WIREDGOV NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE
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October 21st - 22nd 2014 Manchester |
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Digital: Vision to Value Socitm’s annual conference, the leading event for ICT professionals from local public services, returns with a keynote speech from Shadow Minister Chi Onwurah. Drawing on contributions from leading politicians, industry experts and local practitioners, Socitm 2014 will help ICT professionals from across the public sector to take on the challenge of designing and articulating the value of a deeper digital presence. Key issues to be discussed include:
Click here to register or visit the website for more details. |
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| Hidden from sight, but vital part of UK’s ecosystem |
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MPs have cast doubt on the Government’s commitment to protect sea life in Marine Conservation Zones (MCZ). It is now well over 4 years since the launch of the programme, yet only 27 of the 127 sites recommended have been designated & inadequate enforcement provisions put in place. The MPs are calling on the Government to bring forward the MCZ programme, so that more Zones are designated in the next phase, due in 2015. Ministers should follow a precautionary principle approach to designating new Zones, according to the Committee, and use the ‘best available’ data rather than applying the more stringent evidence standards recently introduced by the Government – which require data that is much harder & more expensive to obtain. |
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| Maintaining the values that attract people to the UK |
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The Department for Education has launched a consultation on strengthening powers to intervene in schools which are failing to actively promote British values. Currently there is no similar standard applied to local authority maintained schools. Ofsted will introduce an equivalent expectation on maintained schools later in 2014. |
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| Breaking the cycle of disadvantage |
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Supporting families into work, improving living standards and raising educational attainment are the fundamental aims set out in the government’s child poverty strategy, published last week. |
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| Ensuring standard ‘look & feel’ |
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The Cabinet Office and Government Digital Service have launched revised guidance for naming & registering government websites. |
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| Dignity in death |
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A new approach to caring for dying people based on the needs and wishes of the person and those close to them has been launched. It takes the form of 5 new Priorities for Care, which succeed the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) as the new basis for caring for someone at the end of their life. |
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| A chance to ‘understand’ the CMA |
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The Competition & Markets Authority is looking for competition & consumer lawyers who would be interested in a secondment lasting between 3 & 12 months. Secondees will be offered the opportunity to take part in a range of interesting & high-profile work including Competition Act (CA98) cases, consumer cases, mergers & market studies under the supervision of some leading competition & consumer practitioners. |
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| More contributions to the Referendum debate | ||
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| Editorial Commentary by Simon Wane (Senior Editor) |
| Put aside speculation on Transition costs; Use ‘hindsight’ to foresee the ‘real’ issues |
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Most comments (from all sources) seem to be concentrating on speculating what costs a newly independent Scotland will incur, but in reality that is only a minor issue, as the main ‘problems’ it will face have been well documented in reports (many from the National Audit Office) over the decades. Professor Dunleavy hints at this in the report on pages 9 – 10: By 2016 Scotland will have policy control of some of the biggest issues, but even in defence its capability will only just be beginning, and no complete separation from UK systems is envisaged. Even in important areas like defence planning, back office and procurement, and some taxes, it will take a considerable time for Scotland to build up its own systems. And in some technical areas, that matter a lot less for Scottish policymaking, the transition will take more than seven years. For instance, Figure 4 shows that the registering of vehicles and licensing of drivers carried out by DVLA and three other UK agencies will continue to be based in Swansea until at least 2021. ‘Hindsight’ has consistently shown us that 7 main factors impact on the successful delivery of new/revised governmental organisations & systems:
The SNP should forget trying to ‘grab embassies’ and put in a bid for the UK’s Major Projects Authority, experienced staff from the NAO to bolster Audit Scotland and even perhaps try & ‘claim’ Margaret Hodge MP (Chair of the Public Accounts Committee) to lead on monitoring project progress and costs. Returning to the Dunleavy report, ‘having policy control’ is one thing, making sure functional systems are in place to implement the SNP policies will be quite another! While rUK and Scottish politicians may eventually agree to continue to share systems (deciding operational terms & costs may take many months), they are unlikely to be ‘fit for purpose’ to deliver new SNP policies, as they are designed to deliver rUK policies. Indeed, the declared intention of the SNP is not to replicate the systems, but to redesign them for greater efficiency – a logical aim. Having had personal experience as an IT project manager and then spent over a decade monitoring the UK government’s efforts to ‘politically specify’, design, contract for, manage & deliver improved / new systems, one can only say – Best of luck within your timescale! The only things certain if it is a ‘Yes’ vote is that new system(s) delivery will:
One other thing, neither ‘side’ has yet mentioned how they will meet all the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998 while ‘sharing’ these systems. Finally, much has been made of the SNP’s red line policy of removing Trident within 5 years. The natural counter to that for rUK, must be stopping co-operation and shared access to these computer systems in that event. |
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