The IA09 conference kicked off today with a heading of ‘The Critical Next Steps: Enabling Government Business through Information Assurance’. Sir Gus O’Donnell was first in line with a morning key note speech which reiterated the critical necessity of providing information assurance in government as set out by the National Information Assurance Strategy from last year. Sir Gus also hailed the joint industry-government Information Security & Assurance Board as a necessary channel for improving IA in public sector (on both sides).

Walking around and speaking to a number of delegates and listening to a couple of speaker sessions I sense that IA in government is a topic that all sides agree must be improved and sustained.

At one of the sessions the UK Government ICT strategy was summarised in a helicopter view and included the Public Sector Network, Data Centre Strategy, Open Source and Standards, and Common Desktop Solutions. What was interesting in this case was that all these strategies and policies can only be successful if we have functioning IA in government. The lack of interoperability between departments and systems is a vulnerability and risk factor for government. It is also inefficient. The new overall vision seeks to create a common standard where everything can work together (with top of the line IA delivery) which enables greater efficiencies and shared services with a lower risk factor.

Topics that Intellect has closely worked with government on (in addition to all the above strategies) which were mentioned as critical integrating approaches were a common ID management approach, security management, and improved collaborative procurement in government.

Intellect will continue to work with government colleagues on all these issues with the aim that an improved and sustained IA in government will underpin the successful delivery of the above mentioned strategy and the overall Transformational Government agenda.

Day two of the IA09 will feature our own Director General John Higgins chairing a Workstream and facilitating the morning panel on Information Assurance in the Supply Chain. Be sure to attend for an insightful and important part of the IA agenda.

Tags: government strategy, IA09 Conference, Information Assurance

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Transformational Government, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.