Last night saw Manchester United and Arsenal clinch their places in the Champions League semi-finals, which means that three of the four spots have been taken by English clubs.

The situation in online banking is almost as good as that. ComScore’s latest online banking figures, released today, found that Lloyds Banking Group and RBS were the second and third most popular European ‘online banking properties’ respectively, behind the French-owned Credit Agricole. Barclays, in eighth place, is the next UK-based bank. One wonders if by the time of the Champions League final (27 May), UK banks will make up three of the top four, meaning domination of online banking as well as the football. Only time will tell.

Technorati Tags: Online banking

This week’s issue of the Economist (April 11th -17th) had some interesting things to say about the state of local governments: “after a binge of bail-outs, lifelines and fiscal stimuli, public borrowing is soaring. And if things look bad in Westminster, pain will be felt in town halls around the country.” With over 75% of their budget stemming from central-government grants no one doubts belts will be tightened sooner rather than later. Indeed, the current economic malaise is making local authorities review their spending and investment plans. Local authorities will also be under ever increasing pressure to deliver on savings especially if their revenue is drying up. Paradoxically, public services from these same authorities will be under even more upward pressure, making ‘value for money’ mean just that.

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Technorati Tags: Economy, Local Government

The US is changing the way it fights wars. When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made his Budget recommendations to Congress last week, it was clear that America has re-evaluated its military-strategic priorities to reflect lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan. Equipping forces to fight large-scale, conventional wars against other modern armies has been put on the back burner in favour of – for the time being at least – channelling funding towards fighting asymmetrical wars against asymmetrical enemies like the Taleban.

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As a newcomer to the criminal justice locale, with little previous knowledge of the history of police IT policy, the objectives of the new ISIS programme seem wholly sensible; an intelligent coordination of procurements across the 44 police authorities to drive efficiencies, a drive to improve interoperability and an overall objective to improve police productivity.
The power struggle between actors trying to implement cross-authority objectives and the 44 independent minded police authority chiefs persists, but must be overcome if the police are to embrace technological advancement, without digging themselves into an interoperability nightmare.

The idea of the re-use of information is a key objective emerging from the new police information strategy, with an emphasis on giving the public access to information, crime mapping and a focus on the public outcome. Although un-related, it appears that this tangential objective may serve to help the police forces drive efficiency and implement policy across the forces.

The public wants access to reliable and consistent information about how safe their neighbourhoods are, regardless of police authority boundaries. In the internet era, public services must learn to embrace technology, and really interact with the public to improve public services. And technological change will happen regardless of boundaries, the question is will the police be driven by technological change or will they drive the change themselves?

Just a quick post to note Visa’s launch of its first commercial mobile payments service for point-of-sale transactions using Near Field Communications technology. The service, currently available only in Malaysia, enables customers to pay for items in the same way we use our Oyster cards – simply wave it over the reader and the money is deducted from the account.

The potential of touch payments being rolled out beyond London’s transport network is huge. However, across the UK, we’re not quite there yet, as we wait to see which firms will come together to cross the Rubicon, ink the deals and make the required partnerships work.

Not before long many local government employees will become happy! The four-year-old promise of achieving “greater data sharing through secured networks to make a number of public sector processes a lot smoother and more efficient” will soon be realised (without many hiccups one may add). Government Connect (or GCSx), the pan-government programme that provides a secure network between central government and soon-to-be all local authorities in England and Wales, is nearly complete. Things have come a long way since the Intellect-Government Connect Advisory Forum was set up in 2007 to tackle industry’s concerns about the programme.

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Technorati Tags: Information Security, Local Government, Public Sector Networks

One element of recession coverage that really gets under my skin is the oft repeated view that UK Manufacturing has ‘fallen off a cliff’ recently. Firstly, what cliff are we talking about? Dover? Or, as one commentator recently put it, ‘not so much a cliff, more Mount Everest!”. In fact, the keener the author is to get coverage, the more dramatic the metaphor that is used.

I’m not denying that large elements of the sector are in trouble. It is not a good time to be making cars in the UK. But at the same time, to talk about all manufacturing in this light is at best a generalization and, at worst, simply incorrect.

If you talk to the electronics manufacturers involved with Intellect, and read the data we collect from them on a monthly basis, you get quite a different story. Many members in this area are lower down the supply chain and sell on a business to business basis, rather than directly to consumers. In general, their business model revolves around outsourcing, or contract manufacture of some kind. A recent poll of their customers noted that 59% of expected to increase outsourcing in 2009. There is every sign that their markets are actually growing, rather than contracting. Customers want low-cost added value manufacturing options. Moving production away from in-house facilities saves money. And everyone wants to save money at the moment. Some members are even opening new facilities and expanding capacity to meet new demand.

Those electronics manufacturers even lower down the supply chain, especially those that make items like circuit boards (the base material of all technology products) are little bit more reticent. We’ve seen layoffs here, and order books are generally fairly flat. But there has been certainly been no crash in the same way there apparently has been in other manufacturing industries.

In essence, I’d say that UK Electronics Manufacturing is engaged in a bit of light down-hill skiing (probably on a blue slope) rather than, as the analysts would have us believe, involuntarily base-jumping off Mount Everest. Hopefully as the rest of UK Manufacturing catches up, analysts metaphors will as well.

Thankfully, the most recent data shows that perhaps this process is beginning.

Technorati Tags: Electronics Manufacturing, EMS, PCB, UK Manufacturing

The spotlight for this year’s CeBit exhibition, my first, was on ‘higher efficiency and lower costs in all areas of business IT’. Interestingly enough, however, little attention (in relation to the entire exhibition) was paid to the Green IT World, though increased efficiency and lowered costs are two definitive green IT mantras.

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Technorati Tags: Climate debate, Green IT

No doubt a few of you will recognise this extract from Back to the Future II, courtesy of IMDB:

Marty McFly: [showing the two boys how to play the shoot 'em up video game] I’ll show you, kid. I’m a crack shot at this.
[shoots a perfect score with the electronic gun]
Video Game Boy #1: You mean you have to use your hands?
Video Game Boy #2: That’s like a baby’s toy!

Poor old Marty; he was using outdated technology in a futuristic age. I can’t help thinking we might all be feeling like this as we tap our keyboards in the not-too-distant-future if some exciting ventures in utilising voice recognition come into fruition. In the last week, I have heard of two which particularly caught my imagination.
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Technorati Tags: Biometrics, Financial Services