EURIM Monthly Newsletter

Summary Version

The full text for the newsletter summarised below is at http://www.eurim.org.uk/activities/newsletter.pdf

Some items link to material in the members’ area. Please email admin@eurim.org if you do not have your password to hand.

1)  Good Practice in Identity and Information Governance

Two Home Secretaries were among the MPs who attended the showcase on 10th June organised by the Personal Identity and Data Sharing Group. Margaret Moran MP opened the event, inviting Nick Palmer MP to describe his exercise to look at industry applications, reporting to Meg Hillier MP, as minister for the ID Card. Philip Dunne MP described the Group's plans to reset the agenda around good practice in information governance and introduced the guest speakers, Martin Kearsley of VocaLink and Duncan Hine of IPS. The case studies are being written up for wider distribution. The group is also looking at publicising and building on the FAME (FrAmework for Multi-agency Environments http://www.fame-uk.org/) toolkit developed with £8 million of ODPM funding as one of the ways forward.

2) UK Internet Governance Forum: UK messages to the World: 11th July

Members should have received invitations to participate in an interactive Seminar to identify the messages from the UK on the key issues affecting the development and use of the Internet. If not, please e-mail Laura.Hutchison@nominet.org.uk. The event is presented by Nominet on behalf of industry, in collaboration with the Rt Hon Alun Michael MP and with support of the Department for Business. The engagement of industry people is vital if we in the UK are to influence the future.  The Seminar will focus on issues of importance to UK stakeholders, bringing together messages from the UK to take to the international debate on Internet Governance in Hyderabad in December.

3) Minister Welcomes E-Crime Reduction Partnership

On 20th May the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee Personal Internet Safety enquiry team met with Ministers to discuss the Government Response to the Select Committee (transcript at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld/lduncorr/s&t200508ev1.pdf) and learned of significant new thinking on the part of government. Vernon Coaker, the minister responsible at the Home Office said they would support the creation of the Internet Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership on which the Rt Hon Alun Michael MP, has been working. Support for the creation of this is the main task of the EURIM E-Crime Group. Please e-mail eurim@eurim.org to participate.

4) The Transformation of Public Service Delivery

The group met on 11th June to discuss the report and recommendations from the “dialogues” exercise and a revised draft is due to be circulated to participants before the end of the month. The follow up programme will focus on e-participation, monitoring, accountability and scrutiny, with regard to policy formation, implementation and ongoing service delivery, including from the perspective of the recipients. This raises challenges of people processes more than of technology.

5) Addressing the worsening UK IT Skills shortfall

On 2nd June the Council of Professors and Heads of Computing published a “Study on the IT Labour market in the UK” and E-Skills UK, the sector skills council for the ICT industries, is currently consulting on its forward strategy. The chairman of PITCOM will be leading an all-party delegation (with parliamentary representatives from ApComms and EURIM) to meet the Minister next month. The current EURIM plans are to focus on Security Skills, where the problems are most acute, building on the Cybersecurity KTN skills mapping exercise, which had its first workshop on 4th June. 

6) Communications Regulation

The medium term objective of this group is to facilitate balanced inputs to the EU Telecoms Review and subsequent parliamentary scrutiny but discussions at the Broadband Stakeholder Group conference “Beyond pipe Dreams” indicated strong support for short order exercises on Business Rates and on the aggregation of local demand to help pull through infrastructure investment. Neither topic appears well addressed by others, for a variety of reasons. We will therefore explore whether there is support for addressing these via EURIM and, if so, in partnership with which partners.  The UK-IGF will be co-operating with the European Parliament delegation and Malcolm Harbour MEP will chair a session on 11th July (see 2 above) accordingly.

7) Three Year Plan

We will shortly be offering advance copies of the Draft Three Year Plan for EURIM to Parliamentary, Corporate and Associate Members, hopefully in time to allow revisions in the light of feedback before this is tabled for discussion at the AGM. Please let me know if you would like a copy.