PublicTechnology.net

At the start of the year, Cornwall Council’s cabinet approved an £18m digital improvement plan that aims to fix years of IT underinvestment. Gill Hitchcock reports.

A survey has revealed that the British public can see robots speeding up some public services – but that they doubt robots will be better decision-makers than humans.

After a tumultuous first six months as director general of the Government Digital Service, Kevin Cunnington has finally got the long-awaited Transformation Strategy off his desk and is looking forward to an office move. He tells Rebecca Hill about Whitehall “self-help groups”, reforms to spend controls and cold water swimming.

The Ministry of Justice has become the latest department to transfer its employee data onto the government’s shared back-office IT system.

The Home Office is seeking a “robust and charismatic” deputy director for Emergency Services Network Mobilisation.

DfE IT leader Dave Rutt has called on digital teams to let users test their tech – and raised concerns that tax reforms are driving contractors out of the public sector.

The government is to invest £16m in a research hub as it announces the creation of a National 5G Innovation Network to act as a testbed for new technologies.

MPs have urged the government to take a “concrete step” to greater transparency by creating a searchable database of meetings with businesses that extends to include senior civil servants.

The Government Digital Service’s notification service has gone live across all central government departments, with local government – and letters – next on the team’s list.

The Government Digital Service has said it will use “more robust metrics” for GOV.UK as its 2017-18 roadmap reveals plans to improve email subscription, content search and user journeys.

The government has achieved “just about everything” that was in its first digital strategy and now needs a different approach to make bigger savings, the director general of the Government Digital Service has said.

Senior managers in the public sector have said that data privacy, security and increasing regulations are all barriers to their organisations benefitting from mobile and digital technologies, according to a survey.

The public sector needs to use technology to reform its workforce by disrupting hierarchies, adopting new recruitment processes and automating administrative roles, a think tank has said.

Password managers may offer advantages in the short-term, but password-based authentication has “outstayed its welcome”, the National Cyber Security Centre has said.

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.

MPs have called on the Home Office to step up its contingency planning in case a new emergency communications system for the police, fire and ambulance services is not ready in time for its planned December 2019 switch-on.

Mark O’Neill, one of the founders of the Government Digital Service, has been appointed chief digital officer at the Department for Education.

Regional NHS bodies could soon be asked to collect patient information to create a ‘data-lake’ for use at a national level, according to an NHS England consultation document.

Civica is large enough to take on big transformation government projects but small enough to be seen as “part of the team”, chief executive Wayne Story has said at the launch of its dedicated digital division.

The Scottish government is recruiting for a director to expand its digital public services accelerator scheme CivTech, at a salary of around £68,000.

The Socitm Better Connected survey has revealed that more than half of English county councils are not providing a good online service to help people sign up for e-resources.