particular board,” he adds.

“They’re actively pushing us, that’s really encouraging. They’re challenging us and they’re saying, ‘Why can’t we have that, and why can’t we have it earlier?’”

This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates on news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.

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Can shared services really deliver? Join our live Q&A

Debate the perks and pitfalls of shared services projects with our panel of experts on Friday 17 February – post your questions now

The use of shared services continues to gather pace within the public sector, with local authorities and central government departments and their agencies regularly announcing new initiatives.

Often, the model is associated with the most vanilla elements of an organisation’s infrastructure – telecoms, back office services and the like – but can it deliver when it comes to higher value services?

In our latest Guardian Government Computing live Q&A we’ll discuss best practice for transitioning to shared services, how to move from sharing commoditised ICT elements to more complex arrangements, and when it’s best to forego shared services altogether and go it alone.

From what infrastructure is needed to underpin successful shared services to its common pitfalls and how to avoid them, we’ll be discussing how and where shared services can really deliver with an expert panel including:

• Simon Banks, head of service delivery, MLL

• Rachel Bruce, digital infrastructure director, Jisc

• Chris Cox, programme manager, Cheltenham borough council

• Kevin Dicks, chief executive, Bromsgrove and Redditch councils

• Andrew Fawcett, head of product development, NYnet

• Michael Leech, chief executive, Itso

To join in the discussion, just register to become a member of the Guardian Government Computing network and post your question in the comments section below.

The live Q&A will run from 12-2pm on Friday 17 February, but questions can be posted in advance either below or through Twitter using the #ggcsharedservices hashtag.

Post your comment below now to join in the discussion.

This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates on news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.

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Ian Watmore: ‘Majority of projects go very well and the public never hears’

Cabinet Office permanent secretary on IT’s role in public sector projects, social media for citizen engagement and how the government is a hacking trophy

Former government chief information officer (CIO) Ian Watmore might be new to the position of Cabinet Office permanent secretary, but he still recognises that digital technology presents a significant opportunity for the government to engage with citizens and shape the future of public services.

Watmore, who spent the last year or so operating as the chief operating officer for the government’s Efficiency and Reform Group, was recently appointed to his current role to help fill the leadership void following Sir Gus O’Donnell’s retirement from the role of cabinet secretary.

“The new generation of politicians really understand technology,” says Watmore. “It’s a business issue that is on the top table in every department in Whitehall.”

The elevated position of technology, according to Watmore, has been inspired by the increasing digital element of public policy and the growing desire of UK citizens to access public information online.

Social media has a key role to play in the government’s digital future, he says. “Politicians are elected to deliver their own philosophy, which revolves around localisation and participation. They now have to address that philosophy through social media – it’s impossible to separate the political and digital world within which we live.

Watmore and his colleagues at the Cabinet Office are charged with helping UK politicians to use technology to engage citizens and create the type of transformation anticipated in the four-year period covered by the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review.

His team are exploring how technology can provide new channels for citizens to interact with the government and share their views on how services should develop.

“We’re testing, in political terms, what is potentially out there,” says Watmore. “The biggest IT challenge now for the government is to get the whole system to think through the end user and allow citizens to help design relevant solutions.

“The system of IT development has traditionally been geared up towards taking an idea from a politician and pushing it to the public. If we can engage and create the types of solutions that the public wants, then technology will be really transformative. That type of change presents a cultural challenge, but we need to harness the public view and get it into the political machine.”

However, greater web and digital engagement must also be balanced against access concerns, with online security an in-built priority for all Whitehall IT projects.

“It’s all about managing the tension,” adds Watmore, before drawing a wider analogy: “If you walk into a shop, you don’t want to have to walk through three sets of armed guards before you get to look around. The trend, these days, is towards openness. But let’s not get hung up on, for example, the security implications of the cloud. Let’s just make sure that when people say something’s secure, it is really secure.”

“The online world is under threat from criminals and we have to protect ourselves,” he adds. “The government can be seen as a hacking trophy and can be a target for state-sponsored attacks, particularly because of the large flows of money involved.”

The government has some serious expertise on the case: “We have some of the best people on our side at GCHQ,” says Watmore. Continuing to deepen that skills base is important, especially as the government is aiming to extend online accessibility and openness for citizens.

Along with security, project management remains high on Watmore’s agenda and he recognises how government IT projects are often associated with high profile disasters in the media. Expensive problem projects, like the NHS’ National Programme for IT, certainly do not help create positive perceptions.

But public accountability – although important in terms of openness and transparency – means civil servants are often held to account for the minutiae of programmes to a level that would be anathema in the closely guarded world of enterprise IT. It is a situation that is not unfamiliar to Watmore, a veteran of the private as well as public sector.

“The majority of projects go very well and the public never gets to hear about them,” he says. “The failure is rarely because of IT. The problem area is either a flawed policy to begin with, or a sense that the business requirement changed and that the amount of transformation was not recognised. If you want change to come from IT, you have to do more than computerise an existing process.”

Improvement, says Watmore, will come through better working practices and smarter programme management, something he continues to prioritise in his role at the Cabinet Office. Above all, Watmore wants to remove any sense of ambiguity. “We know what the key projects are,” he says. “We have to put the right leadership in place and be honest enough to recognise when things are not working.”

Any new policy will be rigorously checked and the pace of roll out carefully considered. “Big bangs tend to be big explosions,” says Watmore.

This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates on news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.

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Open standards opinions sought again in second Cabinet Office consultation

Department wants to gather views on international alignment and the meaning of mandation

The Cabinet Office has unveiled a second consultation into the use of open standards in government.

The consultation, entitled Open standards: open opportunities flexibility and efficiency in government IT, will run for 12 weeks and is hosted on the Cabinet Office’s website.

The consultation, announced by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, is aimed at informing the definition of open standards in the context of government IT. It will also focus on the meaning of mandation and the effects compulsory standards may have on government departments, delivery partners and supply chains, as well as international alignment and cross-border interoperability.

“These are the areas where it was felt there weren’t sufficient views made known [in the last consultation] to refine policy around open standards,” a spokesman for the Cabinet Office said. “The consultation is aimed at getting more responses from a wider pool.”

The consultation follows an earlier investigation into open standards which the Cabinet Office ran between February and May last year, and which generated almost 1,000 responses online.

The first consultation into open standards was aimed at investigating the definition of the term open standard, the open standards that should be a priority for government to consider, and whether particular standards should be mandated, recommended or avoided.

This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates on news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.

Crime prediction pilot to forecast Birmingham’s burglary hot spots

West Midlands police to test modelling system designed to help force target burglars

West Midlands police is to pilot predictive crime modelling to help direct its officers to areas at high risk of burglaries.

West Midlands will begin its trial of the modelling system, which is based on analytical techniques developed by the Jill Dando Institute at University College London, this spring. The pilot, which will see the modelling software create colour-coded maps to indicate likely crime hot spots, is likely to run for six or seven months, according to the force’s Superintendent Alex Murray.

The modelling software uses algorithms previously developed by the Jill Dando Institute, including one created for Merseyside after the institute analysed some 5,000 burglaries.

The analysis revealed “some very specific statistically significant vulnerabilities once a burglary has taken place in vicinity”, Murray told Guardian Government Computing: for example, within 24 hours of a burglary the most vulnerable areas are either side of the burgled premises are “up to 400 metres either side and diminishing in vulnerability from the burgled premises”.

Birmingham is also using two other predictive tools to generate a more accurate prediction of burglaries. One is based on an analysis of roads in the area around a crime and the second, which will be tested in 40 wards, analyses the behaviour of burglars who return to the same location, or are deterred from doing so.

“We need to get officers in the right place at the right time, to try and deter burglaries taking place, which means officers patrolling the area, visiting houses and providing security products to particular houses,” said Murray.

“Clearly we are not going to withdraw services from anybody, but currently we do try and put police officers in places where burglaries are going to take place to try and catch and deter burglars, and this is trying to get smarter in how we do that,” he added.

This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates on news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.

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Metropolitan police requests TfL’s data 22,000 times over four years

Number of requests to Transport for London for passengers’ Oyster card data and other personal information up 15% since 2008

The Metropolitan police has requested Oyster card data relating to citizens and other personal information from Transport for London (TfL) more than 22,000 times since 2008, according to figures published by the capital’s transport authority.

The force requested personal data TfL holds relating to citizens 5,295 times in 2008; 5,359 in 2009; 5,046 in 2010; and 6,258 in 2011, according to a response to a freedom of information request from Guardian Government Computing. The figures also show that the force has made 264 requests for such information this year so far.

TfL said that it could not provide a breakdown of the number of requests made by the Metropolitan police just for passengers’ Oyster card data alone, but a spokesman for London’s police force told Guardian Government Computing that the majority of requests were likely to be related to Oyster information. Other than Oyster data, personal information requested would include CCTV images and details of TfL staff, he said.

The transport authority said that it receives “many requests” for information pertaining to different crime types. Examples over the last four years include requests for Oyster data to assist with the police’s investigations into offences such as theft, robbery, missing persons and sexual offences.

More than 40m Oyster cards have been issued since they were launched in 2003, with in excess of 3bn journeys on TfL’s network made each year using the cards. The transport authority stores data for two months after a journey has been made with an Oyster card.

Nick Pickles, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, said that it was important that electronic methods of payment and identification do not no become “a massive surveillance exercise”.

“The escalating use of this data by law enforcement agencies highlights the risk that these databases are increasingly being used by authorities instead of tried and tested methods,” he said.

TfL is overhauling its ticketing system and is set to accept contactless payments on selected networks later this year. It has said that it would like to move away from travel information being stored on individual cards to a system where most travel data is stored in TfL’s back office.

This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates on news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.

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Job-hunting services to get Monster makeover under DWP deal

Jobcentre Plus’ online services for job seekers, recruiters and staff will be updated under £20.4m deal

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has signed a deal with Monster Worldwide for a range of online job advertisement and search services.

A contract award notice in the Official Journal of the European Union says the department wants to transform Jobcentre Plus’ online labour market services, available to employers and job seekers.

The solution will offer an extended job search by aggregating vacancies advertised directly by Jobcentre Plus, as well as vacancies from employers’ own websites and other job boards.

Companies without an online recruitment system will be able to use a self-service facility to create a vacancy and manage responses from potential candidates, according to the DWP.

It will also offer “intuitive prompts” to help recruiters comply with relevant legislation when they create job advertisements, as well as providing appropriate safeguards for job seekers.

People looking for work will be able to create their own secure online accounts, through which they can set up an online profile, detailing their skills, qualifications, competencies, work history and job criteria. The sytem will also be able to suggest alternative jobs.

It will also match individual profiles and vacancies, giving both employers and job seekers receiving an “automated match”, including information such as public transport links and location.

The new system will track the activities of job seekers, providing the DWP with business and labour market intelligence.

An automated feedback facility will allow employers and job seekers to provide real time information about their experiences, which the department says will be used to influence service improvement.

The facility will be available to the public via Directgov, to employers via Businesslink and EURES, and to Jobcentre Plus personnel via internal systems. Currently Directgov typically receives 10,600 new vacancies and more than 1m job searches each working day for Jobcentre Plus job vacancies.

A value of between £14.45m and £20.44m has been placed on the contract, reflecting its possible extension to other public sector organisations. Both figures are below the department’s original estimate of £50m.

This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates on news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.

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Police’s new £30m e-crime hubs ready to go live

Three regional online crime units to be set up in Yorkshire and the Humber, the north-west and east Midlands

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) has announced three new police hubs to tackle web crime are set to launch.

A spokeswoman for Acpo told Guardian Government Computing that the hubs, which are in Yorkshire and the Humber, the north-west and east Midlands, will go live “imminently”, with some officers undergoing training today.

The hubs, announced in November, will focus on online crime, with the exception of online child abuse which is already covered by units that specialise in the area. The units will cost £30m over four years, according to Acpo.

The units will each initially comprise three staff members – a detective sergeant and two detective constables – and will work alongside the Metropolitan police e-crime unit, which was established in October 2008 as part of the National e-Crime Programme. It will be the job of the regional hubs to provide extra capabilities for the Met police e-crime unit’s operations, according to the spokeswoman, and once regional hub staff have been trained up, they could potentially take on their own investigations.

Deputy assistant commissioner Janet Williams, Acpo lead on e-crime, said: “The government has acknowledged a need to collaborate and provide a structured response to the cyber security of the UK and these three additional policing units are going to play a critical role in our ability to combat the threat.”

James Brokenshire, minister for crime and security, said that cyber crime was a threat locally and nationally, and every force in the country has to deal with its impact on people and businesses in their area.

“As well as leading the fight in their regions, these units mark a significant step forward in developing a national response to cyber crime, which will be driven by the new National Crime Agency,” he added.

The coalition government’s national security strategy, published in 2010, listed web security as one of its priorities.

In 2011, the government also said it was to provide funding of £650m to tackle online crime while its cyber security strategy released in November last year outlined a series of plans to set up a web security hub to pool information with the private sector.

The government has also vowed to deal with the shortage of specialist web security staff in government.

This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates on news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.

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NHS N3 network to be replaced by successor N4 in 2014

Cabinet Office transition plans reveal N3 extension and potential tie-up between N4 and PSN

The NHS’s N3 network could be set to run for another year, according to documents released by the Cabinet Office, with plans to establish a successor already under way.

N3, one of the largest VPNs in Europe with more than 40,000 connections, is managed by BT. The seven-year contract with the telco, signed in 2004, was extended in 2010, enabling it to run until March 2013.

The deal now looks likely to be extended for a further year, with the NHS set to build a case for the contract extension and seek approval for the plan in the first quarter of this year.

The probable extension is highlighted in a document setting out the roadmap for the public sector’s transition to the PSN.

The roadmap also shows that the NHS is planning to begin laying the foundations for the successor to the N3, known as N4, from the middle of this year. The extension of the N3 contract until March 2014 will “enable orderly transition, exit, migration” to N4, the document says.

Plans for N4, and its potential tie-up with the PSN, are still in the early stages, according to a Department of Health spokeswoman.

“As a member of the PSN board, we are working closely with the PSN programme to determine what will be suitable, for not only health and social care, but also wider aspirations of public service networking and telecommunications. Planning for the future transition of the N3 network to N4 is just beginning and still at an early stage, however, we are committed to aligning our future direction with PSN.

“As we develop our PSN transition plan jointly with the programme we will share it with interested parties. We are currently evaluating options for making the current N3 network PSN compliant and intend to publish our plans at the start of next financial year,” she said.

The business case for the move to N4 will be outlined in the first quarter of this year, according to the Cabinet Office document.

Procurement could take place under PSN frameworks where there is a demonstrable value for money, it adds.

This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates on news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.

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Northern Devon trust pilots remote devices for community nurses

App will enable community nurses to file information for Department of Health’s Community Information Data Set remotely

Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust is piloting mobile devices for its community care nurses and therapists to enable them to access files, capture data and update back office systems remotely.

The launch of the 14-day pilot, beginning on 7 February 2012, will see about 60 staff equipped with smartphones and tablets using Vodafone’s 3G network. They will have access to policy and other documents held on the trust’s database and, using an in-house app based on NDL software, will be able to update information about their visits in real time.

The app will help the trust comply with the Department of Health’s requirement to provide the Community Information Data Set (CIDS) – which includes information on patients’ demographics, care and referrals – from April, without its community nurses, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and others having to return to an office.

“Provided the pilot goes okay, and based on the feedback from the 60-odd staff who are using it, the plan is to move straight into our training sessions with 900 staff so that we are ready for implementation from Monday 2 April,” Keri Storey, the trust’s assistant director and social care, told Guardian Government Computing.

Storey said she envisaged that equipping and training staff will happen quickly, but it will take a little more time before staff become confident and comfortable in using the new technology.

“We have had really poor information capture about what out community teams do in the past.

“Our teams go out and they will write records in people’s homes, or on bits of paper that get stored in files. It has just not been the area where we have developed good information systems.

“The development from the Department of Health of the CIDS, whilst a challenge, is a massive step forward in having some good common information about when we are supporting people at home and the interventions we have made,” Story said.

The trust’s policy and guidance documents will also be available via the devices, giving staff real-time information to aid their clinical judgements.

“The staff who have tested the devices and will be testing further in the pilot, find it a very simple way of working,” she said. “It’s just some simple drop down menus and a device which they can take into patients homes and not feel it is intruding into their clinical relationship.”

Northern Devon also intends that the devices will have eventually have access to satellite navigation systems to help staff locate patients’ homes more easily.

Storey said that in some of the rural areas covered by the trust 3G connectivity is patchy, but the app has been developed to enable staff to work offline and then automatically update back office systems when connectivity returns.

This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates on news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.

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