As you may have heard at some point over the last couple of years, the economic situation has been somewhat turbulent. The reasons for this have been covered extensively and my days as a history student are now firmly behind me.

The Intellect Financial Services Group convened for its first Conference halfway up one of the strangest buildings to grace the English capital – the eye-catching Gherkin - in late February determined to look forward. Enough of the past, what about the opportunity to move ahead with UK technology at the helm?

Are we past the worst of the crisis? That is a question I dare not answer. But I can tell you that there will be no sustainable recovery unless it is open to innovation and technology driven.

As we near an election, simple calls for ‘more regulation’ will continue to headline stories about bankers’ bonuses – but, as British Bankers Association Chief Executive Angela Knight told Intellect members, ‘more’ regulation is not a good enough answer. It must be ‘better’ regulation which is both flexible and innovative, and that will require the best of UK technology.

Despite the crisis, the City of London remains the financial centre where vast quantities of capital reside and most of the biggest players still aspire to be seen as part of the ‘City brand’. UK plc, led by forward-thinking Intellect members, must now be ready to step up to provide the twenty-first century power tools to keep it that way as international alternatives develop apace. The technology industry must show its value as both an enabler and an innovator for the UK economy at a time when there is an opportunity and appetite for change on a grand scale.

This is the next battle; perhaps it is time to marshal the troops and move on from the last one.

Part 1
The annual Intellect-OGC Conference is now halfway through, with the morning session setting the context and landscape of the public sector. As we all know, tough economic times means that the public sector finds itself in a predicament. While budgets are getting cut and savings/efficiency being maximized, the demand for public services is increasing. Thus this year’s conference is aptly named ‘doing more for less’.

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Thomas Train

The ‘Sage of Omaha’ Warren Buffet has just bought one of America’s largest freight railway firms, Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) for $26bn in an “all-in wager” of America’s economic future.

He could have gotten a big chunk of a UK bank for that price, but Mr Buffet thinks that ‘railroads will get a decent return’ and will underpin a low-carbon economy in the future. With efficiency much higher than any other transport mode for goods, railroads will probably become a hot-potato for politicians as well (for some it already is).

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Are we witnessing an EU awakening to the role ICT plays in creating a flourishing and sustainable European society? Looking at the recently published proposal for ‘A Green Knowledge Society: An ICT policy agenda to 2015 for Europe’s future knowledge society’ by the Swedish EU presidency one would think so. More so, the European Commission has also recently adopted the recommendation of mobilising ICT to facilitate the transition to an energy-efficient, low-carbon economy. It looks good on paper if nothing else.

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Yesterday, the FSB launched a new report urging the Government to transform post offices into small business hubs. A number of interesting ideas were put forward, including establishing a business desk at each Post Office with specially trained staff or offering meeting room facilities to start-ups and micro businesses.

I welcome the report and its call for action. A number of the points resonate with proposals Intellect put forward in its response to the Business and Enterprise Committee’s inquiry into the future of the PO network. For example, Intellect’s response suggested:
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The relationship between privacy issues and smart metering was always going to be fraught with concern. As such, I was interested to read this article which includes a summary of some of the key issues being faced in Canada and Netherlands. Firstly, to Canada, where law-enforcers have monitored energy usage as part of gathering evidence against suspected marijuana growers. Clever, eh? However, in court, the judge dismissed the ammeter as a source of evidence for reasons of invasion of privacy; it transpired that the police hadn’t obtained the necessary search warrant to use it. Not such a smart move after all.
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Although this time of the year is known as the silly season there is clearly some smart thinking going on.

I came across this article published yesterday about ‘Smart Grid 2.0: ‘The Soft Grid’. The ‘Soft Grid’ referred to here is an emerging market segment described as the ‘countless new applications needed to improve the generation, distribution, consumption and monitoring of the Grid’. (Contrast the ’smart grid’, which, generally speaking, refers to infrastructure hardware.) The potential of this ‘intelligent software’ is noted and comparison to Apple’s approach to the third-party development of applications for its products is made.
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Yesterday, the Department for Energy and Climate Change’s consultation on smart metering for electricity and gas closed. As consumer groups and energy companies took to the airwaves, I expect the printers at 3 Whitehall Place were working overtime as a no-doubt plethora of responses from a range of interested parties were being churned out to make a long summer reading list for the officials involved.

Amongst others, the Energy Networks Association, and the Energy Retail Association have submitted responses urging the Government to make decisions quickly. This is a view that I agree with. Talking to Intellect’s members, there is no doubt there is genuine enthusiasm and excitement with regard to the roll-out of smart meters. As such, the Government’s response to this consultation will be eagerly awaited.

So what did Intellect’s response say?
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It’s not a trick question, I do want to know but I don’t want to start counting characters per page, but 20 pages of guidance on how to twitter in government would be a lot of tweets. The latest government guidance is called ‘Template Twitter Strategy for Government Departments’ and is available here. News outlets are all reporting on it and the author even guest blogged on the cabinet office’s Digital Engagement Blog to promote it. Let’s hope the guidance is put to use sensibly.

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An interesting posting appeared on Google’s public policy blog yesterday which once again set out not only their support for smart meters but what they are doing to better leverage their use. One key part of this is the Google PowerMeter. In brief, it will enable users to access information about their own energy use on their iGoogle home page. This reminds me of an earlier posting which highlighted that it is possible to receive updates about your home’s energy use via Twitter.
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