CDW, CGI, Computacenter, Softcat, SCC, Insight Direct, Trustmarque and XMA have made it onto the East Midlands Commercial Strategy Unit’s (EMCSU) ICT framework.
The ICT VAR framework was announced in July of this year and is valued at an estimated £5 billion. The contract will run for four years until August 2023.
The outfit which buys tech for UK coppers wants an IT supplier for a huge £500m framework but you are going to have to be quick.
The contract will see the Police ICT Company which, according to its website, “acts as a bridge between policing technological and commercial worlds” work with a supplier to manage the relationships with all its VARs, OEMs and independent software vendors.
The Police ICT Company was set up to help police forces reduce spending in the wake of public sector cuts.
It claims its aim is to “cut the costs of police ICT, reduce duplication, improve collaboration and improve the public’s experience of dealing with the police”.
An extensive study by the University Autonomy de Barcelona (UAB) sampled 5,538 secondary school students to gauge the effect of technology in their lives.
A comprehensive survey conducted by market research company Ovum has revealed that IT vendors are failing to address their customers’ needs.
The survey, conducted in 60 countries worldwide of CIOs and IT decision makers is the largest ever ventured.
CRM, it appears, has been widely adopted by higher education with only 10 percent of institutions not using the software.
But there are opportunities aplenty because over 50 percent of these institutions will replace their LMSes in 24 months. Incumbents, Ovum suggests, will be switched to new providers.
“To secure their position in the market, LMS providers must be quick to expand their platforms to seamlessly incorporate compelling features such as social media, video, analytics, and other learning objects, keeping customer satisfaction high and prices low,” said analyst Navneet Johal.
But less than 20 percent are using cloud computing for their enterprises,
“A myriad of factors is holding institutions back from moving core applications to the cloud, the absence of viable solutions in some cases, the questionable return on investment from switching out existing solutions, the difficulty of supporting highly customized solutions in a hosted environment, and even lingering (albeit somewhat irrational) doubts about security,” said Johal.
Labour MP Clive Betts has expressed concern that the ICT behind the Universal Credit system are not up to scratch – and that that he has heard evidence that fraud detection is still at an early stage in development.
In a report from the Communities and Local Government Committee, Betts said the Department for Work and Pensions has to “provide swift assurance that the transition to Universal Credit will not leave the benefit system vulnerable to fraud”. This could prove particularly embarrassing for the Coalition as Conservative politicians have claimed the reforms are partly to prevent fraud.
The first trial will begin late this month in Greater Manchester, the BBC reports..
Director of cybersecurity at Thales UK, Ross Parsell, warned that MPs are “absolutely right” to flag their concerns.
“Although the Public Sector Network (PSN) will provide a secure back-end communications infrastructure, a question mark still remains over whether the government will be able to verify, manage and protect the identity of claimants is still under question,” Parsell said.
Parsell said that although it is possible to apply for a passport or a new driving licence online, the citizen is paying cash to the government – to date we haven’t seen a system that works the other way round, and this “is where the risk likes”.
“If a high percentage of transactions are fradulent, the government could come under severe pressure,” Parsell said. “With 1.56 million people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance at a minimum of £56.25 a week, just that element of welfare presents a £4.56 billion fraud risk over the course of a year”.
Parsell suggested a possible answer would be using a chip & pin system for authentication.
In a time when the ICT sector is banging on about equality, companies are still trying to cash in on the girl geek status.
This time, Datanews has taken the industry back to when girls were famed for their love of pink phones and fluffy gadgets, creating the title of ‘Young ICT Lady of the year’ 2013 as part of its ‘She goes ICT’ competition.
The beauty pageant, disguised under the tech umbrella saw 27 “talented and ambitious” women fighting it out for the title that was won by Karen De Smet, UMAX project manager at Itineris.
She beat off competition from Katty Verresen from RealDolmen and Mercedes Diaz – we can’t be sure this wasn’t a stage name – from Accenture after being “grilled” by the jury on why she should win.
Karen De Smet graduated from Suma Cum Laude with a Master’s in Business Engineering in 2009. She started her career as a functional consultant at Itineris but as a result “curiosity” she began learning about different sectors within the company and by the end of her first year, was already acknowledged as a consultant with high potential.
A few months later she took on the combined role of Functional Lead and Release Coordinator for one of the largest utility players in the Dutch market (Eneco).
When the job opening for Functional Solution Architect for a project at E.ON arose; Karen’s name quickly popped up on the shortlist of potential candidates.
Her new role entailed guarding and ensuring the overall perspective of the end-to-end product envisioned by and for E.ON.
Today, Karen is the project manager at E.ON, where she successfully implemented the Itineris’ UMAX “solution” for utility suppliers together with her team of Itineris consultants.
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