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Home
News
Editor’s comment
Round-up of political party technology policy proposals
What the IT industry expects of the next government
What changes might the next parliament hold for broadband policy?
Opinion
Buyer’s guide to collaboration
A HIP way of securing a wide range of endpoints
Downtime
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Which party gets the tech vote?The next government will be the most digital ever – this election special examines the policies and prospects
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Home
News
Editor’s comment
Round-up of political party technology policy proposals
What the IT industry expects of the next government
What changes might the next parliament hold for broadband policy?
Opinion
Buyer’s guide to collaboration
A HIP way of securing a wide range of endpoints
Downtime
Subpostmasters’ wrongful prosecution claims set for reviewThe Criminal Courts Review Commission is considering sub-postmasters’ claims of wrongful prosecution for offences such as theft and false accounting, as a result of problems with the Post Office’s Horizon IT system they used to file accounts. A former expert witness in one case against a subpostmaster has raised ques-tions over the integrity of the IT system, as he saw it at the time.
AWS cloud bigger than Google, IBM, Microsoft and SalesforceAmazon Web Services (AWS) leads the cloud infrastructure services market, with its operation big-ger than the combined businesses of its four nearest competitors. According to Synergy Research Group’s first-quarter report into the state of the cloud infrastructure services market, AWS remains the provider to beat and continues to outperform the rest of the market.
Brewer Marston’s ISP upgrades core network with SSEMarston’s Telecoms, the network services provider owned by brewer Marston’s, is embarking on a net-work upgrade to be powered by SSE Enterprise Telecoms. Marston’s Telecoms was set up during the recession to save money by taking control of the brewery’s network in-house. Since then it has become a wholesale internet service provider (ISP) in its own right, branching out into serving other businesses.
Autoglass fuels £14m digital push by creating tech director roleWindscreen repair firm Autoglass has announced the creation of a technology director position in charge of the company’s digital strategy. Moving into the position will be Nick Cleary, who has been with the firm 25 years. He has previously been head of the com-pany’s customer contact centre and regional IT manager for its parent group, Belron.
Met Police offers up to almost £200,000 for CIO roleThe Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) is offering up to £197,133 to fill its CIO position, which has been open since February 2015. A job advert posted online claims the role will involve shaping the future strategies and operational policing for the Met Police, and is offering between £152,915 and £197,133, plus £3,501 location allowance.
❯Catch up with the latest IT news online
THE WEEK IN IT
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Home
News
Editor’s comment
Round-up of political party technology policy proposals
What the IT industry expects of the next government
What changes might the next parliament hold for broadband policy?
Opinion
Buyer’s guide to collaboration
A HIP way of securing a wide range of endpoints
Downtime
The most talked-about politicians on TwitterAnalysis of 8,651,162 tweets (23-29 April 2015)
THE WEEK IN IT
Deutsche Bank to spend €1bn to go digital following upgradeDeutsche Bank is spending up to €1bn on digital technology over the next three to five years following the modernisation of its core banking platform. The bank plans to invest in digital technology across its entire organisation in an effort to win new business, make its operations more efficient and offer new products.
Capgemini to buy iGate for $4bnCapgemini is bolstering both its US business and global delivery capa-bilities through the acquisition of IT services firm iGate for $4bn. The combined operations will create a €12.5bn company.
Accenture and Oracle embark on enterprise cloud adoption push IT services firm Accenture has joined forces with Oracle to form a business group geared towards accelerating enterprise adoption of cloud technologies.
EE UK 4G coverage hits 87%, but revenues decline by 1.1%Mobile network operator EE now reaches 87% of the UK’s population with 4G mobile network services after adding 1.7 million custom-ers to its 4G network in the three months to the end of March 2015. However, it was unable to trans-late customer growth into topline growth, with operating revenues down 1.1% year-on-year to £1.47bn.
Fewer IT firms going bust in 2015, shows Exaro Insolvency IndexCollapses among information and communications companies decreased in the first quarter of 2015, following a tough year for the sector in 2014.
Obama’s emails accessed in White House breach, say officialsHackers were able to access con-fidential emails of US president Barack Obama when they breached White House computer networks in late 2014, according to officials. n
.❯ Paym processes £44m payments in its first 12 months.
❯ TalkTalk MVNO claims cheapest unlimited SIM-only plan.
❯ Cost cutting still draining IT outsourcing budgets.
❯ HDS bolsters IoT and data analytics portfolio.
❯Catch up with the latest IT news online
Source: Tata Consultancy Services
Nick Clegg(Liberal Democrats)
5.3%
Natalie Bennett(Green Party)
4.5%
Ed Miliband(Labour Party)
23.2%
David Cameron(Conservative Party)
22.3%Nigel Farage(Ukip) 12.7%
Other 32%
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Home
News
Editor’s comment
Round-up of political party technology policy proposals
What the IT industry expects of the next government
What changes might the next parliament hold for broadband policy?
Opinion
Buyer’s guide to collaboration
A HIP way of securing a wide range of endpoints
Downtime
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Digital challenge awaits next government
It’s been said that the general election this week is the most important for a generation. That’s probably true on a number of levels – and certainly within the microcosm of the IT and digital community.
Technology is not going to decide who wins, but it is going to underpin the delivery of almost every major policy enacted over the next five years by whatever parties make up the new administration. This will be the most digital government ever – frankly, whether they like it or not.
Fortunately, the politicians appear to know this. Every major party’s manifesto recognised the importance of broadband, startups, education, research and digital public services.
The IT community expects and demands that it receives the same sort of favourable political treatment as financial services, manufacturing or construction. We’re not there yet. But a digital Britain ticks every box in terms of the issues that will determine the economic success of the new administration – rebalancing the economy, growing new businesses, reversing the export trade gap, and more.
In healthcare, there is simply no way the NHS will be able to meet demand without a radical growth in technology adoption and inno-vation. In education, children will not meet the future needs of employers unless they have computing skills. Name a policy priority, and tech is at its heart.
This criticality must be acknowledged by the next government in its support and policies for the technology community. We will need a dedicated digital minister, with a far-reaching brief to promote the digital economy and to push through IT-enabled change in Whitehall. We need to build a broadband infrastructure that will meet the needs of the next 20 years, not just the next five. We need digitally enlightened policies that recognise how technology can radically transform the business of government, not simply automate the way things have always worked.
There has been good progress over the past five years, but there is a lot more yet to do – and a lot more benefit to be achieved in terms of cost cuts, service improvements and government efficiency. There is a digital dividend awaiting a government that gets it right. We hope and expect that they accept the challenge. n
Bryan Glick, editor in chief
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Home
News
Editor’s comment
Round-up of political party technology policy proposals
What the IT industry expects of the next government
What changes might the next parliament hold for broadband policy?
Opinion
Buyer’s guide to collaboration
A HIP way of securing a wide range of endpoints
Downtime
Which election manifesto deserves to win the digital vote?Bryan Glick compares the three main parties’ promises in the key areas of technology policy
Technology and the digital economy feature strongly in the manifestos of the three main national political parties competing in the 2015 general election.
Concrete spending proposals were thin on the ground, but every party acknowledged the growing importance of digital technologies to the UK economy.
But which of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat par-ties are offering the best deal to win your digital vote? Computer Weekly compares the three parties’ promises in each of the key areas of technology policy.
BroadbandSuperfast broadband roll-out was a priority in each of the three man-ifestos, with all parties recognising the importance of high-speed internet to the digital economy. The Liberal Democrats offered the strongest proposal, promising to reach 99.9% of UK households.n Conservatives: Will deliver superfast broadband in urban and
rural areas to provide coverage to 95% of the UK by the end of 2017; subsidising the cost of superfast-capable satellite
services in the hardest-to-reach areas. Ultrafast broadband to be available to nearly all UK premises, as soon as practicable.
n Labour: To ensure that all parts of the country benefit from affordable, high-speed broadband by the end of the Parliament. Will work with the industry and Ofcom to maximise private-sector investment and deliver the mobile infrastructure needed to extend coverage and reduce “not spots”, including in areas of market failure.
n Liberal Democrats: Promises to complete the roll-out of high-speed broadband, to reach almost every household (99.9%) in the UK, as well as small businesses in rural and urban areas.
Digital governmentThe Conservative Party-Liberal Democrats coalition govern-ment created the Government Digital Service (GDS) to lead the creation of “digital by default” public services, a move that has been widely lauded. All three parties intend to continue the work of GDS, although Labour has criticised it for failing to meet its targets for new digital services.
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Home
News
Editor’s comment
Round-up of political party technology policy proposals
What the IT industry expects of the next government
What changes might the next parliament hold for broadband policy?
Opinion
Buyer’s guide to collaboration
A HIP way of securing a wide range of endpoints
Downtime
n Conservatives: Trumpets the work of GDS, saying it has already created 20 digital services, although several are still only avail-able as beta versions. The Tories also highlight work on IT cost cuts, digital inclusion and government as a platform: “We will roll out cross-government technology platforms to cut costs and improve productivity – such as Gov.uk.”
n Labour: Wants to use digital technology to create a “more responsive, devolved and less costly system of government”. The Labour Party will further develop digital government to enable better communication, more collaboration and shar-ing data between services, making services and transactions more efficient and simpler for people to use.
n Liberal Democrats: Intends to maintain and develop GDS, and the principle of “digital by default” in public services, pressing ahead with plans announced in the Budget to extend GDS’s remit to local government. Uniquely, the Lib Dems introduce the concept of Technology Impact Assessments as part of the government policy design process to ensure the IT implica-tions of new policies are properly considered.
Skills and educationThe Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats all intend to boost apprenticeships, and to focus on science, technology, engineer-ing and maths (Stem) education.n Conservatives: Promises an expansion of apprenticeships in
general, without specifically mentioning digital skills.n Labour: Wants to improve the nation’s technical capabilities.
Any suppliers – including IT companies – winning government
business will be expected to offer apprenticeships, as will every large employer hiring skilled workers from outside the EU; a move which could particularly affect companies using offshore resources in places such as India. In its education manifesto, Labour proposed the creation of new Technical Baccalaureate and Technical Degree qualifications.
n Liberal Democrats: Promotes the take-up of Stem subjects in schools, retains coding on the National Curriculum and recruits more teachers with skills on these topics. The Lib Dems will double the number of businesses which hire apprentices – especially in creative and digital industries – and develop digi-tal skills courses for young people and the unemployed.
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Editor’s comment
Round-up of political party technology policy proposals
What the IT industry expects of the next government
What changes might the next parliament hold for broadband policy?
Opinion
Buyer’s guide to collaboration
A HIP way of securing a wide range of endpoints
Downtime
Research and innovationSupport for universities and the UK’s research base was com-mon to all three main parties. The Conservative Party offered the most specific promises – although several have previously been announced – while the Liberal Democrats made the most eye-catching proposal, to double innovation spending.n Conservatives: Makes some firm spending commitments for sci-
ence and technology research and innovation. The Conservative Party will invest £6.9bn in UK research infrastructure up to 2021, including £2.9bn for a Grand Challenges Fund to invest in major research facilities such as the Alan Turing Institute. The Tory party will also direct resources to the Eight Great Technologies – among them robotics and nanotechnology – where the Tories believe Britain is set to be a global leader.
n Labour: Wants to introduce a long-term funding policy frame-work for science and innovation, and highlighted digital tech-nology as key to its plans for improving the UK’s productivity and industrial strategy.
n Liberal Democrats: Promises to double innovation and research spending, to make the UK a world leader in advanced manufacturing, clean technology and digital industries.
Technology startupsThe Tory-Lib Dems coalition government oversaw a period of growth and excitement in tech startups across the UK, and all three parties recognised the importance of promoting the UK as one of the technology world leaders outside Silicon Valley.n Conservatives: Flags involvement in promoting Tech City and
encouraging the technology startup community across the UK over the past five years in government. The Tory Help to Grow scheme aims to help plug a £1bn finance gap for startups look-ing to grow and recruit. The Conservative Party will treble its Startup Loans programme during the next Parliament, aiming for 75,000 entrepreneurs to borrow money to set up their own business. The manifesto singled out the growth of the finance technology sector and promised to support challenger banks.
n Labour: Has the fewest references to startups, but says it wants to build on the UK’s strengths as a technology leader. It highlights fields such as a robotics, genetics, 3D printing and big data as areas of opportunity. It will also offer support for knowledge clusters, especially outside the south-east.
n Liberal Democrats: Highlights the fact that 15% of all firms created last year were digital companies, and promises to sup-port the sector. The Lib Dems intend to build on the success of Tech City, Tech North and the Cambridge technology cluster with a network across the UK acting as incubators for technol-ogy companies. The Liberal Democrats will give a helping hand to technology startups making the next step in their growth, supporting fast-growing “scale-up” businesses.
Data protection and privacyIn the past five years, privacy and data protection have become huge political issues, especially after the revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden about the mass collection of internet data by GCHQ and the US National Security Agency. Labour and the Conservative Party offer similar proposals – but
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❯Download a free report on the state of the UK digital economy.
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What changes might the next parliament hold for broadband policy?
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Downtime
ELECTION 2015
the Liberal Democrats want to make greater changes more aligned to their liberal values.n Conservatives: Intend to provide extra cyber training and
equipment for police forces, but will disappoint opponents of state surveillance by promising to resurrect the failed Communications Data Bill to enable mass monitoring and bulk data collection of people’s internet activities.
n Labour: Acknowledges the need for data privacy and the role of technology in the intelligence services, but stops short of any commitments to curtailing mass internet surveillance. It calls for greater oversight of the security services, but high-lights the need for greater powers available to them, while safeguarding individual privacy.
n Liberal Democrats: Proposes a digital bill of rights as a centre-piece of the Lib Dem party’s manifesto, using this as an oppor-tunity to stress its fundamental differences with Labour and the Tories over state surveillance and privacy. The manifesto promises a complete overhaul of surveillance powers in 2016, and protections for the use of encryption.
Other areas of technology policyIf you’re interested in smart ticketing on the UK rail network, you’re in luck – each of the three parties has promised to develop this across the country. Some of the other technology areas mentioned by the parties include:n Conservatives: Looking to take a leading role in developing
global 5G mobile standards; raise the target for government spending to SMEs to one-third; introduce smart ticketing and
Wi-Fi on trains; push for NHS electronic medical records and healthcare technologies.
n Labour: Intends to review the controversial Universal Credit wel-fare programme, with a particular look at its troubled IT; promote “open data by default” for government information; introduce a single smart ticketing network for trains, buses and trams.
n Liberal Democrats: Propose a £250m fund for healthcare technology; call for more use of open data in government; promise to support the EU digital single market.
Your digital voteOf the three parties, the Liberal Democrats featured tech-nology issues the most widely, with a full page dedicated to “securing global leadership in technology” and more sections devoted to its digital bill of rights. The Conservative Party stressed the achievements of the past five years in grow-ing the digital economy, but mostly offered a continuation of existing initiatives. Labour stressed the importance of digital technology in its plans for improving the UK’s productivity and industrial strategy, and offered general support for most of
the main priorities, but made fewer specific, measurable promises on what it hopes to deliver.
Whoever wins the election, there can be little doubt the next government will be the most digital
ever. The choice for the digital vote is yours. nESP_IMAGING/ISTOCK
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Downtime
IT industry’s government policy wish listClare McDonald investigates what the technology industry wants the next government to deliver
In the frenzied run-up to the election, political parties outlined how they planned to enhance the digital economy while the IT industry braced itself for the future.
When Computer Weekly spoke to industry experts about the past five years of government IT, the creation of the Government Digital Service (GDS) was highlighted as the most successful IT project of the coalition government, along with the reduction of clunky outsourcing contracts and investment in technology talent.
But what does the IT industry want from the next government, once the general election has decided the fate of the country?
Can GDS scale?GDS has had a significant effect not only on how the public interacts with government services, but also the government’s future structure. At the Cabinet Office’s Sprint 15 event earlier this year, a government-as-a-platform model was considered to be the best cross-government approach to providing public services in the future. But there are concerns over whether the work of GDS can be sustained and scaled to cover digital services across all central and local government departments.
“Government still has a capability issue. It’s done a bet-ter job than the last parliament of denying mad contracts for
undeliverable IT projects costing millions and billions of pounds. It’s put an end to some of that and, more importantly, to the atti-tude,” said Adam Thilthorpe, director of professionalism at BCS,
the chartered institute for IT. “Scaling and repeating the capability that GDS has across government is going to be a bigger thing.”
In the future, GDS will have to be more than a disruptive force and grow to tackle the government’s current capability issues.
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“This governmenT has done a good job of denying mad conTracTs for undeliverable iT projecTs cosTing
millions and billions of pounds, buT There is sTill a capabiliTy issue”
AdAm ThilThorpe, BCS
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Round-up of political party technology policy proposals
What the IT industry expects of the next government
What changes might the next parliament hold for broadband policy?
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Downtime
The political parties each highlighted their plans for digital in the future, with the Conservatives hinting at plans for a cross-platform approach, Labour promising to focus on data sharing between services and the Liberal Democrats hoping to take GDS to a local level.
Digital focus at a local level This focus on local government is important in driving forward the creation of public-facing services that better promote the needs of customers, according to Martin Ferguson, director of policy and research at Socitm, the local government IT user group.. “There should be no such thing as an IT project. We want to see new investment in public service redesign, driven by bet-ter outcomes for the user, not automation of outmoded, silo-based processes,” he said. “This requires an engagement with those who are closest to the
user, namely local government and its partners in localities – a whole place, whole systems, whole user approach,” he said.
Developing established projectsA number of IT projects have been developed and are a work-in-progress, for example the Universal Credit scheme, or have been put on hold, such as the NHS Care.data initiative.
Although Care.data was not mentioned in party manifestos, there was discussion surrounding healthcare technology, in par-ticular electronic health records.
“What’s really needed is more detail. The concept sounds like something we would fully
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Editor’s comment
Round-up of political party technology policy proposals
What the IT industry expects of the next government
What changes might the next parliament hold for broadband policy?
Opinion
Buyer’s guide to collaboration
A HIP way of securing a wide range of endpoints
Downtime
endorse and we’re very keen to work with GDS to develop that detail,” said Naureen Khan, associate director for central govern-ment at IT trade body TechUK. “Whoever the next government will be, I don’t see massive changes around digital. I think it will be pretty much more of the same, which is great news,” she said.
According to Khan, what is really needed is development of G-Cloud (the government’s cloud software and services purchas-ing framework) and the digital marketplace to promote smaller outsourcing contracts and help grow small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that contribute services through the model.
Although more than £500m has been spent through G-Cloud, with more than 50% of that with SMEs, it is important to promote it as a method of buying in the future.
“What we’d like to see over the next five years is more of the same, but at a greater scale and pace, and we’d really like to see that end-to-end transformation being brought through,” said Khan. “G-Cloud and Gov.uk have been successful, but over the next five years there will be legacy contracts and huge con-tracts that end and come up for renewal – an example being the HMRC Aspire contract – and I think that will be the real test for the government.”
Focus on what’s importantRuss Shaw, founder of startup support group Tech London Advocates, hopes other decisions, in particular whether the UK should remain in the EU, do not prevent the development of the technology industry and the economy – the quicker a decision and reform is chosen the better. “Any time you have a high degree
of uncertainty, particularly around something as big as whether or not Britain will be in the EU, businesses won’t invest and the whole growth in our technology sector will be challenged,” he said.
Employer network Tech Partnership pointed out that the tech-nology industry contributed more than £90bn to the economy in 2014, so promoting digital skills to help it grow is the most impor-tant step the next government can take.
It estimates that 134,000 new people are needed for the indus-try every year, and although incorporating coding into the school curriculum is a step in the right direction, teachers need proper support to teach these new complex subjects.
“For virtually every policy commitment made, tech will be an important component. Tech is increasingly a focus for education and training, our public services rely on digital infrastructure to run, and tech is at the heart of continued economic growth and competitiveness,” said John Cox, policy manager for the Tech Partnership. “Success for the next government will be affected by its approach to delivering digital skills.” n
“for virTually every policy commiTmenT made, Technology
will be an imporTanT componenT”John Cox, TeCh pArTnerShip
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❯GDS hints at a new approach to meet Whitehall’s government-as-a-platform goals.
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Round-up of political party technology policy proposals
What the IT industry expects of the next government
What changes might the next parliament hold for broadband policy?
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A HIP way of securing a wide range of endpoints
Downtime
The future of broadband policyWith the 2015 election taking place this week, Alex Scroxton looks at how broadband policy might change
In word, if not always in deed, broadband has been at the heart of the coalition government’s digital strategy over the past five years. But with one of the most contentious general
elections in recent history upon us, what changes to broadband policy can we expect to see, and what changes does the market want to see?
The broadband news coming out of Westminster over the past 18 months has had a much more positive spin than before. Notably, Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK), the scheme to bring connectivity to parts of the country left out of the commercial superfast roll-out, has begun to hit its stride, ramping up delivery and properties passed at a steady rate, although questions over the process still remain.
Chris Townsend, the man in charge of BDUK at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), took over the project last year. Having knocked a lot of heads together – and spent a lot of time in front of parlia-mentary select committees – Townsend maintains that things are now clearly ahead of schedule.
“I am optimistic we will complete phase 1 by early 2016, and some projects are coming to an end soon,” he said. “Phase 2 is progressing well – we
will hit 95% by the end of 2017 – and, within that, we will have every one of the local bodies achieving the 90% threshold.”
Match funding for phase 2 has been one of the key challenges facing BDUK, and although Townsend concedes it has been a challenge, he expects the roll-out to go a little more smoothly, at least for a while.
For Bill Murphy, head of next-generation access at BT, rarely a day goes by when he is not fending off complaints about the BDUK roll-out. But complaints are par for the course, as he explained in a recent interview with Computer Weekly, and they will become more vociferous as BDUK edges closer to that elusive 95% figure, which it is set to hit during the next parliament.
The current priority for Murphy is to continue to get the contracts delivered and to drive more take-up. For this reason, he is a keen
supporter of the DCMS television and billboard advertising campaign for superfast broadband.
As for the challenges still to be overcome, upper-most in Murphy’s mind is the fact that thousands of things have to go right every day of the week, in the right order, to be able to deliver. He has argued from the start that local authorities need to take the lead on broadband delivery, because so much
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❯Current government sets out future ambitions around ultrafast broadband, rural
connectivity and 4G in Digital Communications Infrastructure
Strategy report.
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Round-up of political party technology policy proposals
What the IT industry expects of the next government
What changes might the next parliament hold for broadband policy?
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Buyer’s guide to collaboration
A HIP way of securing a wide range of endpoints
Downtime
relies on getting the right permits, planning consent, traffic man-agement and community goodwill. “BDUK is a local project exe-cuted on a national scale, and we need to have buy-in and support from local authorities,” he said.
This will become more important as BDUK moves into phase 2 and the “gain share” mechanisms put in place begin to funnel money back to the UK’s local authorities. This is an area where Westminster can exert influence after the election, said Murphy.
But whether it is David Cameron or Ed Miliband standing on the steps of Number 10 when the dust settles, we can expect to see a broad consensus advocating continuity around broadband policy, he said.
“If there is a change in government, I don’t see any change. If anything, their ambition should grow as the benefits accrue. They should want more speed and more coverage.
“If there is change at Number 10, I would hope that Labour would want the same thing for citizens and businesses. I am sure there would be a review of what has gone on and what is going on – that’s normal for anybody coming into a new role – but this is just too important, so I wouldn’t expect to see big policy changes.”
Better regulation a priorityIf the news from government and BT tends towards the positive, it is no real surprise. After all, millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money have been sunk into broadband.
For Charles Bligh, CEO at TalkTalk Business, broadband policy is a matter of regulation, and as Ofcom welcomes its new leader, Sharon White, he urges it to take the initiative around wholesale
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No matter who is standing on the steps of Number 10 when the dust
settles, we can expect a broad consensus advocating continuity
around broadband policy
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Round-up of political party technology policy proposals
What the IT industry expects of the next government
What changes might the next parliament hold for broadband policy?
Opinion
Buyer’s guide to collaboration
A HIP way of securing a wide range of endpoints
Downtime
costs and ensure that any future margin squeeze test applied to BT Openreach has teeth.
“Reach is improving, but costs need to be lower,” he said. “We have seen an uptake in fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) for businesses, which had previously been muted, but where we are selling it, it’s as a layer 2 Ethernet service for corporate networks. What would really help me is if Ofcom moved to drop the wholesale price. If that came down, I could bring down my price and drive demand.”
This is a view shared by Barney Lane, director of regulation, strategy and economics at Colt, who believes there would be more competition in broadband roll-out if there was fairer com-petition in backhaul.
“The UK has an illustrious history of very active competition at the service level, until the time comes – which it has – when we actively need more physical fibre,” he said. “The market has moved on and the regulator has been caught in the wrong place. In other countries, politicians have been dedicated to ensuring competition at the fibre level. We hope Ofcom will liberate access to the incumbent’s passive infrastructure.”
Lane said that compared with other European markets, such as France, its UK business is heavily concentrated in the capital because it has never had an incentive to lay fibre in the rest of the country. “If we could lay fibre in other cities, all of a sudden there’s a much better business case to invest in it,” he said.
But Lane stops short of calling for the government to force the full separation of Openreach from BT, saying that even though Openreach is more tied to BT than either of them would care to admit, it would not be a major part of the solution to the problem.
Mark Collins, director of strategy and public affairs at pure fibre player CityFibre, goes slightly further. He believes the best model for delivering a modern, fit-for-purpose national fibre infrastruc-ture should be that the builder of that infrastructure – Openreach – should be completely independent of the internet service pro-viders that use it.
“We have a shared infrastructure. CityFibre has no motivation to compete with our providers. If you look at some of the models emerging for fibre deployment in Europe, Stockholm has Stokab, which makes fibre open to all providers,” he said. “We certainly support the view of the infrastructure being independent as a bet-ter model. The regulators need to be mindful of supporting a more pro-competitive environment for fibre investment.”
Government interventionSpeaking at a recent Westminster eForum event – Priorities for Broadband – Sky UK policy head Alistair Law said the next
“regulaTors need To be mindful of supporTing a more pro-
compeTiTive environmenT for fibre invesTmenT”mArk CollinS, CiTyFiBre
ELECTION 2015
❯Digital economy minister Ed Vaizey discusses BDUK project, mobility, 5G and IoT.
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government will have to do more to encourage competition, just as its predecessor did in the previous decade when it made BT create Openreach. “The challenge is how we equip the super-fast world with the same levels of competition, the lack of which leads to bad consumer outcomes, lack of incentive to invest and delays,” he said. “In a truly competitive environment, we should not have needed government money to advertise broadband.”
But demand for regulatory change is by no means universal. At the Priorities for Broadband event, Virgin Media head of public affairs Daniel Butler said he felt the strength of the current regula-tory regime was proven by his company’s recent announcement of a £3bn investment in fibre broadband.
Butler suggested that the challenges in the next parliament would be about establishing clearer parameters around an overall approach to net neutrality, and applying more rigorous and robust testing criteria to emerging network topologies.
However, he did argue that the government should take its responsibility to extract maximum value from private investors more seriously, and said it was important for the government’s money to be more tightly limited to areas where the market will not invest.
On this point, Julian Ashworth, global director of industry policy at BT, said that one challenge allied to hitting the last 5% of prem-ises is that many of them will be urban dwellers, largely in deprived wards of low-density housing, which will present problems for BT. “We will need some form of intervention to address that,” he said. “To get to that 1-2%, we will need agreement between the UK government and the EU.”
Alex Pratt, chairman of the Buckinghamshire and Thames Valley Local Enterprise Partnership, used his talk at the event to question why other areas of national infrastructure, such as transport, were getting so much money while broadband was not. He said the answer may be because it sits within the remit of DCMS. Because
DCMS is a relatively small department with limited impact on the coalition’s agenda – and the fact that it had been distracted by projects such as the London 2012 Olympics – it had created a policy vacuum that was filled by Ofcom acting on its own.
Pratt suggested the next government needs to do much more to make national broadband infrastructure a project on the same scale as HS2. “Broadband really is the defining piece of infrastruc-ture of our time, and the way we are set up is not doing us any favours,” he said. “This will be seen as a failure on the scale of the success the Victorians had with railways. The Victorians would be turning in their graves if they witnessed how this is being done.” n
ELECTION 2015
“broadband is The defining piece of infrasTrucTure of our Time,
and The way we are seT up is noT doing us any favours”
Alex prATT, BuCkinghAmShire And ThAmeS VAlley loCAl enTerpriSe pArTnerShip
❯Ofcom to conduct a review of the UK’s broadband, mobile and landline markets.
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When I decided to stand for parliament five years ago, I did so for the same reasons I chose to study electrical engineering almost a quarter of a century
earlier – I wanted to change the world for the better. Technology can transform people’s lives, and politicians can help ensure its benefits reach everyone, not just a lucky few.
IT already plays a significant part in people’s lives, but I believe the next decade will see even greater changes as everyone and everything gets online and connected. The next government needs to make sure these changes are progressive.
The IT sector is both an important industry in its own right and a critical enabler for almost all other aspects of our economy and society, from manufacturing and farming to healthcare and civic engagement. The Labour Party recognises this, which is why the positive role technology should play in building a fairer future for our country is reflected across many different policy areas. These areas include, but are not limited to, education, health, business and government.
As a sector, IT will benefit from our belief in a long-term active industrial strategy. We will set up an independent National Infrastructure Commission to assess how best to meet Britain’s infrastructure needs. We will introduce a new long-term funding policy framework for science and innovation, providing the stability and continuity that our companies and research institutes need to succeed.
OPINION
IT is a platform for economic success and a fairer societyLabour’s Chi Onwurah, formerly shadow Cabinet Office minister for digital government, outlines the party’s policies for the IT and digital sectors
Editor’s note: Computer Weekly invited the Conservative Party, Labour and the Liberal Democrats to provide an article on their general election manifestos for the IT and digital sectors. The Conservatives declined. The Lib Dems initially said yes, but subsequently changed their minds. Only Labour said yes and provided this article.
computerweekly.com 5-11 May 2015 17
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On the green economy, we will end the current uncertainty for investors, with a timetable for the Green Investment Bank to be given additional powers so that it can invest in green businesses and technology.
The Labour Party manifestoAs our manifesto details, we will “drive innovation and build on our strengths as a leader in digital technology”. We are just at the start of the internet revolution. Digital technology has trans-formed startup costs, making it easier to run your own business. There is a widening in the application of new transformative tech-nologies in the fields of robotics, genetics, 3D printing and big data. Our economy is developing a network of connections that will revolutionise innovation.
Labour will ensure that all parts of the country benefit from affordable, high-speed broadband by the end of the next parliament. We will work with the industry and the regulator to maximise private sector investment and deliver the mobile infrastructure needed to extend coverage and reduce not-spots, including in areas of market failure. Additionally, we will support community-based campaigns to reduce the proportion of citizens unable to use the internet and help those who need it to get the skills to make the most of digital technology.
Labour’s commitment to reducing and then freezing business rates for small businesses shows we recognise their critical role in bringing disruptive change, and driving competition and innovation to improve products and services for consumers. We will support small businesses in their growth by building a
long-term investment culture in the private and public sectors while retaining what is the most competitive rate of corporation tax in the G7.
The next government will be the most digital ever and Labour will ensure that means inclusion, transparency and accountability. We will continue to back the principle of open data by default, releasing public sector performance data wherever possible. We will also set up an independent review to develop a legal and ethical framework which enables citizens to own their personal public sector data.
We will use digital technology to create a more responsive, devolved and less costly system of government. Working with local authorities, we will support platforms to promote the use and re-use of digital government services powered by people.
The next Labour government will support the growth and expansion of the IT industry while ensuring that everyone has the skills and the opportunity to grasp the possibilities it holds out to them. n
OPINION
Chi Onwurah was the Labour Party’s shadow
minister for digital government during the previous
parliament. She is Labour’s parliamentary candidate
for Newcastle Central, where she served as MP from
2010 to the dissolution of the previous parliament.
computerweekly.com 5-11 May 2015 18
A t one time it seemed like the only choice employees hankered for was to get their preferred mobile phone or a particular brand of laptop; they had precious little impact on other technology decisions unless
they ran the IT department. Then dumb phones became smart application platforms and tablets appeared – and both suddenly soared as consumer choices, changing everything.
First, it was bring your own device (BYOD), which prompted many IT teams to focus on managing hardware, when the reality is the device is a multi-purpose communications platform and so carries with it many other risks.
Now, BYOD has morphed into BYOC – bring your own cloud, content and collaboration (and, more often than not, chaos). And it is collaboration, sharing and communication that really challenge IT departments’ remit to control their organisation’s digital assets.
Things have moved on a long way from casually sending files in emails or simply copying them onto a memory stick. Not only are there any number of storage services offered by cloud-based providers, there are many other ways to share data, too.
So what can an enterprise do to balance the desire of employees to use and share data with their favourite social tools and still apply sufficient corporate control?
First it has to decide where to focus. There are many social media models that introduce additional mechanisms beyond email to form the communications flow or timelines of chatter and interaction. These include both traditional and “new-wave” suppliers’ social enterprise-oriented offerings, such as IBM’s
Bring your own collaboration
Following the rise of BYOD, IT departments face a new challenge in controlling their organisation’s digital assets while liberating employee
productivity and information sharing. Rob Bamforth reports
BUYER’S GUIDE TO COLLABORATION | PART 1 OF 3
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SameTime, Jive software, Salesforce’s Chatter, Microsoft’s Yammer, Facebook at Work or even LinkedIn.
There are important decisions to be made about which, if any, to adopt formally and how they might fit in with regular email. But for many organisa-tions the more pressing need will be how to deal with information.
The social information sharing challengeThere are elements of information control and organisation that have an impact on whether formal enterprise grade tools or cas-ual consumer products and services are used. Recent Quocirca research into BYOD, conducted in large enterprises across Europe, reveals the safe storage of information is the major concern, well ahead of device and application management, with two-thirds of organisations admitting data security is a top worry.
This is not surprising, given there are cloud storage systems aplenty already being used by employees. Most have applications for all the main mobile platforms and are very easy to use. Some suppliers directly formed to address the con-cept, such as the enterprise-focused Box and ever-popular Dropbox, while others have emerged as an aspect of an existing supplier’s overall propo-sition, including Google Drive and Apple’s iCloud, for example.
While security of personal data is of some inter-est to individual users, there have been breaches that have caused concern. Despite this, many trust that a password and unencrypted data stored with a well-known supplier will be okay. Many of the cloud storage services operate this way, but there are some that go a step further. SpiderOak enables users to perform local encryption before their data
is synced and Mega takes an above-average approach to secu-rity, thanks to its history giving it a certain paranoia concerning government snooping.
These might provide employees with the familiar simplicity of tools for sharing data with friends, colleagues and between differ-ent devices, but will be a headache for the enterprise.
Starting to take controlWhile there are many offerings to try to simplify the multiplicity of cloud storage using a layer of management controls – Otixo, Jolicloud Drive, Gladinet, ownCloud, for example – these are
more likely to appeal to employees as consumers, as none have much traction or standing in the enter-prise. Without being acquired or being absorbed into the services of a larger supplier, they will still strug-gle in this regard.
One in this category with a decent pedigree, however, is Primadesk,
There are imporTanT decisions To be made abouT which, if any,
enTerprise-orienTed social media offerings To adopT formally
BUYER’S GUIDE
❯UK charity Oxfam has chosen Box’s cloud content sharing and
collaboration platform for its teams working across
90 countries.
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which came from the team that developed firewall software ZoneAlarm. In addition to allowing individuals to aggregate their cloud storage, it also provides secure virtual file management for the enterprise. This has the corporate advantage of sharing without copying enterprise files, applying encryption and tracking usage, while still making life easy for the user to find and share documents of interest.
There are corporate versions of popular cloud storage players – Box and Microsoft OneDrive for Business, for example – but according to the research, while 44% of large enterprises are allowing the use of cloud storage on BYOD, only 25% use corporate versions of cloud storage tools. This is something that should change as enterprise-strength security features and tools continue to evolve to have more consumer-like interfaces. Asking employees to use an enterprise version for important or work-related files will become much more straightforward.
As well as the general-purpose cloud storage mechanisms, there are also plenty of tools aimed at helping to organise work into to-do lists, tasks and projects. These consumer-oriented approaches to organising are not formal, but are still based around “things to do” and contain enterprise data. Content stored in them can be sensitive from an enterprise perspective and need assessing.
Whether it is presentations in SlideShark or LinkedIn’s SlideShare, or cloud-based note-taking in Evernote, or the slightly more establishment Microsoft OneNote or Google Keep, the organisation needs to exert some control, or at least influence,
over individual employees and the mechanisms they use.
One route is to impose corporate storage systems from established enterprise providers in use else-where in the organisation, such as Citrix with ShareFile or Oracle with its Enterprise File Sync and Share offering. These provide the strong controls enterprises need, but in
smaller organisations will be less familiar than other platforms such as Huddle or Microsoft’s SharePoint. Although the latter has a long-established corporate history, it is becoming more socially oriented, and while the addition of community sites, micro-blogging and better mobile integration might not be enough on their own, they are a good start.
For those looking for even more rigour and control in shared workspaces, there are approaches which started out in the most secure and closed environments. For example, Intralinks, known for providing secured shared workspaces for certain specialists in highly stringent processes, such as mergers and acquisitions, now offers a service for the entire enterprise with its Via product.
Finally, there are the constraints of mobile devices to consider and some tackle enterprise collaboration by starting out from the
BUYER’S GUIDE
while 44% of large enTerprises allow The use of cloud sTorage on byod, only 25% use corporaTe versions of cloud sTorage Tools
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mobile edge. For example, Moxtra has taken the well-established workplace notion of binders for pulling together all related con-tent to be used collaboratively in a project and made it not only accessible while mobile, but with a mobile-first approach that is consumer-familiar and friendly.
One approach is to focus purely on the content, rather than where it is stored. FinalCode offers a system that encrypts files and uses a centralised means of control to command what recipi-ents can do with the file – whether this be copy and paste, print, forward and so on.
Steps to address the challengeFew organisations need to take draconian measures to tackle the risks associated with consumer and social application use in the enterprise, but neither is it safe to ignore the issue. With a few simple steps the risks to the organisation can be contained, without overly constraining employee choice:n Understand the appeal of consumer tools – mostly it’s about
convenience and ease of use, so the organisation needs to look for safer alternatives designed to be easy to use and adopt.
n Set the bar – make sure everyone understands security risk, why information needs to be protected, what their responsi-bilities are, and what the consequences will be if they fail to meet them.
n Don’t sweat the trivial – forget trying to apply strong rules to trivial information – it doesn’t matter if the menu from the staff cafeteria is shared on Facebook. Focus on important data,
grade it so that suitable strength policies and tools can be applied where really required.
n Fix mobile next – casual mobile use of data is a risk; a sys-tem that works well on the personal-choice mobile devices of employees will make it far easier to get them on side, happy and secured.
n Look for and pre-plug leaks – assume data will flow freely across the organisation, but put data leak protection in place to minimise potential leakage.
n Don’t stop collaboration – inappropriate use of social media might have negative consequences, but banning it or forcing difficult tools on employees will simply restrict collaborative working styles which after all, most pro-productivity technol-ogy is trying to encourage.Social media and consumer-driven sharing mechanisms might
seem to be a headache for the IT department, but they not only fit well with personal preferences, they also hit a pressing enterprise need – a more collaborative and open approach to working.
It could be argued that without the explosion in adop-tion of social media, a lot of organisational structures would still be stuck in a hierarchical, stove-piped rut, where shar-ing was done sparingly to retain control, rather than liberate productivity. How things have changed – but they will go fur-ther, so all organisations need to take a proactive approach to ensure they can retain some control while liberating employee productivity. n
Rob Bamforth is an analyst at Quocirca.
BUYER’S GUIDE
computerweekly.com 5-11 May 2015 22
Security threats continue to rise in number, strength and originality on a daily basis.
While this is a major concern for all companies and individuals, in the world of industry and cyber security
the stakes are almost limitless. Imagine the impact of a successful cyber attack on a nuclear power station, a hydro-electric dam, a gas or oil plant, or even a major retailer.
In all these cases, the targets are vulnerable endpoint devices, for example manufacturing equipment, water pumps, control devices, cash machines, point-of-sale systems and other devices.
This creates a very different challenge to securing networks themselves, network segments and users or groups of users. Although firewalls have advanced significantly – especially in terms of deep packet inspection capabilities – they are still very much designed for perimeter or blanket security measures.
It can also be argued that both firewalls and virtual private net-works (VPNs) are cumbersome to deploy and manage in large numbers and require extensive IT skills, which are an expensive resource or a resource that an enterprise may simply not have. For example, configuring VPNs for a few point-to-point connections is not complex, but try rolling out a deployment in the hundreds or more and the cost and complexity can rise exponentially.
Network access control emerged a few years ago as a means of securing endpoint access and was designed to use a set of pro-tocols to define and implement a policy that describes how to secure access to network endpoints on initial access. However, it really made sense as a means of preventing already-infected
A HIP way of securing a wide range of endpoints
The host identity protocol is emerging as an alternative way to secure a range of physical endpoints beyond laptops
and smartphones, writes Steve Broadhead
ENDPOINT SECURITY
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devices, such as users’ laptops, from being able to gain network access.
It is also important to stress that transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) was not initially designed as a secure protocol. A host and its location are identified using internet pro-tocol (IP) addresses in the current internet archi-tecture. However, IP addresses can serve only as short-term identifiers because a considerable number of hosts are portable devices and they change their IP addresses when moved from one network to another.
Short-term identifiersShort-term identifiers disrupt long-term transport layer connec-tions, such as internet phone calls, and make it more difficult to locate the peer host. Therefore, mobility and multi-homing (a computer or device connected to more than one computer net-work) are hard to implement securely in the present internet.
Upon changing an IP address, the host must prove to its peers that it is the same entity they communicated with before, requir-ing the use of cryptographic identities.
Another challenge is the fact that deployed protocols in the internet are prone to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Substantial memory state can be created before the communicating peer is authenticated. Impersonation attacks are possible because IP addresses are relatively easy to forge.
Because of difficulties in configuring IP security for users, most internet traffic is still transmitted in plain text, which makes it easy
for attackers to collect passwords or lists of vis-ited websites, for example, in public wireless local area networks.
So what are the alternatives for securing physical endpoints, not just a laptop or smart-phone, but – in the case of industry – complex, ultra-critical devices? That said, how critical is a file server or core router, for example, in these days
when the network, data and applications are the business? In other words, there is a real challenge here to all forms of
business, especially as networks become more fragmented by a combination of public and private networks, internet, public and private cloud and other outsourced network elements.
Host identity protocolOne option has emerged in the form of host identity protocol, or HIP – not to be confused with HIP meaning host inspection protocol, as some firewall suppliers use the term. HIP, in the former definition, offers an internet engineering taskforce workgroup-specified alternative to traditional encryption methodologies.
It effectively decouples the transport layer of the Open Systems Interconnection model from the network layer, with a presence on the private local area network and the shared network – wide area network or internet, for example – equally. But unlike traditional security devices, HIP has no IP address on the private side, thereby negating attack possibilities, and requires no configuration changes on the local devices it is protecting.
ENDPOINT SECURITY
❯A study conducted by wireless supplier ArubaNetworks identifies a
distinct cohort of high-risk, security-agnostic workers.
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Instead, it introduces a host identity namespace, based on a public key security infrastructure. So, in HIP networks, all occurrences of IP addresses in applications are eliminated and replaced with cryptographic host identifiers.
HIP enables consenting hosts to securely establish and maintain shared IP-layer state, allowing separation of the identifier and locator roles of IP addresses. HIP uses public key identifiers from a new host identity namespace for mutual peer authentication. The protocol is designed to be resistant to man-in-the-middle and DoS attacks.
It should also be made clear that HIP is no overnight success, but has matured over 15 years of research, development and deployment by companies such as Boeing, Verizon and Ericsson, as well as research institutions around the world. It is simply that only now is it finally being ratified and productised.
Cryptographic mechanismsOut of several proposals that were under consideration by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), mainly due to positive developments in public key cryptography and increased com-putational resources of hosts enabling the use of cryptographic mechanisms to handle identities, HIP has emerged in the form of HIP RFC 5201, approved by the IETF as a proposed standard.
This is an important step, but the true measure of a standard is adoption and this always takes longer than is ideal.
So the question is: does anyone actually offer this new alternative? And can HIP be effective as a complementary system,
rather than a “rip out and start again” option, the latter patently not a realistic proposition for most companies?
One early supplier/adopter of HIP is Seattle-based Tempered Networks, with a product based on technology that came out of Boeing, hence the Seattle connection. Importantly, a HIP-based system,
as implemented by Tempered Networks, is a transparent drop-in system that provides private overlay networks and a defence-in-depth approach. In this way, it protects the existing investment a company has made in its security strategy and implementation, but adds endpoint security without affecting the underlying network infrastructure, configuration and management.
Another element of the Tempered Networks system is that it uses HIP alongside the Interface for Metadata Access Points specification, which provides a common interface between the security appliances and a database server. Although initially aimed at protecting critical control systems in industrial environments, the system is applicable to most enterprise network environments. The key element here is that the endpoint device is specifically secured, rather than groups of users or network segments.
ENDPOINT SECURITY
hip is no overnighT success – iT has maTured over 15 years of
research, developmenT and deploymenT
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One early adopter is Xcel Energy, a major US electricity and natural gas company with annual revenues of $10.9bn. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the energy provider has regulated operations in eight midwestern and western states, and provides a wide range of energy-related products and services to about 3.5 million electricity customers and 1.9 million natural gas customers through four operating companies.
Classic target for cyber terrorismIn other words, it is a classic target for cyber terrorism, hence the interest in HIP as a means of active security against that kind of threat.
“The premise of HIP is quite powerful and compelling,” says Xcel Energy director of IT security and risk management Doug DeGrote. “It changes the lingua franca of internet communica-tions and gives everyone their unique rosetta stone to introduce trust and integrity into computer networks.”
HIP also offers a specific answer to a specific problem that is relatively simple to deploy and manage. Typically, a HIP system will include a scalable orchestration engine that co-ordinates con-figuration, security policies, trust relationships, monitoring and analytics between the endpoint connection devices, industrial and datacentre-grade security appliances, and a management console and user interface.
So it is very much an overlay sys-tem, rather than being fully inte-grated in the existing network, but it has to be this way to be effective. That said, it is very much a one-off deployment, with no endpoint configuration changes. This has a positive effect on both deployment and day-to-day management costs,
potentially reducing months and weeks of configuring and recon-figuring to just days.
It also simplifies the logistics of who deploys and who man-ages what is very much a security, rather than a network, system. IT governance is a hot topic these days as networks continually expand and job roles start to overlap. A HIP system is designed to enable IT to delegate user-level administration for self-service departmental provisioning. It is also a classic case of providing the right tool for the job, rather than contriving a new use out of something that was never designed to do the job.
In summary, the importance of simplifying the security of device endpoints – especially those open to industrial sabotage – cannot be overstated. HIP provides the technical means of securing these devices, and an approach that simplifies the deployment from cost, ease and political aspects. It neither effects the existing security strategy, nor who owns that space, but simply improves on it. n
Steve Broadhead is founder and director of Broadband Testing.
ENDPOINT SECURITY
hip offers a specific answer To a specific problem ThaT is relaTively simple To deploy
and manage
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Why Slough is where it’s at for cloud computingThere’s no getting away from the fact that the quaint Berkshire town of Slough has an image problem, with the general percep-tion being that it’s an ugly place with a funny smell.
That’s not Downtime being mean, by the way – Slough was named the UK’s third-ugliest town in a 2013 poll, and “why does Slough smell?” is among one of the most searched phrases about the town, according to Google.
But times they are a changing, with the local council’s ongoing work to redevelop the town centre continuing apace, while the roll call of tech firms that call the town home continues to grow.
One such firm is datacentre operator Equinix, which has just opened its third facility in Slough, and has decided it’s high time people stopped being so mean about the place.
To emphasise this point, the firm’s UK managing direc-tor, Russell Poole, recently attempted to rejig John Betjeman’s scathing poem about the town by adding references to cloud computing.
“Come friendly servers and hosters in Slough, it’s entirely fit for the cloud now,” he said, before stopping to acknowledge that rewriting the works of a poet laureate is actually quite taxing. Who’d have thought? n
“pull quoTe here pull biTTer bold small caps 22pT xx
xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx”
DOWNTIME
❯Read more on the Downtime blog