EURIM Monthly Newsletter
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1) Turning the
Challenges of the Spending Review into Opportunities for the Recovery
2) Securing the
More Effective Use of ICT to Deliver More for Less
3) Securing the Jobs of the Future for the UK - and
your Constituency
4)
Bringing the World-Class Fixed and Mobile Broadband to a Business
Near You
5)
Joining Up Training and Immigration Policies for Local Access to
World-Class Skills
6)
Information Governance for Global Competitive Advantage, not just Local Security
1)
Turning the Challenges
of the Spending Review into Opportunities for the Recovery
Objectives for Quarter 4 and
Strategy and Tactics for 2011
On
20th October, immediately after the announcement of the spending review, the
governing council met to review the current programme and discuss plans for
2011. Time is no longer on our side. We have to move from studying problems to
securing action to address them. That means a short-term focus on bringing
politicians, industry and officials together to identify and remove
the barriers to implementing those solutions on which there is agreement. In
parallel, the working groups are being asked to look at how to use short-term
activities to also bring forward long-term change, including in the ways that
policy is formulated, scrutinised and implemented in a world where confidence in
the wisdom and competence of central government can no longer be taken for
granted.
2)
Securing the More Effective Use of ICT to Deliver More for Less
Rebuilding the image of ICT as part of the solution not the
problem
The
Public Service Delivery Group has been tasked to produce succinct briefing
material on how best to use ICT to help deliver efficiencies. It has also been
asked to circulate interim reports on its work on good practice in planning and
procurement for widespread peer review. The aim is to draw in new members and
partners to help secure action on the improvements needed to improve value for
money, including by reducing the overheads (both time and money) of planning,
procurement and bidding.
The forward programme for 2011
will begin by focussing on collecting case studies of success to help reduce the
growing risk that new technologies and implementation partners will be used to
replicate approaches that have failed in the past. There is a particular
interest in low cost, rapid payback, projects where the processes (people as
well as technology) inter-operate with existing systems, use open-standards (or
those which are effectively “open”) and are suitable for widespread replication
and extension – i.e. they also include low cost, unobtrusive routines for
handling security, resilience and privacy to the standards now expected.
The aim is to make the case studies available via the House of Commons Library
to answer questions from MPs and for use by those working on the many Party
Political and Think Tank exercises that are likely on the means of improving
public service delivery at affordable cost over the year ahead. Please e-mail
eurim@eurim.org if you would like to
participate in this exercise, stating whether you would wish to be part of the
leadership/planning team or merely to contribute case studies and/or review the
outputs. Please also suggest groups with whom we should co-operate on policy
studies in this area.
3) Securing the Jobs of the Future for the UK - and
your Constituency
Putting national political agendas into
local context and vice versa
The aim is to assemble hunting groups of
MPs and employers who will work together to ensure that local communities (not
just London and a few technology clusters) are locations of choice for those
working for businesses that could be located anywhere in the world.
That will entail bringing forward investment in
infrastructure (particularly fixed and mobile business broadband) and
skills (updating those already in the workforce) and ensuring information
governance and fiscal regimes that are trusted world-wide and attract
rather than repel global businesses. We need to put national policies into local
context and use local concerns to inform national policy. That means addressing
long-standing policy disconnects.
The
Knowledge Economy Group chaired by Stephen McPartland MP is taking an
immediate look at the need to join up skills and immigration policy. For
example, the
list of trusted sponsors for those wishing to study in the UK under the
points system includes reputable and well known education and training providers
alongside others with similar names operating from back rooms over restaurants
with no sign of any education or training facilities.
Our
response
to the recent BIS consultation on Skills for Sustainable Skills recommended
that:
"The UK Borders Agencies
should actively support reputable accreditation services routines to help
enhance the UK position as a global leader in world-class education and
training, welcoming those coming to “learn and return” while limiting and
discouraging fraud and abuse on the part of those simply seeking to bypass
immigration controls."
Corporate members with global career paths wish similar action to halt abuse of
the routines for supposedly skilled workers, making a clear distinction between
those sponsored by reputable employers and those producing paper “evidence”.
4)
Bringing the World-Class Fixed and Mobile Broadband to a Business
Near You
Removing the obstacles to allowing
market forces to work
The immediate task is to summarise and
prioritise the actions necessary to ensure that the obstacles are removed
rapidly and efficiently. We need to bring forward investment in time to avoid
the need for bandwidth rationing in the summer of 2012 - when most of the
population expects to be able to go online to watch the event(s) of their
choice, including while stuck in the traffic jams caused by the priority lanes
to get the participants to the venues. That will require political understanding
of the sources of market funding, (including public and private sector business
communications budgets, content subscriptions and Internet advertising) and of
the importance of technical issues such as spectrum availability. Rory Stewart
MP and Therese Coffey MP have joined the
Communications Group co-chaired by Malcolm Harbour MEP and David Harrington
of the Communications Managers Association.
Debate has been moved forward by the
material on shared infrastructure and funding models in the
National Infrastructure Plan. The sub-group (chaired by Anthony l’Anson of
Alcatel-Lucent) looking at the
procurement of
shared network services
has agreed to collect case studies showing how the alleged barriers to sharing
(business rates, state aid rules, planning guidance, health and safety, codes of
connection etc.) have already been overcome or avoided. The aim is to help
expedite the availability of authoritative guidance and thus bring forward
investment. The case studies will be moved from the password protected members
area to the public area as soon as they have been validated.
Current debate is muddied by allegations
as to the scale and nature of demand and the costs of provision. A paper
summarising current and planned spend of communications, the means of meeting
that demand, the business models of the major players and the various sources of
information is being drafted. It will shortly be circulated to members and
observers for peer review. The provisional finding is that there is no shortage
of funds (including from major users wanting to contract reliable, resilient
bandwidth and from UK and international pension and sovereign wealth funds
seeking “utility” investments) provided that market forces are allowed to work.
5)
Joining Up Training and Immigration Policies for Local Access to
World-Class Skills
Towards integrated policies for UK workforce skills acquisition and
updating
Employers have
become used to importing skills to make up for long-standing deficiencies in the
local supply. At the same time many Universities and Colleges have come to
depend on overseas students to make up for equally long-standing deficiencies in
UK funding regimes. Current policy is to address immigration as a security/fraud
issue and FE/HE funding as an education (i.e. first entry to the workforce)
issue. The need to join them up is covered in section 3 above.
There is also an urgent need to give adequate priority to
reskilling those already in the workforce or about to be made redundant. For
example a short term “crisis” has been identified with regard to cybersecurity
skills (from information assurance and forensics to surveillance and electronic
warfare). This may be about to become very much worse as players compete for
staff to meet commitments for what needs to be operational by summer 2012. The
need is not just to secure the Olympic Games and infrastructures around them,
but everything else that is likely to come under strain (see
section 4 above) let alone attack. Meanwhile, however, hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of staff with related skills are being made redundant as a result of
defence and other cutbacks.
We are therefore looking at the practicality of a short order
exercise to:
-
Identify the groups already
active in the cybersecurity skills space (updating previous work).
-
Identify relevant initiatives
that are already under way and the status of those planned.
-
Identify who is willing to
work with who, to achieve what and to what timescale.
-
Invite others to join those
who have agreed to work together.
The aim is to use the cybersecurity skills crisis to pilot
approaches that are long overdue with regard to our mainstream education and
training system. We are therefore seeking to recruit those who are under
pressure to address the short-term skills needs (quality as well as quantity) of
their own organisations and customers and those willing to pool existing
materials and training modules, delivering them when and where needed. If the
approach works it will hopefully transform attitudes towards building on the
longer-term exercises on cybersecurity needs and career structures that are
being done by others. If so, we can then think about applying the lessons to
education and training policy as a whole and break out of the current sterile
debate on funding.
The scoping meeting is on 8th November and the aim is to have
plans ready for announcement on 2nd December. Note that if the analysis is
correct there is a need for having the shared delivery of many of the update
modules under way by Easter. E-mail me c/o
eurim@eurim.org if you would like to join the leadership or implementation
teams.
6)
Information Governance for Global Competitive Advantage, not just Local Security
Can society afford to rely on security
by afterthought not design?
We had an excellent attendance at the reception for the
launch of the
Security by Design report on 27th October, including many of the officials
responsible for policy in this area as well as the suppliers responsible for
delivery. Carlos Solari, former CIO at the White House, who chaired the working
group, made the key point: “We can no longer afford the cost of treating
security as an afterthought. Not only is it more expensive, it does not work.”
He also gave examples from the private sector of how the change of approach had
let to major savings. We also used the opportunity to publicly announce
plans to follow up the report with exercises on "good practice in security
procurement, including the procurement of advice" and on "the supply of security
skills, including training and accreditation, at all levels".
Bringing together the Race Online and Get Safe Online
messages
The discussion in the session on Online Safety at the
Parliament and the Internet Conference found a need to prevent different
messages cancelling each other out in the minds of the target audiences. We
therefore plan a workshop to bring together those who already run programmes for
thousands of in-house staff and contractors looking after corporate and customer
data. The aim is to see if they can work together to extend that approach to
cover customer education as part of their marketing strategies -
"this is how to deal safely with us online". The workshops will be aimed at:
The objective is to have pilot programmes, which link to and
compliment Race Online and Get Safe Online et al, under way in time
for public announcement as success stories next
spring (e.g. Infosec). Please e-mail
eurim@eurim.org to suggest who should be invited to participate.
Please let me know if you would like an invitation for your organisation and, if
so, who it should be sent to and what they would expect bring to the table -
e.g. resources, budget, responsibilities etc.
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