PublicTechnology.net

The Government Digital Service has said it wants to find out what technology councils need to buy, in a bid to make its Digital Marketplace procurement platform more attractive to local government.

The government’s industrial strategy has emphasised the importance of data-sharing by Whitehall, as well as a push to improve digital skills training and boost funding for technologies like robotics and 5G.

The Public Services Network adds unnecessary complications to providing digital services and will be abandoned, according to the Government Digital Service.

Suppliers of cloud-based technology to government will be able to apply for the ninth iteration of the G-Cloud framework from March, the government has announced.

Much of the digital information that government has amassed over the past two decades is poorly organised and “almost impossible” to search, a Cabinet Office report has said.

Governments need to stop relying on outsourcing and make sure they have competent public servants who can deal with technology, the former leader of the Australia’s Digital Transformation Office has said.

The Environment Agency has awarded a three-year, £5m contract to CGI to design, deliver and run its Future Flood Forecasting System for England.

All civil servants involved in creating government services should be thinking about the whole process, not just their part of it, according to digital experts in Whitehall.

As the New Year approaches, PublicTechnology takes a look at what we might expect in the world of digital government in 2017. 

More than 400,000 Scottish taxpayers did not receive a notification letter from HMRC in December last year due to an error in the design of an automated identification exercise, the UK’s spending watchdog has found.

The government’s chance of meeting its self-imposed deadline of publishing the transformation strategy before Christmas have once again narrowed as critics accuse ministers of trying to “sneak it out” as parliament rises for recess.

Amazon Web Services has this week opened its first London region, joining Microsoft and IBM in boosting its UK-based cloud data centre offering and aiming at securing public sector customers.

Less than half of UK local authorities’ websites have good or very good information for people planning to carry out a building project – and some are using web pages as a “hard sell” for council services, a survey has said.

The latest figures on the government’s cloud procurement framework G-Cloud show that just over half of all sales are to smaller companies – a figure that has remained largely unchanged over the past two years.

The Government Digital Service's director general Kevin Cunnington has offered PublicTechnology's sister publication Civil Service World an insight into his goals for next year, taken a look back on 2016 - and spilled the beans on his favourite Christmas gift - as part of CSW's annual permanent secretary round...

A secure cross-Whitehall WiFi service will be available in government buildings in early 2017 as part of private beta testing, the Government Digital Service has announced.

Digital transformation will be the biggest priority for public sector chief finance officers over the next five years, according to a survey by consultancy EY.

The government should encourage councils to increase their use of data through a £4m fund to partner data scientists with councils and make data analysis a requirement of devolution deals, according to a report.

IBM has become the latest company to boost its cloud data centre offering in the UK, announcing plans to add four new cloud data centres, bringing its total in the country to six.

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.

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.