Industry news

Security Firm G4S are to take two thirds of the civilian staff working for the Lincolnshire Police over a ten year contract.

The Police Authority expects to see significant savings which will be used to extend the front line deployment of officers. The move has attracted the attention of ten other Police Authorities who are looking to make similar savings.

Barry Young, chairman of Lincolnshire Police Authority, said "This is not a total solution and the authority still faces significant financial challenges, but it does provide a solid foundation to secure quality and value for money policing of our communities in the future".

Developers situated at Canary Wharf are looking to the success of Silicon Roundabout, as well as media and telecoms.

Developers at Canary Wharf are moving to attract up and coming IT companies as they aim to emulate Shoreditch’s based Silicon Roundabout success.

John Garwood, Canary Wharf Group secretary, has commented that the area represents “a unique selling point” and a "natural fit" for start-up IT businesses, with multiple funding opportunities from the surrounding financial institutions.

Government departments have received guidance from the Cabinet Office on awarding contracts under £100 million in a bid to increase SME participation.

The guidance is intended to reduce risks from outsourcing to a single supplier while increasing competition.The guidance provided states that of open source and open standards should be employed and that designs, code and templates should be reused.

Francis Maude, Cabinet Office minister, said: “We will end the practice of attempting to cover every requirement in great detail and cover every legal eventuality in every project and contract, thereby increasing the procurement cost and timescales to all parties to unacceptable levels”.

In the past few years, outsourcing elements of Learning & Development (L&D) has become increasingly popular due to a large number of organisations experiencing static training budgets. According to recent research by the Learning & Performance Institute (LPI), 44 per cent of organisations surveyed expect their L&D budgets to remain the same in 2012. Externalised L&D offers businesses the opportunity to save valuable time, whilst maximising their investment.

When it comes to outsourcing L&D, the level to which it is outsourced depends on the company and their individual needs. We’re seeing a common theme where the private sector is really embracing the opportunities associated with outsourcing, while the public sector has fallen behind slightly.

This is also supported by the LPI’s findings, which found that the public sector has been hit by huge reductions in spend.

Some organisations may decide to simply outsource the training function whilst others may prefer to externalise the entire process, from the management and administration through to the training. Whilst organisations today understand the benefits L&D will have on their employees’ performance and productivity, in times of austerity they can be forced to focus on reducing their bottom line, pushing L&D down the list of priorities. On the other end of the spectrum, some organisations are committed to continuing their investment in L&D, despite the economic conditions, and outsource their L&D because it can offer them the best return for their investment. It also provides expertises that they wouldn’t have access to in house.

Every organisation has its own unique reasons for outsourcing L&D but it is of the upmost importance that the selected vendor fully understands the company’s business, its expectations and objectives from L&D. The first step to laying down the foundations of a successful working relationship between both parties is ensuring that the responsibility falls in the right hands. We believe the business partner model is the best approach, offering the external vendor more influence internally, allowing the business to fully benefit from their knowledge and expertise. The model also specifies the vendor’s obligations through a service level agreement that quantifies their obligations, in turn placing the responsibility onto the vendor.

The L&D Director is central to the success of this relationship by identifying the correct vendors, communicating the company’s objectives and expectations, and by ensuring that the training programme is in line with the company’s culture and ideologies. Researching vendors that can offer the right fit in terms of culture, experience and ability to fulfil the company’s training requirements is critical. Employees flourish when they know that their training is in the hands of a credible organisation that understands them and the business they work for. By taking the right initial steps when choosing the vendor, L&D Directors can avoid any unnecessary complications later down the line and reap the benefits of contracting and working alongside an L&D vendor that really understands their business and can offer the expertise and skills needed by the business, to help take it forward.

When I explain that governance consulting has played a major part in my career to date, I’m often greeted with the look of a good friend searching for ways to say ‘how sad, you really need to get a life’. I have on more rare occasions also received supportive comments such as ‘keep the faith’, often coupled with a consoling pat on the back.

I suspect these reactions reflect some degree of adverse individual experience but also a more widely held perception that governance in any form should carry a health warning. Indeed many individuals and organisations are more than a little ambivalent about governance - and therein lies my challenge. It is difficult to promote the merits of something when such mixed views prevail in the corporate community.

In my view successful governance is an enterprise wide, overarching corporate function, aimed at delivering innovation, value and mitigating risk to the business. It therefore follows that governance should provide a management continuum throughout the outsourcing life-cycle to provide a consistent and appropriate focus on strategic outcomes. Good governance should not be undermined by the distractions of every day operational issues.

This may seem obvious, but the reality often falls short of the mark. The effects of time, business dynamics, management changes and daily events too often overtake the intent at the outset. It is almost easy to gradually lose sight of the objectives and outcomes we’re aiming for when dealing with daily operational challenges. I once heard an Executive comment, “they’re all floundering around in the swamp when I need them up here on dry ground showing us the way out”.

Governance should not be seen as an opportunity for yet another meeting attended by a cast of many to dwell on matters already settled elsewhere.

Good governance is critical to the success of any outsourcing venture. It provides a formal decision making framework to ensure alignment of the provided services with the business, technical and sourcing strategies of the client. The precise nature of this framework matures over time to reflect mutual levels of trust and confidence coupled with the changing aspirations and the nature of the client and provider relationship.

We need good governance to enable the delivery of business benefit. Put simply: Governance really matters.

Local homes and businesses to benefit from access to ultra-fast broadband

Homes and businesses in Deddington, Oxfordshire are set to benefit from the UK’s fastest available broadband speeds after BT announced the village will be the first pilot location for its fibre-only exchange programme.

This programme will explore the opportunities arising from a future fibre-only world in which services over copper are replaced entirely with next generation voice and broadband services running over fibre optic cables.

It is a long term programme given that copper based services are expected to be available for many years yet.

Sean Williams, Group Strategy Director of BT said: “Fresh advances in technology are pushing the boundaries for new services on an almost daily basis. This is an important pilot which will help the industry better understand the opportunities arising from a fibre-only world in which traditional copper will be replaced by the super-fast capabilities of fibre-optic cable.”

Oracle has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire ClearTrial, a leading provider of cloud-based Clinical Trial Operations (CTO) applications that make the planning, sourcing, and tracking of clinical projects and financial performance faster and more accurate.

ClearTrial's activity-based costing solutions use embedded intelligence based on deep industry expertise to help life sciences companies manage the rising costs and increasing complexities of bringing new therapies to market.

MDB system launched to simplify billing and meet demands for pay-per-use and agile tariff changes

Logica, in cooperation with SAP AG, Software AG and DigitalRoute, today launched a Mass Data Billing (MDB) system that enables organisations to increase revenue while dramatically reducing their total cost of doing business by deploying a usage-based billing approach.

The MDB system is available via a multi-tenant, software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, through which users access the system remotely over the internet. It aims to solve the many unique billing and compensation challenges – such as issues related to mass data collection, transactional volumes and varying tariffs – faced by clients in industries including telecommunications, utilities, transportation and logistics.

The European Commission proposed, on 28 March, to establish a European cyber crime centre to help member states detect illegal online activities, starting with fraudulent banking transactions. The objective is to guarantee an open, free and safe internet in the European Union.

The proposal has to be adopted by the management body of Europol, the European Police Office. The centre will be set up at Europol (the Netherlands), where it is expected to become operational in January 2013, employ up to 50 experts and have an annual budget of €3.6 million.

“Criminals are getting more and more competent,” commented Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström. Their illegal activities “disrupt the lives of consumers and Europeans” shopping online or participating in social networks.

Three Hampshire local authorities have created a new partnership, sharing IT systems to help make local service delivery more flexible and efficient amid unprecedented challenges to public sector finances.

Following twelve months of joint planning, the collaboration has now been approved, and the agreement means that Hampshire County Council, East Hampshire District Council and Havant Borough Council will now form a true 'partnership' with joint management arrangements, sharing risk, investment, strategy and benefits around IT.