This report from the Audit Commission is based on surveys of public and private sectors and it provides a snapshot of the level of ICT abuse, the reasons why it occurs and the risks that organisations need to address. Over the past 24 years, the trend in incidents suggests that ICT abuse continues to be a threat. While new types of incident have arisen, frauds, viruses and accessing inappropriate material on the internet now present the greatest risks to organisations.Organisations have improved their ICT governance arrangements with 96 per cent developing ICT security policies, 82 per cent employing email filtering; and 85 per cent employing staff with specific ICT security responsibilities. But there is less evidence of commitment to providing users with robust guidance and unambiguous statements about their responsibilities. Only half of the organisations surveyed have initiated ICT security awareness training and only one-fifth of staff have been provided with a copy of their organisation’s ICT security policy. Many organisations have responded to the range of risks they face by deploying more preventative measures, but there is still an alarming minority that fails to protect its information assets, whether through complacency or ignorance of risks.
In a move to develop a more holistic and joined up health service focused on patient need, Sir Nigel Crisp, Chief Executive of the NHS, has challenged senior managers to get personally involved to experience what it is like living in the gaps between services. As an action plan for the year he has asked that they each identify a patient with a long term condition or some sort of more complex need who lives in the community and uses one or more services. He made it clear that this should not be someone who is absolutely dependent and might be looked after by a community matron, but someone with more intermittent needs. He then wants them to follow the experiences of the person throughout the year and at the end of this monitoring to report to their own Boards on what they discovered. This he believes will give Boards a different perspective and maybe help them think and act a lot differently.As an explanation of the challenge he described the case of a man in his 70s. He is diabetic, recently widowed, wants to give up smoking and has a problem with his knees. No one apart from his daughter was concerned about his whole health. No one communicated between all the services – it wasn’t the responsibility of the GP nor of the nurse in the diabetic clinic.
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The campaign for ‘new localism’ to allow councils to take a more strategic view and give them greater discretion in how resources are used has taken a major step forward with the roll out of new funding arrangements. Over 20 councils piloted Local Area Agreements from July last year and demonstrated that the new arrangements can successfully bring together local priorities with those of the Government. The Agreements simplify the number of funding streams from central government. By focusing on a core set of outcomes for an area, they significantly simplify the arrangements which have previously been in place, and give councils much greater freedom to spend on local priorities. The success of the pilot has resulted in a nationwide roll out of Agreements with 66 councils being brought into the scheme this year and the remaining larger councils by 2007.Each Local Area Agreement will be negotiated with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and it will be focused around the four blocks of children and young people, safer and stronger communities, healthier communities and older people and economic development and enterprise. The remaining 13 areas will be structured around a single pot. The effect of this will be to reduce bureaucracy by bringing together over 100 different funding streams. On average councils will report on 64 targets instead of several hundred and this will allow them to focus on meeting local community needs. Each Agreement will have a three year life span.