Recent Blog Posts
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Yet more uncertainty ahead for digital government after minister ousted in election
Editor in chief 09 Jun 2017Amid all the chaos, recriminations and excitement on the morning after the General Election, the future of digital government is far from the minds of anyone other than those of us with a personal ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Whoever wins election 2017, it's time for a digital minister with real authority
Editor in chief 02 Jun 2017You would expect, of course, that a publication such as Computer Weekly would call on whoever wins the 2017 general election to put the digital economy on its list of immediate priorities. While ...
The future of data storage will not be in the binary switching of electrical cells as in flash storage. It may also not be in magnetism-based potential successors to flash such as Racetrack Memory, ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
UK government, NHS and Windows XP support - what really happened
Editor in chief 15 May 2017In all the debate about the NHS ransomware attack, much has been made of a government decision in 2015 to end a contract with Microsoft to provide support for the ageing Windows XP operating system ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Can DWP meet its revised 2022 target for completion of Universal Credit?
Editor in chief 26 Apr 2017In the run-up to the last UK general election in 2015, the Labour Party’s then shadow employment minister Stephen Timms pointed out that the target completion date for the Universal Credit welfare ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Don't expect much that's new from political parties' digital manifestos in General Election
Editor in chief 21 Apr 2017Like it or not, necessary or not, we have another General Election, and while nobody will decide their vote based on a party’s digital policies, the imminent poll will raise important questions ...
Last week’s highly critical National Audit Office (NAO) report highlighted the need for change at the Government Digital Service (GDS). The NAO “found widespread views across government that GDS ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Can GDS avoid becoming just another Whitehall silo? Analysing the NAO's scathing critique
Editor in chief 30 Mar 2017Prior to this week’s publication of the latest National Audit Office (NAO) report on the Government Digital Service (GDS), rumour had it the Whitehall watchdog had pulled back from serious ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
The digital revolution is unstoppable, inevitable - and bigger than Brexit
Editor in chief 29 Mar 2017Let’s start with the disclosure. I voted for the UK to remain in the European Union (EU). My reasoning at the time was that the EU is an over-bureaucratic, dysfunctional organisation that ought to ...
This is a contributed post which is wholly attributed to the team at GitHub, 'the home of developers' as they would like to be known. Widening open source Software developers love open source ...
The question of build vs buy was the fundamental question posed, framed and postulated by Jeff Lawson in his role as CEO of Twilio during a keynote address delivered at this year's Mobile World ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Gov.uk Verify ID providers eye the prize of HMRC’s digital users – but what happens without them?
Editor in chief 21 Feb 2017In all the recent talk about whether HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is truly committed to the Cabinet Office’s Gov.uk Verify service, there’s been less said about the commitment of the external ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
HMRC ID vs Gov.uk Verify – what’s the difference, and why it matters
Editor in chief 15 Feb 2017The long-term row between HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and the Government Digital Service (GDS) over online identity assurance broke into the open this week. HMRC published a blog post that ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
GDS, HMRC and Verify: so much for cross-government digital collaboration
Editor in chief 14 Feb 2017Less than a week after Cabinet Office minister Ben Gummer announced the new government transformation strategy, its central premise is already in question after HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Government digital strategy ticks the boxes - but real transformation needs more radical ambition
Editor in chief 10 Feb 2017The long wait for the new government digital strategy may have caused frustration in some places, but clearly within the Cabinet Office the extensive delays have brought expectations to a peak of ...
Load Balancing (LB), is now popping up on the corporate security agenda! LB is no longer just about managing traffic flows across enterprise routers and servers. In the age of the cloud and ...
Developments in both audio visual (AV) and information technology (IT) are leading to a ‘convergence’ of the two sectors. This is similar to what has already happened in other markets once open, ...
StorageBuzz
Violin memory: Reasons behind the demise of an all-flash pioneer
Storage Editor 05 Jan 2017In these days when flash storage grabs so many headlines for the right reasons it’s quite a surprise that one of the pioneers in the space – Violin Memory – is about to hit bankruptcy hard, with an ...
Inspect-a-Gadget
Just Eat showcases innovative “food tech” - the future of online delivery
Business Editor 30 Dec 2016Online food delivery service Just Eat has a number of ideas for how food tech will influence the future of online food delivery, including technologies such as augmented reality (AR) artificial ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
How the technology sector helped create President Trump
Editor in chief 10 Nov 2016It’s probably fair to say that the world doesn’t need another journalist trying to explain why Donald Trump won the US presidency right now. Nonetheless, I think that we in the technology sector ...
With BT Wholesale having announced that from 2020 you will no longer be able to purchase integrated services digital network (ISDN) and public switched telephone network (PSTN) circuits as it ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
The clampdown on IT contractors in Whitehall is another risk for digital government progress
Editor in chief 31 Oct 2016IT contractors working in government are under pressure like never before over their tax status, and many people in Whitehall IT fear that a clampdown on the use of temporary staff could lead to a ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
GDS under Kevin Cunnington (so far) - different, and yet the same
Editor in chief 24 Oct 2016Computer Weekly’s first opportunity to meet with Kevin Cunnington, the new director general of the Government Digital Service (GDS) answered a lot of questions – but raised plenty too. It’s ...
The Government Digital Service (GDS) is an uncertain place at the moment – or so the rumour mill says. The team are carrying on with their pre-existing strategy – one that was written last year to ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Even GDS creator Francis Maude is worried about future of GDS
Editor in chief 05 Oct 2016Followers of the ups and downs of the Government Digital Service (GDS) will be aware of the question marks surrounding the future of the organisation and the Whitehall in-fighting over its role. ...
Cloud native computing as championed, advocated and evangelised by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) itself is an approach that uses an open source software stack to deploy applications ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
The all-new GDS under Kevin Cunnington starts here
Editor in chief 15 Sep 2016So, the first phase of changing the Government Digital Service (GDS) is underway, and it’s clear there is a lot more to come. The Cabinet Office pitched the latest news as minister Ben Gummer’s ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
The grubby day-to-day frustrations of digital change in Whitehall
Editor in chief 09 Sep 2016Change is hard. Few business or IT leaders would disagree with such a statement. But learning the lessons from change should be the easy and obvious outcome. Failing to learn the lessons from ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
How to break up GDS without breaking up GDS
Editor in chief 23 Aug 2016The Cabinet Office and its latest recruit – new Government Digital Service (GDS) chief Kevin Cunnington – are adamant that GDS will not be broken up. Cunnington told us so in his first blog post of ...
MariaDB is a database that was created as a community-developed 'fork' of the MySQL relational database management system and, as such, has always been free to use under the GNU General Public ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
The only certainty of Brexit is uncertainty
Managing Editor 15 Aug 2016The reality of what Brexit means is starting to sink in: no one knows for certain what will happen. Six weeks after the UK voted to leave the EU, the weak pound is already causing IT costs to rise ...
Data Matters
The Analytics Battle: agility vs. governance
Senior Analyst, Business Applications 04 Aug 2016This is a guest blogpost by Ajeet Singh, CEO, ThoughtSpot Despite the recent rise in data analytics as a “topic du jour” the concept has been around for over a century. “BI” as we think of it ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
No matter what happens next, GDS's long-term future is not assured
Editor in chief 29 Jul 2016No matter what happens next for the Government Digital Service (GDS), you can assume three things will be true: 1 - The Cabinet Office will make an announcement full of praise for GDS and express ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
BT needs to go the extra mile, to keep the last mile
Editor in chief 26 Jul 2016Imagine this. It’s the early years of the 20th century. While many people still get around using a horse and trap, cars have become affordable and more and more people are buying them. It’s clear ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
How digital will Theresa May's government be?
Editor in chief 20 Jul 2016Now that the UK government – well, apart from the Labour party - seems to be returning to some semblance of business as usual following the extraordinary political upheavals of recent weeks, the ...
Software analytics company New Relic will now support web applications built with current and future Single-Page Application (SPA) frameworks and libraries. But what is a SPA anyway?
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Brexit silver linings exist for UK technology - but they are hard to find
Editor in chief 27 Jun 2016If there’s one thing you can credit the UK tech sector for, it’s a generally long-term view of the future. In this time of huge Brexit uncertainty, that pragmatism is perhaps the main cause for ...
Since Computer Weekly launched its list of the most influential women in UK IT in 2011, the number of initiatives championing and encouraging women in technology has grown enormously. Through ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
The voter registration website crash - fingers point to software problems ...and the Foreign Office
Editor in chief 09 Jun 2016The government has not yet released an official explanation for the crash of the UK voter registration website earlier this week – but Computer Weekly has learned the likely cause. How ironic it ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
The incredible shrinking Hewlett Packard - where does it go next?
Editor in chief 27 May 2016In 2011, Hewlett Packard’s annual revenue was $127bn, making it the largest technology company in the world by sales at that time – yet its market worth was a comparatively meagre $42bn. It had ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Here's the obligatory 'What IT leaders can learn from Leicester City FC' story
Editor in chief 20 May 2016As a football fan, it’s not often I get to indulge in a bit of technology-football crossover, but the Leicester City fairytale is too good an opportunity to miss. It seems it’s also a story that ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Next in the digital revolution: commoditisation of processes
Editor in chief 29 Apr 2016One of the questions most commonly asked of technology journalists is, “What’s the next big thing in tech?” It’s easy enough to answer – at the moment, you would point to emerging trends such as ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Liam Maxwell: The man who checks the homework
Editor in chief 19 Apr 2016Former Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude used to call Liam Maxwell "the man who checks the homework". First as an advisor to Maude, then as government CTO, Maxwell was responsible for making ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Universal Credit shows it is time to make all major government projects open and transparent
Editor in chief 15 Apr 2016After four years of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spending taxpayers' money on legal fees to prevent the release of key Universal Credit documents, the only surprise revealed by their ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
In the digital revolution, the Luddites are the ones in charge
Editor in chief 07 Apr 2016Between 1811 and 1813, English textile workers and weavers conducted a campaign of protests, sabotage and occasional rioting against the spread of new technology that threatened their livelihoods ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Are there more changes ahead for the Government Digital Service?
Editor in chief 24 Mar 2016As we all know, the Government Digital Service (GDS) was awarded £450m by George Osborne in his Autumn Statement last year. A business plan detailing how that money will be spent was due to be ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
What now for Universal Credit - and could Iain Duncan Smith quitting lift the veil of secrecy?
Editor in chief 21 Mar 2016Amid all the political fallout and the carnage within the Conservative Party since the shock resignation of work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith last week, many observers have started ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Blockchain will bring a radical rethink of banking - but not yet
Editor in chief 04 Mar 2016Rarely has an emerging technology experienced both the levels of hype and the levels of anti-hype that exists around blockchain at the moment. For every supporter proclaiming the distributed ledger ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Will Ofcom break up BT? Probably not - but it must enable fibre broadband fit for the future
Editor in chief 19 Feb 2016Next week sees an announcement that will set the scene for the next 20 years of the UK's digital infrastructure. Ofcom's review of the communications market is due out within days and its potential ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Why are so many organisations bringing outsourced IT back in-house?
Editor in chief 12 Feb 2016To outsource or to not outsource? That, for many IT leaders, has been something of a religious question for a long time. You're either a follower or you're not. But we are no nearer to answering ...