Industry news

New regulation has been backed which will stop suppliers from non-EU countries from bidding for public sector contracts, if home markets do not offer equal opportunities to EU businesses.

The new rulings will apply to public sector contracts worth more than €5 million and where goods and services from outside of EU terrorises make up more than 50 per cent of the total value.

The regulation would make undeveloped countries exempt from the rulings in order to prevent harming economic growth in these cases, despite such measures critics have said that the regulation threatens to damage the UK by establishing protectionist trade measures.

European trade commissioner Karel De Gucht, said: “I am a firm believer in open markets. Europe’s public sector market is one of the most open in the world and should remain so. This stands in contrast to many third (non-EU) countries.”

EU creates new procurement rulings

The lessons from food supply chain contamination last year, including the discovery of horse meat, have still not been learnt according to Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee MP Anne McIntosh.

As of yet no results or convictions have been made from investigations into the revelations that meat products had contained contaminated products.

McIntosh commented that: “Retailers still need to work on smaller supply chains,” adding that “By buying local we can more likely trace all sources of our food.”

The committee said that the transportation of meat still faced high risk and that more analysis of food should be carried out.

Details of significant delays to the Ministry of Defence’s new recruitment project have emerged, with suggestions that the project is currently two years behind schedule.

The Recruitment Partnering Project, which is focused on driving online recruitment to the armed services, may not be operational until April 2015 according to a report in The Times.

Delays have been attributed to a lack of progress in establishing computer hosting systems, resulting in lost applications and missed recruitment targets.

A MoD finance official said: "If the ICT hosting solution is not put in place then the MoD risks not gaining the appropriate number of recruits needed.”

In order to rectify the schedule, the MoD is reportedly considering investing further resources in a new IT platform in order to prevent further delays.

A MoD spokesman said: “In December last year we acknowledged a number of problems with the Army and Capita recruitment partnership. Ministers have gripped these problems and put in place a number of fixes to correct the issues that had emerged.”

MoD reveals new ICT strategy

Verizon has announced an infrastructure deal with Tesco, designed to centralise services for the supermarket giant.

The agreement comes in support of a general application and services centralisation programme by the supermarket, which seeks to link suppliers, customers and employees of Tesco together on one system, across 12 countries around the globe.

The infrastructure programme is expected to drive increased delivery times, while improving overall efficiencies in order to provide cost savings.

Mike McNamara, Tesco’s CIO, said: “Verizon has the scope and expertise to help us deliver on our vision wherever we are around the globe. Whether in our stores, online, or on the move, we need our infrastructure to support our business goals.”

Leading dairy company partners with Verizon

Vodafone looking to the future after selling its stake in Verizon Wireless

South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has achieved savings and improved reporting since employing a new accounts management system from Real Asset Management’s (RAM).

The Trust which has a large number of assets spread across a wide area employed RAM to deliver a unified system across different sites.

The accounting technology delivered “an increase in overall efficiencies and time savings" according to the Trust.

Since the deployment of RAM’s management system (known as Asset4000), the Trust has been able to quickly access increasingly detailed reports, ultimately increasing the overall accuracy of financial reporting.

NHS launches £100 million fund for innovative IT

Augmented reality (AR) services are set to become the next big thing within enterprise level business processes.

Research firm Gartner has highlighted AR technology as being poised to become the next big thing in enterprise services, with the technology having practicality in employee training, service workflow, real time decision making and in business processes.

The visualisation technology, which is perhaps most publicly known as being used within Google Glass, is being seen as an enabler of many other services, particularly their use within a mobile environment.

Gartner analyst Tuong Huy Nguyen said: "AR leverages and optimises the use of other technologies such as mobility, location, 3D content management and imaging and recognition. It is especially useful in the mobile environment because it enhances the user's senses via digital instruments to allow faster responses or decision-making."

"AR is most useful as a tool in industries where workers are either in the field, do not have immediate access to information, or jobs that require one or both hands and the operator's attention."

Data discovery to become a main focus

French based telecommunications company Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has been awarded a contract to deliver communication and collaboration services to Fingal County Council, one of Irelands largest county councils.

Alcatel-Lucent will provide a Unified Communication and Collaboration solution which is designed to reduce the council’s communication costs while improving mobile working to 1,200 staff situated across 22 different sites.

The contract will see the provision of support services for new communications equipment as well as mobile services designed to allow users to use their mobile phones as they were desk phones.

The move to outsource 70 per cent of the probation services is to exclude the management of high-risk criminals according to leaked guidance from the Ministry of Justice.

Experts have expressed concern that by leaving high-risk offenders, who in some cases are publicly notorious, will leave the public sector probation service stuck with providing high risk services with added media attention, while the private sector benefits from low risk offender.

The leak comes as the House of Commons discusses the possibility of a vote in both houses before probation privatisation can go ahead.

Justice secretary, Chris Grayling, told a justice committee last month that: “The aim is to have those two teams in place by April and to have started the process of migrating cases so they are properly allocated across those two groups, but without an absolute requirement to do so by 1 April”.

“We need to make sure public safety is guaranteed. If a particular offender is in the wrong group but there is a good reason for them staying with the current offender manager, they will do so."

Labour calls for deadline on prison improvements

Prison privatisation plans scrapped

Outsourcing firm Capita has been awarded a five-year contract to operate the London congestion charge programme, with the option or a further five-year extension.

The contract is expected to generate revenues of around £145 million, which will start in November 2015.

Services to be provided as part of the contract includes BPO, IT and contact centre services.

The congestion charge scheme was originally designed and created by Capita back in 2003, but the company lost the contract to IBM in 2009.

Capita shares drop following the departure of CEO

Capita awarded nine-year IT contract with Croydon Council

David Higgins, new chairman of the High Speed 2 (HS2), has said that he is looking to reduce the cost of the HS2 project in order to increase political support.

The comments made on BBC Radio come as the HS2 scheme faces heavy criticism from both within the media and parliament regarding the cost, impact and practicality of the planned route.

The Labour party has indicated that they would be more cautious in their approach to HS2 and allocation resources to the programme.

Despite the criticism PM David Cameron has hailed the project as a keystone in modernising UK infrastructure and growing the economy.

Report recommends cancellation of HS2

100,000 jobs to be created by HS2