LocalGov Digital moots co-operative model with £1 membership fee
The network for digital staff in councils across the UK has announced plans to become a more formal organisation with a co-operative membership model and more clarity on its aims.
The government has commissioned the Ordnance Survey to create a smart map that will determine...
Digital technology in primary care is “one of the brightest hopes” for patients and staff, but...
DWP’s Mayank Prakash named CIO of the year – as department rumoured to be reviewing projects
The director general of digital technology at the Department for Work and Pensions has been named CIO of the year in the UK IT Industry Awards, while the department denies project overspend...
Police chiefs and crime commissioners pledge digital policing reforms
Policing Vision 2025 sets out plans to boost staff skills, share digital evidence and improve recording and analysis of online crime.
NHS Digital boss Andy Williams resigns
The chief executive of the body helping drive forward the NHS’s digital transformation is to step down in March 2017, after three years at the helm.
Watchdog tells Ealing to ‘toughen up’ on data protection
The London borough of Ealing has signed up to a series of measures to improve its data protection practices after a breach involving the loss of a set of court documents.
GDS adds second DNS service after malicious attack affects GOV.UK
The government’s flagship GOV.UK site was affected by a global distributed denial of service attack on a third party company that also took out Twitter, Spotify and other sites last month....
Government launches ‘digital trade hub’ in a bid to boost export market
The Department for International Trade has created a platform to help UK businesses get better export deals in a bid to meet trade targets.
NHS mail system grinds to a halt after email list error
A bug in the NHS email system meant that 850,000 staff received a flurry of ‘reply all’ emails while others saw delays in their email accounts.
Don’t let ‘perfect be the enemy of good’ on digital services, councils told
Local government risks being left behind on digital services if it focuses all its attention on digital inclusion, an event has heard.
Department of Health offers £100,000 for ‘digital evangelist’
The Department of Health is seeking a deputy director of digital and technology strategy to help create a digital first healthcare system.
Future parliament: How a change of scenery could encourage innovation
Could parliament’s move out of the 19th Century Palace of Westminster be used to embrace 21st Century technology? Rebecca Hill reports.
The long run-in: Changing culture, IT and services in East Sussex and Surrey
East Sussex and Surrey councils first mooted shared services two years ago. Chief information officer Matthew Scott tells Gill Hitchcock about the hurdles the partnership had to overcome during its development, and where it is now.
'Councils have to change': Scottish local government CDO Martyn Wallace has big plans for his new role
Just a month into his new job as chief digital officer for the 28 Scottish councils that have pooled their digital resources, Martyn Wallace already has big plans for his team.
Lessons from Seoul: How eGovernment can drive citizen engagement
Scott Moore, business analyst for the Scottish Improvement Service, won a Socitm scholarship to research digital public service trend in Seoul during the summer. Here he looks back on he learnt during his summer investigating the city’s digital transformation.
Cracking the ‘us versus them’ mentality: Singapore’s GovTech CIO on digital services for the masses
This week saw the official launch of the Singapore’s dedicated government tech agency GovTech. Rebecca Hill spoke to the organisation’s chief information officer Chan Cheow Hoe about the issues facing government digital services and how his team is addressing them.
‘It’s cheaper, democratic and what users want’: Why councils need to think about accessibility
RNIB inclusion guru Steve Tyler tells Gill Hitchcock that it makes sense for councils to build accessibility into their digital services.
Scottish social care providers must not wait for the limitations of analogue telecare to appear before adopting digital
With current approaches to Scotland’s social services labelled unsustainable, and health care similarly under pressure, Tom Morton of Communicare247 urges providers to realise the potential for digital technology now.
Trump appears to have no position on digital – but are the tech tides against him?
The digital revolution in US states and cities is not likely to grind to a halt following Trump’s election, but your take on his win will depend on how you view the sands of time, says David Walker.
Why data is key to the success of city devolution
A lot has been promised to the public on city devolution and the price of failure is high. Eddie Copeland, director of government innovation at Nesta, argues that joining up data across those regions is one basic way to give the plans a fighting chance of success.
Changing the culture: What government must do to make the most of AI
Artificial intelligence could transform the public sector, but adoption has been slow. As the Government Office for Science publishes its report into the subject, Richard Sargent, director of ASI and former performance lead at the Government Digital Service, says leadership and culture will be crucial for success.
Calling out acts of government IT self-harm: The playbook of anti-patterns
Reading between the lines of official government digital standards and policies might help you make out the horrors that led to their creation, but it's rare that acts of self-harm are called out, says the Department of Health's Dan Sheldon. Here, he calls on departments to stop doing this to themselves, and argues in favour of the spend controls he spent 18 months helping to enforce.
Theresa May's government must not forget about digital government
The new government is focused on Brexit, and Theresa May and Philip Hammond have not yet voiced their support for making government digital – but Daniel Thornton, co-author of the Institute for Government's in-depth report on digital transformation, says the potential for savings is huge.