The Department of Social Security has chosen ARCWAY as the preferred bidder for a contract to provide a network and office services for headquarters and local Benefit offices throughout the UK. ARCWAY is a consortium headed by BT that includes Bull Information Systems Ltd and Sema Group UK Ltd.A major weakness of the department’s IT systems is that different benefits are processed on different computers which do not talk to each other. 

An initiative is being launched to improve the environment of hospital wards with the creation of new budgets for ward sisters and a trial of bank-style credit cards. Ward environment budgets will be worth a minimum of 5,000 pounds in 2001/02 with 2500 pounds being made available for the remainder of the current financial year.The budget can be spent on whatever the nurse managers’ consider will best enhance patient care or improve the working lives of staff. 

New targets to reduce the number of children who share a computer in school have been set to support higher standards in primary and secondary schools. 

A Modernisation Board for the NHS has been set up to steer the 10 year Plan announced last July. Membership of the Board will include doctors, nurses, managers, people from the RCN, UNISON, the BMA and the medical royal colleges. 

Antonacopoulou E, Kandampully JThe Learning Organization, (UK), 2000 Vol 7 No 1
Start page: 13. No of pages: 10
Argues that the widespread recognition of the importance of employees in delivering high quality service to customers has shifted the focus of the debate concerning service quality from the tangible components of service (the product) to the intangible, i.e. the way that the product is delivered. 

By R A W RhodesThe author provides a personal interpretation of the key findings of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Whitehall Programme. It tells the distinctive story of ‘governance’ - of fragmentation, networks, unintended consequences and diplomacy - challenging the dominant, managerial account of change in British government since 1979. 

Electronic tagging, pagers and voice verification systems will be used in a scheme to check on the whereabouts of some 2500 persistent young offenders in a scheme to be launched in April 2001. It is estimated that about 25% of youth crime is committed by 3% of young offenders and targeted monitoring is thought to offer the prospect of cost effective crime reduction.Electronic tagging will allow checks to be made twice daily on the whereabouts of young offenders. 

The increasing use of inspection to drive up performance of public services has led to an alliance of organisation in the health service and local government to call for a rethink of the inspection role. 

A research centre is to be created to investigate the impact of new technology on society and spearhead the government’s drive to end the digital divide. 

The 10 year Plan for improvement of the health service announced in July 2000 has been criticised by Julia Neuberger, Chief Executive of the Kings Fund. She claims that the Plan will not bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.Most of the initiatives to tackle health inequalities are short term and are mainly at the margins of the health service. Some groups of people appear to have been forgotten.