IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Supplied as part of Scotland's £600,000 Pathalba project, which is funded by the Scottish Executive Health Department, the scheme is being assessed by the University of Dundee to establish the effectiveness of the technology.

HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) has urged the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS) to purchase an IT solution to support performance management development.

It suggests that a national system to capture performance data, if readily accessible and without red tape, would improve the performance of police forces throughout Scotland.

The Security Industry Authority (SIA), a Home Office body that regulates the private security industry, is using biometric technology to authenticate its users.

Once hailed as an economic saviour, the Internet is now in danger of becoming a threat to the future prosperity of the UK and its allies, the head of UK security agency GCHQ Iain Lobban has said in a rare speech.

Another speech, another dire warning about the economic, social and political threats being posed by the rise of cybercrime, but Government Communications Headquarters chief Lobban did offer more detail on the daily threats battled by his agency.

GCHQ detects 20,000 malicious emails discovered inside government systems each month, 1,000 of which have been deliberately targeted to its departments, he said.

Technology experts have raised concerns about the security of the City of London’s new WiFi network.

The network, turned on last week (Computing, 26 April), covers the heart of London’s financial district, serving more than 350,000 people, comprising 127 nodes, and offering 95 per cent coverage to the area.

The UK's e-voting programme is suffering from major security weaknesses, a Whitehall e-government adviser told Government Computing News on 30 July 2003.

The new Centre is designed to improve access to Council services as well as to meet Government guidelines for the introduction of Electronic Government by 2005. Sefton MBC is headquartered in Bootle on Merseyside and serves a population of 290,000 citizens.

Although the deadline is still a concern for 70 per cent of IT managers, more than 80 per cent reckoned service improvement was more of an issue. The techies also reaffirmed a long standing love-affair with three-letter acronyms, citing BPM, CRM and SOA as their main investment priorities. (Tha's Business Process Management, Customer Relationship Management and AService Oriented Architecture, for anyone who was unsure.)

Ceredigion County Council went live with the system on 10 May 2004, with the system due to be operational at two other authorities by July and further authorities over an agreed timescale. This implementation is regarded as a flagship e-Government project for Wales, and is backed by the Welsh Assembly Government.

Local authorities will soon start to share frontline services such as education and recycling, according to David Myers, the Home Office director of shared services.

Pooling technology is becoming more acceptable as back-office sharing boosts public service delivery, said Myers.

The public sector will spend several billion pounds on centralised IT systems in the next five years, according to the newly-appointed head of the government's shared services programme.

Shared services are intended to cut down on duplication by developing common administrative systems, such as human resources (HR) and finance, for use by multiple organisations.