The Ministry of Justice has named the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s chief technology officer as its new chief digital and information officer.

Local government is struggling to keep up with the pace of change in technologies and true digitisation is at risk of being held back by poor leadership, according to Tower Hamlet’s head of ICT.

The Government Digital Service is to take ownership of the Department for Work and Pension’s Digital Academy to offer training to civil servants across Whitehall, as Cabinet Office says digital transformation strategy due by the end of the year.

The Government Digital Service has reiterated its commitment to the cloud and pledged to refresh its ‘cloud first’ policy and promote it more widely.

The Information Commissioner’s Office is conducting a survey of councils to find out what their information governance frameworks are like.

Mark Skilton of Warwick Business School says that the opening of Microsoft’s three UK data centres marks another step on the road to full public sector adoption of cloud computing in the country.

The government needs to offer tech specialists more freedom and creativity if it wants to recruit the most talented people, according to a recruiter in the Ministry of Justice.

The Ministry of Justice is seeking a chief information security officer and a deputy director of digital delivery.

An analysis has shown that the adoption of cloud computing varies widely across councils, with barriers including out-of-date procurement policies and reliance on in-house IT infrastructure.

The Government Digital Service has set out the requirement for councils wanting to join the first pilots of the local version of its identity assurance scheme, for older people’s concessionary travel and parking permits.

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.

Chris White, head of digital solutions at Capita Software Services, looks at how councils can use single sign-on citizen portals to improve services and support vulnerable residents. 

The representative body for UK tech companies is seeking opinions on the government’s G-Cloud procurement framework.

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.

Councils need to recognise that real digital transformation goes beyond e-enabling transactions and “get serious” about technology-informed redesign, Socitm has said.

Joe Kim, chief technology officer at IT monitoring and management tools developer SolarWinds, looks at the scale of the problem faced by healthcare organisers handling ever-increasing amounts of data and offers five ways they can tackle it.

The Government Digital Service has published a revised version of the Technology Code of Practice that departments must use when designing, building or buying digital services.

As PublicTechnology looks at diversity in public sector technology careers, Home Office developer Barbara Cassini reflects on her experiences as a female developer in both public and private sectors, saying that some offices are just better than others.

Last week, the government unveiled eighth iteration of its G-Cloud framework for public sector bodies.

The eighth iteration of the government’s cloud procurement site for public sector bodies has attracted a record number of new suppliers, it has been announced.

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.