As with most of these events the title of this month’s EU ‘eHealth without frontiers’ conference in Slovenia seemed to focus more on ‘ill health without frontiers’.  The UK is clearly not alone, with representatives from across member states describing the same challenges time and time again: a rapidly ageing population and the growth of chronic diseases like COPD (or smoker’s lung), combined with rising citizen expectations and an ever mobile population. 

The sharing of electronic health records (EHRs) and interoperability (technical and semantic) are becoming increasingly critical to delivering both value for money and more personalised healthcare services. These solutions are essentially about one thing – cooperation.  Ultimately, the only way to deal with the healthcare challenges of the future will be through patient-doctor partnerships that provide tailor-made healthcare delivery, doctors working with other doctors (within and across borders), and computers communicating with other computers (within and across borders).

There was much talk of the European Commission’s Smart Open Services (SOS) programme, a three-year plan involving 12 member states and 31 suppliers cooperating around a shared goal – to enable the interoperable sharing of electronic patient summaries and e-prescribing across borders (and with, I should add, patient consent).  What’s important about the SOS project is that it has the potential to revolutionise healthcare by establishing the basis for a future pan-European eHealth infrastructure, supporting integrated care and improving patient safety.   

Telehealth was also a major focus of the debate. Case studies presented from Slovenia, Greece and Finland demonstrated technology’s role in compensating for shortages in health professionals and increasing patient choice through personalisation.  Dr Andrew McCormick (Permanent Secretary, Department of Health and Social Services and Public Safety, Northern Ireland) gave an overview of Northern Ireland’s plans to implement telehealth solutions on a national scale.  I am sure all eyes will be on this programme, which has earmarked £46m to be spent on telemedicine services for chronic disease management (CDM) and aims to have 5000 people on remote patient monitoring by 2011.

Ultimately technology will provide the tools that enable society to look away from traditional disease-centric models of health management and more towards self-empowered health management. But, technology cannot achieve this vision alone – cooperation will be essential in ensuring that the UK and other member states are able to meet the challenges presented by 21st healthcare.  And less tangibly, just imagine the social benefits that can be achieved through cooperation on this scale.

By Melissa Frewin and John Hoggard – Transformational Government

The AA published a survey of nearly 17,500 members this week reporting that 86% of their members do not trust the government to deliver a fair system of road pricing, though 42% of members support the principle of a pay-as-you-go system. With increasingly negative press surrounding the debate, it is not surprising that the AA/Populus came to the conclusion they did.

There are a number of aspects to the road pricing debate such as public acceptability, trust in government and an understanding of the technological capabilities. The survey reports that 86% of respondents would not trust the government to keep its promise to introduce reductions in fuel duty or road tax as a means of offsetting the costs of road pricing. The government will need to take steps to improve public opinion on the matter by clearly setting out their goals and continuing to engage with industry at the earliest opportunity.

Road pricing is a sensitive issue. Given rising fuel and road taxes as well as the increasing cost of transportation in general, people are unwilling to see yet another tax thrust upon them.

Some transport economists, planners and academics see road pricing is a means of tackling congestion. The Stern Review and the Eddington Study both promote the economic and environmental benefits of road pricing. However, the government appears to have backed away from a national road pricing strategy and instead is leaving the decision to local government. Central government is encouraging local authorities to look at implementing road pricing schemes through the DfT’s Transport Innovation Fund (TIF). Manchester City Council and Cambridgeshire City Council have both submitted a TIF bid and are awaiting the government’s decision.

The AA/Populus survey reports that 51% of respondents are strongly opposed to local road pricing schemes. In spite of the public opposition to local road pricing, it would seem it is here to stay. The London Congestion Charging system has been running for 5 years and in all likelihood Manchester and Cambridgeshire will implement road pricing schemes in the future.

Industry has a central role to play in ensuring that road-pricing schemes operate effectively, particularly as ICT will prove essential in underpinning secure, acceptable and successful schemes. It is clear that the technology designed to offer safe, secure and efficient options for road pricing schemes is already available. Manchester City Council is currently looking at the Tag and Beacon system, Automatic Number Plate Recognition and Global Navigation Satellite Systems. The Council is working towards a planned introduction date of 2013.

Intellect is keen to engage with government, local authorities and other key stakeholders as early as possible to ensure that the approach taken by local authorities is the most appropriate. This will enable stakeholders to understand the future requirements, drivers and develop appropriate strategies.

It is important that a more accurate picture of technology, and its success in helping to deliver government objectives, is presented to both public authorities and the general public.

By Carla Baker, Programme Manager

As you may (or may not) have noticed from the media, Saturday  is World IP Day. Believe it or not, this is not just another meaningless marked day. IP is vitally important for the success of our economy.

April 26th has been celebrated as Word Intellectual Property Day since 2001 marking the date when the convention establishing the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) originally came into force in 1970. This year, the UK Intellectual Property Office is joining WIPO and its members in celebrating the link between intellectual property and creativity under the theme - celebrating innovation and promoting respect for intellectual property. Baroness Morgan, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Intellectual Property and Quality, this morning (25th April) marked the occasion with a speech in which she said the IP system has to be fair and accessible for all those who can benefit.

As reiterated by both the Gowers report and the recent Government White Paper, “Innovation Nation”, the successful translation of creativity, ideas, insights and reputations into value is one of the critical determinants of our prosperity. The Intellectual Property system enables businesses to capture value from innovation.

Although Gowers concluded that the current IP framework is broadly fit for purpose, the system is not perfect and adaptation to the digital age is somewhat challenging. The year ahead will see; the start of the new Strategic Advisory Board on Intellectual Property, consideration of how intangible assets could best be used to secure finance and additional IP training for UKTI export and business link advisors. The UK is creative but this innovation has to be exploited. We look forward to the start of a number of licensing initiatives from the IPO including an online business-to business licensing resource that will reduce the cost to business of IP collaborations.

Intellectual property has never been more important. So let’s celebrate IP Day and the value of our creative output.

By Jennifer Carlton, Senior Programme Manager

Netgear is a US technology manufacturer offering high end networking products for the home. One of the features a Netgear broadband router offers is the accurate monitoring of your home Internet connection. If your connection fails, appropriately enough, a little red light appears on the device and blinks a warning. Sales of these devices in the UK have increased steadily over the last two years due in no small part to this facility, as consumers have become frustrated with fluctuating internet access inhibiting the flow of text, pictures, music and now - the killer application - streamed video content into their homes. They want to know who and what is to blame. In this the little red light is a satisfying piece of technology; inherently binary (the only permutations are yes or no), clear in message and symbolic, it tells the consumer that the problem is not with something tangible like their computer or their modem but somewhere out of sight and intangible: the problem is in the network.

Now this is where the real confusion begins. Whereabouts in the network is the bottleneck that is causing this problem? The network is not a monolith structure but a complicated chain divided into different segments: we have in no particular order of significance, the exchange, the Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplex (DSLAM), the back haul, and the last mile. The bottleneck that is causing the little red light to flash could be at any one of these particular pressure points at any given moment and is affected by a number of factors including consumer usage and demand, contention rates and legacy technology. However - and this is the crucial point - the consumer doesn’t care; all they know is that the little red light is on and the Internet is off.

What is clear is that the network is under increasing amounts of pressure: in many ways this is an unexpected consequence of success, but it is important to put this pressure in some sort of context. Current talk of an Internet ‘crunch’ is misplaced.  More people are using the Internet to access bandwidth intensive products and services than ever before in the UK. iPlayer is an obvious success story here with some 42 million downloads since its introduction on Christmas Day 2007. Last year it was claimed that YouTube consumed as much bandwidth in a year as the entire internet took up in 2000. If more people are using the network, there are bound to be congestion and slow downs – the analogy with roads here is well made. There’s more and bigger traffic out there, things will slow down. What we are seeing and what the little red light demonstrates is the first ‘squeeze’ or ‘pinch’ of this increased traffic.

The little red light then is a harbinger of things to come though: the growth curve of internet usage continues on its steep incline. This pinch is an episode on that growth curve and indicative of what is to come as the pressure points become more apparent and the little red light doesn’t blink but beams.   

By Sam Ingleby – Digital Communications Programme Manager

Alas. Once again, we are invited to mourn the loss of hundreds of thousands of peoples'  personal data. The culprit? HSBC. The ramifications? Unknown.

Given the data losses of recent months – each with essentially unquantifiable yet potentially grave consequences (financial and identity fraud spring to mind) – is it really too much to insist on the proper, safe and secure handling of data?

This catalogue of errors makes two things especially clear. Firstly, that information is crucial to the operation of society and our everyday lives. Secondly, that information, despite this impact, continues to be both undervalued and underrated in comparison to the conventional triad of people, property and pounds. In other words, government, industry and the wider public have still to learn to regard information as precious rather than to treat it as a trivial commodity.

In this sense, recent developments should not be interpreted as a refutation of technology as much as the need to better align people, processes and technology on the organisational level. In practice, it simply cannot be allowed for organisations to transfer masses of data without taking the necessary precautions.

In order to effect organisational change, responsibility must be the key word. It is the responsibility of management to educate its staff around the handling and use of personal data and to ensure that appropriate rules, regulations and guidelines are put in place. These steps will be essential if technology is to be used effectively and to the benefit of the consumer.

Sebastian Fox - Programme Executive

Virtualisation is set to have the highest impact on infrastructure until 2012, according to a report published by research firm Gartner. What will this mean for software licensing models?  It's no surprise that before virtualisation it was relatively easy to keep control of business IT expenditure through the assigned hardware costs and software applications licensed to execute upon them. Even at the individual level it was possible to keep track of licensing terms and conditions by counting the number of employees who had access to their office and other work applications.  If we struggled to keep track of licence agreements and their provisions in the past, does virtualisation help or hinder the task looking forwards? What tools and techniques are available to help us manage in this new age of computing?
   
Grid Computing Now!  - a government funded Knowledge Transfer Network - is working with Microsoft, Capgemini, Federation Against Software Theft and Scalable Solutions to try and find some answers that provide benefits for all parties involved. The Grid team is particularly interested in what new responsibilities IT managers might need to take on and what practical, impartial advice is available to them and they are launching a special interest group to provide such help.

Yet the debate about software licensing continues to rage on. It seems unlikely that we will find a simple solution in the near future. This means that initiatives like Grid Computing Now's special interest group are particularly important to IT managers and that this is just more evidence to back up Gartner's assertion that virtualisation will not only have a massive impact but also a hugely disruptive one.

By Tara Kelly – ICT Programme Manager

Recent weeks have seen speeches from both Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband on the continued reform of public services, stolidly invoking the Blairite mantra of citizens as ‘consumers’, armed with the weapon of ‘choice’. Hot on their heels is Tom Watson, the erudite and scholarly minister responsible for the transformational government agenda, who this week announced his new Power of Information Taskforce.

The Taskforce is predicated on ideas expounded in the 2007 Power of Information report. Commissioned by the government and written by Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg, the report examines the ways in which we ‘use, re-use, create, recombine and distribute’ information. It also considers how people organise around information dependent on how it is presented. New ways of packaging and sharing information lead to new groupings and communities of understanding, which in turn lead to new ways of solving old problems. Against this context it looks at the use of technology to augment what we as a species already do and always have done – communicate and share information.

Tom Watson is very keen on sharing. In the crèche of government obstreperous ministers and civil servants are rarely willing to share their toys. However, there is more to Mr Watson’s task than simply getting one department to share information with another. Government must also share with citizens and, worse still, must let them play.

At the recent joint Cabinet Office/Intellect transformational government symposium, Tower ’08, Mr Steinberg cited the example of how his own organisation’s website theyworkforyou.com has profoundly changed political behaviour. Using publicly available information, made easily intelligible and accessible, the site has made MPs’ activities in Parliament much more transparent. This in turn has prompted parliamentarians to behave much as chefs in an open kitchen in a restaurant; there is a clear incentive towards demonstrable best practice.

In his speech on Monday Tom Watson invoked H. G. Wells’ idea that one day the ‘whole of human memory can be... made accessible to every individual’, what he called a ‘world brain’. This idea can be taken further, towards what Andy Clark and David Chalmers called the ‘Extended Mind.’ They suggest that everyday objects used to aid cognitive thought actually form part of that cognition. For example, directions written on a notepad are no more removed from the thought process than the same directions committed to memory.

Technological advances now mean that citizens need be no further removed from social policy than ministers or civil servants. If you make services ‘with boundaries porous to external ideas’, the users can shape the services to deliver maximum benefit. The community of knowledge becomes a community of participation, a kind of extended cognition: instead of government thinking for citizens, each citizen can think and act for themselves based on exactly the same information.

With opportunity comes risk, however. Those currently out of the loop are in danger of being left further behind. In this the government still carries the weight of old-school responsibility. Closing the ‘digital divide’ is a pre-requisite for removing barriers of principle to freer exchange of information. Without it we run the risk of a developing a schizophrenic ‘world brain’.

This should hold as the key tenet of how we as citizens think of our government, our services and ourselves. With technology, with opportunity, as with information, we must share and share alike.

Matt Mulley, Transformational Government Programme Executive

As we have discussed many times before, the UK is facing a skills shortage. This is regularly commented on in regards to the technology industry but we recognise that we are not alone - many of the UK’s key industries from agriculture to manufacturing and in nursing to teaching are grappling with similar skills issues.  As a nation we are struggling to attract the right people into our industries whether it is for basic labour in agriculture or for highly skilled work in the technology industry.  We are not providing a workforce that can enable the UK to compete globally.   

This is not a new problem.  The UK has long survived on an influx of highly educated, motivated migrant workers mixed with the talent from our own education and business system, and this is set to continue.  According to a study, compiled by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), highly skilled migrants (defined as managers, senior officials and those involved in professional, associate professional and technical occupations) are filling skills shortages in the UK.  The report forecasts that due to demands in professions such as nurses and IT specialists, in 2012 there will be 812,000 skilled migrants contributing over £77bn to our economy over the next four years.

The importance of migrant workers is well known within the technology industry but a continued increase in the number of migrant workers should not be seen as a long term solution for our industry.  The UK cannot rely on the fact that we will always be an attractive place to come, live and work. Recent reports suggest that many Polish workers are returning home for a better standard of living and the opportunities now available in their own markets.  The UK must look at its own development of talent and find the solutions that will ensure we can utilise all of the diverse talent in the UK as well as those highly skilled migrant workers.

The UK currently has a huge skills gap, which cannot continue to be filled purely by migrant workers, nor can new graduates purely fill it.  We must work with all stakeholders to retrain and re-skill our workforce. This will ensure a strong technology industry in the UK and therefore a strong, vibrant and competitive UK economy. 

By Carrie Hartnell - Transformational Business Programme Manager

I always thought it was BA Baracus, the iconic figure from 80’s TV show The A Team that coined the phrase "time is money". It turns out, like many other things, we owe this wisdom to the Greeks, in this case to Antiphon, an orator who wrote speeches for defendants in legal cases.

"The most costly outlay is time," he told his clients. Quite how right he was and how explicitly this maxim is now being applied in new business models he couldn’t possibly have imagined. Could he?

It now appears that the most valuable economic commodity in a world abounding in competing and distracting information, is our own attention, or our own time, and people are prepared to spend a lot of money to capture it. 

Welcome to the discipline of "the attention economy" that  advocates believe will be the dominant currency in new knowledge and information-based societies. This radical theory of value is focused on the relationship between advertising, commerce and societal behaviour. The current over-abundance and growing body of information that sprawls across various networks and devices is locked into a competition for the precious commodity that is our attention. This scarcity of attention has been compounded by the falling cost of transmitting advertising to consumers that has fallen to a sufficiently low level where more ads can be transmitted to a consumer than the consumer can possibly receive or process.

Technology has also played a role in producing this scarcity of attention. At one time the advertising model was relatively straightforward: find a big audience and speak to them, insistently and disruptively if need be, but ensure that your message is put across.

However, new technologies have facilitated the fragmentation of mass audiences to such a degree that advertisers - mega media events such as X-factor or the FA Cup Final apart - can no longer identify a mass audience, grazing like a herd of buffalo on the plain. The audience is hiding now, elusive and difficult to reach, on the internet watching YouTube, fast forwarding through adverts on their personal video recorders listening to their iPod’s and oblivious to billboards. To respond successfully to this paradigm shift in audience behaviour, businesses and advertisers will need to rely heavily on theories of attention economies.

So that’s the theory, but what does it actually look like? Well, in the formative stages it looks something like UK company Blyk, a free mobile phone network exclusively for 16-24-year olds entirely funded by advertising. Users signing up to the network receive no more than six advertising messages on their mobiles a day and in return are given an allowance of 47 texts and 243 minutes for free each month. In short, consumers are exchanging their attention to advertisers for an agreed set of services and products. Advertisers get access to an important and sizeable target market and can generate data and sales for brands from the dialogue they instigate with the consumer. This is a win-win and a notable example of how businesses are having to adapt business models in the face of falling revenues.

Now just think what you could have charged for reading this article… 

By Sam Ingleby 

Almost nine months after the prime minister first announced the creation of a National Security strategy and a National Security Council, the government has taken the wraps off what amounts to a detailed assessment of the threats and hazards facing the UK.

This is an important first step, as one of the trickiest parts of this type of work is the need to have a clear understanding of what you’re trying to fight – thus far the UK public’s perception of national security is that it’s something of a mix between counter-terrorism and an excuse to rummage through your bins.

Today’s media fanfare is therefore useful in improving people’s understanding that in a globalised world, security is more than the metal detector at the airport. The many successes of Britain’s first-rate security community are based on good intelligence, effectively used, and strong links across government, criminal justice, defence and our international allies. Likewise the protection and resilience of our critical infrastructure (utilities, telecoms, health and transport) depends on a wide group of people working in concert – from MI5 to fire brigades to BT to the Army to industry.

All of these threats are brought into sharp focus by the forthcoming London Olympics, which for a variety of reasons present a tempting target for terrorism, as well a substantial infrastructure and resilience challenge. The teams running the security of the Olympics have been engaging with industry well ahead of the event to try and bring the most effective programme management and technology into their planning.

Appropriately, the Olympics team is racing ahead of the competition in establishing strategic relationships with all its different partners. In the new interdependent era the government has described, this kind of mature engagement is the way forward if ministers and officials want to access the innovation, expertise and skills of UK industry.

Ultimately, the security strategy (subtitled “Security in an interdependent world”) is the latest in a slew of similar “threat analysis” papers from think tanks, academics and indeed from industry. However the fact that it has been published at all is commendable and represents a welcome commitment to addressing the modern form of threats and hazards.

What’s important is that the government now follows through. Without effective implementation at a practical level, the good intentions and political vision behind the strategy will make little impact on the ground, and without a strong partnership with industry government will struggle to deliver the solutions which make much of our response possible.

The PM has today told us what he thinks about security. Now it’s time for us to step up and let government know what we think.