PublicTechnology.net

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.

Local government needs to move away from piloting digital services on the periphery of their work and focus on building digital in from the start, a conference has heard.

Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council has set out plans to bring all digital activity under one roof in a new digital strategy.

The Scottish government is advertising for a chief digital officer for social security for the second time this year as it gains control of benefit systems.

The slow roll-out of the government’s identity assurance programme Verify is holding the UK’s progress towards e-government back, according to Cagemini.

HMRC has cut down call-handling times by two minutes by automating manual processes, as tax authority announces plans for an Automated Delivery Centre to build robotics.

Digital suppliers are struggling with the process for invoicing government departments and risk losing out on payment due to the length of time it takes to get a purchase order for the work, research has shown.

Surrey and Borders Partners NHS Trust has launched a £5m trial of Internet of Things technologies to improve healthcare for people with dementia.

The Government Digital Service is beta testing ways to improve how government sends out letters, saying that automation could cut the cost of sending a letter from £3 to 29p.

The government has said it intends to have a prototype pensions dashboard by March 2017, and that it will consider regulating companies if they don’t volunteer to participate.

The Department of Health has announced an academy to train NHS staff in digital skills along with a suite of new digital services for patients in an effort to fast-track the NHS’ move to digitisation.

The majority of local authorities assessed by a content management company are failing to write online content that would be easily understood by 13- to 15-year-olds. 

The digital democracy manifesto launched by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn earlier this week has failed to gain the approval of those working in public sector technology.

Sooraj Shah looks at the benefits of AR and VR, and asks whether councils should be spending taxpayers’ money on the emerging technologies so soon.

The Home Office has completed the roll out of its online visitor’s visa service.

North Hertfordshire District Council has adopted a cloud-based solution to enable a number of departments automate their processes.

An online button directing people facing a housing crisis to the most appropriate service for them has won backing from Shelter Scotland for further development.

The Ministry of Justice has published a set of nine principles it will stick to as it updates outdated hardware that is making work difficult for employees.

The GOV.UK Notify system is to start sending messages to people applying for student finance and UK visas as part of the government’s invite-only public beta testing.

Council IT chiefs tell Sooraj Shah that, although the Internet of Things has huge potential for local government, it’s still early days for the technology.

At the end of last year, the charity doteveryone launched its heatmap of digital exclusion across the UK to help communities take control of the situation. But where is the project now, and have councils paid attention? Rebecca Hill reports.