News

IT for government and public sector

• November 21, 2022 21 Nov'22

  NHS federated data platform must avoid repeating Care.data mistakes, says national data guardian

  UK’s national data guardian agrees with the ambitions of the platform, but warns that the programme must avoid ‘common pitfalls around trust and transparency’

• November 18, 2022 18 Nov'22

  Is Elon Musk’s Twitter safe, and should you stop using it?

  With a litany of security and compliance issues exposed and in many cases caused by Elon Musk’s takeover of social media platform Twitter, some may be asking if it’s still safe or appropriate to use

• November 18, 2022 18 Nov'22

  Post Office scandal inquiry’s expert IT witness ‘troubled’ by his findings

  Controversial Post Office Horizon system lacked the integrity required to trust accounting data and contained ‘joke’ coding akin to an ‘overly engineered mousetrap’, inquiry told

• November 17, 2022 17 Nov'22

  Brexit deregulation will make UK next Silicon Valley, vows Hunt

  Chancellor vows to revolutionise how the IT industry is regulated to spur competition, investment and innovation in a technological ‘Big Bang’

• November 17, 2022 17 Nov'22

  Another Log4Shell warning after Iranian attack on US government

  The breach of a US federal body by an Iranian threat actor exploiting the Adobe Log4j Log4Shell vulnerability has prompted a fresh flurry of patching

• November 17, 2022 17 Nov'22

  Scottish government to pilot digital identity platform in early 2023

  Pilot of Scotland’s digital identity platform will be run in partnership with Disclosure Scotland, using secure sign-on and identity verification

• November 17, 2022 17 Nov'22

  NHS Digital confirms final settlement of £3.95m with HMRC following conclusion of IR35 investigation

  The health service’s digital arm has paid HMRC £3.95m in unpaid tax to cover the cost of its IR35 compliance errors

• November 17, 2022 17 Nov'22

  HMRC will begin migration from Government Gateway to One Login in summer 2023

  One Login for Government programme has the objective of simplifying access to central government, says HMRC chief technology and design officer

• November 16, 2022 16 Nov'22

  Team working on controversial Post Office Horizon EPOSS software was the ‘joke of the building’

  Former members of the ICL team developing software for the Post Office Horizon EPOSS system were unqualified and engaged in poor software development practices, public inquiry told

• November 16, 2022 16 Nov'22

  Global network fragmentation a source of increasing risk

  Risk consultancy’s report says the weaponisation of cyber space and geopolitical clashes herald a breakdown of global networks into distinct regional or national architectures

• November 15, 2022 15 Nov'22

  Post Office changed view of Horizon problems before roll-out, because of a ‘sunk cost fallacy’

  Insider tells public inquiry that the Post Office continued to roll out the controversial Horizon system despite a ‘considerable’ number of errors, because it was too committed

• November 15, 2022 15 Nov'22

  Commoditisation of NHS tech is a problem, says NHS Digital interim CEO

  NHS Digital interim CEO Simon Bolton calls for a stronger mandate from the centre around the systems in use in the NHS, with no more than four to six electronic patient record systems used across the country

• November 15, 2022 15 Nov'22

  APP fraud volumes expected to double by 2026, says report

  Losses to authorised push payment fraud in the UK are expected to climb to over $1.5bn in the next four years. Meanwhile, the NAO accuses the Home Office of lagging on progress to tackle the issue

• November 15, 2022 15 Nov'22

  NHS Scotland extends video consultation scheme

  The Scottish Near Me video consultation platform can now be used in community settings such as libraries and health and care centres for GP appointments, hospital appointments, care homes, dietetics and mental health support

• November 15, 2022 15 Nov'22

  Inside Singapore’s public sector IT strategy

  Adopting a platform approach with products that can scale across the board and building a strong engineering bench are some of the key aspects in Singapore’s public sector IT strategy

• November 15, 2022 15 Nov'22

  Met Police removes nearly two-thirds of people from gangs matrix

  Legal action by human rights group Liberty forces Met Police to overhaul its gangs violence matrix database

• November 14, 2022 14 Nov'22

  Sadiq Khan launches Data for London Advisory Board

  Board will look at how to join up and share data between public and private London organisations in an effort to build a stronger data economy and improve public services

• November 11, 2022 11 Nov'22

  Volume of self-reported breaches to ICO jumps 30%

  The number of self-reported breaches to the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office soared by nearly 30% in the 12 months to 30 June 2022

• November 11, 2022 11 Nov'22

  MoD recruits Immersive Labs to bolster cyber resilience

  UK’s Ministry of Defence will run cyber drills and address its security talent gap with Immersive Labs’ CyberPro, Cyber Crisis Simulator and Application Security products

• November 11, 2022 11 Nov'22

  Defra confirms final settlement of £86.5m with HMRC over ‘historic’ IR35 status assessment errors

  The conclusion of HMRC’s long-running enquiry into errors made by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs when assessing the IR35 status of its contractors has seen it pay a final settlement of £86.5m to the tax collection agency

• November 10, 2022 10 Nov'22

  Scrutinising AI requires holistic, end-to-end system audits

  Understanding the full impacts of artificial intelligence requires organisations to conduct end-to-end social and technical audits of their systems, but the process comes with a number of challenges

• November 10, 2022 10 Nov'22

  ODI fuel poverty survey shows young adults most hard up

  A fuel poverty data report and index from the Open Data Institute shows that young adults and people in multi-occupied accommodation are most at risk

• November 09, 2022 09 Nov'22

  Anything can happen so IT teams need to be ready, says Kyiv City Council CIO

  Kyiv City Council’s IT team has experienced challenges faced by no other tech department and is determined to use what it has learnt to take Ukraine forward when the war is over

• November 09, 2022 09 Nov'22

  Microsoft serves smorgasbord of six zero-days

  November’s Patch Tuesday fixes significantly fewer vulnerabilities of late, but includes six actively-exploited zero-days, three of them of critical severity

• November 09, 2022 09 Nov'22

  Fujitsu expert witness in subpostmaster trial ‘manoeuvred’ into role, public inquiry told

  A former Fujitsu technology expert who defended the Horizon system’s robustness in court was unhappy after being ‘manoeuvred’ into acting as an expert witness, public inquiry hears

• November 08, 2022 08 Nov'22

  Six subpostmaster convictions referred for appeal in Scotland

  Six former subpostmasters in Scotland will have appeals against criminal convictions heard after being referred by Scotland’s Criminal Cases Review Commission

• November 07, 2022 07 Nov'22

  UK climate tech startup investment doubles in 2022

  Climate technology investment has nearly doubled in the UK over the past year and is growing globally, but questions remain over how to scale capacity and whether the necessary change will occur in time to prevent climate catastrophe

• November 07, 2022 07 Nov'22

  Public sector IT projects need ethical data practices from start

  Data ethics needs to be integrated into public sector IT projects from the very start, and considered throughout every stage of the process, to be effective

• November 07, 2022 07 Nov'22

  Department for Education escapes £10m fine over data misuse

  Department entrusted data on 28 million children to a company called Trustopia, which turned out to be anything but trustworthy, but has escaped a £10m fine under new rules

• November 04, 2022 04 Nov'22

  Microsoft: Nation-state cyber attacks became increasingly destructive in 2022

  The willingness of nation-state actors to conduct destructive cyber attacks is a source of grave concern, as Microsoft’s latest annual Digital Defence Report lays bare

• November 04, 2022 04 Nov'22

  Crown Hosting Data Centres secures £250m government colocation deal

  Cabinet Office joint venture with Ark Data Centres secures a second term providing colocation services to the government

• November 04, 2022 04 Nov'22

  Data Lab bolsters business execs data course in time with Data Summit

  Course focuses on the leadership skills needed to design, resource and implement a data strategy that will enable organisational change

• November 03, 2022 03 Nov'22

  Microsoft pledges $100m in new IT support for Ukraine

  Microsoft will continue to offer free-of-charge technology support to Ukraine for the foreseeable future

• November 03, 2022 03 Nov'22

  All NHS staff should have basic AI training, says report

  A report by the NHS AI Lab and Health Education England calls for all health and care staff to receive training in artificial intelligence as the technology will be increasingly adopted in healthcare practice

• November 03, 2022 03 Nov'22

  UK and Japan join forces on digital government

  Countries sign memorandum of cooperation to share ideas and strategies on digital government initiatives

• November 02, 2022 02 Nov'22

  Shadow digital secretary outlines Labour’s tech priorities

  Labour’s digital and technology plans focus on reining in the power of the tech giants, boosting connectivity across the UK, and improving online safety

• November 02, 2022 02 Nov'22

  UK spent £6.4m on secret cyber package for Ukraine

  Westminster has revealed for the first time the existence of a previously top-secret security programme that has been helping Ukraine fend off Russian cyber attacks

• November 02, 2022 02 Nov'22

  Game of ‘hardball’ in Horizon negotiations left subpostmasters exposed to tragedy

  ‘Hardball’ negotiations between the government, the Post Office and ICL meant subpostmasters were ignored and thrown into a tragedy that could have been averted

• November 01, 2022 01 Nov'22

  A third of UK cyber leaders want to quit, report says

  Nearly a third of UK security leaders are considering leaving their current role, and more than half are struggling to keep on top of their workload

• 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