More people online in the UK

A report from the Office for National Statistics recently published has revealed the digital divide in the UK has narrowed significantly during the third quarter of 2011.

In its latest quarterly Internet Access update the ONS said that although 8.43 million adults in the UK had still never used the internet, this figure had decreased by 299,000 since the previous quarterly report. This represents a major improvement on earlier rates of getting people online with only 12,000 adults joining the digital age between the first two quarterly updates of the year.

The largest decrease in non-users was amongst the 75 and over age group where there were said to be 164,000 fewer people on the wrong side of the digital divide.

As the digital divide in the UK narrows, Local authorities need to re-think and re-shape their services offer. These figures represent a plethora of opportunities to alternative ways of delivering services through online platforms which local authories must consider.

More changes announced to central government procurement

With the new Government Procurement Service up and running more changes to central government procurement were announced by Mr. Francis Maude, Cabinet Office Secretary. to as a major shake-up of central government procurement.

The plans aim to put over £50bn worth of public works and services tenders online and will thus facilitate and accelerate the process to bid for government work, especially for smaller companies who often lose out when pitching for public projects. Government departments will now be instructed to break contracts into bite-sized chunks to make it easier for small and medium-sized enterprises to get involved.

Most of the work to go online initially will relate to IT and facilities management, with building and infrastructure projects going online from next April. According to the Cabinet Office Secretary, who is to ask Brussels to simplify EU rules on government procurement, the changes will mean it will be 40 per cent faster to do business with Whitehall.

According to Maude, UK public sector spends a huge amount of money in buying in goods and services from outside, and it is not doing it properly. The UK currently follows the European law extremely literally, which entails very legalistic processes, and with the big contracts councils have Mr. Maude believes the current situation is not particularly benefiting UK businesses.

Scotland committed to the digital future

The Scottish Government and different organisations across public, private, academic and third sectors have signed a digital participation charter to help bring together resources in order to secure Scotland's digital future.

The various organisations signing the charter, including Microsoft and Hewlett Packard, University of Edinburgh, Carnegie UK Trust, Scotland IS, have committed to sharing information and aligning their resources and efforts to deliver shared outcomes over the course of the current Parliament.

The Scottish Government believes digital technology is crucial to Scotland’s future economic growth, social and environmental success and it is fully committed towards it.

This document brings together the public, private, academic and third sectors to achieve the shared goal of increasing digital participation in Scotland as it has potential to bring many benefits to the nation.

In a near future, more organisations are expected to join the shared charter.

November at Zipporah

It’s November, the year has gone quickly and we are already one month into a new business year at Zipporah.  Sometimes in the hustle and bustle of the average week you forget to take stock of what’s going on and suddenly it has been months gone before you know it.  We are launching into our new business year full throttle with international and domestic campaigns ramping up, our new leisure management system getting rolled out to more users and the neo systems coming into full swing and some now live making it easier than ever for our clients to manage their systems.  It seems like only yesterday we were toasting Emma as she started her maternity leave and already the baby is almost three weeks old.  Time flies by around us as we work hard to better our services, systems and deliver benefits to our clients on an even higher scale than before. It’s good to be busy, it’s good to push the boundaries but just this once I thought I’d stop for a minute and talk about something else.

November is also a month with some particularly special activities in it.  Firstly we have Remembrance Day.  When I was young I seem to remember that at 11 o’clock the whole country fell silent as we remembered the brave men and women lost, and the people they left behind.  Now it seems that phones still ring and meetings still go on and people in all the hustle and bustle of a busy daily life forget what the chimes of 11 o’clock on November 11^th mean.  At Zipporah we still want to uphold such a tradition so please don’t be worried if you can’t reach us at 11 o’clock.  We haven’t stopped answering we are just taking a moment to reflect upon what sacrifice others have made for us.  As part of a young team I think it’s important to remember such things.

November also brings us “Movember”.  In order to raise awareness of the issues of prostate and testicular cancer men around the world decide to grow as outrageous a moustache as possible, put it on a website and try and raise money for charity.  This year a number of Zipporah staff have got together to create a team all of whom will deliver some exceptional facial topiary in the hope of gathering support, raise money and raise awareness.  I myself will be attempting something quite special.  I don’t write this to encourage your sponsorship (although it is for charity!) but instead to warn those people I will be meeting with over the next month.  It’s not some sort of breakdown at Zipporah that means several team members have gone feral.  It is one month only and then normal service will be resumed (until Christmas anyway!).

Zipporah first success via the Local Government Procurement Service

Zipporah is pleased to announce that we have been chosen by Hampshire County Council to provide a solution for its Registration Department, with a key function of the system being to handle the range of different appointment types through our easy to use Electronic Diary solution. The system will enable members of the public (online), HCC’s Contact Centre and Registration Services’ staff to book appointments for all Registration Services’ offices across the county.

When Hampshire County Council was looking to replace its current Registration Services’ Appointment Booking System with a new cloud hosted system, they underwent a Mini-Competition for the Supply of this solution through the very framework that Zipporah has successfully joined earlier in the year, the Local Government Software Application Solutions – Libraries, Museums and Leisure related Software Application.

We’re looking forward to working closely with the authority on this exciting project over the coming weeks and months, and ultimately helping the council achieve a more efficient service for both staff users and members of the public.