Recent Blog Posts
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Immigration is a dirty word - but it's one IT has to address to solve digital skills gap
Editor in chief 03 Jul 2015The political climate in the UK makes it difficult to talk about immigration and its effect on the IT sector, given the wider sensitivities around the subject. But it's a topic that needs to be ...
The Turing Test is a famous challenge to computer scientists to create an artificial intelligence machine that is so convincing people believe they are talking to a real human being. Meanwhile, it ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
The state of NHS IT? Ring a random NHS trust and see if they have IT problems - it worked for us
Editor in chief 05 Jun 2015We'd like to let you in on a little secret. In the past week, Computer Weekly uncovered IT problems at two NHS trusts in the north-west of London. In one, medical staff were unable to access ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
What does the end of the "Francis Maude era" mean for GDS?
Editor in chief 15 May 2015Earlier this week, I wrote here that a new Conservative government could mean more changes in government IT than such administrative consistency would suggest. It already seems those changes may be ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
New government, same government IT? Perhaps not...
Editor in chief 12 May 2015On first impressions, the Conservative election victory appears to be business as usual for IT across government. The challenges before the election are the same challenges now; the civil service ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
The digital challenge for the new government
Editor in chief 06 May 2015It's been said that the general election this week is the most important for a generation. That's probably true on a number of levels - and certainly within the microcosm of the IT and digital ...
The closer we've come to the UK general election, the more it seems the Government Digital Service (GDS) is taking a public bashing. You might wonder why.It's certainly true to say that GDS divides ...
Open Source Insider
How to find good open source code libraries: Sourcegraph code browser
22 Apr 2015Sourcegraph aims to answer the challenge here with a search engine and code browser designed to help developers find the code they need.
A criticism often levelled at IT education is that by the time you come to apply the skills, they might be out of date. Why learn technology skills when that technology might not be in use in a ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Would GDS like to airbrush rural payments out of its digital exemplar history?
Editor in chief 10 Apr 2015Last month, I wrote in this blog about the problems that caused the new rural payments digital service to be withdrawn from use by farmers and replaced by paper forms. The system was one of the 25 ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
To make Britain digital we need leaders who are part of the network, not apart from it
Editor in chief 31 Mar 2015It's great to see so much debate taking place on social media - and hopefully in the real world - following Martha Lane Fox's Dimbleby Lecture broadcast on BBC1 last night. Regardless of what ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Why it's time for the IT community to engage with politicians
Editor in chief 13 Feb 2015No blood was spilled, but listening to the three main political parties debate their digital policies together for the first time this week laid out the battleground for their likely general ...
Microsoft open sources 'execution engine' for .NET
Damage coalition cuts and bodge have done to Universal Credit was omitted from the National Audit Office assessment of the scheme in November.The full story emerged a week after the auditor ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Apple success shows the importance of making IT invisible
Editor in chief 30 Jan 2015It's been impossible to ignore the biggest technology headline of the week - especially as it became the biggest business headline in many places too. Apple declared the largest quarterly profit in ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Windows 10 proves this is a different Microsoft - but is it different enough?
Editor in chief 22 Jan 2015The software company with 14% share of the global operating systems market announced the latest version of its flagship product this week. It's called Windows - you might have heard of it. It's not ...
While many people are obsessed with their mobile phones and never put them down for a minute, research shows that for many others they are just a waste of time. In fact, the average Brit will spend ...
Iain Duncan Smith looked like a fall guy when he started work on Universal Credit. He humbled forward to take the stage for his grand social project, with a little shove from his superiors. He ...
As we know, use of the term "infographic" generally causes involuntary gagging and may result in unwelcome skin irritation.
As we know, we have spent the last couple of decades and more putting more and more electronics into our automobiles.
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Introducing the Devereux-Hodge shambolicness scale for rating progress of Universal Credit
Editor in chief 16 Dec 2014If Universal Credit were made into a Hollywood rom-com, you just know that Margaret Hodge and Robert Devereux would be the central characters. Thrust into repeated opposition on different sides of ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
DWP still has lessons to learn to make Universal Credit IT a success
Editor in chief 28 Nov 2014"Unacceptably poor management" and "wasted time and taxpayer's money" - that's how Margaret Hodge, MP, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee described Universal Credit this week.The latest ...
Diversity is a topic that is widely discussed nowadays. A lot of companies have Diversity Leaders within the business whose actual roles revolve around making sure the business is diverse. Some may ...
When you are consistently criticised over trust and security, deliberately obfuscating the facts about your involvement in a brand is very strange.
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
What has happened to the Prime Minister's Digital Taskforce?
Editor in chief 14 Oct 2014In July, the government revealed the existence of the Prime Minister's Digital Taskforce - notable at that time mainly for the fact that Tech City chair and former Facebook Europe managing director ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Credit where it's due - this government has made huge progress on digital and IT
Editor in chief 03 Oct 2014It was hugely welcome to see the prominence that digital issues were given during the Labour and Conservative party conferences. Nobody would pretend that voters will make their decisions based on ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Greater devolution offers a once in a lifetime opportunity to accelerate digital government
Editor in chief 19 Sep 2014So Scotland is not going it alone - and in all probability the whole of the UK will be better for that decision. The independence drive engaged voters in Scotland like never before, and also ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Technology on trial - justice system could do better at finding digital fingerprints
Editor in chief 21 Aug 2014I've just completed jury duty - my first real-life experience of the English judicial process. It's a fascinating thing to do - I would recommend it to anyone. But it was also an eye opener for the ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Congratulations to GDS on open document formats - but will Microsoft resort to litigation?
Editor in chief 24 Jul 2014Back in February, when the UK government's consultation on the use of open document formats closed, I described the decision to be made by the Cabinet Office as the acid test of its commitment to ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Universal Credit business case not approved - obfuscation from the most open government in history
Editor in chief 08 Jul 2014The government has finally been forced to admit that the business case for the troubled Universal Credit programme has still not been signed off - despite repeated assurances that approval was ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
To every male IT leader - it is your responsibility to get more women into IT
Editor in chief 04 Jul 2014Congratulations to the 25 most influential women in UK IT - our annual list was announced yesterday, and it contains some amazing, high-achieving individuals (who happen to be women). The event at ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Labour's digital rhetoric is increasingly positive towards GDS
Editor in chief 03 Jul 2014Labour MP Jon Cruddas gave a speech this week that was barely reported in the press, but contained his party's most significant statements yet about the role of digital and technology in a ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Dear HP, Microsoft (and others) - stop bleating, start competing
Editor in chief 03 Jul 2014There's an interesting story in The Independent today that highlights the issue I wrote about on this blog last week - about the Cabinet Office policy of trying to make the old "oligopoly" of big ...
Google taken its PDFium software library forward into open source project status.
Pretty much every week these days you can expect a story in Computer Weekly on one of two topics: the growing importance and influence of the web to business and economic development; and the ...
Computer Weekly can illustrate how a UK network connection forms part of a US weapons targeting system that has slaughtered civilians in attacks gone wrong.The illustrations add credibility to a ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Russia invests £2.8bn to deliver 10Mbps fibre broadband across the country
Editor in chief 06 Jun 2014Earlier this week, I was in Moscow, visiting the Skolkovo Innovation Centre, Russia's $15bn attempt to create a tech startup environment to compete with Silicon Valley.I mentioned in one of my ...
The billions of rubles of government money being invested in the Skolkovo Innovation Centre on the outskirts of Moscow (read my previous post for more details) is not only going into developing the ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
How Moscow money and the post-Soviet generation hope to create Russia's Silicon Valley
Editor in chief 02 Jun 2014The Skolkovo Innovation Centre is about a half-hour drive from Red Square, in a 400 hectare building site on the outskirts of Moscow. Today and tomorrow, it's the venue for the second annual ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Are the UK's borders being compromised by legacy IT systems?
Editor in chief 02 May 2014My sources suggest that the IT problems that affected UK airports and sea ports earlier this week were related to Warnings Index, the ageing system that sits at the heart of the UK's border ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Is DWP looking for yet another new chief for Universal Credit?
Editor in chief 29 Apr 2014Is the troubled Universal Credit programme looking for yet another new leader for the project?A good contact of mine has told me that he was approached by two separate headhunters recently, asking ...
And so the most popular PC operating system of all time reaches the final winter of its years.Windows XP goes out of regular support on 8 April, but it is testament to its enduring success that ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
GDS becomes political as Labour launches digital government review
Editor in chief 11 Mar 2014Government IT - and in particular, the role of the Government Digital Service - is about to get political. Tomorrow night, the Labour Party launches its digital government review, a programme ...
With the tablet market booming, it's no longer just traditional office employees that have laptops and tablets in the workplace. We've written before about ruggedised tablets being adopted in ...
I've been told that the Department for Work and Pensions CIO, Andy Nelson, is about to step down from the role.The information came from a usually reliable source, but at the time of writing this, ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Thanks Microsoft - we now know that everybody prefers ODF to OOXML for government document standards
Editor in chief 24 Feb 2014Microsoft's call to its friends in the software community to contribute to the government's consultation on open document formats seems to have worked. Although, perhaps not as Microsoft intended. ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
The lesson from the NHS Care.data row: You can't keep privacy issues private any more
Editor in chief 18 Feb 2014The rumbling, growing row over the NHS England Care.data service has become an instruction manual for how not to handle data privacy in the digital age.For anyone not aware of the issue, Care.data ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Coding for kids is great - but where do digital skills come from in the meantime?
Editor in chief 14 Feb 2014There has been a lot of discussion lately on the topic of teaching school children how to code. Some controversy has ensued - as ever - around some of the initiatives, but there is little ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
The question that matters on Universal Credit: Do you believe Iain Duncan Smith?
Editor in chief 06 Feb 2014Do you believe Iain Duncan Smith?This is becoming a key question in the progress of the troubled Universal Credit welfare reform programme. The secretary of state for work and pensions has staked ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
When will government IT teams learn they are not as different as they think
Editor in chief 14 Jan 2014We learned today of another government IT fiasco - millions of pounds being wasted at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on a system for recruiting soldiers and reservists for the Army. The project was ...