News

IT for government and public sector

• August 23, 2023 23 Aug'23

  St Helens Council in Merseyside hit by ransomware attack

  St Helens Borough Council is investigating a suspected ransomware incident targeting its systems, and is advising residents to be on the alert for follow-on phishing attacks

• August 23, 2023 23 Aug'23

  Cyber attacks in 2023 develop quicker as average dwell times plummet

  The median attacker dwell time shrunk from 10 to eight days in the first seven months of 2023, and in the case of ransomware attacks it is down to just five days

• August 22, 2023 22 Aug'23

  Met Police data platform £64m over budget

  A freedom of information request has revealed that the Met’s Connect integrated record management system is running tens of millions over budget, and has already generated more than 25,000 support requests so far

• August 17, 2023 17 Aug'23

  NUHS taps LLM to boost productivity, patient care

  Healthcare professionals at Singapore’s National University Health System can now summarise patient case notes and predict patient healthcare journeys using a large language model trained by a supercomputer

• August 17, 2023 17 Aug'23

  MP calls for review of computer evidence rule which led to subpostmasters being wrongly convicted

  MP writes to minister in charge of courts requesting he looks at the controversial rules on the use of computer evidence in court

• August 16, 2023 16 Aug'23

  Accenture’s Brussels AI lab to focus on European public sector and health

  Accenture will use its Brussels AI lab to test AI and generative AI's application in the European public sector

• August 15, 2023 15 Aug'23

  Biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner resigns

  Dual biometrics and surveillance camera watchdog will step down at the end of October 2023, noting that while he agreed to stay on until the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill received royal assent, continuing delays to its passage means ...

• August 15, 2023 15 Aug'23

  Norfolk and Suffolk police hit by FoI-linked data breach

  Latest UK police data breach relates to crime suspects, victims and witnesses across East Anglia, and comes just days after a similar incident at the Northern Irish service

• August 14, 2023 14 Aug'23

  CMA provisionally clears US healthcare giant’s purchase of GP IT supplier EMIS

  US company UnitedHealth is looking to buy UK healthcare technology firm EMIS in a £1.2bn deal

• August 11, 2023 11 Aug'23

  Biden administration bans investment in Chinese high tech

  Executive Order prohibits investment firms from supporting Chinese firms specialising in AI, quantum and advanced semiconductors

• August 10, 2023 10 Aug'23

  DWP accounts highlight decline in outside IR35 workers in wake of department’s £87.9m tax bill

  The Department for Work and Pensions has seen a marked decline in the number of outside IR35 contractors it engages since the department was hit with a £87.9m tax bill several years ago, its accounts show

• August 10, 2023 10 Aug'23

  Babylon Health faces downfall

  GP at Hand provider once hailed by Matt Hancock looking to sell UK business after merger plans collapse

• August 10, 2023 10 Aug'23

  Sutton Council steps up tech-enabled care for residents

  Council partners with technology-enabled care provider to support vulnerable residents living independently in their own homes

• August 10, 2023 10 Aug'23

  MoD embarks on cloud-based push to digitise data protection request service

  After previously finding itself on the receiving end of a reprimand from the UK data protection watchdog for taking too long to respond to subject access requests, the Ministry of Defence sets out how its turned the situation around with the help of...

• August 10, 2023 10 Aug'23

  PSNI investigating second breach after laptop stolen

  Just hours after accidentally disclosing the personal details of 10,000 personnel, the Police Service of Northern Ireland has notified a second data breach after a police issue laptop and documents were stolen from a parked car

• August 09, 2023 09 Aug'23

  Northern Irish police expose staff data in botched FoI response

  Human error is being blamed for the leak of personally identifiable information on all serving officers and civilian staff at the Police Service of Northern Ireland

• August 08, 2023 08 Aug'23

  MPs warn about growing prevalence of tech-enabled domestic abuse

  The UK government must take action to prevent perpetrators from being able to use connected or smart technologies to conduct their domestic abuse, a select committee has warned

• August 08, 2023 08 Aug'23

  UK voter data hacked in cyber attack on election watchdog

  An unknown threat actor who attacked the UK’s Electoral Commission had access to data on millions of UK voters for over a year, the watchdog has revealed

• August 03, 2023 03 Aug'23

  Plexal takes on new cohort for cyber security leadership scheme

  Six more cyber security startup founders have been selected to take part in Plexal’s latest Cyber Runway Ignite programme, which is designed to help them develop their leadership skills

• August 03, 2023 03 Aug'23

  UK government recruits panel to focus on semiconductors

  A panel of experts is being recruited as part of the government's national semiconductor strategy to ensure the UK’s chip sector can grow

• August 02, 2023 02 Aug'23

  Ivanti MDM users told to patch against two dangerous flaws

  Users of Ivanti’s mobile device management platform have been warned to act now to patch two vulnerabilities that were chained by a threat actor in a series of cyber attacks on the Norwegian government

• August 02, 2023 02 Aug'23

  Wirral Council set to deploy Microsoft Fabric data platform

  The platform, which is being developed in collaboration with Simpson Associates, will be used to aid decision-making and improve operations

• July 31, 2023 31 Jul'23

  G-Cloud 13 suppliers claim framework extension is making it ‘commercially unviable’ to sell through

  Government procurement chiefs at the Crown Commercial Service are under fire for extending the life of the G-Cloud 13 framework and preventing suppliers from upping their prices as inflation bites

• July 28, 2023 28 Jul'23

  Lancaster Uni lends cyber support to nuclear decommissioning body

  Lancaster University’s cyber team has joined with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to help support and protect its 300-year mission, while enhancing its own capabilities in the process

• July 28, 2023 28 Jul'23

  Scottish university hit by Rhysida ransomware gang

  Data allegedly stolen from the University of Western Scotland has been put up for sale on the dark web by a ransomware gang going by the name Rhysida

• July 27, 2023 27 Jul'23

  Post Office tried to convince independent IT witness that he was wrong about Horizon

  ‘Delusional’ Post Office tried to influence an expert witness and get him to change his view about IT evidence which was detrimental to its case against a subpostmaster

• July 25, 2023 25 Jul'23

  CCRC refers two more subpostmaster convictions for appeal

  Two more subpostmaster convictions referred to appeal court by the Criminal Cases Review Commission

• July 25, 2023 25 Jul'23

  Tetra radio users’ comms may have been exposed for years

  A number of flaws in the encryption algorithms used in the secure Tetra radio communications standard have potentially left users exposed to snooping

• July 25, 2023 25 Jul'23

  Mayor of London announces startup funding

  Seven technology startups working on the Mayor of London’s Poverty Prevention Challenge will receive up to £50,000 each to further develop their proposals, designed to help alleviate the cost-of-living crisis for the capital’s most vulnerable

• July 25, 2023 25 Jul'23

  Small satellite testing gets funding boost

  A new facility has been established as part of the government’s £200m funding for Earth Observation

• July 24, 2023 24 Jul'23

  CIO interview: Sean Green, University of East Anglia

  In his role as director of digital and data at the University of East Anglia, Sean Green provides high-performance computing to researchers and manages the diverse needs of a campus with the characteristics of a small town, all while finding the ...

• July 24, 2023 24 Jul'23

  Tribunal investigates complaint that journalists’ phones were unlawfully monitored

  The Investigatory Powers Tribunal has agreed to investigate complaints by Northern Ireland investigative journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey that they were unlawfully placed under surveillance

• July 21, 2023 21 Jul'23

  Government boosts protection for encryption in Online Safety Bill but civil society groups concerned

  House of Lords adopts amendment to require Ofcom to commission a report before requiring technology companies to scan encrypted messages, but drops proposals for judicial oversight

• July 20, 2023 20 Jul'23

  Electronic Trade Documents Act receives royal assent

  Digital trade documents are to be accorded the same status in law as paper ones under a law implemented to help reduce paper waste and speed up the UK’s foreign trade

• July 20, 2023 20 Jul'23

  Online Safety Bill screening measures amount to ‘prior restraint’

  The Open Rights Group is calling on Parliament to reform the Online Safety Bill, on the basis that its content-screening measures would amount to “prior restraint” on freedom of expression

• July 20, 2023 20 Jul'23

  Interview: Richard Corbridge, CDIO, DWP

  Only 13 weeks into his new role, the Department for Work and Pensions’ CDIO speaks to Computer Weekly about plans for artificial intelligence, data modernisation and how to complete a business plan in record time

• July 20, 2023 20 Jul'23

  How the DSMA balances security and privacy with press freedom

  In a world of information sharing and 24-hour news cycles, the Defence and Security Media Advisory committee have to balance national security and data privacy with freedom of the press

• July 20, 2023 20 Jul'23

  BBC outsources IT to India’s Tata Consultancy Services

  TCS continues to build its UK public sector business, with the BBC its latest customer

• July 20, 2023 20 Jul'23

  AI and data experts to be brought into government through secondment programme

  The government has announced plans for a secondment programme designed to bring digital experts into government departments

• July 19, 2023 19 Jul'23

  ‘Significant gaps’ in UK AI regulation, says Ada Lovelace Institute

  UK government’s plans to diffuse regulatory responsibility for AI among existing regulators will mean the tech is “only partially regulated”, while its data reforms will undercut already-limited existing protections, says Ada Lovelace Institute

• July 18, 2023 18 Jul'23

  NATO membership to drive Nordic cyber security sector growth

  The Nordic cyber security sector will see increasing demand as Finland and Sweden joint NATO

• July 17, 2023 17 Jul'23

  Subpostmaster compensation deadline will be missed, warns public inquiry chair

  Subpostmasters that successfully sued the Post Office and exposed the Horizon scandal are at the ‘back of the queue’ and won’t receive compensation by current deadline

• July 17, 2023 17 Jul'23

  Police Scotland use cloud for biometric data despite clear risks

  Police Scotland confirms it has stored significant volumes of biometric data on a cloud-based digital evidence sharing system despite major ongoing data protection concerns, bringing into question the effectiveness of the current regulatory approach...

• July 14, 2023 14 Jul'23

  UCLH uses machine learning to cope with emergency beds demand

  University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has deployed a machine learning tool which uses real-time data to predict how many emergency beds will be needed

• July 13, 2023 13 Jul'23

  Civil society groups call on EU to put human rights at centre of AI Act

  Dozens of civil society groups are calling on EU institutions to prioritise people and human rights in AI legislation as secretive negotiations begin

• July 13, 2023 13 Jul'23

  MPs launch inquiry into government use of data

  The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee is to investigate the possibility of reforming the way government collects and analyses data, and whether the UK census could be scrapped

• July 12, 2023 12 Jul'23

  Digital public services ‘riddled’ with problems, says TUC

  The UK’s increasingly digitised public services are plagued by design, governance and workplace issues that are undermining the government’s stated goal of improving efficiency, but can be alleviated by giving public sector workers a greater say in ...

• July 12, 2023 12 Jul'23

  Ofcom’s online safety preparedness efforts hobbled by government

  Despite Ofcom’s progress so far, UK government changes to the scope and timetable of the Online Safety Bill are hobbling the ability of the regulator to successfully prepare for the new regime

• July 12, 2023 12 Jul'23

  Cozy Bear lures victims with used BMW 5 Series

  A recent Cozy Bear campaign saw the Russian APT group pivot to exploiting an advert for a used car as it targeted diplomatic missions in Kyiv

• July 11, 2023 11 Jul'23

  EU formally grants data adequacy to US

  The European Commission has formally granted the US data adequacy, allowing companies and organisations to freely transfer personal data across the Atlantic via the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. But privacy activist Max Schrems has already committed...