eCULTURE SOLUTIONS

The Covid response, Regenerate Devon Summit and recent analysis of social enterprise activity in Exeter and Rural Devon confirms the existence of a vibrant, innovative and disruptive social movement, actively developing and delivering solutions and services addressing a wide range of social issues and concerns for individual, family, and community wellbeing. The story of this community power was very well demonstrated by the response to the very recent Regenerate Devon Summit

The Internet is in fact a connection of over 70,000 networks, that exchange data with each other, these networks are managed by a range of Internet Service Providers, content providers like YouTube and what are referred to as backbone providers that just provide connectivity services to other networks. The internet was founded on the principle that companies shouldn’t optimise the connections of those willing to pay higher fees and thus create a discriminatory service that cr

Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, has urged businesses to make IT security a boardroom issue. The minister warned that security was no longer just an issue for IT departments alone. Is it still the case that modern day businesses still need encouragement to make IT security a top priority? Is data protection legislation in itself failing to impress upon organisations, the need to adoption of a more business orientated approach to IT Security investment and manag

Identity and access management is one of the most challenging aspects of securing citizen, and from a National Health Service perspective patient, engagement on-line with services and information. This especially important when the engagement extends to on-line access to highly personalised information specific to individual citizens. As the government digital service (GDS) makes progress on the digitisation of services it is pleasing to see that the team leading the developm

The National Audit Office (NAO) has published it’s independent research report on Digital by Default objectives being based on sound assumptions about the preferences, capabilities and needs of the citizens of England. The report is based on independent research established from the viewpoints from face to face survey of over 3,000 people, on-line surveys of 130 businesses and eight focus groups across England. It is worth reflecting on the fact that the NAO undertook an earl

The UK Government has just published is proposed Communications Data Bill, a new regulatory framework refreshing the old Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to ensure law enforcement agencies maintain the ability to tackle crime and terrorism as criminals use modern technology and new ways of communicating to plan and commit crime. The main point of concern already being raised is that the powers will ensure that all data communication sent via mobile phones, emails

The government ‘digital’ plans to provide patient access to GP records by 2015, raise a number of important questions, not least would access to just GP be of significant value to the patient on it’s own? To explore this fully it is necessary to perhaps try to qualify who would most likely be the initial beneficiaries of online access to medical information, and in the process what, information would be of most value. In the first instance patients can arguably be categorised

There is plenty for those involved in putting version 9 of the NHS Information Governance Toolkit together to consider, here are my thoughts: We cannot ignore that the country is about to embark on the most significant health and social care reforms ever seen since the inception of the health service, this in itself has huge ramifications from an information governance perspective. Not least the proposal for health and social care integration to result in the convergence of h

Staff and organisation culture has often been identified to be an inhibiting factor of efforts to develop public sector information governance capability and standards. Some suggest cultural issues stem from the fact that the majority of the workforce has had to adapt and learn to use computers and information systems, largely on evolved basis of trial and error? Training historically has focused on addressing the “hands on” use of the technology only, it is only recently tha