PublicTechnology.net

G-Cloud purchases by local government made another steady rise during January – up 12% on December.

The Crown Commercial Service is on course to exceed the top end of its savings target for 2015-16, but director Matt Denham has spoken of the challenges the agency faces in the hunt for its own Uber and Airbnb equivalents.

Newcastle City Council and five other local authorities have begun to lend e-books and audiobooks via the cloud from mobile apps.

Director for G-Cloud and the digital commercial programme at the Government Digital Service moving to become deputy director of the BIS digital service.

Kingston Upon Hull City Council has launched the search for a supplier to undertake a huge overhaul of its online services.

Local government spending through the G-Cloud framework rose by 2.8% during December after a large drop in November.

Rolling out text alerts, sorting out "crap" government IT, cleaning up data, and trying to recruit skilled people when the money's tight — there's plenty going on in the world of government digital, as Matt Foster found at the Government Digital Service's annual gathering.

Suppliers are now able to remove services from the G-Cloud they no longer provide, following the introduction of improvements.

Dame Margaret Hodge has led criticism of the expected appointment of a director of cloud supplier and online retailer Amazon to a senior board role the Department for Work and Pensions.

Blackburn with Darwen Council has outsourced its revenues and benefit software to a cloud provider – reversing its original decision to bring it back in house.

One of the UK government’s top technology chiefs has welcomed news that Oracle is to increase cloud services hosted at its Slough datacentre to its public sector customers.

Scotland’s public sector is “scrambling” to stay on top of growing demands for improved digital infrastructure, a head of IT within the NHS has warned.

London Borough of Islington has approved the appointment of a supplier to deliver an ICT solution to join up social and health care records in a contract worth £10m.

A proposed data sharing body for public bodies across Greater Manchester will adopt a “federated data” model, rather than collating residents’ personal information on a single database.

Blockchain technology holds promise but won't succeed if it is applied to old, failed or impossible ideas, says Jeni Tennison.

Jos Creese says that technological solutions are at the heart of allowing local authorities to provide shared services.

Aberdeen City Council has appointed Scottish cloud and data centre provider Brightsolid to provide a managed data centre service worth £1m a year.

Nicky Stewart says public sector bodies and their suppliers must put measures in place to avoid large fines for data breaches.

A digital tsar for Scotland should be appointed to offer “leadership, advice and challenge at the most senior levels of government”, according to an industry report.

App and software developers will later this month gather for a hackathon to find uses for a new API newly created for Bristol’s transport services.

Councils will be able to raise money for ICT revenue projects by selling off capital assets from April, the government has confirmed.