Computing Comment

Beware the spin as politics meets IT

2009-07-09T11:06:59+01:00

In the last few General Elections, Computing has not been alone in hoping that the leading political parties give technology a pivotal role in their manifestos.

Next year - assuming Gordon Brown doesn’t surprise everyone with an autumn poll - we might finally get our wish.

Labour’s Digital Britain strategy is central to the party’s plans for economic recovery, job creation, and digital infrastructure, as minister Pat McFadden explains in the latest issue of Computing.

Meanwhile, the Tories seem to be positively all over technology. The party said last week it plans to use IT to make government more open, transparent and accessible to the public.

“For all politicians, the question now is, do they understand how technology is changing people’s expectations?” said shadow science and innovation minister Adam Afriyie.

And this week we heard again that the Conservatives want to look at how electronic patient records can be hosted online by the likes of Google and Microsoft, a concept first touted by David Cameron in April.

It is good to hear the benefits of IT being so widely debated, but still the concerns linger - and in particular, how naive politicians’ expectations for technology seem to be.

Tony Blair rightly saw that IT-enabled change was the key to transforming public services and his government set out down that road with enthusiasm. But it soon discovered that delivery was a rather more complex affair.

There are sure to be votes and certainly attractive national newspaper headlines to be gained by populist ideas such as giving electronic patient records to Google.

But as the NHS is finding, introducing electronic records is a massively complex task, and just by stamping the names Google or Microsoft all over them does not make them any cheaper, easier, or more likely to succeed.

We look forward to IT taking its rightful place as a policy battleground, but let’s hope the UK’s IT professionals are offered a chance to keep the promises grounded in reality.

Rally the troops for war on cyber crime

2009-07-02T09:34:33+01:00

“Divide and conquer” is a battle plan that probably goes back further than the Romans, and it is one on which e-criminals and cyber saboteurs have been all too happy to rely in the UK.

The government’s new Cyber Security Strategy not only sets up two new organisations to help protect the country against the growing digital threats we face, but identifies 16 other bodies that already have responsibility for dealing with such attacks.

Nobody is trying to pretend that cyber defence is easy, and perhaps there is a very good reason why we need 18 different organisations working together – or at least, trying to.

But as most IT security experts know, it is human factors that the best hackers target, and even with the best will in the world, 18 different groups with 18 different priorities and prejudices mean an exponential increase in the potential for gaps through which cyber criminals can attack.

In theory, the new Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) to be set up at GCHQ will be responsible for co-ordinating all these organisations in a coherent way. Good luck with that.

But what this means is that the success or failure of the government’s plan will depend entirely on the authority and accountability vested in CSOC. The centre’s location at the government’s top-secret communications monitoring site rather suggests its focus will be on high-level cyber espionage and terrorism – somehow it seems unlikely it will be that bothered about the sort of low-level, frustrating hacking activity that is the daily bane of most businesses’ life.

It would be churlish to criticise the Cyber Security Strategy because it has so plainly been needed for so long, and its arrival is to be welcomed, even though it is belated. But to counter the increasingly sophisticated threats the UK faces, we need a simple, streamlined, co-ordinated operation that has the real teeth needed to take action.

If one does not emerge, those gaps will loom ever larger for both the casual hacker and the malicious cyber attacker.

Unheeded warnings highlight NHS flaws

2009-06-25T10:00:05+01:00

Two weeks ago, under the headline “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”, this column highlighted the importance of managing expectations in major IT projects.

With the release last week of 31 Gateway project reviews covering the progress of the £12.7bn NHS National Programme for IT, it has become apparent that the response there to attempts to manage expectations was more along the lines of: “If at first you don’t succeed, ignore the problems and hope they go away.”

Reading through the documents reveals persistent warnings about a lack of clinical
engagement, poor communications, and concerns over supplier performance. These have been recurring criticisms of the National Programme, and ultimately have led to the serious delays seen in the most critical project, the Care Records System (CRS).

In the London region in particular hit hard by CRS problems that not only affected the NHS trusts involved but this year contributed to a £1.2bn write-off at BT poor supplier performance was first raised as an issue four years ago.

Within the National Programme then, the concerns raised by clinicians and in the press were being recognised but it would seem the warnings were not heeded.

This is therefore not an issue about scrutiny or openness the project was receiving scrutiny in all the right areas, and internally at least there was openness and honesty about the problems. But it is an issue about listening, accepting criticism, and here we go again, managing expectations.

For whatever reason, too many people involved in the NHS IT programme clearly did not listen to the warnings they received. They ignored official criticism from the Gateway review teams. And they failed to reset perceptions until it was too late.

The NHS project is enormously complex and controversial, and in many ways most of these problems were always likely to happen, and as we now know, they were indeed anticipated. The big question remains why so little seems to have been done about it until so late.

UK needs a leader for Digital Britain plans

2009-06-18T09:35:11+01:00

It might seem a little churlish to berate Gordon Brown over the status of a few of his junior ministerial posts, given that he has had rather more critical issues with senior ministers to worry about lately. But you’ll forgive us if we do so anyway.

At the moment, two of the top three government roles relating to the technology industry remain vacant after the latest reshuffle, and the third is soon to be vacated.

We have yet to see a new minister for digital engagement – formerly Tom Watson – or a minister for digital inclusion – previously Paul Murphy. Add to that the impending departure of the man meant to be championing Digital Britain, communications minister Lord Stephen Carter, and you have to wonder just how serious the prime minister really is about the industry.

Instead, we have a couple of Alan Sugar-style “celebrity” appointments, with Sir Tim Berners-Lee advising on opening up government data, and Lastminute.com founder Martha Lane Fox as digital inclusion champion.

Let’s look for a moment at the key words in those job titles – engagement and inclusion. The former is meant to lead the promotion of online public services, the latter to reach out to the digitally excluded. These are two pretty critical tasks if, as Brown has repeatedly promised, technology is central to the future of the UK economy.

This week sees the publication of the final Digital Britain report – a crucial document for UK IT, and one bound to create controversy. So who will see it through? Not Lord Carter, enobled purely to appoint him to a ministerial post so he could drive the plan through, yet off he goes, presumably back to a lucrative private sector role.

If the UK IT industry is not complaining in the loudest terms possible about its apparent downgrading within the government’s ranks, then it should be.

It’s time for Brown to stop messing about with job titles and political appointees. The UK needs a technology czar to oversee the development of digital Britain.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again

2009-06-11T09:36:16+01:00

Here is a question that may go right to the heart of major IT initiatives in government and the private sector: should we assume that all technology projects will somehow, and to some degree, go wrong at the first attempt?

How much heartache and vitriol would IT leaders be spared if the answer to that question were “yes”?

Of course, you should scoff at such a suggestion. But look at two high-profile cases in point that Computing features this week.

The Ministry of Justice was forced to halt and scale down a project to join up the criminal justice system, attracting severe criticism from MPs along the way. The revised project is now starting to go live and there is much more optimism for its success.

British Gas bet its future on a new multimillion-pound billing system, whose subsequent failures were blamed for it losing thousands of customers to rivals. Since the initial problems, the situation has markedly improved.

Undaunted by failure, both organisations have opted to try, try again.

A similar process is underway in the NHS, after the task of rolling out electronic patient records proved, at first attempt, to be far more daunting than anticipated.

So, in such huge and complex projects, is it reasonable to assume a degree of initial failure? Clearly not the aim has to be to get it right first time, every time, or else how can anyone in IT justify their critical role in the future of their organisation?

But perhaps such examples suggest that IT leaders are failing in one very important aspect of modern business - managing expectations.

In IT, we have all rightly promoted technology as central to corporate success, but how many IT managers can honestly say they have not, on occasion, over promised?

In so many situations in work and life, the cause of conflict is not f ailure, but the failure to manage expectation. When planning technology projects, it is a lesson IT leaders should remember.

Nurture roots while waiting for shoots

2009-06-04T09:37:23+01:00

How well do you think you would cope with an overnight cut of 30 per cent in your IT budget?

That’s the reality facing British Airways (BA), as Computing revealed this week, and a stark reminder of the difficulties facing IT leaders in the companies most affected by the recession.

Banks and other financial services firms will no doubt have suffered similar or even greater cutbacks, but BA is the first blue-chip firm to be open about the dramatic effect the slump is having on its technology plans.

IT professionals across the UK are being disproportionately hit by the downturn. According to research by the Keep Britain Working campaign, 30 per cent of UK IT staff have had to accept pay cuts – above the national average of 27 per cent of employees.

And with a further 5,700 jobs to go at HP’s European operations, there is bound to be further strife for UK workers.

For all the optimistic talk of green shoots from some quarters, there is little hard evidence among the IT community that the prolonged economic woes are coming to an end.

There may be a small rise in house prices; share prices may be up – but the effects of the downturn will be felt in IT for some time yet. Trade unions point out that unemployment rarely peaks until some time after a recession has ended – which is a sobering thought for those who have survived so far.

But for enterprising IT leaders, the worst of times can be the opportunity to shine. As Deepak Singh, acting chief information officer at HM Revenue & Customs, says: “Out of the current crisis will be born the next generation of IT leaders,”.

The challenges that IT managers face are unprecedented, but even if you cannot see any green shoots, it is a time to nurture roots and sow seeds.

As Computing has said many times, the organisations that make the best use of IT will be the ones that survive now and thrive in future. It is tough out there, but IT must take the lead.

Government skills plan is the right idea

2009-05-28T11:10:41+01:00

It took a long time for the government to assert its purchasing power over IT suppliers.

It was only a few years ago that Whitehall first negotiated public sector-wide software licensing deals with major providers such as Microsoft and Oracle, but the potential has always been there to achieve more than just cost savings.

Government IT policy should be an exemplar to every IT leader in the UK, setting the standards for professionalism and best practice.

So it is very encouraging to see the latest initiative – a plan to force vendors to provide staff training to help develop the IT skills of the UK workforce.

Sector skills council e-Skills UK estimates that UK IT will need to recruit an additional 130,000 people into the industry every year for the next 10 years a wildly ambitious figure, and one that it is almost impossible to see being achieved from where we are today.

But that target also shows the scale of the challenge we face. Within the IT community, we have long called for government backing to make the sector central to the economic success of the UK. The recession has made government realise we were right all along. Now, growing UK IT is not simply good for the sector, it is essential for the future of the country – and politicians know it.

Those 130,000 jobs will have to be filled somehow – and unless action is taken swiftly, you can bet that a large proportion of them will end up sitting at a desk in India. That’s not meant to be anti-Indian or anti-offshoring, simply a statement of the facts about IT employment in the UK.

Many IT suppliers will no doubt privately resent government trying to dictate their training and development plans, but if the skills gap is to be filled, someone has to take a stand.

IT leaders in the private sector would do well, this time, to follow the government’s lead.

EU must heed call for reform of data rules

2009-05-21T09:56:25+01:00

Richard Thomas, the outgoing Information Commissioner, can look back at his tenure as the UK’s data watchdog with some satisfaction. During his time in charge, the subject of data protection has garnered hitherto unimaginable levels of attention, and Thomas has sought to take a sensible but firm approach to data protection issues. There has also been the introduction of Freedom of Information rules to add to an already significant workload.

But however well he has set about his task, there has always been the suspicion that his efforts have been somewhat hamstrung. The publication of the Rand review, which Thomas commissioned, confirms those misgivings.

That review is clear in its recommendation that current European data protection legislation needs an overhaul. And so it does.

That Thomas should prepare to leave his post by calling for more business-friendly rules is no surprise. It is a common theme from anyone with an interest in data protection.

The vast majority of business leaders accept and recognise the duty of care they have over the information that they collect and store about their customers and fellow citizens. They are happy to abide by sensible rules governing personal data.

But there is so much in the current European data protection directive – which is the basis for the UK’s Data Protection Act – that is not sensible and could cause firms to unintentionally find themselves on the wrong side of the law. That situation needs to be addressed urgently.

The trouble is, calls for more business-friendly data protection rules are nothing new. Indeed, one of Thomas’s first acts as Information Commissioner was to promise such an approach.

There is, however, scant evidence that the regulators within Europe have any appetite for change. For sure, crafting rules that are to govern a technology environment that changes at lightning pace is a thankless task.

If there is to be any prospect of change, it is vital that Christopher Graham,the incoming commissioner, takes up the baton.

A healthy start to our charity appeal

2009-05-14T13:28:36+01:00

In what has already been a challenging year for IT chiefs, there are plenty of reasons to feel downbeat. Budgets have been tightened across the board; promising projects mothballed as costs are squeezed; in several cases, valued colleagues have been let go.

If those in the public sector mistakenly imagined that they might be immune from the downturn, the strenuous efficiency targets that were announced recently will have quickly dispelled those misconceptions.
And yet amid all the gloom, it is good to report that there seem to be huge numbers within the UK IT community willing to look beyond their immediate concerns, and spare a thought – and indeed some money – for others.

Last week, Computing launched its 2009 charity appeal in conjunction with the charity Computer Aid International, and we are delighted to report that the initial response has been fantastic. This year’s appeal is attempting to raise funds to equip 120 hospitals in rural Africa with vital telemedicine systems.

This life-saving equipment can make a huge difference in remote community hospitals. By equipping such hospitals with some relatively simple and cheap gear such as a laptop, digital camera and scanner, doctors there can communicate with specialists at larger city hospitals, improving diagnoses and treatment.

The compassion of Computing readers was never in doubt. Nevertheless, the initial response has still taken us aback. Several companies have already made significant donations, and the contributions from individuals have been extremely generous.

We are still banking on you to help us further. Computer Aid has identified 80 hospitals and health centres that would benefit enormously from the introduction of telemedicine, so all contributions, no matter how modest, would be gratefully received.

If you want to get involved, or find out more information, contact Stephen Campbell at
Computer Aid on 020 8361 5540 or email. Or you can donate at: www.justgiving.com/computingtelemedicine.

A new spirit of resourcefulness

2009-05-08T10:58:50+01:00

f the doom mongers are to be believed, parts of the financial services sector have put innovation in IT firmly on the back burner.

Despite its well-publicised travails, the financial services sector is still hugely important to the IT industry. Many others take their cue from the sector’s leaders. If senior decision makers in financial services decide there is no room for innovative IT, others are bound to take note.

Such a decision would be a huge mistake. The IT function is uniquely placed within the business to deliver the kind of efficiency gains business leaders so desperately seek as they grapple with the caustic impact of the worst recession in decades.

Thankfully, the IT chiefs working in financial services clearly recognise that they have to keep innovating. What has changed is the focus from delivering eye-catching innovation to work under the hood, tuning organisational effectiveness through initiatives such as collaboration.

So while budgets may be tight within these firms, IT leaders are adapting, finding new ways to deliver performance-enhancing projects that don’t come with a big price tag.

Should such efforts be dismissed as “incremental innovation”? Hardly: the value of an IT project to the business is not always dependent on the cost. Unlocking internal knowledge and improving employees’ ability to interact with colleagues and customers can have huge benefits.

But those advocating incremental innovation seem to suggest that IT leaders should be setting their sights low. They shouldn’t.

If business leaders look at financial services IT, they should not be misled by talk of cost cutting, and assume that scaling back IT investment is the only sensible course in a difficult economy. Instead, they should understand how IT is once again demonstrating its ability to improve operations, and ensure organisations are able to seize any advantage possible when the upturn comes.