This feature describes how a Scottish Council has successfully used prepayment cards to make crisis payments from its welfare fund.

Fife Council is third largest Scottish Council, providing hundreds of different services to the residents, businesses and visitors of Fife. In 2015, Fife Council first started working with one of the leading UK payment specialist allpay, to disburse crisis payments for the Council’s Scottish Welfare Fund scheme through allpay’s prepaid card solution. The programme provides cardholders with funds to purchase items classed as living expenses, fuel, food, clothing, travel, utility payments and essential and day to day living expenses. In 2018 alone, the Council loaded more than £85k onto prepaid card accounts.

Those eligible for a prepaid card are citizens entitled to ‘Crisis Payments’ as defined by the Scottish Government, with card holders deemed to be in ‘Crisis’ where they have no living expenses until their next income. Often the instant issue card will be loaded due to an emergency and the funds spent within a few hours.

The introduction of prepaid cards allows the council to track and evidence successful and unsuccessful transactions made from the prepaid cards, negating the need for the cardholder to provide physical receipts.

Mary Williamson, customer service lead advisor, Fife Council explains: ‘We had a customer who had a very small baby and had applied to the fund for a pram, she wasn’t entitled to any DWP assistance, as she had previously had received a sure start grant. Due to the size of the baby it required to have a pram that it could lie flat in, however the customer was unable to afford this kind of pram. We were able to give this lady an allpay card to allow her to purchase the pram that she required.”

Rob McCloy, regional sales manager, allpay Ltd explains: “The preloaded Mastercard® can be distributed and used to pay for goods up to the value loaded on the card, offering a bespoke, managed and efficient solution to payment distribution. allpay currently works with around 50 councils across the United Kingdom enabling them to distribute the benefits of the prepaid cards for a variety of projects. Councils have used the cards to provide accessible funds for emergency accommodation for example, or to provide the facility to purchase specific products, or in Fife Council’s case, to provide payments for emergency living expenses. The prepaid cards offer a practical and efficient alternative to cheques, cash and vouchers.

Rob McCloy continues: “The award-winning prepaid cards ensure goods and services can be purchased at the point of sale, online, or over the telephone offering a prepaid solution for those in need, regardless of their financial situation. Potential users do not have to have a bank account or credit check ensuring full financial inclusion. All transactions made using the card are recorded and monitored to provide an audit trail and there is no credit or overdraft facility. Councils using the prepaid cards have been able to reduce the cost and administration normally associated with paying out funds.”

Mary Williamson, customer service lead advisor, Fife Council explains: “allpay allows us to get funds to customers in crisis quickly and efficiently. By using allpay, it allows our customers to have control over the money awarded to them. The card looks like a normal debit card and therefore there is no stigma for the customer using it. ”Fife Council required the facility to re-load the cards which was a restriction on the original product. Following the project approval and upgrade, Fife Council staff were able to reload the cards on an ongoing basis to cardholder accounts accessed through an online Organisation Portal.

Mary Williamson, continues: “The move to re-loadable cards was in response to the start of Universal Credit full service where much larger amounts are being awarded to customers for longer periods of time. This function allows us to split payments where necessary to help our customers budget more easily.”

When it came to implementation, the Council met with allpay to scope the project and understand the parameters of the scheme. Staff from allpay also assisted in the completion for the Council’s ‘Programme Overview’ document, which detailed the scheme’s and card usage requirements outlining how the cards can be used for point of sale (POS) and online transactions. The council also has the ability to allow or disallow access to ATMs, which enable the cardholder to make cash withdrawal, make PIN changes and balance enquiries.

Onsite training was provided for staff enabled them to gain knowledge of the use and functionality of the Cardholder and Organisation Portals along with the reporting capabilities of the system. Weekly calls monitored the progress of the overall implementation.

Transaction monitoring is completed by a lead advisor at Scottish Welfare Funds on a regular basis.

For further information please visit: www.allpay.net

Mike Winter, CEO of MIW Water Cooler Experts, explains how drinking fountains can counter the blight of plastic waste.

Barely a day goes by when we don’t see a story in the media about the blight of plastic on our society – its effect on wildlife, rising litter levels in our rivers and on our beaches, and the emergence of microplastics in some fish and seafood. According to DEFRA, the UK recycling rate for waste from households is steadily increasing (up to nearly 46% in 2017), and we seem to be on track to meet the 2020 target of recycling at least 50% of household waste; but recycling alone will not solve the problem – we need to take steps to reduce the amount of plastic we actually use on a daily basis.

A prime contributor to plastic pollution in the UK is the single use drinks bottle – 38.5 million plastic bottles are bought in this country every day, but only just over half are recycled, while 16m are put into landfill, burnt or leak into the environment and oceans each day. Plastic bottles can take up to 450 years to break down once they reach the sea. Many of the popular bottled water brands consumed are transported hundreds of miles from their source, contributing to the 350,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere every year by the bottled water industry in the UK.

Blue Planet II and Blue Planet Live contributed to pushing the plastic pollution issue onto the front pages of national media and into the public consciousness – now residents, consumers, visitors, students and staff are increasingly demanding that organisations take action to reduce their plastic usage. Over the last couple of years this has led to more and more areas in the UK taking a stand against plastic water bottle waste by turning to the contemporary free-to-use public drinking fountain.

There was a time when free-to-use drinking fountains were found in every place of public gathering in the UK. The motivation then was the prevention of cholera, but as overall sanitation improved public fountains fell out of favour. Now they’re making a comeback and it is apt that our capital is championing the refill revolution – high profile venues such as Borough Market, ZSL London Zoo, Chelsea Football Club and Heathrow Airport have joined the public sector to offer free public drinking water to visitors. London pioneered its first public drinking water fountain in 1859, which at its peak was used by up to 7,000 people each day. Philanthropists started to contribute funds, and so more fountains were erected, and within 11 years there were 140 fountains in place across London.

Now London is once again providing safe drinking water to people on the move, with the recent rollout of public drinking water fountains and bottle refill stations by the Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority. MIW Water Cooler Experts donated 20 water fountains and helped to jointly establish the London Drinking Fountain Fund with the GLA and #OneLess last year, with the aim of reducing the capital’s reliance on plastic. The fund called on land and site owners across London to bid for a drinking water fountain. Bids were assessed by #OneLess and the fountains have been installed in high footfall areas in a mixture of busy shopping areas, business districts, universities, public visitor attractions, transport hubs, community spaces and open parks.

The average London adult currently gets through 175 single-use plastic water bottles every year; adding up to one billion at the city-level. The problem will be on a comparable scale in every area in the UK, and I would encourage local authorities and other public sector organisations to follow cities such as Bristol and Hull in rolling out drinking water facilities.

Compared to other European cities, Britain is rather behind the times when it comes to drinking fountain provision. Zurich is famous for having 1,200 historic water fountains around the city, all issuing drinkable water – yet The Guardian reported in 2017 that across Greater Manchester, with a population of almost 2.8 million, there were no council-maintained drinking fountains – with those that had been installed, decommissioned. However – this is set to change with MIW’s installation of two water fountains in Bury in partnership with Refill, United Utilities and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) as part of the Mayor of Manchester’s Plastic Free GM Campaign – the first of many which we hope to see rolling out across the North West.

Perhaps we should also look further afield to Australia – where residents of the town of Bundanoon in New South Wales voted to ban plastic water bottles in 2009 – or to the US, where in 2017 San Francisco banned packaged water on city property.

We have to remember that bottled water is a relatively recent phenomenon, in the 30 years since we founded MIW, we have seen vast changes in attitudes to single use plastic. Bottled water only became mainstream in the late 1970s following slick marketing campaigns, and initially consumers were sceptical about paying money for something they would normally get for free. That initial scepticism soon gave way and the consumption of bottled water in the UK has almost doubled over the last 15 years.

However, there are positive signs that we are starting to revert back to our refill heritage. More and more of us are switching to using a refillable water bottle, instead of hundreds of single-use bottles. In fact, according to a recent survey, 65% of us wouldn’t buy bottled water at all if tap water were more freely available.

Schools, universities, museums and hospitals are taking the plunge – along with local councils up and down the country – including sites in historic locations such as the Natural History Museum and the Horniman Museum in London. Organisations planning new buildings or extensions, such as the V&A in Dundee, are including public water provision at the design stage.

A report released last year by Keep Britain Tidy found that 78% of people in the UK would like there to be greater availability of free tap water, and the public sector can show its commitment to a plastic free future for users by providing free, filtered drinking water in a range of key areas – if last year’s scorching summer was anything to go by, it’s more important than ever that people are able to keep hydrated on the move without resorting to buying bottled water. Authorities can track the number of bottles they’ve saved from ending up being bought and thrown away by using the device installed in the fountains and refill stations –an effective way of demonstrating the impact to residents and key stakeholders.

The latest models of outdoor fountains are tougher, safer and more accessible than ever before. Hygienic and efficient, they can be plumbed into practically any indoor or outdoor space, delivering water without any of the waste, litter or expense associated with contained drinks. Clever design means that once they’re installed – something that can usually be completed with minimal disruption if a sensible site is chosen – very little maintenance is required. Unlike their predecessors, current models of water fountain and bottle refill station are also vandal proof, weather-proof and corrosion-resistant, so there is very little in the way of on-going costs – and the evidence is that people love to use them.

Kingston Council recently unveiled the first of a number of new fountains to be installed across the borough in its historic market place, which has proved to be a hit with the public, providing clean and readily available drinking water for cyclists, families, shoppers and tourists alike.
While plastic waste is an issue that is not going to go away, we hope that we continue to see forward thinking public sector organisations making bold decisions to help hydrate people whilst they’re on the move – and make drinking fountains as much part of our street landscape as the post box – you might even find communities sharing an outdoor ‘water cooler moment’!

By Mike Winter, CEO of MIW Water Cooler Experts (www.miw.co.uk)
Formed in 1989, MIW now supplies over 7,000 businesses and public sector organisations with Water Regulations Advisory Scheme (WRAS) approved public drinking fountains, bottle refill stations and water coolers, and is the UK’s leading authority on outdoor drinking fountains. For the last 30 years MIW has been developing and building innovative, high quality products for some of the UK’s leading public and private sector clients including Southampton and Bournemouth Universities, London’s Borough Market, ZSL London Zoo, Greater London Authority, Staffordshire County Council, Vale of Glamorgan Council, Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Club, Chelsea Football Club, Scottish Water and The Bank of England.

Information management expert David Jones
discusses why digital transformation may be being held back

For some it’s an overused phrase, but every
organisation really is on some kind of a Digital Transformation journey. The
heart of such a journey: understanding, anticipating, and redefining internal
and external customer experiences.

The problem: digital transformation is being
hampered by a rising tide of information that is overwhelming organisations.
According to The State of Intelligent
Information Management report published earlier this year
by AIIM, the leading association representing the information management
profession, while most organisations continue to increase the number of content
systems they use, the majority of critical business content (54%) remains
outside of these content management systems — making them increasingly hard to
find and manage.

Progress is being made when it comes to managing
specific types of information and processes, but clearly organisations face an
increasing volume, variety, and size of content assets that must be managed.
The increasing volume of incoming
information, and the speed at which we must ingest this information is plain to
see — and legacy/manual approaches to this are struggling to keep pace. But
it’s often under-appreciated how the sheer size
of the files that must be managed is also a factor. There are more digital file
types (videos, images, audio files) that organisations must manage today than
ever before. This creates ongoing information governance challenges, especially
for assets that must be managed over long retention periods.

These new kind of  ‘rich media’ challenges are becoming an
increasing issue in the public sector. For instance, more and more law
enforcement agencies such as the Police are using CCTV and body-worn cameras on
officers as a means to gather evidence, and these rich media files need to be
effectively managed. And it’s not just law enforcement firms — NHS Trusts
struggle with CT/MRI scans, X-rays, photographic records of patient injuries
and progress of conditions, etc. Meanwhile, local authorities are dealing with
the rise of photographic-based citizen records. All of this is contributing to
Information Chaos, and none of the traditional enterprise content management
(ECM) systems were originally designed to properly work with these types of
content.

The Scope and Scale of the Information Chaos Dilemma

Public servants working under these conditions
are struggling, particularly when it comes to information), access and
retrieval. Finding the right information in a timely way is a big problem
identified in the aforementioned AIIM study by three out of every four  (76%) of respondents. Other big issues
identified in the AIIM survey was information overload by (75%) and the cost
and/or difficulty of managing legacy applications by (65%). Keeping up with
compliance regulation (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) features as a problem for nearly
two-thirds of respondents (64%).

AIIM also asked how easily practitioners could
integrate information across systems:

• The ‘Inability to connect information from
  different systems’ was an issue for 79% of respondents
• ‘Scaling our information management systems to
  other processes beyond the original deployment’ is recorded as an issue by 71%
• Meanwhile, a lack of integration between content
  management system and core business applications is acknowledged as a headache
  by over three quarters (74%) of those polled.

The scale and
nature of information management has changed, and legacy document document
management (DM) systems and  ECM
solutions no longer cut it  in today’s
fast-paced digital world. The good news is that a successor technology, the
Content Services Platform (CSP), is emerging to help, and can deliver real
benefits to the public sector.

The Content Services Platform – a Modern Approach to Information Management

A CSP
provides  the foundation for a modern
approach to information management because it’s built using modern technology —
not technology that was  built 10 (or
more) years ago, in a time before mobile and cloud had taken off. That means it
can natively manage all of today’s data and content types — video, audio,
social media, etc.— not just scanned documents and Word files.

Plus, CSPs can
act as an organisational information hub
— not just for data and content stored within the CSP itself, but by connecting
to information stored in the multiple (legacy) systems deployed throughout the
organisation. This is key, as a CSP can provide a Police Force, NHS Trust or
Town Hall users with a single place to go to in order to store and retrieve
information, reducing time wasted searching for files across multiple systems.

By connecting
disparate information systems, the actual value of what lies in those legacy
systems can be unlocked, and the many data-driven applications and potential
analytic-led digital public services many of us would like to see can finally
start to be delivered.

No need for rip and replace

Many public
organisations are now realising how they can  deliver significant cost-savings by reducing
search time, increasing access to information, and enabling information sharing
via the cloud and mobile devices. This, in turn, results in higher productivity
and rapid return on investment (ROI).

So as a sector
let’s consider the future of information management. While modernisation has
pushed many organisations to update their IT infrastructure, many aren’t ready
to take the full leap yet. However, CSPs can actually help with IT
modernisation by preparing organisations to move towards new systems at their
own pace — and in turn, to better serve their employees and service
users/customers.

Rather than using
a ‘rip-and-replace’ strategy, with a CSP connecting systems together, migration
becomes  an ongoing process towards
legacy system retirement, done over a more relaxed timescale that a rip and
replace project. This reduces the impact and disruption on the users and  ultimately delivers a long term reduced cost
of ownership. Indeed, without a CSP — or technology like it — the British
public sector will continue to struggle along, never truly boarding the train
to start the Digital Transformation journey. It will persist with solutions
that were fine for yesterday’s problems, but not for today’s challenges, let
alone tomorrow’s.

The author is VP
of product marketing at Nuxeo

Last week the Government launched its annual Green GB Week
to highlight the opportunities clean growth offers the UK and raise
understanding of how business and the public can contribute to tackling climate
change.  A key theme of the week was
financing the low carbon economy and clean growth.  Heat networks are expected to be at the
forefront of this growth.

The Government has a legally binding commitment to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% of 1990 levels by 2050.[1]   Heat currently accounts for around 18% of the
UK’s existing greenhouse gas emissions (by way of comparison, power is around
21% and transport is 24%).  Meeting such
challenging climate change targets will therefore require complete or
near-complete decarbonisation of heat.   

Heat networks, as proven technologies for providing lower
carbon heat to domestic and commercial customers, have the potential to play a
key role in the long term decarbonisation of heating, and local authorities can
contribute significantly to their success in this emerging sector.  Local
authorities’ involvement, particularly as a principal driver in the development
stages of a project, can help realise the many benefits of heat networks, while
also delivering jobs and growth.

Many local authorities may recognise the potential benefits
of developing a heat network, but lack the expertise and/or finance required to
pursue such ambitious schemes.   The
Government, therefore, is providing support to help facilitate the delivery of
heat networks:

• Heat
  Networks Delivery Unit (HNDU): Established in 2013 the HNDU seeks to address
  the obstacles local authorities face when considering developing heat networks by
  providing grant funding and guidance on project development. Since its
  inception, HNDU has run 7 funding rounds – awarding £17 million in total – and
  is currently running Round 8. Over 200 unique projects have so far been
  supported across 140 local authorities.

• Heat Networks Investment Project (HNIP): Launched by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) on the 16th October 2018 HNIP is a major Government investment project which will see £320m of capital funding made available for the development of heat network projects.  The funding, made up of a combination of grants and loans, will be available from April 2019 and is offered as “gap funding”.  Local authorities are encouraged to apply for the funding for a period of up to 3 years and it is hoped that the scheme will leverage around £1bn of private sector and other investment to support the commercialisation and construction of heat networks.
• Published Guidance: BEIS have also commissioned various pieces of guidance relating to heat networks.  As recently as August this year the following were published with a view to guiding local authorities (and others) on various aspects of heat networks:          
  • Heat networks: procuring finance

•           Financing heat networks in the UK: guidebook

•            Optimisation of heat networks: issues for project for     sponsors to consider

For further information on heat tworks please contact charles.robson@wbd?uk.com

Neo4j’s Emil Eifrem reports on how Germany is using graph
technology in combination with AI to make connections in research that no-one
else is doing. Is this something the UK’s health sector leaders should also be
doing?

Diabetes is
one of the most widespread diseases worldwide, and increases not only of type 2
diabetes in our ageing population but also of type 1 diabetes will present
major challenges to the NHS in the coming years – type 2 diabetes in children
has risen 40% in three years amid Britain’s obesity epidemic, for instance.

Health
policymakers are using all the tools they can summon to try and help. In
Germany, for example, the country’s national Centre for Diabetes Research (DZD)
is looking to investigate the causes of the disease and, through new scientific
findings, develop effective prevention and treatment measures to halt the
emergence or progression of diabetes. DZD is an instructive example of what can
happen with diabetes research when a new way of tackling the problem is
explored.

A ‘master database’ to consolidate diabetes information

Based in
Munich, DZD brings together experts from across the Federal Republic to develop
effective prevention and treatment measures for diabetes across multiple
disciplines, and to see what treatment the latest biomedical technologies may
offer citizens dealing with the condition. In order to better understand
diabetes’ causes, its scientists examine the disease from as many different
angles as they can.

DZD’s
researchers, then, combine basic research data sources – genetics, epigenetics,
metabolic pathways – with data from clinical studies. Connecting this highly
heterogeneous data is a challenge, but necessary in order to answer biomedical
questions across disciplines.

Recently,
its IT leadership decided it needed a better way of connecting this research
data from various disciplines, locations and species. Besides connecting data
sources, it wanted an easy-to-understand visualisation of data and easy
querying so that scientists benefit from it. The result is a ‘master database’
to consolidate this information, and provide its 400-strong team of scientist
peers with a holistic view of available information, enabling them to gain
valuable insights into the causes and progression of diabetes.

In search of
a suitable data tool to build such a system on, Dr Alexander Jarasch, the
Centre’s Head of Bioinformatics and Data Management, drew on experience gleaned
from previous work on a project at Munich’s Helmholtz Zentrum. That had used a
graph database – a positive experience that prompted him to test graph
technology at DZD, specifically Neo4j’s graph software. Dr. Jarasch has thus
offered his colleagues a new internal tool, DZDconnect, built in graph software
that sits as a layer over the various relational databases linking different
DZD systems and data silos. DZDconnect is not fully implemented yet, but DZD
staffers can already access metadata from clinical studies in the prototype –
and are particularly impressed by the visualisation and the easy querying it’s
made possible.

‘The more detailed the information, the easier it is to
identify relationships and patterns’

Many researchers wonder if graph databases
(technology that powered the Paradise Papers
investigation, among other intriguing examples of cracking big data problems)
could help in the prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of major illnesses
and so save lives. Why? Because not only is graph technology ideally suited to
depicting hidden relationships and discovering unknowns at big data scale, it
is also able to handle dynamic and constantly evolving data – something that
medical thinkers say is vital with scientific or bioinformatics analysis
research.

“With graph technology we were able to combine
and query data across various locations,” Dr. Jarasch enthuses, adding that, “Even though only
part of the data has been integrated, queries have already shown interesting
connections, which will now be further researched by our scientists.”

In the long term, as much DZD data as possible
should be integrated into graph database, Jarasch believes, noting that the
next step is to see how human data from clinical research will be complemented
with highly standardised data from animal models, such as mice, to find
communalities or other insights.

It’s not just graph software that is being
employed. AI techniques like Machine Learning in combination with graph
software will play a key role going forward, says DZD, with a particular area
of interest being building a system able to ‘read’ scientific texts and
integrate them into the database ready for analysis.

The promise
is that the more detailed the information, the easier it is to identify
relationships and patterns – which could really help in cracking the diabetes
problem. The kind of innovative data management and analysis approach DZD is
pioneering could well be the way forward in precision medicine, prevention and
treatment of diabetes – and, perhaps, other diseases.

Given that the NHS needs as much help combating
diseases as possible, could graph technology’s innate ability to discover
relationships between data points have an important role to play in fighting
not just diabetes, but many other problems? The DZD example does seem to suggest
this is a pathway worth exploring.

The author is co-founder and CEO of Neo4j, the world’s
leading graph database (http://neo4j.com/)

The collapse of Carillion and cuts in public service capital spending are having a devastating effect on sub-contractors. Major construction companies secure most of the public service contracts who then sub  contract to smaller companies. The pain resulting from the collapse of companies and public sector cut backs is spread across the sub contractors, who often are least able to stand the financial stress. This effect is illustrated by  the case of Newcastle Joinery Limited which was taken to the brink and is now fighting back.

At
just 27, Jamie Greenwood, the managing director, borrowed nearly £1 million to
acquire a business, which, ultimately, developed into NJL. For two decades, the
company has manufactured bespoke joinery and commercial interiors, delivered
across various sectors underneath the NJL umbrella: NJL Custodial, NJL Secure
and Yorkline.

Over
the years, NJL has employed specialists in their respective field, all of whom
have possessed attributes and skills to deliver an award-winning product. From
craftsmanship to customer service, the offering is exceptional – illustrated by
playing a pivotal part in helping Whitworth Chemists, based in Scunthorpe, win
back-to-back Chemist and Druggist Pharmacy Design awards in 2017 and 2018.

However,
as has been well-documented, the construction sector has been crippled over
recent years. In January 2018, Britain’s second biggest construction firm,
Carillion, collapsed under billions of pounds of debt. Jobs were sacrificed,
pensions were put in jeopardy and approximately 30,000 smaller subcontractors were
left out of pocket and faced with financial peril.

The
last three years have been particularly tough, but the last six months,
according to Jamie, have been the “worst ever”.

He
explained: “We have been bullied and lost obscene amounts of money as a result
of the construction crisis.

“Working
with main contractors, like Carillion, has left us with terrible bad debts. The
prison service employed us directly for 15 years, but then the maintenance of
prisons was outsourced to Carillion and others and, as we now know, that proved
to be a catastrophic error.

“On
another project, we were employed by a main contractor to assist the build of a
secure hospital; however, once started, the project was delayed, bills weren’t
being paid and, bluntly, we were battered and commercially-bullied as a result
– this happened a lot.”

From
a commercial and personal point of view, this took its toll on the company –
redundancies were made, contracts dried up, and emergency talks took place
within the company about how to stabilise the business.

Jamie
explained how this was achieved, changing the company’s condition from
‘critical’ to ‘stable’: “We had to rationalise our business. Letting people go
was soul-destroying – I think people’s livelihoods and state of well-being have
got lost within the fighting and debt collecting – but we had no choice.

“While
we don’t have a choice in working with large construction firms, as they
pick-up most of the new build and refurbishment projects generally, we are now
mitigating the risk; for example, we manage credit very tightly, obtain credit
insurance or bonds and don’t sign up to contracts with clauses allowing the
construction firm to kill us.

“Whitworth
Chemists is one of our most trusted and loyal clients; we receive a brief,
we’re paid on time and we deliver a professional service on time – that’s how
it should work. We are going back to our roots, manufacturing bespoke
furniture, and not chasing big money orders – that way we have a more
manageable, sustainable and less-stressful business as a result.”

Over
the last few months, NJL has been pounded, been taken to the brink, but with
the tenacity, dedication and experience that Jamie and his experienced senior
management team have at their disposal, he is confident that the company can
return to its former glory and inject some happiness back into a sector that
clearly needs a positive news story.

Cloud technology is becoming popular in the public sector, but there are downsides. Martin Lipka, Head of Connectivity Architecture at Pulsant, offers advice about taking a migration decision and offers suggestions for minimising the problems that can arise and for getting the full benefits.

The journey from IT stored in a head office to IT stored online, in the cloud, can be long.
There may be pockets of turbulence. But handled well, cloud technology can help public-sector organisations improve their digital services, innovate, cut costs and respond quicker to citizens’ needs.

Cloud technology (software or an IT service that’s delivered over the internet) has been around for more than a decade. The market (which ranges from Google’s email service, Gmail, to vast datacentres and entire back-office financial software systems) has grown steadily. It’s now standard in the private sector.

But the cloud’s benefits (being able to ramp up computing power at short notice; pay-per-use IT; the potential to save money) are not confined to business.
Cloud technology is increasingly popular in the public sector. Organisations in both sectors face similar challenges ? tight budgets, pressure to become digital-service providers.
“ … National governments typically see cloud as a long-term pathway to strategic IT modernization, whereas local and regional governments tend to pursue the immediate tactical benefits of innovation and cost savings,” says Neville Cannon, research director at Gartner, a research company.

Yet, as the private sector has found, the journey to the cloud can be tricky. Challenges include migrating legacy IT systems, which can be more than 40 years old, and training staff in new technology and business processes.

And as the cloud technology market grows, the amount of choice and jargon can be confusing.
How can public-sector organisations decide whether the cloud is right for their IT? And if they do move part of their IT to the cloud, how can they minimise any disruption and maximise the benefits?

Counting clouds