Since Barack Obama won the US presidency last year, there has been speculation that the general election in 2010 might be the first truly “internet election” in the UK. If fallout from the appearances of Gordon Brown and David Cameron on social networking site MumsNet is anything to go by, there is some way to go before online campaigning becomes really decisive in the UK.
However, whether next year brings a new occupant to Number 10 or not, there are some very clear and real challenges for the next government – possibly the greatest for a generation – and our industry can provide many of the solutions.
The most obvious of those challenges will be bringing Britain out of recession and restoring growth in the British economy. Bank of England Governor Mervyn King has recently suggested that the UK economy has "only just started" along its road to economic recovery. He has also predicted that it will be late 2011 before the UK is back to the level it was at before the recession.
His cautious optimism is a sign that we can take nothing for granted. With a disgraced and more highly regulated financial services industry, politicians will be searching for signs of growth and recovery in new sectors. How we present our industry in the run up to and in the months following a general election will be vital to securing policies that will help research-intensive industries like ICT, that rely on a highly skilled and mobile workforce to thrive in the UK.
It is no secret that government itself will feel the pain of the recession for many years to come. In September 2009, the public sector net debt (as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product) stood at 59 per cent, the highest for over 10 years. The debt is expected to rise to 79 per cent of GDP by 2013 – its highest level since the Second World War. Living within their straitened means will be a pressing day-to-day concern for ministers in an incoming government – especially when faced with the unappealing prospect of cutting services.
A paper that Intellect has recently submitted to the Chancellor suggests that around five per cent of the government’s current expenditure is on ICT. However, intelligent use of ICT can help deliver huge potential saving to the other areas. Freeing up public servants from routine tasks and allowing them to focus on more high value and fulfilling activities can improve productivity significantly across a range of different business areas.
I think that it is fair to say that ICT in government suffers from some significant image problems. However, efforts to reduce the government’s deficit should provide an opportunity to demonstrate the value and the quality of the IT sector here in the UK.
Perhaps most challenging of all will be the fight to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions and limit the effects of climate change globally. A growing and increasingly urban world population is consuming resources of all kinds at a much greater rate than they can be restored. The ICT industry has its part to play in minimising our use of resources through measures such as improved energy efficiency in our products and services.
However, we can make a much greater impact on the world if we focus on ICT as a way to enable people across the world to do business in a more resource-efficient manner. This is a perspective that was backed up by the European Commission, which recently estimated that ICT-enabled improvements in other sectors could save about 15 per cent of total carbon emissions by 2020 - with particular benefits for building and construction, transport logistics and energy use.
The fact that the European Commission has formally recognised the role of ICT in cutting carbon emissions is a great achievement for the industry but we must work hard to make those proposals a reality. In the UK much depends on the outcome of the next election. However, whatever the result, we must, as an industry, demonstrate our readiness to respond to the challenges our politicians face.The government’s hotly anticipated plans for reforming adult social care finally saw the light of day last week. Having launched a call for more integration of health and social care services back in March 2007, we at Intellect, were pleased to see that the burden of an ageing society and rising costs of care are finally getting some proper attention from government.
The green paper sets out plans for a National Care Service that will offer national assessment, joined-up services, information and advice, personalised care and support and fair funding. News that a Cabinet-level ministerial integration group has been set up to help drive this forward will be welcome to everyone that’s campaigned for reform. But good intentions are not enough.
Having the right technology to underpin these changes will determine whether the vision stands or falls. Various technical, commercial and cultural barriers to providing joined-up services will need to be addressed if we’re are to see the creation of a more sustainable health and social care system. That’s why we’ve launched ‘Fitting IT all Together’ which sets out the industry’s view on health and social care, and which calls for more openness and transparency, a roadmap to support joined-up working, and earlier engagement with industry.
By Melissa Frewin, Head of Healthcare and Central Government
So the government’s big low carbon transition plan was launched yesterday mapping out how we’ll achieve emissions cuts of 34% by 2020. It’s a beast of a document at over 200 pages, but any strategy that promises the creation of 1.2 Million “green jobs” isn’t going to be able to tell you how on a couple of sides of A4. Overall it seems to do a good job of pulling together previously disparate policies in to a coherent transition plan and we at Intellect welcome that. I’ve included a useful summary list from The Guardian of all the big ideas below and we’re particularly pleased to see the reinforced commitment to smart metering and smart grids.
However, ICT and associated technologies are critical enablers of this transition and don’t seem to get much of a mention elsewhere. Maybe that’s fair enough when the document points out that half of the proposed carbon cuts by 2020 would come from changes to the power sector. But the 15% that will come from making homes more efficient, 10% from workplace improvements, and 20% from changing how we travel (the other 5% from agriculture and land use) will also benefit from ICT applications. The problem here is the lack of a market for these already available technologies and we must be smarter at addressing how we tackle this.
By Laurence Harrison, Energy and Environment Director
Summary points:
• Plans are projected to create 1.2m “green jobs”
• Every government department will be required to meet a carbon budget alongside its financial budget.
• Domestic energy prices would rise in 2020 to pay for some of the required changes. Hopes are this would be offset with energy efficiency savings in 7m homes and financial help for the poorest consumers.
• launches consultation on the details of the government’s feed-in tariff, re-named the “clean energy cash-back” scheme, which will pay people and businesses a premium for generating low-carbon electricity. A similar scheme for renewable heat will follow in April 2011.
• Introduces plans for a “pay as you save” scheme for homeowners to receive loans to insulate their homes, with money repaid by savings in energy costs.
• Up to £6m to start development of a “smart grid”, including a policy road map next year.
• Launch of the new Office for Renewable Energy Deployment in the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to speed up the growth of renewables in the UK.
• DECC to take direct responsibility from Ofgem for establishing a new grid access regime within 12 months.
• Up to £180m would be made available to promote wind and tidal power – this includes setting up a low-carbon economic area in the south-west to promote marine technologies and money for up to 3,000 wind turbines off the UK’s shores by 2020.
• £15m to establish a Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre that will develop the next generation of nuclear power infrastructure.
• £10 million will go to improving infrastructure for charging electric vehicles.
• Challenging 15 villages, towns or cities to be test-beds for piloting future green initiatives.
Following last week’s publication of a UK national Cyber Security Strategy, the FT devoted a leader column to “Cyber security risk” highlighting the growing threat of cyber warfare to national security and resilience and its future role in conflict.
This is a subject close to the technology industry’s heart, and the recent publication of a national Cyber Security Strategy has now also focused Government’s attention on what many believe is the newest theatre of war. Whilst we at Russell Square therefore applaud the FT’s interest in the subject, I cannot help but disagree with their fundamental conclusion – that developed economies (including the UK) are better placed to withstand the collapse or compromise of our digital networks than less developed equivalents.
I’d posit that in truth the opposite is true - the UK is one of the world’s most technology dependent societies, and the impacts for Government, business and citizens of even part-failure of our “digital backbone” would be unprecedented.
As the 2003 power blackout on the east coast of the United States (which was itself, some say, caused by overenthusiastic Chinese cyberagents) proved, the inability to use ICT sends most developed world businesses and many vital public services – which depend solely on the Cyber domain for trade, communication and finance - back to the digital Dark Ages.
This contrasts sharply with less technology or service-based economies, where networks are both more limited and less integrated into business processes, and agricultural or manual industries could largely continue to function – Britain’s banking sector or creative industries could not.
We know that both state and non-state adversaries are using the Cyber domain to attack national infrastructure and our open and globalised society’s dependence on its digital backbone makes us an extremely vulnerable target. Intellect therefore welcomes the advent of the Cyber Security Strategy, and looks forward to helping Government use industry’s expertise, experience and innovation to aid its implementation.
By Joel Grundy, Defence and Security Programme Manager
Three years after first announcing its intention to roll out smart meters across Great Britain, the Government has finally published plansof how it is going to happen. In brief, smart meters will dramatically change the way that meter readings are taken, see an end to bills based on ‘estimated’ consumption and enable householders to see exactly how much energy they are using. This final point is particularly interesting. One easily could have imagined the smart meter being in the same place as where meters currently reside; in a cupboard somewhere! However, the Government are proposing that alongside a meter, a free-standing display will be included to ‘provide real-time, near instantaneous feedback on consumption (in terms of energy, money or CO2)’. It will be interesting to see if innovative companies can link this requirement into existing technology, so the information could be displayed on a mobile phone, a television or a laptop, for example. It’s even possible to receive updates about your home’s energy usage via Twitter.
Rolling-out smart meters to 26 million homes and several million businesses is a huge undertaking, so how does the government propose to do it? Well, their preferred approach is to give responsibility for the provision of smart meters to gas and electricity supply companies. A single provider will be also appointed centrally to supply communications services to and from meters. From a business opportunity point of view, it’s fair to say this will be exciting some boardrooms this morning.
Ensuring a smooth and successful roll out over the next decade(s) is a huge challenge, but technology companies – working with the other parts of the sector – are more than up to the task. The consultation announced this morning raises a lot of questions and no doubt the wide range of stakeholders involved in this area – including Intellect’s Smart Metering Group – will be seeking to provide constructive feedback on the proposals. However, with eight documents to get through, some strong coffee a decent supply of biscuits may be order of the day.
Finally, it’s very pleasing to see the consultation state that smart meters are a ‘key step’ towards smart grids. I could not agree more. At a micro level, they will enable a smarter grid to literally have two-way communications with every home; at a macro level, they have significant transformational capacity. Today’s developments once again highlight what an exciting time it is to be involved with the sector. For more information about what Intellect is doing in this area, please get in touch.
By Ben Andersen-Tuffnell, Programme Manager.
MPs’ expenses were back on the agenda this week, with the publication of the Cabinet Office’s expense claims since 2004 in the Telegraph.
Gordon Brown has blamed “the system” for the apparent discrepancies that have emerged, one of which related to his own expenses in 2006, when he claimed twice for a plumbing bill.
While Brown obviously believes the governance and structure of the MPs’ claims system needs to be overhauled, one can also wonder to what extent a decent IT system—both in ministers’ offices, and the House of Commons fees office—could have prevented such mistakes from occurring.
Evidently, keeping track of such a large number of claims in Parliament is no easy task, but a document and information management system could go a long way to prevent incidents such as duplicate claims and other clerical errors.
Few would disagree that the Prime Minister has had a difficult few weeks, and with the increasing public resentment over the claims system’s lack of transparency, an improved document management system seems a small price to pay to ensure that relatively minor expense claims hiccups don’t threaten the credibility and efficiency of the Government machine.
By Scarlett Graham, Programme Executive