A. Not a lot – a lack of transparency covered both up by which point it was too late to mitigate significant losses.

You can’t help but feel that the Independent Commission on Banking’s final report, published a couple of weeks ago, has somewhat missed a massive opportunity in the reform of the UK’s banks and has looked more at the symptoms of the financial crisis, rather than the cause. Now this is not a criticism. The report was a thorough piece of work undertaken with the best intentions but which suffered from an over reliance on those institutions that contributed to the financial crisis in the first place and significant (and indeed oscillating) political pressure on the eventual outcomes. However, it does present HM Treasury with a significant amount of work to do over the coming weeks to consider what is missing from the report, not just what is present.

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Conference season is upon folks and it’s one down, two to go. Whitehall Watch is a third less happy than it was this time last week.

As ever, the Liberal Democrats have kicked off proceedings but, for the second year running, it’s with the novelty of actually being in government – cue unusually high interest in what’s traditionally a rather low key affair of mass introspection and headline grabbing proposals. Mansion tax anyone? (more…)

Technorati Tags: energy, Healthcare, NHS

Procurement policy hardly gets the pulse racing at the best of times. It is not exactly surprising that police procurement, with all the associated internecine battles between the Home Office, the police service and the police authorities, has often been viewed by politicians as best avoided. It is refreshing then, that the Home Affairs Select Committee has chosen to wade into this quagmire, with its report into the New Landscape for Policing coming up with some intriguing recommendations.

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Technorati Tags: Home Affairs Select Committee, NPIA, police, Police ICT Company, procurement

Now an established entity on the UK tech meet-up scene, Intellect’s Convergence Conversation’s have grown from strength to strength. The events aim to bring previously disparate industries together once a month to debate a whole bunch of issues under the convergence umbrella. Just some of the topics covered of late include; augmented reality, consumer data, social TV, location-based services, the internet of things, and publishing 2.0 (more…)

Technorati Tags: advertising agencies, augmented reality, ce manufacturers, consumer data, converged trade association, Convergence Conversations, county councils, film producers, government departments, hundreds of tech start-ups, infrastructure providers, intermediaries, internet service providers, journalists, location-based services, mobile network operators, network security providers, publishers, publishing 2.0, record labels, retailers, rights collection agencies, Social networks, Social TV, tech providers, the internet of things, trade associations, trade commissions, TV presenters

According to recent figures put out by the EEF, the electronics sector has seen weaker orders intake over the past three months, with associated concerns about output expansion for the next three months. Companies are indeed tightening the belt due to growing challenges in the global economic environment (the cost of gold has increased dramatically) and are taking their time to make investment and recruitment decisions. However, whereas big and medium size companies are better placed to offset losses, the case is slightly different for single-sited UK SMEs, where the loss of an important customer could be business-critical. The relatively short-term nature of SMEs’ order books in the electronics sector is certainly eroding confidence for some businesses. The UK government should acknowledge that and support smaller manufacturing companies, and allow them to thrive as in Germany where SMEs have been the catalyst for economic growth.

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Technorati Tags: DSEi, electronics, manufacturing, SMEs

Nick Clegg’s speech yesterday at the London School of Economics provided another opportunity for a leading government figure to argue that the coalition are not just all about cuts and are very much focused on growth. The Deputy Prime Minister was brutally frank about the scale of the economic challenge facing the UK and the global economy and admitted that the situation is worse than it was 6 months ago.

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Technorati Tags: growth, infrastructure, LSE, Nick Clegg

Monday, 12 September 2011 is going to be interesting. Very interesting. As the culmination of almost 14 months of deliberation, the Independent Commission on Banking (ICB, otherwise known as the Vickers Commission) will be publishing its final recommendations on the reform of the UK banking system. ‘Ring fence’ and ‘account switching’ will once again become phrases ‘du jour’ and we will see the beginning of the next phase of banking reform – legislative scrutiny. The Joint Committee on the Draft Financial Services Bill has already started its own three month project of scrutinising HM Treasury’s planned reforms of the UK financial services regulatory architecture, and we look forward to the House of Lord’s own debate on the ICB’s findings on 15 September 2011. The House of Commons, and the irrepressible Treasury Select Committee will surely not be far behind.

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Gamification – applying the mechanics of gaming to non-game activities to change people’s behaviour

As one of the most talked about trends of the year, gamification has made it onto the 2011 Gartner Hype Circle for the first time. At the next convergence conversation we’ll seek to discover whether the concept is a serious application with the power to change people’s behaviour, or just pure hyperbole?

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Technorati Tags: education, gamification of everything, Healthcare, INENSU James Gardner, Paulina Bozek, politics, Spigit Toby Beresford

George Osborne and his ministerial team faced their first set of Treasury questions after the summer recess in the House of Commons yesterday. Top on the agenda was economic growth and it will be this issue that will come to dominate the political landscape over the next few months. The Chancellor reiterated his commitment to his deficit reduction strategy. He insists that the recovery was always going to be choppy and that there is no need for a ‘Plan B’. The Labour opposition, and the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls in particular, argue that the Government are going ‘too fast, too soon’ with their deficit reduction plan and are stifling demand in the economy as a result.

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Technorati Tags: George Osborne, growth strategy

EHI CCIO Campaign

In July Intellect endorsed the E-Health Insider Chief Clinical Information Officer (CCIO) Campaign. Intellect has long advocated for greater clinical engagement in health IT before even 1997 (worth a read) and all the way to our Information Revolution response in January. After all, clinicians should be the greatest advocates for using information technologies to radically improve the way care is delivered. If clinicians take a greater lead we can be sure the needs of the NHS are met and designed with the front-line in mind. Unfortunately we haven’t reached a level where every clinician can enthusiastically embrace the use of IT in their job every day.

The E-Health Insider CCIO campaign is an important first step to have clinicians leading the IT enabled transformation of the NHS.

Mark Treleaven, Vice Chair Intellect Healthcare Council said: “The value of the clinical champion in delivering successful service transformation by exploiting high quality information and communications technology solutions is well understood by Intellect members. We fully endorse eHealth Insiders CCIO campaign for NHS Trusts to appoint CCIOs and recognise this would be a significant step forward for the NHS, following best practice from other health systems around the world.”

Intellect urges all its 260 healthcare members and stakeholders to endorse the campaign by visiting http://www.ehi.co.uk/campaign/ccio

Technorati Tags: chief clinical information officer, EHI CCIO, health IT