Industry news

Leicester City Council has moved to tender for a new benefits and revenue system, with a seven year contract being offered for the service which will be expected to deliver efficiency and cost savings.

The tender specifies an integrated service from one provider which will provide management and reporting tools.

The new system is expected to improve collection rates of council taxes. The value of the contract has not been revealed but the contract will contain the option for extension on an annual basis.

Leicestershire Council Saves £10m Through Online Auctions

IBM secures Leicester NHS contract

The UK Government is moving to scrap plans to recruit a private consortium to run a military procurement service after all bidders pulled out but one.

The tendering process was designed to operate under a GoCo (Government-owned, contractor-operated) arrangement, with the tendering for a outsourced provider expected to deliver increased efficiency.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond, said that the withdrawals created uncertainty as to: “whether it is in the public interest to proceed with only a single commercial bidder and an internal option, or whether alternative approaches should be considered".

MoD reveals new ICT strategy

MoJ tenders for £108 million ITO contract as part of future procurement strategy

David Cameron presided over the opening of IDEALondon, a partnership between UCL, Cisco and DC Thomson, which is designed to help start-ups in Tech City.

The partnership between the different groups is designed to provide support and mentoring services to UK start-ups, with the IDEALondon workspace situated in Tech City being able to cater for around fifteen companies with around one hundred individuals.

Start-ups will also be in the position to receive funding from the support partnership as well as advanced technology and services.

David Cameron said that the support program would help the UK economy to grow, develop cutting edge technologies and promote innovation.

Government provides £50 million for Tech City development

UK tech investment at highest levels in a decade

The UK government has announced grants for SMEs of £3,000 to move to superfast broadband services.

The proposal was announced by David Cameron and culture secretary Maria Muller and will available SMEs in 10 cities originally.

The funding for transition to superfast broadband is designed to increase outside investment in the UK and encourage UK businesses to embrace new technology.

David Cameron said: “Up to £3,000 of broadband vouchers for small business in these cities is not only a massive boost for growth in the UK, but also has the potential to bring China to Cardiff, Brazil to Bristol and the Emirates to Edinburgh in an increased export market”.

UK broadband speeds increase rapidly as government spending sees strong results

Capgemini has won a seven year outsourcing contract to provide back-office processes to Norfolk and Suffolk police forces.

Suffolk and Norfolk Police and Crime Commissioners have commissioned Capgemini to provide support and enterprise resource planning services to the district forces, in a deal valued at £3.75 million.

The contract is expected to deliver savings through increased efficiency while promoting collaboration between different forces through the sharing of support functions.

Stephen Bett, Police and Crime Commissioner for Norfolk, said: “Anything that cuts down on administration and process and frees up police time has to be a good thing. This is yet another example of collaboration between our two forces in action and will help both be more effective and more efficient.”

New police procurement strategy recommended

Emergency services bid for shared services funding

The BBC are looking to tender for the provision of a mobile service for audience engagement.

The service would allow the audience to interact live with protection teams through mobile and online channels as the BBC looks to interact with users on social media platforms.

The service would be employed on fast moving programs that contained a live element, such as sport, music, news and live radio.

The contract is valued at between £500,000 and £530,000 per year, extending for two with the option for extension.

The notice for tender detailed that: “The use of SMS messages is still highly popular with some sections of the audience, especially with local radio and World Service listeners,

but social media services such as Twitter and Facebook are becoming increasingly important as well.”

BBC employs management consultancy firm to improve efficiency

BBC reports two North Yorkshire councils are to stop sharing services

The House of Commons has been called on to reduce the length of the government’s procurement processes.

Labour MP Meg Hillier spoke has called for “serious step change in how contracts are drawn up”, saying that the length of procurement processes in the public sector was impacting performance and putting off SMEs.

The comments made in the House of Commons called for similar lengths for procurement processes as achieved by governments in the U.S. and Sweden, which typically take between 7 and 12 weeks.

Meg Hillier also criticised an on-going two-and-a-half year contract for the Ministry of Justice, were the procurement processes is still uncompleted.

In defence of the government’s procurement record, Nick Hurd, Cabinet Office minister for civil society, said that the average procurement process had been reduced by 40 per cent, making the UK’s procurement process faster than European counterparts.

Public sector procurement facing ‘crisis of confidence’

Wales launches National Procurement Service

Basildon Borough Council has announced savings of £600,000 from the first year of operating a self-service customer contact centre.

The centre has been delivered using technology from Qmatic, and forms part of the councils Customer Experience Programme of Change.

The centre has been also been used to deliver improved customer experiences to the 180,000 visitors the council service in a year including reduced wait-times and increased service guidance.

Tom Walker, business relationship manager for customer services at Basildon Borough Council, said: An improved customer experience means serving visitors with the right information, through the right channel in the right time - ultimately getting the basics right”.

Lee Washbrook, manager of customer services at Basildon Borough Council, described how the new service would need time before customers become accustomed to the self service system: “We were expecting to see a slight dip in satisfaction levels while our customers acclimatised to the new system and layout, as it can be challenging to garner support for such bold changes.”

Sitel named Global Contact Centre Outsourcing leader

UK contact centres to move to the cloud in 2013

The Chancellor George Osborne called for continued support of the Government’s economic plans as he revealed strong economic recovery from the 2007 recession.

The Chancellor announced in his address to the Commons that the UK economy increased at a faster rate than any other major European country, but that Britain could not afford to relax in carrying forward cost cutting measures and long term sustainability goals.

The Chancellor detailed the state of Britain’s finances and revealed changes to pensions, energy bills, property taxes, new funding for businesses and a range of other measures designed to support the UK’s continued growth in order to reduce historic debt.

Key economic pledges and achievements included:

Developing the UK economy:

• Achieving growth that outpaced all other major European economic nations

• On track to meet targets one year ahead of schedule by achieving no deficits by 2019

A focus on developing the UK infrastructure:

• Support of shale gas as an energy source including tax breaks for energy companies

• Plans for £375bn of investment in energy, transport, communications, and water projects

• Development of HS2

• Supporting housing construction with a billion pounds in loans

Reducing unemployment:

• Achieving the lowest proportion of unemployed households in 17 years

• The creation of 400,000 new jobs , 2 million more jobs than in 2010

• Ending job taxes on those aged under 21

• Developing skills through better and offering frees school meals in reception, year 1 and year 2

• The Government will increase funding to Job Centre plus to help 16 and 17 year olds

The Chancellor announced that the Government will be freezing fuel duty prices throughout 2014 and will seek to help small and medium size companies by extending the availability of business loans. The Government will seek to keep Britain globally completive by keeping business taxes low and will seek to bring industry investment to Britain by offering film, theatre and social enterprise tax subsidies.

The Autumn Statement reflects the Chancellors strategy to keep the British economy growing, with the better than expected performance not being used to ease cuts, but instead being used to drive growth and reduce overall debt. Despite the Chancellor's attempt to display positive economic news, his presentation to the Commons had little effect on the London equity market. The FTSE 100 remained almost unchanged at 6,510 and in the currency markets, the pound stayed in negative territory throughout the statement.

Skills are increasingly not keeping pace with the move to leverage Big Data according to findings in a new survey.

SAP carried out research which revealed that businesses were struggling to deploy the necessary skills and resources.

The research found that 92 per cent of respondents had seen data amounts grow over the last 12 months, however users were struggling to effectively employ the data effectively.

Respondents revealed that they felt limited by skills shortages in data science, with 84 per cent of respondents desiring specialised analytics training in order to integrate data services into every-day services.

James Fisher, VP of Marketing for Analytics Solutions, SAP, described how “it is critical that companies empower their staff with both the skills and systems to self-service their analytics needs.”

Big Data still yet to mature

Study shows rapid uptake in big data usage