Round up of community, news, resources and articles.

on 15/06/2011 · No Comments">No Comments · in News, Newsletters

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Opinions and blog’s

Even the Smartest Government Can Succumb to Dumber Politics
by Andrea Di Maio | June 2, 2011 Gartner defines smart government as an administration that integrates information, communication and operational technologies to planning, management and operations across multiple domains to generate sustainable public value (see Gartner note The Five Dimensions of Smart Government – login required) Although a government can be smart at any [...]

STOP BEING IRRELEVANT: Here’s five things every comm’s person should know
Posted: June 9, 2011 | Author: Dan Slee It’s amazing communications people are walking towards irrelevance but have not yet woken up. In 2011 people get their information through a range of places. Twitter broke the news of Osama bin Laden’s death. For some people, it was Gary Neville’s Twitter stream that did it. Closer to [...]

SLIDESHARE: Case studies on connecting people using social media
Connecting People: Advice for Local Government on Social Media and Hyperlocal sites. View more presentations from Daniel Slee Once upon a time clip art was once cutting edge. No, really. It was. Back in 1997, the first Walsall Council website sported a dancing light bulb. No, really. It did. There’s also a notice [...]

CitizenSarah reports (experiences of self service via digital channels from Government)
In November 2010 I decided that while I was on maternity leave for six months I would keep a note of each interaction I had with public service. I would actively try to engage with all levels of government and other areas of public service, such as the NHS, digitally where possible. This is what [...]

Democratic Regulation – of private providers of public services
Posted on June 9, 2011 by Colin Talbot It is widely recognised, and mostly accepted, that ‘utilities’ provide a public service and not just private services, so it is legitimate to regulate them in ways that ensure the public interest. This is partly because there are always elements of natural monopoly in the way in [...]

News

Derbyshire Fire and Rescue: Dampening down the cost of software licensing to save £80,000

The Derbyshire Fire and Rescue service operates 31 fire stations, four area offices and its head office. The organisation relies quite heavily on IT, providing resources for approximately 450 full time fire fighters, 350 retained duty system firefighters, 40 Command and Control personnel and 180 support personnel. By streamlining the licensing model Derbyshire Fire and [...]

Surrey CC issued with £120,000 penalty over misdirected emails

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) served Surrey County Council with a monetary penalty of £120,000 for a serious breach of the Data Protection Act after sensitive personal information was emailed to the wrong recipients on three separate occasions. Christopher Graham, UKInformation Commissioner said: “This significant penalty fully reflects the seriousness of the case. The [...]

Sensitive information stolen from council worker’s unlocked bag

North Lanarkshire Council breached the Data Protection Act after the theft of a home support worker’s bag containing papers which included sensitive personal information. The council alerted the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to the data breach shortly after the theft in October 2010. The bag – which was not locked – contained the worker’s visiting [...]

£68 million cost of “stealth centralism” – Localism Bill a curate’s egg?

Plans to give Ministers hundreds of new powers to tell councils how to deliver local services will increase council administration costs by at least £68 million a year, town hall leaders warn. New analysis by the Local Government Association reveals that measures proposed in the Localism Bill, which receives its second reading in the Lords [...]

Council calls for contract renegotiation after savings not met in Southwest One shared services partnership.

A review into Southwest One, the public-private partnership that supplies back-office functions including Purchasing and HR for Somerset County Council has revealed the contract “could do better”. Commissioned by Council Leader Ken Maddock, the review was completed in June 2010. It recommends that Southwest One should be renegotiated to deliver “efficiencies”. This renegotiation project has [...]

Millions saved through Fraud Taskforce pilots

Today Francis Maude announced a set of pilots testing fresh and innovative approaches to tackling the £21 billion of annual fraud in the public sector and signalling the end of the ‘pay first, check later’ culture. The pilots have already delivered immediate savings of £12million in their first few months. The Cabinet Office Counter Fraud [...]

Annual report of Gov’ websites delayed until June – Digital by (de)fault?

“Digital by default” maybe the channel advocated by Government but meeting a deadline for an annual report of Government websites has slipped from publication in May according to the Monthly Implementation Update of the Cabinet Office’s Structural Reform Plan. Francis Maude announced plans to rationalise central goverment websites last year and that he wants to [...]

Making travel safer in cyberspace keynote transcript from Francis Maude

Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Cyber Security, delivered a keynote speech at a conference in Londonon 1 June 2011. Ladies and Gentlemen, I realise that I’m joining you at the end of a long day of speeches and discussions, and that you’ve now only got me and one other speaker to go [...]

Government saves over £1 billion on procurement

… and (claims) there’s £3 billion a year more to come. In a move expected to save £3 billion a year, Francis Maude today announced that the Government is making significant changes to the way it buys in categories of common goods and services such as stationery and office services. The move follows Sir Philip [...]

Councils are taking steps towards adult social care efficiency but need to pick up the pace

Councils are changing their approach to providing adult social care to make services more efficient, the Audit Commission briefing Improving value for money in adult social care has found. As demographic change and financial pressures combine to create tough times for adult social care, councils have looked at many aspects of the service in order [...]

Making travel safer in Cyberspace – Minister calls for closer partnership with industry and the public

Francis Maude, the Government’s newly appointed Minister for Cyber Security, today urged business leaders to help protect the economic well being of the country by investing in measures to empower safe travel through cyberspace. Read the speech In his first speech since taking over the Cyber portfolio from Baroness Neville-Jones, Mr Maude told a conference [...]

Reports

Better collaboration and data sharing key to transforming NHS ambulance service

The Department of Health has until recently been focusing on speed of response as a measure of performance of the ambulance service, rather than on clinical outcomes. The service achieves high levels of public satisfaction but there are wide variations in ambulance trusts’ efficiency. The system has not delivered the best value for money to [...]

Research report: local authorities’ strategies for cuts

Local authorities are getting to grips with the scale of the efficiency savings they need to make – but 40 per cent do not yet have strategies in place to achieve the spending cuts required according to a recent survey. On average councils are expecting to make cuts of 20 per cent by 2014, with [...]

Report – Improving value for money in adult social care

‘Improving value for money in adult social care’ is the first in a series of briefings that will look at value for money in health and social care. This briefing finds that, as demographic change and financial pressures combine to create tough times for adult social care, councils [...]

More than one in ten gov’ IT tenders illegally specify brands according to report

Openforum Europe’s annual assessment of procurement practice across the European Union reveals that for the third year running a significant proportion of government agencies are illegally specifying trademarks when they engage suppliers from the private sector for specific IT contracts worth billions of euros. The OFE Procurement Report 2010 found that 13 % of a [...]

Regular Features

UK Councils Social Media Reputation Index for May 2011

Thursday June 9, 2011This month: The top 20 UKcouncils for online reputation “With the rise of the internet, everybody’s a publisher”: Controlling reputations, controlling Twitter Who is your ‘Mr Monkey’? The Media Mix – News v Blogs v Twitter etc The Top 20 The top 20 councils ranked by social media sentiment (subject [...]

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Council Spending Dashboard from Openly Local http://openlylocal.com/councils/spending

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