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To deliver certain services in the aftermath of G4S security failures at the Olympics, two seniors ministers have questioned the use of the private firms. Troops were formulate in at the Games after the private company was unable to accommodate enough security guards. Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary stated that he had made realize again about the default use of private contractors.
Base to the Defence Secretary Philip Hammond, the state is the only one that could provide a large scale of contingency back up. For Olympic events, G4S had a £284m contract to provide 10,400 staff. However, it could not supply enough personnel, leaving some 4,700 members of the armed forces to stand in. The firm described its failures as a humiliating shambles and it was forced to apologize.
The G4s stated that it has donated £2.5m to the armed forces with Mr. Hammond saying that the donations would go some way in recognizing the extra work placed on the military. In London 2012, some of the 18,000 service personnel provided support it including Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force Staff.
Base on the Labor, the problems demonstrated that the dangers of outsourcing security to the private sector and all future private tenders for back office policing functions should put on hold. MR. Hunt told 5liveBreakfast that it must be remembered that while there had been serious failures in the firm’s management, many thousands of their staff had turned up for work and done a great job.
He think that they have to have an open mind. They will all look at the execution of G4S in this situation and it does make you think again about the use of private companies in certain situations. He think that you have to be pragmatic about it. Mr./ Hammond a former businessman told the independent that he went into a government with a starting prejudice that should learn from the private sector but now acknowledge that model was not always the best way to handle big projects. He suggested that the issues with G4S had been quite informative for ministers. He think that there’s a lot that the public sector still has to learn from the way private sector does things.
Procurement lessons: Chris Mason of the BBC’s political correspondent stated that the comments should not be over evaluated in terms of what they meant for the government arrangement on opening up public services. However, he said that they showed a willingness by ministers to question the regularity of the just-in-time model for private sector rendition to maximize efficiency. Then the ministry of defense spokesman react that it was patently precise that there were variety in how the armed forces and G4S had handled security. But, the spokesman said that the private sector still offered best process in most areas and the MoD would be announcing plans soon to originate greater commercial skills into its procurement chain.
A senior Royal Air Force officer has suggested the armed forces could take two years to recover from the extra deployment for the Olympics.
REFERENCE:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19251772
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According to the Financial Times, the mobile payments shared venture within the Everything Everywhere, O2 and Vodafone are nearly in getting the green light coming from the European Commission. The telcos’ Project Oscar will support fully-highlighted mobile payment and e-wallet functions for their customers with full backing from banks, financial service retailers and merchants, it was based on the Financial Times.
Like the Vodafone’s same contactless payment scheme and O2 Money’s Wallet app that it disclosed in conjunction with Visa way back in February, the enterprise is expected to create on recent development of the firms in the mobile payment field. Pushing some way to lessen doubts of a future mobile payment industry ruling by a distinct firm like Apple. Therefore such a provider-skeptic plan should testify well-known with the retailers that is noted to be considered at submitting a payment management system in addition to the contactless facilities of iOS 6 and the Passbook e-wallet
In a fast-approaching industry with all to play for, Play.com, RIM and Google are also presently operating or deciding for contactless payment solutions. Adam Banks, the Visa Europe CTO delivered his ideas on the capabilities of the contactless payment and a mobile network alliance.
He added that everyone viewed the mobile network operators as a risk for the past 10 years, they are not and he anticipated that they have not been, however he still hopes that progressively someday they will be. He also said that it maybe not for the upcoming years because they have a need to set their standards apart, however if someone will observe at markets where mobile payments has really acquired a large skip forward, those markets where there is a distinct telco provider.
Banks stated that they have to approve the standards with each other, similarly what banks did before they are a certain threat, however it is approaching. Seeing a different kind of devices, hardware and providers resemble to e-wallet offerings and mobile payment, standardizing mobile payment by way of consolidating providers could support with several order to what is a progressively divided industry. However, most eminently the UK’s fourth-largest mobile provider.
REFERENCES:
http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2190532/uk-carriers-set-eu-nod-forr-mobile-payments-joint-venture
http://www.spiderednews.com/index.php?article_URL=feeds.computing.co.uk%2Fc%2F554%2Ff%2F10979%2Fs%2F213454f5%2Fl%2F0L0Scomputing0O0Cctg0Cnews0C2190A5320Cuk0Ecarriers0Eset0Eeu0Enod0Eforr0Emobile0Epayments0Ejoint0Eventure0DWT0Brss0If0F0GWT0Brss0Ia0FUK0Kcarriers0Kset0Kto0Kget0KEU0Knod0Kfor0Kmobile0Kpayments0Kjoint0Kventure%2Fstory01.htm&category=Communication
http://www.scoop.it/t/greenwich-nfc/p/2145310940/uk-carriers-set-to-get-eu-nod-for-mobile-payments-joint-venture-computing
http://mobilemarketingandtechnology.com/2012/07/10/uk-carriers-set-to-get-eu-nod-for-mobile-payments-joint-venture-computing/
http://www.mobile-financial.com/news/uk-carriers-set-get-eu-nod-mobile-payments-joint-venture
http://localuknews.co.uk/article/uk-carriers-set-to-get-eu-nod-for-mobile-payments-joint-venture
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After the firm found itself criticized over its failure to provide enough security staff for the Olympics, plans to outsource support services of three police forces to G4S are being reviewed. The Hertfordshire Police, Bedfordshire, and Cambridgeshire plan to help plug a £73m funding gap. The forces were given the go-ahead to investigate outsolurcing backroom services in the month of June. Between the forces’ Chief Constables, a new meeting has now taken place. With the 3,500 extra troops now being deployed for security, earlier this month G4S admitted that it would fall short on the number of security guard provided for the Olympics.
A Police spokeswoman of Cambridgeshire stated that the “Chief Constables of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire police forces are meeting to discuss the current situation regarding the development of a full business case to outsource organizational support services through the Lincolnshire Police Contract with G4S.”
About the Olympics devastation, its said that “a further meeting of police authority members and chief constables is expected to take place early next week” and ” any changes to the current position would need to be considered in public by each of the three police authorities in due course. The branch secretary of Union Unison which represents support workers at Cambridgeshire Police, Dave Craig stated that he hoped the new meeting would reconsider the move. He also said that the Olympics debacle shows that big conglomerates do not always get things right. To provide the HR, finance and ICT services, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire forces are looking use the G4S. By year 2015, the plan could affect 1,100 staff and save each force £20m a year.
G4S Policing Support Services, John Shaw told the BBC that the “G4S has been reliably supporting police forces for more than 20 years. In Lincolnshire, they have been supporting the force since April and have made a solid start in delivering specific services and savings.” and “the new G4S operated force control room is up and running and been completed on schedule.”
Their policing support division is entirely divided to their global events business, which has managed the Olympics contract. It has an appropriate resources with more than 1,000 staff. Beyond the part of their business, they abide to work to the high standards that their customers have come to foresee and no contracts have been induced by the Olympics. The G4S still committed in providing efficient and high quality services to their government and commercial customers as they have completed for 75 years.
REFERENCE:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-18862499
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The latest public cloud services to experience an increase outage is the Microsoft’s Azure cloud, it succeeds to two main crashes that will affect previous downtime at Salesforce.com and Amazon’s cloud in the upcoming month. The disruption emphasizes the defect of the cloud computing and how the services and the software established over cloud computing are commonly as determined as their weakest link that are in the part of a huge and sometimes careless firms.
Microsoft then posted its apology on its Windows Azure dashboard which stated that they are facing an availability concern in the sub region of Western Europe that blow access to hosted services in the region. They are severely observing the issue and managing to resolve it immediately, and additional updates will be proclaimed to keep them informed with the situation.
But, later on the firm stated that the outage was immediately resolved. They posted that they asked pardon for any disadvantage the outage may have brought with their customers, the extent of the service interruption was nearly 2.5 hours. The customers who have concerns with the situation are advised to contact customer service and support. Appealing to the UK government’s Cloudstore service offline, Azure had recently gone down last March when it experienced a leap day disruption.
In a span of one year, Azure has recently claimed that it stores over four trillion objects or more than quadrupling in its size. Even though Azure supports Microsoft’s Office and SkyDrive 365 services, as Amazon’s cloud is frequently utilized for third-party application development, Microsoft’s raw numbers determine that its cloud is more famous over Amazon’s.
REFERENCES:
http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2194652/microsoft-azure-suffers-prolonged-outage
http://www.techinvestornews.com/Enterprise/Latest-Enterprise-News/microsoft-azure-suffers-prolonged-outage
http://www.i4u.com/2012/07/windows-azure/cloud-western-azure-europe-microsofts-platform-outage-suffers
http://localuknews.co.uk/article/microsoft-azure-suffers-prolonged-outage
http://www.overachievers.co.uk/news/latest-news/microsoft-azure-suffers-prolonged-outage-computing.html
http://www.onenewspage.co.uk/n/Computer+Industry/74rc5j94k/Microsoft-Azure-suffers-prolonged-outage.htm
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Together with BT, the MoD or the Ministry of Defence has assured to extend its cyber cyber security agreement. The contract’s value could not be disclosed for security reasons however that work had already started in the 7-year settlement with the Mod, BT said. BT will provide and mix new capabilities that are planned to restrain, respond to and catch up from any offensive or attempted corruption.
More than double the number found in the year 2009, the MoD identified and hindered over 1,000 probable serious attempts to penetrate or disturb its computer systems in 2010. The developing threat from cyber attacks signifies that they are longing for a consistent improvements in the Mods defence efficiency, said by the head of the service operations at the MoD, Air Commodore Tim Bishop.
He said that their forces rely on the computer networks of the United Kingdom and on operations all over the globe. It is critical that they seek for consistent improvements of their defence mechanisms to solve those threats, as they have seen a serious growth in the number of threats in the United Kingdom’s national security by means of cyberspace over the last five years.
He also added that BT has already provided a world-leading solution, therefore it make sense to improve their partnership more. On the other side, in April there was more uncertainty than ever of data being mixed up said by captain Simon Wise, deputy head of service operations at the MoD. At the same time, Liam Fox, the defence secretary said that the MoD encountered a constant struggle in cyberspace last year. The extension will create its working relationship with the government to support in providing the UK National Cyber Security Strategy that has declared in 2009, BT said.
REFERENCES:
http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2189740/mod-extends-cyber-security-deal-bt
http://central-government.governmentcomputing.com/news/2012/jul/06/bt-mod-cyber-security
http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=407A2244-BAD0-84D8-7EB27C345D782323
http://eandt.theiet.org/news/2012/jul/bt-mod.cfm
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/security/3368009/mod-extends-cyber-security-deal-with-bt/
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240159123/BT-extends-cyber-security-agreement-with-MoD
http://news.hitb.org/content/uk-mod-extends-cyber-security-deal-bt
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In a couple of weeks as part of a larger review that could start to an overall split within the two local authorities, two neighbouring district councils located in North Yorkshire that was established shared services for three years ago will repatriate a number of the said services. It will repatriate a number of services in the next couple of weeks that includes business support and customer services taking in a decision by the cabinets of the two district councils, it was according to Hambleton District Council.
Only approved to the shared services partnership in 2009 in a project that tackled up to two years to set in place, the two authorities are located either side of the A1 nearby Darlington. As a way for local authorities to lower down the costs hence maintaining service levels, shared services between local authorities have been firmly promoted by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles.
According to the local press reports, the split follows the constrained gardening leave of Peter Simpson, the joint chief executive of Richmondshire and Hambleton district councils who was accompanied from Hambleton District Council offices in Northallerton in February. Since October 1996, Simpson had been the chief executive of Hambleton District Council. Simpson was exactly employed by Hambleton and it had been its verdict to dismiss him, however the reason for his removal are unknown.
But, with the two local authorities, Simpson had won acknowledgment nationwide for his shared services motivation. Leader of Hambleton District Council, Councillor Neville Huxtable said that there has been no big differ within the two authorities and they are clearly going to look at new ways of supporting services with the advantage of both sets of residents. There had been major changes in the senior management of Hambleton District Council and with a change of strategic technique, Huxtable claimed.
He added that shared services have been rewarded and it will bring huge savings for both councils when they were venturing cuts. However it is now time to seek for what is best for their residents, they have a new management team moving Hambleton forward and they are now starting a new phase of working together. Handling excellent services for their taxpayer is for paramount significance, he added. They want to achieve more and utilize some of the savings they have acquired to share better services.
REFERENCES:
http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2185456/yorkshire-councils-repatriate-shared-services
http://localuknews.co.uk/article/yorkshire-councils-to-repatriate-shared-services
http://regiofora.com/index.php?topic=1296376.0
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-18483936
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To enhance its internal operations in a three year agreement, Deloitte, a business advisory company has picked IT management services provider ServiceNow’s SaaS or software as a service suite. Deloitte will run live with the issues, problems, change tools with a configuration management database in the upcoming two weeks. According to Mark Westbrook, its IT director , it will set phase one of the company’s move to ServiceNow.
He added that Deloitte was planning to replace what they had in phase one and the bigger changes would be the phase two. Phase two of the project would be to handle the release management, levelling management tools and service level management and purchasing. Westbrook selected the company’s present product HPSD or HP Service Desk several years ago and Deloitte had to change the system for two major reasons.
The first reason to change is that HPSD supported the firm well however the vendor was not stretching support for the product as the year end. And secondly, they are experiencing an IT transformation project and trying to lift through changes in their departments. He explained that they open a mission statement for what they needed in the toolset as it is not just utilized for IT services but for internal services client functions like in the facilities and HR.
After Deloitte looked at Gartner’s magic quadrant of the top five IT service desk products, the selection of ServiceNow arrived. It then reduced the vendors down to three which is the ServiceNow, CA and HP. It was the simplest of the products they noticed at, Westbrook said as he commented on how ServiceNow’s product compared to its rivals. ServiceNow was the most understood and quick to follow, as the employees were going to utilize the product handled the demo of each of the tools. The transformation will affect 13,000 Switzerland and UK employees and will pursue the direction of Deloitte’s Canadian operations that already utilize ServiceNow.
ServiceNow had very tough service management models regarding with the ITIL or the set of practices for IT service management and needs less implementation time instead of an on-premises tool, Westbrook said. IT will support the SaaS infrastructure so that when they make a change to a specific module, they can manage the metrics and uptime that go around it. For the implementation of ServiceNow, Deloitte hires TeamUltra, a consultancy company and Westbrook said that the company was happy with the work that had been finalized since then.
As a lot of money and time goes into it, it is not a product that changes every year and they had excellent support from ServiceNow and TeamUltra. He added that a big portion of the work was to determine which processes they needed to pursue from HPSD and they were perceptive with this matter. He also added that the vendor has helped the product opposed to HPSD that was not a product that HP were providing in after several years. Deloitte users would mainly appreciate the chat tool that ServiceNow offers, it was according to Westbrook.
REFERENCES:
http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2185103/deloitte-selects-servicenow-improve-internal-operations
http://localuknews.co.uk/article/deloitte-selects-servicenow-to-improve-internal-operations
http://www.itservicesheadlines.com/deloitte-selects-servicenow-to-improve-internal-operations/
http://www.onenewspage.co.uk/n/Computer+Industry/74raheanw/Deloitte-selects-ServiceNow-to-improve-internal-operations.htm
http://ipotpal.sylverstyle.com/%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BB/deloitte-selects-servicenow-to-improve-internal-operations/
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The FT reported that the outsourcing was booming with a surge in the contracts that not seen since the 1980s relating to prisons, defense, police forces and health. They already knew that the first wave of police force privatization was leaked to the Guardian in March. The first tender documents went out for nine prisons last November.
What was the health and social care bill? The FT answered that the new tranche of work will be worth £4bn, however this is certainly a surge, it is a drop in the ocean of the public sector as a whole which in the year 2009-2010, spent a £236bn on services and goods. If it were spent wisely on companies with some basic principles about the pay differential between the top and the bottom, the society would look very different.
Public Sector Commissioning said that there goes wrong and that is they are often dealing with a unique service. For instance, the police, which this paper reports today will soon be run by the G4S. What other business of the market could be held equivalent to a police force? When it is never been privatized before, it is hard to lodge an effective opposition.
However, it is hard for local authorities to commission. Who do they know who has experience of taking over a police force?
What kind of irresponsible idiot would hire someone with no experience. That’s why, the way the tender document is designed is that only people who can prove experience of dealing with huge budgets need apply. Only the big firms could afford the cash it costs to make the opening bid. They become the only viable bidder who is efficacy is rarely tested and when it is it doesn’t matter because this is old chestnut, too big to fail. The central problem here is that it encourages companies to build into areas in which they have no expertise and squeeze out smaller.
REFERENCE:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/20/public-sector-outsourcing-fairness
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The organization initiating the capital’s bus and underground train network, TfL or Transport for London has released a prior Information Notice’ before the expiration of its deal with Capita Business Solutions. Sequential to a major National Grid power break down on the London Underground in the year 2003, Capital got the contract to establish and manage a centralized incident management system for Transport for London.
To distinguish and align responses to issues on the transport network, it had emphasized the demand for a better information and management system. To hand over information in managing incidents large or small and to senior manager all over the Underground network, the system is utilized widely nowadays by the duty officers.
The capability to deliver the correct level of incident detail and performances needed at the same time for a huge organization of affected users is the main advantage issued from the system. States the Notice that it also delivers updated incident information and has become a crucial London underground Limited or LUL operation tool.
Within the key stakeholders, it enables them to a responsive and easy decision to create in the major incidents. In addition to that, the system will also deliver early clarity and the capability to share information within different sectors like any other emergency services especially the British Transport Police.
To search for expressions of interest beyond an established procurement process and to inform possible bidders of the awaiting contract renewal, these are the intention of the Notice. For the first ten years up until it was removed from IBM last 2009, Capita also operates the TfLs congestion charging strategy apart from issue some penalty tickets for non-payment and managing cameras in the central zone of the capital.
REFERENCES:
http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2186811/tfl-invites-bids-incident-response
http://www.railpage.com.au/f-t11363581-s125.htm
http://www.pageglimpse.com/tfl.gov.uk
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Among users’ biggest questions over the cloud computing are the deficiency of standards, uncertainty within the service provider and its data security. These are the unreliable proof from the attendees and speakers at the World Cloud Computing Forum in London. Based on the numerous presenters and attendees, the security abides to be one of the biggest obstacle to adopt because as they continue to be liable for their customer and other valuable information, they cannot assure that the cloud providers are protecting that data to the high measures that they assumed.
The head of IT at an academic publisher Elsevier, Jora Gill said that they control a lot of data like the authors and writers information and they will never settle like those private information on the cloud as of this time. Paul Boyns, head of IT strategy and policy of the BBC analyzed some part of the problems, and it is nesting, a PaaS or platform as a service offering may really be depended on IaaS or the infrastructure as a service being supported by another vendor.
He added that when they go up the stack more, SaaS or the software as a service offering may absolutely be doing the similar thing. Hence they have to possess a service level agreement with a SaaS provider that has an established operational level agreement with a PaaS provider and IaaS provider. A subsidiary of his company had already had to compromise with the termination of a cloud provider, an occurrence in which the firm’s central IT function had to shift into an action to support the migration of data from the extinct company’s platform, said by the technology director at global security company G4S, Glyn Hughes.
Vendors are moving more quickly than the standards bodies and that users thus required to analyze about the possible data migration from a provider prior to make some agreement with them, warned by the head of IT strategy at the BBC, Paul Boyns. The added work of the industrial standards might help, he said. It is not just to enhance interoperability within the services but to improve enable data to be shifted from platform to platform or even back in-house if needed.
Probable providers need to be firmly and exactly audited before they signed the deal with them, it means that they have to analyze first how they host and look after the data, also handling some security tests on their infrastructure to guarantee that they meet the needed security standards. Hughes recommends that potential users of cloud services have to adopt the same pragmatic risk-based technique that they would acquire the data secured in-house.
REFERENCES:
http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2184077/security-standards-cs-biggest-question-marks-cloud
http://technology-news-hub.com/cloud-computing/security-standards-and-tcs-the-biggest-question-marks-over-cloud/
http://localuknews.co.uk/article/security-standards-and-tcs-the-biggest-question-marks-over-cloud
http://ipotpal.sylverstyle.com/%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BB/security-standards-and-tcs-the-biggest-question-marks-over/
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