News

IT for government and public sector

• November 01, 2022 01 Nov'22

  Scotland’s Data Lab CEO Brian Hills on its ambition to change lives

  Brian Hills, chief executive of The Data Lab in Scotland, on why he thinks the organisation’s mission is less about data and more about changing lives by giving people career opportunities

• October 31, 2022 31 Oct'22

  Prepare today for potentially high-impact OpenSSL bug

  OpenSSL trailed a critical vulnerability patch last week, which will be only the second such flaw ever found in the open source encryption project. Unfortunately, the first was Heartbleed

• October 31, 2022 31 Oct'22

  Cyber crime officer says French legal challenges to EncroChat are ‘hype’

  Matthieu Audibert, officer of the French Gendarmerie’s cyber space command, gets into a spat with defence lawyers on Twitter over the lawfulness of evidence from the hacked phone network EncroChat

• October 28, 2022 28 Oct'22

  Post Office warned of Horizon software-induced ‘tragedy’ in 1999

  Problems experienced during live trials of the Post Office Horizon system predicted the ‘tragedy’ that unfolded

• October 27, 2022 27 Oct'22

  NCSC’s Levy steps down after 20-year intelligence career

  NCSC technical director Ian Levy bids farewell, telling his successor: ‘Don’t panic’

• October 27, 2022 27 Oct'22

  NHS to get new national CISO

  The Department for Health and Social Care is seeking a new national CISO, who will be tasked with providing strategic cyber leadership, direction and expertise across DHSC and the wider NHS

• October 27, 2022 27 Oct'22

  Horizon system EPOSS code writers lacked basic programming skills, public inquiry hears

  Horizon system code writers lacked basic programming skills, according to the task force set up to investigate reported problems with the controversial software

• October 27, 2022 27 Oct'22

  LinkedIn adds new features to safeguard user privacy, security

  Social media platform is adding a number of features and systems designed to protect legitimate users from inauthentic profiles and activity

• October 26, 2022 26 Oct'22

  Reported Horizon errors should have been ‘show-stopper’, public inquiry told

  Subpostmasters should have been given the benefit of the doubt over unexplained losses, but were hounded to pay money back, with lives ruined and innocent people prosecuted

• October 26, 2022 26 Oct'22

  Australia budget closes in on digital divide, cyber resilience

  Australia’s latest budget is geared towards providing better broadband connectivity in regional and rural areas, shoring up the cyber security posture of its businesses and plugging tech talent shortages, among other areas

• October 26, 2022 26 Oct'22

  UKCloud in liquidation: Troubled public sector cloud provider hit with winding up order

  Public sector sovereign cloud provider served with winding-up order nine months after an acquisition that was intended to address a £30m funding shortfall at the firm

• October 25, 2022 25 Oct'22

  Apple patches new iPhone zero-day

  Apple’s latest patch fixes yet another zero-day, as security issues keep surfacing in its mobile products

• October 25, 2022 25 Oct'22

  UK needs stronger regional innovation clusters outside South East

  Venture capital fund managers speak to Computer Weekly about the importance of innovation clusters to the UK tech ecosystem, and the need to develop further investment opportunities outside the South East

• October 25, 2022 25 Oct'22

  Germany: European Court of Justice asked to rule on legality of hacked EncroChat phone evidence

  Berlin’s Regional Court has asked the European Court of Justice to answer questions about whether the use of hacked EncroChat phone evidence complies with European law

• October 24, 2022 24 Oct'22

  Government speeds up NHS Digital and NHS England merger

  NHS bodies will now merge in early January 2023, aiming to create a single statutory body for NHS data and technology

• October 24, 2022 24 Oct'22

  Half of staff might quit after a cyber attack, report says

  Findings from a survey of CISOs, IT leaders and staffers reveal how experiencing a cyber incident may take a larger-than-thought toll on employee retention

• October 21, 2022 21 Oct'22

  Ukrainian and UK IT sectors to deepen collaboration, partnerships

  BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, and the IT Ukraine Association have signed an MoU to deepen collaboration between the UK and Ukrainian IT sectors, and champion new partnerships and growth opportunities

• October 21, 2022 21 Oct'22

  Did Truss authorise ‘war risk’ provocation over Black Sea?

  A UK Boeing RC-135W Rivet Joint spy plane was ordered to approach Russian territory in a Cold-War-style provocation just days after Liz Truss’s mini-budget collapsed

• October 20, 2022 20 Oct'22

  Manchester to launch digital strategy

  Four-year strategy to focus on smarter use of technology and data to make Manchester a sustainable and resilient city

• October 20, 2022 20 Oct'22

  Parliamentary committee launches inquiry into AI governance

  MPs will examine the impacts of artificial intelligence throughout the UK economy and how governance of the technology can be improved ahead of the government publishing its formal regulatory proposals

• October 20, 2022 20 Oct'22

  Cyber professional shortfall hits 3.4 million

  Shortage of cyber security professionals continues to grow and shows no signs of abating, says report

• October 19, 2022 19 Oct'22

  Greenland investigates potential blockchain-based election system

  Researchers have been funded to investigate blockchain-based online voting in Greenland

• October 19, 2022 19 Oct'22

  Treat cyber crime as a ‘strategic threat’, UK businesses told

  The government’s new National Cyber Advisory Board aims to help elevate cyber discussion and spur action in the business community

• October 18, 2022 18 Oct'22

  MoD must have clear delivery plan for digital strategy, says NAO

  While the Digital Strategy for Defence seems to be going well, the National Audit Office is concerned there is no overarching plan to implement it, or a clear way of measuring whether it is on track

• October 18, 2022 18 Oct'22

  Government introduces Electronic Trade Documents Bill

  Digital trade documents will be legally recognised as part of plans to reduce paper documents and speed up processing times

• October 18, 2022 18 Oct'22

  Subpostmaster federation failed its members when they needed it most

  A dereliction of duty saw subpostmaster federation ignore its members when IT problems hit and allowed the Post Office destroy their lives

• October 17, 2022 17 Oct'22

  IR35 reforms repeal scrapped: Government labelled ‘spineless’ over u-turn

  The contracting community has not taken kindly to the news that the government is rowing back its plans to repeal the IR35 reforms in the private and public sectors

• October 17, 2022 17 Oct'22

  Government u-turns on plans to scrap IR35 reforms in public and private sector from April 2023

  Chancellor Jeremy Hunt confirms that the planned repeal of the IR35 reforms in the public and private sector is cancelled

• October 17, 2022 17 Oct'22

  Biden ramps up China chip sanctions

  The war of words between China and the US has ramifications across the high-tech sector. We report on the latest developments

• October 14, 2022 14 Oct'22

  Annual costs of Hackney ransomware attack exceed £12m

  Hackney Council reveals new insight into the ongoing cost of a ransomware attack that devastated its systems two years ago

• October 14, 2022 14 Oct'22

  Office 365 email encryption flaw could pose risk to user privacy

  A vulnerability in Microsoft Office 365 Message Encryption could leave the contents of emails dangerously exposed, but with no fix coming it’s up to users to decide how at risk they are

• October 14, 2022 14 Oct'22

  Fujitsu to finally face blame for its part in Post Office Horizon scandal

  Fujitsu’s part in causing the extreme suffering of subpostmasters will be made clear as the IT supplier begins giving evidence at a statutory inquiry

• October 14, 2022 14 Oct'22

  Protecting children by scanning encrypted messages is ‘magical thinking’, says Cambridge professor

  Ross Anderson argues in a rebuttal to GCHQ experts that using artificial intelligence to scan encrypted messaging services is the wrong approach to protecting children and preventing terrorism

• October 13, 2022 13 Oct'22

  Dutch influence standards for post-quantum cryptography

  Cryptology group at Dutch research institute is involved in the two primary algorithms of the next NIST portfolio comprising four new standards

• October 13, 2022 13 Oct'22

  Perpetrators of subpostmaster suffering in Horizon scandal must face public inquiry

  Victims demand that the perpetrators of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal face the public inquiry

• October 13, 2022 13 Oct'22

  Tech critical to the UK’s prosperity, says Jacob Rees-Mogg

  Technology could provide the answer to the energy crisis, according to the secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy, as he hails tech as a way to guarantee prosperity for the country

• October 13, 2022 13 Oct'22

  Turing launches government-backed AI standards information hub

  The Alan Turing Institute has launched the AI Standards Hub jointly with the British Standards Institution and the National Physical Laboratory, backed by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

• October 12, 2022 12 Oct'22

  NCSC urges organisations to secure supply chains

  NCSC’s latest guidance package centres supply chain security, helping medium to large organisations assess and mitigate cyber risks from suppliers

• October 12, 2022 12 Oct'22

  French Supreme Court rejects EncroChat verdict after lawyers question secrecy over hacking operation

  France’s Supreme Court has sent a case back to the court of appeal after police failed to disclose technical details of EncroChat hacking operation

• October 12, 2022 12 Oct'22

  ICO selectively discloses reprimands for data protection breaches

  Data protection experts question ICO’s selective approach to publishing formal reprimands for contravening the law, after FoI request reveals the Cabinet Office was among the organisations reprimanded

• October 11, 2022 11 Oct'22

  Post Office scandal inquiry restarts with call for a pause amid disclosure controversy

  The statutory public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal has begun phase two with a request for an adjournment amid allegations that the Post Office is failing to meet its obligation to disclose all relevant documents

• October 11, 2022 11 Oct'22

  Public sector spend on IT climbed to £12.6bn in 2021

  Public sector bodies IT spend went up 10% last year, but the majority of the money went to large IT suppliers with 89% of the total spend going to so-called ‘tech titans’, according to a report from Tussell

• October 10, 2022 10 Oct'22

  Dutch infrastructure sector seeks closer collaboration with government

  Although the Netherlands government is increasingly realising how vital the country’s digital infrastructure is, it lacks sufficient policy-making and vision, say industry associations

• October 10, 2022 10 Oct'22

  BHRUT launches digital surgery clinic

  Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust’s digital surgery clinic, thought to be the first in the world, will give 700 patients access to a digital platform to help them prepare for surgery and speed up recovery

• October 10, 2022 10 Oct'22

  Ukraine and EU explore deeper cyber collaboration

  A Ukrainian delegation has met with officials from the EU’s ENISA cyber agency to explore deeper cooperation on cyber security issues

• October 09, 2022 09 Oct'22

  ODI food poverty study shows black families and North East suffering most

  A food poverty data report from the Open Data Institute shows black families and the North East of England are suffering the most

• October 06, 2022 06 Oct'22

  EU rolling out measures for online safety and AI liability

  The European Council has approved the passage of the Digital Services Act to protect people’s rights online, while the European Commission has announced proposals to help those negatively affected by artificial intelligence to claim compensation

• October 06, 2022 06 Oct'22

  Proposals for scanning encrypted messages should be cut from Online Safety Bill, say researchers

  Automatic scanning of messaging services for illegal content could lead to one billion false alarms each day in Europe

• October 04, 2022 04 Oct'22

  Public sector aims to close digital skills gap with private sector

  Digital leaders from the public sector have stressed the need to build up the digital skills and capabilities of civil servants to successfully deliver the government’s digital transformation ambitions, but not at the expense of supplier ecosystems

• October 04, 2022 04 Oct'22

  IR35 reforms to be scrapped: What IT contractors need to know

  News of the government’s plans to scrap the IR35 reforms took the contracting world by surprise, but IT contractors are being warned off making hasty changes to the way they work just yet