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 Sascha Giese, Head Geek™, SolarWinds By Sascha Giese, Head Geek™ at SolarWinds
For even the most sensible among us, the word “automation” still strikes an uncertain, often fearful chord. Conditioned by the kind of rhetoric conveyed in movies like “The Matrix,” “The Terminator,” and “I, Robot,” the fear—even among the most seasoned IT professionals—of our jobs being affected by automation isn’t entirely unjustified. Particularly in the public sector, where budgets are increasingly restricted, this anxiety is understandable. However, there are two guaranteed ways to overcome this anxiety: a change in perspective and a willingness to push yourself out of your comfort zone.
Align Automation to Your Purpose
In most cases, anxiety around the implementation of automation in organisations originates from fear over being incapable of fulfilling your purpose. For IT operations, automation heralds a day when we won’t need people to run maintenance, manage resources, or troubleshoot issues—when the fundamentals of ops no longer require a human to operate them. Developers may have an advantage over IT ops because they’ve been automating things from day one. But when a machine or an application starts to take over the job they do well, it can be damaging to professional pride and self-worth, no matter how confident you are.
It changes, however, when you look closer at the purpose of both disciplines. A public sector technology professional’s real job isn’t to patch servers or manage clouds. At its core, it involves finding efficient and elegant technical solutions to help the organisation do things better. In this way, one could argue tech pros do their jobs better when they embrace automation: using ticket histories to identify recurring technical issues, devising scripts or workflows to automatically take care of them, and using the extra breathing space to get down to the root of the problem so it never happens again.
For developers, this purpose should be even more obvious. No developer or coder ever went into programming wishing they could spend 80% of their time working through meaningless code changes with no guidance. A developer’s true purpose is to create—to come up with new ideas and turn them into viable products or services beneficial to both end users and the bottom line. Automating the tasks in the way of that, no matter how much time or effort developers have spent learning to do them, can only help accomplish this core drive.
In other words, the best fix for automation anxiety is to get back to basics: for developers and tech pros alike to remember why they do what they do, instead of worrying about not being able to do it anymore. With a refreshed perspective, however, comes some challenges—namely, where to invest their energies in an automated world, and put this technology to the best use for the general public.
Combat Automation Fear by Spending Time With People
Though it might seem counterintuitive, as automation increasingly makes its way into IT environments, developers and other IT professionals will have to spend more time working directly with other people. For some, that’s potentially a greater source of anxiety than having robots render you redundant. But by doing so, they can better fulfil their professional purpose, and perhaps even find some unexpected sources of personal fulfilment.
For developers, it’s simple: find out what people—including colleagues and the general public—want. As automation takes over the drudgery of maintaining and fixing code, coders have a responsibility to use their newfound time to better understand the needs, objectives, and habits of those who use their creations. Most people would agree talking to other individuals isn’t always easy, but it remains the only clear way to know what’s working and what’s not, and to use this knowledge to develop apps to better serve those people.
The new challenge for tech pros is to communicate better—to tell a more convincing and compelling narrative about the value they can bring to their organisation. To a certain extent, this means translating technical metrics into a language non-technical people can understand, and showcasing the solutions, especially those involving automation management, in the same language. For tech pros, whose language of fluency is technical jargon, speaking to less technical people may prove a challenge. The more they can do this, the more IT leads will find themselves gaining the support of business leaders and being given a seat at the table on matters of future technology direction in the public sector.
It’s understandable to be nervous about increasing automation in organisations. People often assume more automation means fewer jobs for humans, but this is rarely the case. To combat the fear of automated IT, tech pros should remember why they do their job—the public sector relies on dedicated workers making sure public services run effectively 24/7, and IT teams should keep this purpose in mind when approaching new automation strategies. Working in harmony with technology is the surest way to drive the public sector forward and continue to provide the care and support the country needs.
 Kingston Council has agreed to recommission its children’s services to Achieving for Children until 2026, following a decision at Children’s and Adults’ Care and Education Committee yesterday.
After considering various options, members of the committee agreed the preferred option was to extend the current contract for another five years, through a joint arrangement with Richmond Council. The extension will include the reconsideration of governance arrangements.
This decision is also dependent on the outcome of Richmond Council’s Education and Children’s Committee scheduled for 17 December 2019. Members will be considering the same options, with the recommendation to extend the current contract.
Achieving for Children (AfC), a community interest company, was established jointly in 2014 by Kingston and Richmond Councils to provide their children’s services. In August 2017, the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead became a co-owner of the company, which now provides children’s services across all three boroughs.
The company has been nationally recognised and continues to deliver excellent services for the councils it works with since its launch.
Sarah Ireland, Kingston Council’s Director of Corporate & Commercial, said:
“AfC has achieved a huge amount since it formed in 2014. We look forward to continuing to work with them for the next five years to provide children, young people and families in Kingston with the very best possible opportunities and support so that they can live safe and happy lives.
“Over the last few years AfC has worked with the council to deliver excellent services in a very challenging financial environment. We are seeing a huge growth in the need for children’s services, particularly for support and education for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). They have worked extremely hard to provide education and support across Kingston despite there not being enough money available to meet the SEND needs in the dedicated schools grant.
“Working with AfC we will continue to transform the way we deliver our children’s services and achieve excellent outcomes for Kingston’s children and young people.”
 MOBILANE – LivePanel at the Nursery in London N Family Club is a group of early years nurseries with a brand new nursery concept in four spaces across London. Offering day care to children aged three months to five years, the facilities create a family feel and offer support to parents, grandparents and carers in an ever-more fragmented community in a city environment.
Nurture and Nature in unison
The London Fields nursery opened in June 2019. As the doors opened and the first children took their first N Family steps, they were greeted by a beautiful living wall, courtesy of Oasis Plants and the Mobilane LivePanel. Installed on the roof level of the nursery, the 13 square metre LivePanel extends the roof garden’s nautical natural theme and is planted with Pachysandra, Carex Morrowii, Carex Ice Dance, Hedera Helix White Wonder and Euonymus Fortunei. This infusion of grasses, climbers, colour, foliage and form draws varied interest from its young patrons. The children are encouraged at play to take notice of the plants, to spot when they need a little care and to learn about plant science, growth and nature.
A healthy, clean air environment
Maximising green elements in an otherwise grey urban environment, the LivePanel plants are also working hard on improving the air quality. Renowned for their pollution-busting qualities, the leaf cover not only forms a naturally beautiful wall of colour but is busy removing harmful particulates from the air in this intensely busy city environment. The nursery maximises the children’s outdoor time, weather permitting, with sessions taking place alongside the living wall up to three times a day. At the start of a child’s educational journey, this area is the backbone of a healthy living environment at the Club where reading, socialising, exploring, playing and learning in the fresh air is a vital element of a child’s development and preparation for school.
Flourish and grow
“We are thrilled with the LivePanel living wall, as are the children.” explains Paige Francis, Operations Manager at N Family Club. “The children particularly enjoy playtime alongside the living wall. They take time out to see how it is growing and show great interest in its development. The plant choice of grasses, climbers and different colour leaves creates a beautiful backdrop to their daily activities. We’ve been pleasantly surprised as to how quickly it has established and we’ve been impressed with how much it has already started to flourish and grow – we’ve had plenty of positive comments from parents and visitors too!”.
To find out more about N Family Clubs in the London area and to see the LivePanel wall in action, please visit the N Family Club website.
Installed and planted by Oasis Plants.
A range of works and 234m2 modular data centre design and build completed for Thurrock County Council, which will serve its 170,000 thousand residents.
Secure I.T. Environments Ltd, one of the UK’s leading design and build companies of modular and containerised data centres including refurbishment of existing data centres, has announced today the handover its latest data centre project to Thurrock County Council. The new 234m2 data centre, will provide a new energy and space efficient home for an IT infrastructure serving 170,000 residents across over 160km2.
 Chris Wellfair, Projects Director at Secure I.T. Environments The data centre was required as the operational location and IT systems had reached end of life. This led to a critical timeline to ensure handover for the new facility was achieved on time and within budget. The project was split into two phases, the first comprising the design, build and testing (including acceptance testing) of the new data centre, the evaluation of existing critical and essential power, and decommissioning of the existing ICT infrastructure. Phase two is an on-going five-year programme of planned preventative and reactive maintenance, including emergency call-out services.
The new data centre room includes Resilient Data Centre energy efficient air-conditioning in N+1 configuration, Riello MPW UPS, a built-in 65KVA generator, 840U of server space, raised access flooring, environmental monitoring, biometric access control, CCTV and Novec fire suppression. The project also included all ground works and connection to existing electricity supplies and back-up generators located on other parts of the site.
Chris Wellfair, Projects Director at Secure I.T. Environments, added “We have worked hard for over a decade to ensure that customers can trust our name when it comes to the delivery and maintenance of their data centres. For the public sector in particular, where people rely hourly on access to council services, we take great pride in being a part of councils achieving their digital vision.”
 About Secure I.T. Environments Ltd
Secure I.T. Environments Ltd is a UK company specialising in the design and build of energy efficient internal/external secure modular data centres, containerised data centres and its infrastructure. The company has established an enviable relationship with its clients based on trust and mutual respect by working as a team with the client and its project team.
The company offers a “Total Solutions Package” to the private, healthcare, education and government sectors, as well as co-hosting companies in the UK and offshore, by way of design, implementation and installation management services for projects from small stand-alone computer rooms to large public sector contracts and co-hosting locations. All rooms are designed to meet the latest test standards, now regarded as the benchmark standard for modular rooms being installed throughout the UK and Europe.
Secure I.T. Environments’ primary aim is to ensure that clients’ critical infrastructure components are protected against all external threats in a suitably protected modular room or Modcel containerised environment. To this end the company has established long-standing partnerships with its manufacturers, who are at the forefront of R&D, to ensure the highest level of physical protection and energy efficiency is maintained.
• Contract will include up to 2 million MiPermit digital permits per year
• Introduces MiPermit innovation to leading UK Smart City
Chipside, a provider of parking and traffic management IT to more than 160 UK local authorities, is delighted to announce it has been awarded a contract with Bristol City Council for MiPermit digital permits. The contract will enable Bristol City Council to deploy up to two million digital permits per year through Chipside’s MiPermit system – enabling city residents and visitors to buy, manage and renew permits electronically.
 Paul Moorby, Founder and CEO of Chipside Paul Moorby, Founder and CEO of Chipside, comments; “We are delighted to win a contract with Bristol City Council. It will not only strengthen MiPermit’s position in the South West as the premier digital permits brand, but also give us the ground space to contribute innovative technology to an already-celebrated connected city”.
Bristol topped Navigant Consulting’s UK Smart Cities list in 2017 and beat Barcelona, Dubai and New York to win the Smart City Award (Judges’ Choice) at the GSMA’s 2018 Global Mobile Awards (The GLOMOs). The award provided global recognition on how Bristol has raised the bar on defining the Smart City of the future. With central government funding from the Smart Cities Agenda, the city’s ‘Bristol is Open’ initiative now offers innovators a testbed to develop disruptive solutions to city challenges.
“The diversity of the issues tackled through smart city technology is an indication of the potential of connected public services to improve residents’ lives,” continues Paul Moorby. “I look forward to introducing our MiPermit technology to the city and seeing the system’s capabilities and efficiencies positively impact Bristol’s residents and visitors to the city.”
IED Annual Conference 2019
The Challenge of Change – economic strategies for a new era – Wednesday 4th December 2019 – BMA House, London
Exploring ways to deliver inclusive and sustainable growth and more effective place management will be the focus of discussion at the Institute of Economic Development (IED) Annual Conference 2019, which is being held at BMA House in London next week.
The 4th December conference, titled The Challenge of Change – economic strategies for a new era, will bring together around 200 sector leaders and economic development and regeneration practitioners representing local and regional communities. Key topics on the agenda are growth versus sustainability; inclusive growth; international trade and investment; local industrial strategies; and wellness and place.
Amongst the highlights is an opening keynote from Rt Hon The Lord Kerslake, President of the Local Government Association and Chair of The UK2070 Commission, The Centre for Public Scrutiny and Peabody; which follows opening remarks from IED Chair Bev Hurley.
Other keynote speakers are The Baroness Valentine, Chair of Heathrow Southern Rail and Director of Place at Business in the Community, who will be speaking on ‘Regenerating seaside towns and communities’; and Professor Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford, who will be reflecting on ‘How the UK can match European success’. There is also a keynote panel discussion on ‘The future of underperforming towns’, featuring Professor Cathy Parker, Chair of the Institute of Place Management; Sir Howard Bernstein, Strategic Advisor at Deloitte and Chair and Patron of the IED; and Professor Henry Overman from LSE.
This year’s IED Annual Conference, which will again incorporate the IED Annual Awards ceremony, is sponsored by Lichfields, Pegasus Group and Warwick Economics & Development; AECOM, Emsi UK and Local Government Chronicle; Grant Thornton, SignedUp Skills and the Social Value Engine.
IED Executive Director Nigel Wilcock said: “Predictably the ‘rhetoric’ building up to the General Election has touched on left-behind UK regions and how best to address those areas of the country which, for structural economic reasons, have fallen behind in terms of income and employment and struggled to find a new raison d’etre.
“The focus of this year’s IED Annual Conference could therefore not be better, as we explore issues around growth and place and the role of economic development. Purely from a structural perspective, the situation is a mess and it is small wonder economic development has failed to deliver in so many places. Our message to the incoming government is simple: the landscape needs to be simplified, there needs to be certainty of funding over the medium term and whatever is selected as an approach it needs to be in place for the long term.
“We would like to thank our speakers, sponsors and partners for their support in making the IED Annual Conference the ‘must-attend’ event that it is for anyone with an interest in economic development and regeneration issues.”
Full details of the conference, organised by Regen Events, can be found here: www.regenevents.com/ied/conferenceAgenda.php
Sustainability: is it time to view economic development through a different lens?
The General Election campaign has been positioned, by many commentators and politicians from across the spectrum, as an opportunity for renewal and refresh. A chance to seize the economic opportunities that lie beyond the seemingly immoveable barrier that is Brexit.
However, for those who have worked with and within government for a long time, or those who are a close study of economic development know, the reality is often more vanilla. The destination rarely changes, even if the method of getting there might be subtly different.
Will it be different this time and do economic development professionals within local and regional government have an opportunity to be at the forefront of that change? The answer is yes, providing we are willing and capable of seeing beyond the narrow view that growth needs to remain the panacea of sub-regional economic policy.
I can’t count how many times I have come across – or even been involved in drafting – an economic strategy and felt that both the ambition it sets out, or the tools which will be used to deliver it, could apply to most places in the UK.
Granted the challenges faced across many sub-regional economies are broadly similar, especially across the North which continues to be dominated by low skill levels and structural underfunding in infrastructure. But that does not mean that the way we choose to approach them must be the same. It can be different, it can be more locally-driven, and it can also help us address our most fundamental challenge of this generation. That is the need to move towards a more sustainable economic future. It is not growth at all costs, nor is growth the best measure of the success of a place.
The professional and political debate is catching up with this new reality, but perhaps not quick enough. It is time the economic development profession took a lead and began to shape the agenda. We need a new paradigm for sub-national economic development. One which addresses three key issues around growth, inclusion and sustainability, but redefines the primary lens through which everything else is viewed.
We have a choice. We can seek to continue to try (and largely fail) to balance the three, or as has been the case for many years, view inclusion and sustainability through the lens of growth. The way we approach these three factors will be defined by which one you start with. If we continue to view growth as the principle lens, inclusion and sustainability will be retrofitted around the need to achieve growth.
Barring a few isolated examples, I suggest that has largely failed as an approach to sub-national economic policy. Jobs get created, but people fail to fully benefit. Roads get built to unlock ‘growth’, and the quid pro quo is to try to minimise the impact on our natural capital.
It is time to view economic development differently. If we begin to shape future industrial strategy at a sub-national level by first looking at it through the sustainability lens, then we begin to see an opportunity for renewal and refresh. It opens the potential to address those universal social and economic challenges in a different way and could also provide a new framework for local communities to begin to take a greater sense of control and ownership through a redefined approach to devolution.
There is a growing movement which proposes redefining industrial policy through a ‘green revolution’ which also seeks to address rising inequality. This has particularly been championed in the UK by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES). As the NEF defines it, it is about creating a new generation of jobs in the industries and infrastructure we need to tackle the climate crisis and taking a new approach to running our economy that guarantees decent work, greater ownership and economic democracy, with a central purpose of putting people and planet first.
Its distractors will say that some places, which lag in job creation, investment or employment, simply do not have the luxury of taking this view. They argue that the focus should be on more growth and more jobs first and foremost. After all, you can’t have inclusive growth without growth. However, in many cases the meaning of what inclusive growth is has been lost, or at best has been played lip-service to.
I would argue that addressing regional inequalities is entirely complementary and consistent with adopting a new set of social and economic reforms. If you bring people with you.
There is every reason that the sub-national government structures we currently have in place can lead the charge, thereby avoiding years of unnecessary naval-gazing and questions over economic spatial geography which blighted the end of the Regional Development Agencies and the introduction of Local Enterprise Partnerships and Combined Authorities.
If a proper and long-term devolution settlement is agreed by government, there is no reason why these sub-regional bodies cannot shape themselves as genuine agents of change. They should, by their very raision d’etre, be mission-orientated organisations focused on the ‘grand challenges’ we face. They have it in their gift to move beyond narrow and outdated thematic norms and redefine cost-benefit models which enable a broader view on the merits of public investment. By taking this strategic leadership role, it will complement the work of local authority partners who are best placed to drive, from the bottom up, a focus on community wealth-building.
This is what the approach to growth and inclusion could be if we looked at them through the lens of sustainability. This is genuinely the opportunity for renewal and refresh in our approach to economic development. This is genuine change. The upcoming election will show whether we have the leadership in place to achieve it.
Mark Lynam is a Board Member of the Institute of Economic Development, and Director of Transport, Housing and Infrastructure in Sheffield City Region’s Executive Team. On 4th December 2019 the IED is hosting its Annual Conference 2019, ‘The Challenge of Change – economic strategies for a new era’
 Professor Jim Hall By Professor Jim Hall, Chair of DAFNI Governance Board
A new tool, set to transform research, planning and policymaking around infrastructure in the UK and beyond, is now in alpha testing.
DAFNI 1.0 from the Data and Analytics Facility for National Infrastructure (DAFNI) takes a significant step forward this autumn as its platform moves into alpha testing with users in eight UK universities. The platform is designed to allow a more cohesive picture of the UK’s infrastructure needs, possibilities and policies to be developed.
The result of over £1m of hardware investment and two years’ development, DAFNI 1.0 is designed to create a cohesive picture for infrastructure needs, possibilities and policies. It is already advancing research and allowing users to run models more quickly, through greater compute capacity and at greater scale and level of detail than has previously been possible.
DAFNI 1.0 has already improved the time it takes to run complex models, meaning it can be used for short-term decision-making as well as long-term planning, saving valuable researcher and computing time.
Much more than a team of developers and massive compute power, DAFNI 1.0 is underpinned by groups across industry, government and academia, and is actively seeking further collaborations. The support of the community that conducts infrastructure research and their active participation in DAFNI 1.0’s dynamic evolution ensures models driven by academia help validate and inform policy and new infrastructure developments.
We’re already working with organisations including the National Infrastructure Commission, the Alan Turing Institute, the Department for Transport, Oxfordshire County Council, the Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium (ITRC), the University of Oxford, Southampton University and Leeds University.
A number of pilots have run on the DAFNI platform across the last year, with the models now live, including:
- The Digital Communications Model – The implications of roll-out of 5G mobile networks across the UK
- The Agent-based Housing Model – How different factors affect the UK’s housing prices and market forces
- Automated Demand-forecasting Model for New Local Railway Stations – Forecasting demand and identifying the best locations for new local railway stations
- Population Estimation and Scenario Projection Model – Mapping the UK population in terms of future growth, migration and household structures
Transport Scotland is currently evaluating DAFNI’s demand-forecasting model with a view to using it to rapidly generate forecasts of passenger trips at potential new stations under a range of future scenarios; thereby informing decisions on infrastructure requirements, efficient build and spend and most appropriate station location.
The model in its entirety can be linked to other models in DAFNI 1.0, and DAFNI 1.0’s user-friendly interface means that researchers can take a view on interconnected infrastructure networks and derive an integrated vision on infrastructure provision.
DAFNI consists of five key parts:
- National Infrastructure Database (NID) This is an increasingly large library of datasets (already over 600) – some of which DAFNI holds, some of which DAFNI facilitates access to. Metadata tags are incorporated to make searching the database easier.
- National Infrastructure Modelling Service (NIMS) This is split into two main parts – the national modelling catalogue; and the workflow section, where you can drag and drop different models to link with each other to provide a “system-of-systems” approach to modelling and analysis. The aim is to democratise access to models whilst allowing modellers to set permissions on who can use their work.
- National Infrastructure Cloud Environment (NICE) Users can make use of the high-processing computing power behind DAFNI 1.0 to develop and increase the speed of their models, which may involve hundreds of gigabytes and much more. DAFNI 1.0 uses best practices in industry, such as hybrid cloud and onsite investment.
- National Infrastructure Visualisation Suite (NIVS) Modellers can use GPUs and CPUs to create 3D renders and 2D plots to tell effective and meaningful stories through visualisations.
- Data Security Service (DSS) This provides security assurances to those providing the data. Data is looked after in a secure and controlled fashion, based on industry best practices.
As one of our collaborators, Nick Cook, Senior Analyst at Tessella, explains, “DAFNI 1.0 lowers the barrier to entry for research, as users don’t need to procure expensive IT infrastructure, set up their own cloud environment or store data. It enshrines provenance and traceability and allows for reuse of workflows and models for wider community to engage with.”
Key facts about DAFNI 1.0
- 50,000 lines of code already in the platform
- Platform runs on Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) compute power, which hosts around 40 petabytes of data
- 20 programming languages used
- 20 independent services combining to create the platform
- At the time of writing this article has 600+ datasets and the list is growing steadily
The alpha launch swiftly follows the DAFNI Conference, which was held at the Royal Society in London in June 2019 with an audience of around 200 delegates from government, industry and academia. Watch the video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZA1UAcGZCw .
Web: www.dafni.ac.uk Email: info@dafni.ac.uk
 AMI Conversational Artificial Intelligence Solution Transforms Services for Citizens
Britannic Technologies, specialists in voice communications, systems integration and managed services, has deployed AMI, a conversational AI solution into Stockport Council’s contact centre to improve customer experience. AMI has enabled the council to reduce the cost of customer response in the contact centre by 95%, compared to other communication methods such as telephone calls, emails and live web chat. For a council that receives thousands of enquiries a week the potential savings are huge.
However, it is not just about the cost-savings for Stockport Council. Their priority is about improving the customer experience. Stockport Council is modernising the way people access council services, using digital technologies to meet 21st century expectations of customer service and deliver routine services more efficiently. They are committed to human centred design, putting the needs of the people who will be using the service first, rather than the business goals or technical solutions.
Councillor Kate Butler, Cabinet Member for Citizen Focus and Engagement says, “We are redesigning the way we deliver our services, based on the needs of the people who will be using them. We are significantly improving the customer experience by embracing all the opportunities digital solutions bring, including online self-service.”
For the past few years Stockport Council had been offering Contact Centre operated web chat for users who are online and need help, but they were looking for an Artificial Intelligence (AI) solution that could operate on a 24/7 basis and handle as many contacts from citizens as possible. The aim was to transfer low level enquiries to an AI solution and focus their contact centre agent support on customers who are vulnerable or have complex circumstances.
Britannic worked closely with Stockport Council through Discovery workshops to understand their needs in depth and what technology they had in place ensuring that it could be integrated into existing operations and infrastructure. They reviewed the areas where AMI could be used, where it could automate interactions and how it could help improve customer service. To assist the learning process Ami was initially focussed on environment, council tax, bins and recycling, roads and footpaths.
“In each area we studied the customers’ journeys, looking at ways that we could make it easier for them to use. The chat is so simple; they ask AMI what they are looking for and it will present them with the information they require or guide them to a relevant page or the correct form on our website. If the enquiry is too complex, then it will hand over to a contact centre agent,” says Alison Blount, Head of Revenues, Benefits and IAG.
Jonathan Sharp, Director, Britannic Technologies states, “Stockport Council has used digital transformation strategies to re-engineer business processes and modernise the workplace. They engage with customers to examine the journey they take, looking at every touchpoint with the aim to make is as seamless as possible for the users. They also look at how the processes work and flow together as an entirety rather than an isolated project.
“Through analysing the conversations with AMI, they can continue to learn about and identify improvements to the customer journeys for each service – any gaps in her learning indicate there’s a need to revisit the web content.”
As well as extending the hours when online support is available, there are no limits on how many chats Ami can handle at one time, so citizens are no longer having to wait for their queries to be answered. Now with the AMI solution 61% of enquiries are being resolved, while just 19% of chats are being routed to an agent because they are too complex for AMI to deal with.
“We selected Britannic as they understand the requirements of digital transformation solutions for the public sector, and they are accredited by the procurement frameworks. The fact that AMI can automatically update with any changes in our website, can handle unlimited conversations and we can also analyse the chats to make improvements definitely make it stand out from the competition,” says Blount.
If you are free on the 14th November then please join us at our annual summit for business leaders, at Mercedes Benz World, in Weybridge, to see AMI in action and find out about Workplace Modernisation.
www.btlnet.co.uk/events/convergence-summit-2019
To the Ami page.
www.btlnet.co.uk/solutions/contact-centre/contextual-apps-and-ai
The latest edition of the Government & Public Sector Journal is available to read online: LATEST EDITION
 Peter O’Driscoll Peter O’Driscoll, Managing Director, RingGo
Local governments are now fully embracing digital services that benefit both their staff and constituents, slowly, but surely getting rid of paper and physical offerings. However, to see the scale of benefits that can be realised from digitising, local governments should be looking to develop new solutions that flow across departmental boundaries. This can take many shapes, but consider for a moment what this could look like with an often forgotten service like parking.
Parking is more than where constituents leave their car. Local governments initially developed smarter parking solutions to control and reduce congestion, but that was just the beginning. Parking has become a leader in the adoption of a cashless way of living and is now being used to drive strategic change in areas as diverse as improving air quality and integrating transport solutions.
Good for the city, good for the environment
As the climate change debate rages at a national and international level, local Councils are often looking for ways to make an impact in their part of the world. There are multiple ways in which parking solutions can help to minimise the environmental impact of driving, with the obvious one being that identifying available parking spots reduces the amount of time spent circling around city centres in search of the elusive spot. This in turn minimises congestion, reduces emissions and improves the air quality.
However, there are much more advanced and impactful ways of reducing pollution. Solutions such as RingGo’s Emissions Based Parking (EBP), which significantly helps local councils improve air quality, demonstrate environmental benefits and ultimately make UK towns and cities better places to live. As most city councils have already migrated the majority of their parking payment systems to digital, adding EBP is an easy and cost-effective implementation process.
The application that drivers are already using to locate a parking spot and pay for parking can easily be adapted to influence environmental impact. Using real-time data, combined with the vehicle’s fuel type and year of manufacture, tariffs can be automatically varied to match pre-defined emission brackets set by the council.
EBP parking schemes are already having an impact. Westminster City Council saw an immediate effect from introducing the solution, reporting a 16% reduction in the most polluting vehicles driving and parking in the city, without any obvious displacement to nearby parking zones.
Parking is also about offering the best ecosystem for encouraging use of vehicles that minimise environmental impact. Electric vehicles are key to the future of transport, and with increasing uptake RingGo allows drivers to view a map of over 5,500 EV charging points across the UK, find the closest charging point and be directed to the selected destination. Increasing awareness of charging points not only helps existing drivers of EVs but also normalises their usage, encouraging greater adoption amongst motorists who may be concerned about making the shift. It also makes the surrounding area more environmentally friendly.
More efficient transport
Along with the enhanced capabilities being built into unified parking solutions, all mobility systems are benefiting from technological advancements and when harnessed in the right way, this can create amazing results. Converged mobility systems provide data to better understand customers, improve transportation efficiency, recognise new trends in mobility and plan for the future.
PARK NOW, RingGo’s parent company, has helped to implement an Urban Mobility Control Hub (UMCH) in Paris, a perfect example of how digital systems are bringing together not just parking, but data from mobility across the city to increase efficiencies by, for example, reducing congestion. The UMCH connects and manages asset and access models, joining up information from zones, parking machines, pollution forecasts, enforcement data, permits and cashless options. It monitors behaviour in all aspects of mobility and provides ways to improve how people travel around the city.
The complete digitisation and integration of mobility services, including vehicle journeys and parking will increasingly be used to optimise and steer traffic flows. With quick and easy analysis, local governments can use this data to improve how constituents travel, transferring usage to underutilised areas or modes of transport, and ultimately ensuring cities are better places to live. Average parking duration times, high-density zones, price sensitivities, and on-street performance can all be analysed and used to better manage the parking ecosystem.
Consumers also benefit. As travel and parking information increasingly converge within vehicles, motorists are better informed about where to go and how to get there.
Liveable cities of the future
From improving air pollution to creating smart, economic ways to travel through cities, parking has a key role to play in helping local councils provide cleaner, healthier and more liveable cities. While it may be just one part of the overall picture, by understanding local parking needs based on intelligent data insights, governments can gain greater understanding and introduce further smart mobility services supporting a more sustainable future.
 David Trossell, CEO and CTO of Bridgeworks By David Trossell, CEO and CTO of Bridgeworks
Whenever a network seems to operate too slowly the conversation soon turns to how much bandwidth the network connectivity and infrastructure offers, and then it moves on to how much faster the network could be if more money were made available to ‘resolve’ the problem by buying higher bandwidth network connectivity. The trouble is that increasing your organisation’s bandwidth won’t necessarily equate to higher network performance.
WAN bandwidth is a little bit like the petrol mileage that motor manufacturers claim on their cars. It sounds good, but you never seem to get close to that figure you are expecting. In fact, you are more likely to get closer to the petrol mileage figure than you are to your WAN bandwidth.
Over the past few years organisations have seen a move from so-called small “transactional” type data transfers to the WAN to one that reflects the bulk data transfers that are associated with offsite data backup and cloud use. This can lead to a conflict between the network team and the data team where one blames the other for poor data throughput. I have been involved in so many conversations in which the data guys are moaning about the lack of throughput, while the network guys respond with: “It’s not our problem; you’re not even using all the bandwidth allocated to your WAN – it must be your program”, and so it goes on.
In the end the “Carrier” gets pulled in and “If you want to go faster, add more bandwidth. “The contract is signed; more bandwidth is added the salesman gets his commission and…nothing changes! You achieve only the same throughput! More head scratching and embarrassing questions are being asked by accounts and the CFO why we signed up for more expensive connection with no improvement. Why? The clue is in the poor utilisation figures that the network team is reporting.
Long distances
When organisations transport data over long distances that are typical for WANs, the TCP/IP latency effect rears its ugly head and kills the throughput while it waits for those all-important acknowledgements (ACKs) from the other end. So, throwing more bandwidth at the problem is not going to fix it.
Let me explain with an example: If we have a 1Gb/s WAN with 100ms of latency and we are transferring data in 4MB blocks. We send the block of data and then wait 100ms before we get the ACK back from the receiving end before we send the next block of 4MB. So, in 1 second we can send 10 blocks of 4MB = 40MB/s – not bad but a 1Gb WAN should be capable of transferring more than 100MB/s That’s only 40% utilisation.
So, what happens if we upgrade to 10Gb/s? Does it offer 10 times the performance? That is the perceived wisdom, but don’t forget we still have that 100ms of latency and 4MB blocks. So, we are still only going to transfer 10 x 4MB =40MB/s. Exactly the same as the 1Gb connection. However, the capability of the 10Gb connection is around 1GB/s, so now we have a utilisation of only 4%!
I wish I could say that’s the only problem, but there is yet another performance thief – Packet Loss. What if we lose a few packets along the way…that’s not a great problem, or is it? TCP/IP will resend those that were lost. We may lose a little time, but all the data will get there.
Life is never simple
Unfortunately, life is never simple in the world of data comms and TCP/IP. When TCP/IP sees packet loss, it loses confidence in the connection and shrinks the amount of data it places on the network until it gains confidence in the connection and starts to increase the block size again. Now let’s apply some packet loss to our example, and assume we shrink the data block by 75%. With the 1Gb WAN our performance drops to 10MB/s (10%) and with the 10G we drop the same throughput but now the utilisation is only 1%. That’s going to take some explaining!
So, what is the solution? Latency is governed by the speed of light and until someone finds another method of communication (perhaps quantum entanglement), then we are stuck with it. You can get low latency connections that take the shortest route, but at the end of the day the two end points are still the same distance apart. As for packet loss, you can order dedicated links which should have much lower packet loss, but both of these options add considerably to the costs.
Data optimisation products
SD-WANs are gaining popularity in many organisations and have many advantages in flexibility and cost over traditional WANs, but still suffer from the same latency and packet loss. The traditional workaround is to deploy WAN Optimisation products. These are data optimisation products as they do not optimise the WAN.
These are very effective in improving the user experience with Office-based products and other data applications, where the data can be compressed or be deduped, but they add no benefit if the data is already compressed or encrypted. One of the effects of all the high workload involved in compressing or deduplicating the data restricts the overall throughput capability below many of the WAN bandwidths currently available.
Mitigate latency
To gain control of the WAN and return the performance to the full capability of the WAN we need to first, mitigate the effects of latency and secondly, minimise the effect of packet loss. But how? Firstly, to minimise the effect of latency we take the incoming stream of data and split it up into multiple parts to simultaneously send these over the WAN as separate TCP/IP streams.
By filling the “pipe” it’s possible to drive the throughput up as well as the utilisation ratio. To mitigate the effects of packet loss we can manipulate the number of connections and the size of the data on the WAN. Managing these factors is beyond a network engineer’s ability to constantly tune these. The various other parameters make it impossible too, and that is why within PORTrockIT WAN Data Accelerator, AI is used to manage the whole process constantly by adjusting a myriad of parameters. Typical customers can realise up to 95% of the possible capability of the WAN bandwidth. The beauty of using agentless WAN Data Acceleration such as PORTrockIT is that it can be used in combination with SD-WAN products to give the user the ability to exploit both new technologies.
How does this work in the real world?
Bridgeworks was asked to see if we could help with NetApp SnapMirror replication of 85TB over approximately 2,000 miles across a 10Gb WAN connection. After all other options had failed, my team ran the replication back to back in the data centre and then ran the same replication over the WAN with the exactly same encrypted data set. As you can imagine the data centre replication was fast. However, over the WAN we were only 7MB/s slower.
5 best practice tips for managing bandwidth and network performance
So, here are my 5 top best practice tips for achieving WAN data acceleration, improved use of existing bandwidth and network performance:
- Before blaming the WAN, run the transfer within the data centre and then check the performance and the utilisation of the WAN when transferring data. If it is not in the high 80’s then consider WAN data Acceleration products. If the performance across the WAN is lower than the data centre, and the utilisation is high then consider upgrading the WAN.
- Make sure the solution you use can handle multiple differing protocols and not just file transfer protocols. With the increasing use of the Cloud and remote data centres as part of the Backup and Disaster Recovery strategy.
- Check with different data types to ensure you have the performance you need not only for backup but MORE importantly when you need to restore data. Many of the cloud transfer products use deduplication.
- Consider deploying a WAN Data Acceleration solution such as PORTrockIT to mitigate the effects of latency and packet loss. Add this as a layer onto SD-WANs, too, to achieve greater WAN performance.
- Think, you may not need to replace your existing infrastructure. You’re existing network infrastructure may need a boost, but this doesn’t mean that it should be replaced. However, you should plan for data growth, disaster recovery, etc.
The question of ‘How much bandwidth do I need?’ can often be the wrong question when more utilisation could be gained from an existing network infrastructure. However, data volumes are ever increasing, and the need for disaster recovery as well as service continuity is always something that requires constant attention and planning. One thing truism is that the big vendors are often happy to sell solutions that may not adequately mitigate latency, and so organisations should be wary and look to smaller vendors that are often more innovative – providing solutions that actually do the job.
For GPSJ by Nigel Wilcock, Executive Director of the Institute of Economic Development
 Photo: GPSJ I have arrived at a clear view that a ‘No Deal’ Brexit will create an economic emergency – one that will impact economic development and regeneration professionals working for local and regional communities. It is considered likely that the impact of all of the factors outlined below will have a sufficiently detrimental effect – that any potential long-term upside (argued by some) will struggle to overcome the poor compound growth rate of a short-medium term slowdown. In other words, even the optimistic long-term view of hardliners will fail to address the short-term harm created for a generation. This is not project fear and the IED is absolutely non-political. So why do I take this stance on ‘No Deal’? These are the facts, as I see them:
- Immediate disruption
According to the Government’s own analysis, a ‘No Deal’ Brexit will result in additional paperwork, border delays, an immediate imposition of tariffs on large numbers of outbound goods and fewer tariffs to be charged by the UK. This only creates economic ills. Additional paperwork takes time, inevitably impacting on profit margins. Border delays will result in lost export orders or the need to increase inventory to cope with additional days of stock sat in transit. Tariff imposition will either make UK goods more expensive overseas (reducing sales) or will force exporters to cut their prices (reducing margin). The UK Government has set out its proposed tariff regime and also set out a light-touch approach. This means that for a large number of products, the cost of imports from outside the EU will fall – undermining UK suppliers. There is a view that food and fuel will be two product areas significantly affected – essential products where price rises have a disproportionate effect on lower income groups. There is no upside in the immediate aftermath of a ‘No Deal’ Brexit. Some companies may benefit (from stockholding and subsequent higher charges to consumers, for example) but the overall impact on the whole economy is neutral. There is an argument about scale, however it is clear that the immediate economic impact of a ‘No Deal’ Brexit is entirely negative.
- Business investment
Analysis has shown that whilst the economy has avoided a recession since the EU referendum, business investment has declined. Cash hoarding on balance sheets is increasing and commercial borrowing is declining. Negotiation of a favourable and known deal could release this pent up investment potential – but a ‘No Deal’ scenario continues uncertainty for a considerable period. Business impacted by increased export difficulties, or concerned about its competitiveness position in the face of suddenly reduced tariffs on imports, risks investment capital until the competitive environment is clearer. There is no conceivable position where business investment increases in the short-term after a ‘No Deal’ Brexit – it may recover as a response to the new trading environment, but in the immediate term it will decline. Again, there is an argument to be made about scale, but it is clear that the immediate business investment impact of a ‘No Deal’ Brexit is entirely negative.
- Macro-economic position
The macro-economic position of a ‘No Deal’ Brexit can be considered from a number of perspectives. In the short-term, from a narrow perspective, the evidence has shown that sterling has come under pressure amid uncertainty. A ‘No Deal Brexit’ is likely to result in further deterioration in the value of the pound. This will lead to inflationary pressures as a result of the increase in the cost of imported goods – and this will be exacerbated by the tariff impact on some products. Inflationary pressures will immediately reduce consumer demand but they are also likely to increase pressure on the Bank of England to increase interest rates to meet their long-term inflation targets. This will further impact on consumer spending. It will also result in greater economic hardship for the elements of society most reliant on borrowings. A responding Government stimulus effect through spending or fiscal measures is made difficult through the continued public sector deficit position. It is, therefore, difficult to envisage anything other than a negative macro policy position resulting from ‘No Deal’ in the short-term.
- Regional impacts
The immediate downsides of a ‘No Deal Brexit’ set out above suggest that lower income groups will be disproportionately affected (high proportion of spend on food, fuel and interest charges) and businesses involved in import/export trade (manufacturing, wholesale, retail) will face disruption. In addition, any business focused on domestic discretionary spend is also likely to be affected by a general economic slowdown. The result is that knowledge-driven, high-value added, flexible and fast-moving economies are likely to be least affected whilst those economies that are structurally more traditional will be less able to adapt. Generalisations in this area are dangerous but it is easy to foresee a scenario where the digital cluster of Liverpool Street, London (Silicon Roundabout) adapts and continues to grow compared to the automotive branch plant economies of Sunderland or Ellesmere Port. Economic analysis has suggested that a ‘No Deal’ Brexit will worsen and hasten economic divides despite those economies being left behind in economic terms tending to favour Brexit. Certainly, whilst the scale is debatable, there is no foreseeable prospect of poorer and more traditional economy dependent regions out-performing others in a ‘No Deal’ Brexit world.
- Medium-term prospects
Short-term prospects after a ‘No Deal’ are regarded as definitely negative – and perhaps very negative. Medium prospects are more difficult to predict – but one area that the economic debate has somewhat overlooked is the impact of overseas ownership on the UK economy. Globalisation has resulted in flows of capital that have resulted in large changes in the ownership and control of companies. The UK has been particularly laissez-faire in policy regarding change of ownership of influential businesses – European businesses typically allow business councils influence over such decisions. Whether the influx of new foreign capital and influence into originally UK-owned businesses is a good idea is a matter for debate. Certainly, over a period of economic and legislative stability the outcomes would seem to have been relatively benign. In a period, however, of major economic disruption and uncertainty, there is a risk that remote UK subsidiaries bidding for Head Office investment against competing locations will now be disadvantaged. Large-scale foreign ownership, built up over time, may now result in a gradual flight of capital from the UK economy – and this capital is more likely to have been sticky if business had remained UK-owned. Government statements and business reporting in this area suggests that the level of foreign influence in UK corporate activity is significantly under-estimated. A further note on foreign ownership of the more dynamic businesses is that export policy is likely to be controlled from head office. The continued clamour for an increase in UK businesses to export is impacted by the ownership and control structure – German-owned businesses are likely to use their UK subsidiaries for the UK market, expansion to meet global needs is more likely to take place near head office – especially if UK exports face increased tariffs. Medium-term, therefore, I do not recognise any credible arguments for an economic upside – but continue to see a rationale for pessimism in the event of a ‘No Deal’ Brexit.
- Longer term
It is difficult to provide any certainty on a long-term position – and I would question any organisation that appears able to offer such a view. One very well-evidenced economic model that does help predict future trade and investment with overseas markets is ‘Gravity Modelling’. Simply put, all other things being equal, economic links are most likely with the largest and closest markets. This predicts that shoppers in Reading, if they leave Reading, are more likely to shop in London than Bristol. Extrapolating this view, even if the German market becomes difficult for UK exporters, it is unlikely that the volume lost in sales will manage to find markets in the Far East. Equally, any investment lost to the UK from EU neighbours is unlikely to be replaced by investment from strongly-performing Asian economies who continue to see huge opportunities on their own doorstep. All in all, therefore, the arguments for long-term upsides are fundamentally difficult to fully reconcile with long-term economic evidence.
In summary – in my opinion, a ‘No Deal’ Brexit is an act of economic self-harm. It is considered to be particularly pernicious because not only is it likely to damage the economy irrevocably, the expectation is that it will damage the regional economies and economic groups least able to adapt. On this basis it represents an economic emergency.
Joining Government and industry representatives, RingGo brings its wealth of experience in how parking can encourage electric vehicle adoption to the campaign
RingGo, the UK’s leading cashless parking provider, today announced a partnership with Go Ultra Low, the national campaign for electric vehicles. Supported by a consortium of vehicle manufacturers and the Government’s Office for Low Emission Vehicles, the Go Ultra Low campaign aims to reduce misconceptions and dispel myths in order to drive the continued adoption of electric vehicles (EV).
In support of the launch of the new Go Ultra Low campaign RingGo are helping to provide their customers with the information they need to make the switch to electric by including messaging and information on their website and app. They will also be working with Go Ultra Low to showcase the impact which the parking industry can have on helping to drive uptake of EVs.
 Becoming a partner of the campaign reinforces RingGo’s focus on promoting EV usage and growth within the UK and builds on the work the company is doing in the environmental space to make cities cleaner, healthier and more liveable.
The Go Ultra Low campaign aims to normalise EV use and provide drivers with all the information they need to make an informed decision about switching from traditional, petrol and diesel cars to an EV. By reassuring drivers about the cost efficiency, range and infrastructure in place to support EVs and highlighting the positive environmental impact making the switch can have, Go Ultra Low hopes to encourage more drivers to make their next car electric.
RingGo strongly encourages more environmentally friendly driving and their parking solutions enable both providers and users to make better decisions around environmentally conscious parking and reducing carbon emissions. Councils and parking management companies can use emissions based parking tariffs to influence choice, while drivers can locate EV charging stations and ULEZ information – a solution that RingGo brought to market first.
“We have already seen through our emissions based parking solution that the adoption of electric vehicles is on the rise, but it still feels like we have a long way to go,” said Peter O’Driscoll, UK Managing Director, RingGo. “Making a positive impact on the environment through our work is something we, at RingGo, are passionate about so it is great to partner with a campaign like Go Ultra Low, who are aiming to achieve the same goal. Bringing our expertise together will help us encourage EV adoption and make cities across the country healthier and more liveable for generations to come.”
“Registrations for battery electric vehicles have hit a record high, with a 93.1% increase in year-to-date registrations compared with 2018. Currently there are 223,000 electric cars registered in the UK compared to only 3,500 in 2013 – and we are just getting started,” said Poppy Welch, Head of Go Ultra Low. “This partnership with RingGo will help us to show drivers across the country how easy it is to make an EV work in their lives. RingGo has been championing EV adoption through its emissions based parking solution and now with its EV charging point locating capabilities, it’s easier to make the switch than ever. Working together we can continue to make monumental strides in the nation’s switch to electric.”
Reporter: Stuart Littleford
An ecology team at a pioneering public sector planning and development consultancy is expanding to cope with growing demand.
Telford-based apT’s team of ecological experts has trebled in two years, partly as a result of winning new consultancy work outside their home borough.
The team – made up of ecology and green infrastructure specialists Mark Latham, Fran Lancaster and Nicola Stone – will expand again later in the year as it continues to go from strength to strength.
 Mark Latham of apT Fran, who joined the Council in 2013, said the team’s wide range of skills and the innovative way in which apT was set up to offer its skills commercially whilst being a part of Telford & Wrekin Council, were huge factors in its success.
“Having grown from being the only ecologist in the department two years ago, our team now has a mix of commercial survey experience, protected species mitigation and licensing, statutory planning, specialist air pollution assessment and planning policy skills which allows us to take on complex projects and to provide our clients with the best possible service.
“The team has statutory roles within the planning system and in supporting other teams across the Council but also sits within apT and is able to engage in commercial work.
“We are successfully winning commercial survey work outside the borough and building capacity to continue to grow our local authority work and projects.”
Last year the team secured a series of contracts with both private clients and neighbouring authority estates departments. These have seen the team undertake surveys for amphibians, reptiles, badgers and breeding birds to inform schemes ranging in size and complexity from single home owner developments, self-build schemes to large residential developments.
 Fran Lancaster of apT Fran said the team’s local authority backgrounds meant they had specialist skills which other commercial consultancies could not always offer.
“We are particularly experienced in Habitat Regulation Assessment, both of plans and projects, and Nicola brings significant experience of assessing aerial emissions associated with livestock developments.”
The team has been particularly successful in declaring new Local Nature Reserves with Telford & Wrekin Council and was now working to finish an ambitious programme which will declare 16 LNRs covering around 520 hectares in the borough – three times the recommended standard.
Fran added: “We are actively involved in positively managing these sites with our colleagues in Neighbourhood Services, and alongside local communities, town and parish councils and friends groups.
“Our LNRs, alongside Sites of Special Scientific Interest and Local Wildlife Sites represent the best quality and most biodiverse habitats in the borough and are intended to be accessible to local communities for recreation, education and enjoyment.”
 Nicola Stone from apT The team is also working on two grant funded projects with Shropshire Wildlife Trust to deliver wetland habitat works at Apley Woods and Dothill in Telford and habitat improvements and community engagement schemes along the Newport Canal SSSI.
“The council has also allocated a further £50,000 of funding to the 200 Green Guarantee sites across the borough – small local green spaces in Council ownership which are being protected for public use. The ecology team is looking at how we deliver that programme of works at the moment.”
apT is the Midlands’ first public sector commercial planning, development and environmental consultancy.
SolarWinds and its direct reseller, Kenson, will attend the annual Healthcare Excellence Through Technology (HETT) event at the ExCel in London, on October 1st and 2nd. The U.K.’s top healthcare technology event is a relevant platform for both companies to share their knowledge of, and promote awareness for, stronger cybersecurity practices in this sector.
In showcasing the security portfolio, developed by SolarWinds and supplied by Kenson, both organisations aim to put the spotlight on cybersecurity and offer solutions to help reduce cyberattack incidents. With nearly three quarters of NHS trusts and Clinical Commissioning Groups reporting that they experienced up to 50 attempted cyberattacks in 2018, according to a recent Freedom of Information survey conducted by SolarWinds, it’s an opportune time to talk to organisations in the healthcare industry about their cybersecurity postures.
If you are attending the HETT event, SolarWinds and Kenson will be at stand G32, where the following range of security products will be available to view:
Annual IT Pro Day survey highlights need to increase upskilling and tech pro confidence
SolarWinds (NYSE:SWI), a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software, today announced the findings from its IT Pro Day 2019 survey: Building Confidence for Tech Pros of Tomorrow. The survey results explore what tech pros need to build confidence in managing both today’s hybrid, distributed tech environments and the complex environments of tomorrow. The survey supports IT Professionals Day, which is observed on the third Tuesday of every September (September 17, 2019), and emphasises appreciation for IT professionals, the critical role they play in end users’ lives, and in operating successful, modern businesses. This year’s findings reveal how technology professionals can prepare for the future.
“Tech pros may know where they want to go, but the road to career confidence can be challenging,” said Joe Kim, executive vice president, engineering, and global chief technology officer, SolarWinds. “Mapping out the necessary skills and understanding how best to gain those competencies can be difficult, as proven by our annual IT Trends Report from earlier this year. For IT Pro Day 2019, we’ve taken it a step further by exploring how tech pros can skill up and become more confident, and how we can help them on their path for career confidence. We’re excited to celebrate the fifth annual IT Pro Day by shedding light on their needs and dedication to their field.”
Tech pros are feeling the impact of the skills gap. Sixty percent of survey respondents have not actively pursued a new skill or completed a certification in the last six months; nearly 50 percent of tech pros who did start a certification process did not complete it due to lack of time to commit.
The IT Pro Day 2019 survey reveals how business leaders and tech pros can work together to address the need to upskill. Survey results found increased support and budget from IT and business leaders are the top two requirements for tech pros to become confident managing current and future tech environments. At the same time, developing skills in interpersonal communications is critical for continued career growth.
“Now more than ever, technology professionals work alongside business leaders to meet organisational goals. At the same time, they must keep up with the tremendous amount of work and responsibility that comes with managing today’s complex tech environments,” added Kim. “For the past 20 years, SolarWinds has dedicated itself to helping tech pros solve problems the way they want them to be solved. To celebrate the fifth annual IT Pro Day, we want to address this skills gap and empower tech pros to take their careers into the future.”
“At SolarWinds, we focus on enabling the IT pro with training resources and a user community where they can connect with other tech pros like them. Whether through our customer Success Center, our MSP Institute, and SolarWinds Academy, our THWACK® community of over 150,000 registered members, our annual, virtual, online learning event THWACKcamp™, our SolarWinds Empower MSP, our bi-annual partner event, or in educational programming like SolarWinds Lab™ and TechPod™, we want to help make IT pros’ jobs easier, so they can drive even more success for the businesses they support,” Kim said.
Key Findings
The IT Pro Day 2019 survey: Building Confidence for Tech Pros of Tomorrow polled global technology professionals to gain insight into the skills gap and how it’s being addressed from their perspective and by the organisations they support.
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- Nearly 60% of survey respondents have not actively pursued a new skill or completed a certification in the last six months.
- Some tech pros attempted to pursue a new skill: 63% of survey respondents started a certification process (such as Microsoft®, Cisco®, AWS®, VMware®) but did not complete the course.
- Nearly half (47%) cited lack of time to commit to completing the course as the reason they stopped before completion.
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- Organisations are working to resolve the data centre labor shortage in ways that resonate with tech pros.
- In-company trainings ranked as a top-three tactic for addressing the labor shortage, with 35% of respondents selecting this option.
- Similarly, the majority of survey respondents (54%) cited full-day in-person workshops as providing the most value for the time spent when it comes to IT skills training materials.
- Organisations using automation to address this gap (31%) point to business investment in new ways to help their staff develop skills.
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- Developing soft skills is becoming increasingly important in driving career growth.
- Nearly half of survey respondents (46%) cited interpersonal communications skills as most critical for their continued career growth. Other top skills included:
- Project management: 56%
- Public speaking/presentations: 52%
- While most tech pros feel confident communicating with business leaders, they’re not always equipped with the support and tools necessary to do their jobs effectively.
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- The top two requirements for tech pros to become confident managing current and future environments are:
- Increased budget/additional resources: (64%)
- More support from IT or business leadership: (48%)
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- Most tech pros feel comfortable communicating with business leadership when it comes to requesting technology purchases and investing time/budget into team trainings:
- Forty-four percent are very comfortable and nearly 50% are somewhat comfortable
- Skills in application performance management (APM) are becoming increasingly necessary for tech pros across disciplines to possess. Tech pros have an appetite to develop APM skills further.
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- Respondents cited application support, troubleshooting, and monitoring as responsibilities they are tasked with falling outside their core job description.
- Specifically, 53% cited user experience monitoring of applications as an additional required skill to develop to confidently manage their environment, which points to the continued prioritisation of an exceptional end-user experience.
Fielded in August 2019, the survey was conducted by SolarWinds and yielded responses from 177 technology professionals from across the globe, including those from public and private sectors.
IT Professionals Day
IT Professionals Day annually recognises and celebrates all IT professionals, regardless of discipline. Whereas holidays such as System Administrator Appreciation Day recognise one category of the profession, IT Professionals Day honours not only system administrators, but network engineers, database administrators, information security professionals, developers, MSPs, IT support technicians, and all other professionals serving in IT-related roles. Please visit ITProDay.org to learn more.
Additional Resources
Connect with SolarWinds
 The Chartered Institute of Journalists (CIOJ) has persuaded the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office to consider reporting more detailed information about warrants seeking journalists’ digital data and information that could identify their sources.
The IPCO is the oversight body set up by the controversial Investigatory Powers Act 2016, which is also known as ‘The Snoopers’ Charter.’
Institute Vice-President, Professor Tim Crook, has been asking for more detail about when state investigation bodies have applied to Judicial Commissioners for access to journalistic data that could be confidential information, or breach the protection of journalist sources.
Up until the present time the IPCO has only reported that in 2017 public authorities made a total of 755 applications to acquire data which related to persons who held sensitive professions and these could have related to ‘lawyers, journalists, members of parliament, ministers of religion or doctors.’
Professor Crook complained to the IPCO that given the importance of Article 10, freedom of expression rights to protect journalists’ confidential information and sources, this level of reporting was inadequate.
He said: “The 2017 report only stated that IPCO inspectors found no instances of the legislation being used ‘improperly to identify journalistic sources’. We need to know about those ‘proper’ instances when it has actually been used to reveal sources.”
He has asked for the exact figure of the times interception and use of journalistic data has been approved of by the judicial commissioners who evaluate the applications in secret.
The Institute believes the IPA 2016 legislation is a very poor substitute for the scrutiny of the courts under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984, when production orders against journalists have to be decided by judges with the parties represented by counsel.
The IPCO Legal and Policy Team told Professor Crook: “we will consider whether to include the information you have requested in the IPCO’s next annual report.”
The IPCO have defended their decision not to release any interim figures and information on the basis that they are “required to ensure that we do not cause national security or law enforcement concerns through the information we publish.”
Air quality research in Manchester has received a significant boost with the announcement of funding from two programmes, totalling nearly £2m.
The funding was announced at the launch of two Manchester-based research projects to help tackle air pollution; the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) air quality supersite, and the Manchester Urban Observatory.
The NERC supersite – one of three being established in the UK – will make continuous measurements of air quality at a higher level of detail than is provided by existing monitoring stations. Dr James Allan, a researcher at The University of Manchester said: “The measurements will help us to better understand air pollution in UK cities, in terms of the sources of pollution and the processes by which it evolves in the atmosphere.”
The Manchester Urban Observatory will consist of a network of mobile devices that can be deployed around the city to develop and monitor solutions to urban challenges in real world settings. It builds on the successes of smart city projects including Triangulum and CityVerve that have developed data-driven approaches to smart and sustainable urban development in Manchester. 
Data from the two sites is generated in real time, and is open source, something Dr Allan says; “Will be of use to policymakers, allowing them to make the best-informed decisions. The data can also be utilised by the medical research community, helping them to understand the effects of air pollution on people living in the cities.”
Together, the two projects will combine expertise from the Manchester Environmental Research Institute, the Manchester Urban Institute, the Data Science Institute and Digital Futures. A key aim of the projects is to promote internal and external researchers to come and use the equipment and collaborate with The University of Manchester.
The funding is being provided by the UKRI Clean Air Strategic Priorities Fund, alongside the EPSRC UKCRIC. Manchester is currently the only city in the UK to receive the combination of both of these capital investments.
The launch event was attended by city officials, including Sir Richard Leese, Leader of Manchester City Council and Eamonn Boylan, Chief Executive of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Transport for Greater Manchester, alongside Friends of the Earth and Public Health England. It is hoped that the plans will help Greater Manchester achieve its goal of becoming a green city region.
Eamonn Boylan said: “Greater Manchester has bold ambitions to become a world-leading green city-region – it’s at the heart of everything we do. It’s great to have Manchester as the home of this new air quality supersite, one of just three in the UK.
“The data and insight it will give us into air pollution and its local sources will be invaluable in helping us reach our goal for a cleaner, greener, climate-resilient city-region that is carbon neutral by 2038.”
Top Trust nationwide for A&E performance provides clinicians in emergency care with secure ‘tap and go’ access to NHS spine enabled applications
Imprivata®, the healthcare IT security company, has announced that North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust has deployed Imprivata Spine Combined Workflow to deliver secure, No Click Access® to applications on the NHS Spine at the point of care. Using Imprivata OneSign®, clinicians in A&E, the Rapid Access Clinics and the Emergency Assessment Unit can now access NHS Spine applications and see the summary care records for each patient. NHS Spine allows information to be shared securely through national services such as the Electronic Prescription Service, Patient Summary Care Records and the e-Referral Service. As a result, the Trust has seen improved efficiency, security and data governance.
 Using Imprivata OneSign, staff only have to remember one password to access 21 applications and can focus on patient care and utilise essential clinical applications quickly, while workflows have been designed to complement daily activities. Users access the NHS systems with their own smart cards, providing accurate audit logs and ensuring that diagnostic tests and prescribed medications are attributed to the correct clinician.
Chris Bellerby, ICT Specialist, North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust said: “Fast access to NHS spine enabled applications has been a game changer for us, the benefits from Imprivata have been immediate.
“We have eliminated unsecure practices such as leaving cards in workstations, sharing credentials and writing passwords down on notes stuck to monitors. This has not only improved security practices but also audit logs ensuring compliance with CQC guidelines. Implementing Imprivata has been a leap forward in achieving digital transformation, improving patient care and enabling staff to work without technological barriers.”
Mr R D Southward, Consultant Emergency Medicine, Consultant Sport & Exercise Medicine, North Tees & Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust said: “Imprivata makes my life a lot easier managing multiple logins. It is a big step forward on Information Governance in a busy department with large throughput and multi-device working.”
Nick Roper, Consultant Physician, Clinical Lead, Responsive Care at North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust added; “Imprivata speeds up the use of PCs saving valuable clinical time. It also reduces Information Governance risk as cards are not left in machines.”
 In addition to mobile desktop and laptop units, North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust operates a virtual desktop environment using Citrix XenApp. Imprivata Virtual Desktop Access® extends the single sign-on capabilities to virtual desktops, allowing several users to log in and out of the system, with a tap of their smart badge, without interrupting their session. The Trust also intends to roll Imprivata OneSign to the operating theatres, where time and access to essential patient information are critical factors in care.
Daniel Johnston MRes, RN, and Clinical Workflow Specialist at Imprivata, said; “In all NHS Trusts, A&E, the Rapid Access Clinics and the Emergency Assessment Unit are fast-paced environments where timely decision making is absolutely vital. As a top performing NHS Trust, North Tees has received recognition in its A &E department for its focus on delivering the best possible patient care. Imprivata’s solutions help to support healthcare providers like North Tees by providing fast, secure and compliant access and management for the systems, applications, and data that the clinicians need at the point of care.”
 Reporter: Seymour Roach
Data encryption is nothing new as a need or requirement for an organisation, but since the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force last May, it allows anyone in the Government or public sector a simple and effective way to comply with the legislation.
Article 32 requires “the pseudonymisation and encryption of personal data” and while it is by no means a get out of jail free card, it is a defence. That is because Article 34 suggests that should a breach take place, when data is encrypted, there is no requirement to contact each of the subjects affected by this data loss, something which could prove costly in time, effort and money.
Encryption procedures make achieving compliance a far more attainable goal. For the average employee and contractor working on a corporately-supplied device or through a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy, it should be automatic and invisible, embedded within a holistic information security plan.
Organisations are not concerned whether primary numbers, multiple algorithms, symmetric and asymmetric keys or a plethora of three letter acronyms are used. They just want to know it works and can be trusted. If the bits and bytes at risk on their devices are impossible to read, any attack will fail.
Keeping data secure is imperative to any organisation handling sensitive information but it is especially prescient to Government. We have seen in the past newspaper headlines telling how devices – whether laptops, mobile phones or removable media such as USBs – were lost or stolen, and they contained hugely sensitive security plans, phone numbers or addresses.
One key point of an encryption approach is to have everything as locked down as possible and ensure all PII is encrypted in transit and at rest. This should include the mandating of a FIPS certified, hardware encrypted mobile storage device and the enforcement of its use.
Encryption must be correctly implemented with sufficiently strong encryption keys. Ideally these would be protected in hardware, meaning the only method of attack left is brute force which, if managed correctly within the device, can be limited to a defined number of attempts by policy. Additionally, policies focused on whitelisting and locking down USB ports so they can accept only approved devices, are also vital.
Encryption is especially crucial for work carried out off-site, at home, or on the move. For example, research by Apricorn found half of respondents (44%) agreed their organisation expects their mobile workers to expose them to the risk of a breach. A third (32%) also said their organisation has already experienced a data loss or breach as a direct result of mobile working.
This is why organisations must take time to research, identify and mandate corporate-standard, hardware encrypted devices. They must also educate employees on the best practice in using them to mitigate the risk of a breach and potential fines.
This will take some effort across government and public sector departments but in the digital age when data is taken, sorted and used in transit or the cloud or simply sits there at rest, the potential for it to be compromised is huge. It is important though that encryption is not focused solely on the storage layer as this leaves other unprotected points vulnerable to attacks.
Without the right encryption, data can be taken as easily from internal servers as it can during external wireless transfers. This can be down to sophisticated hacking techniques or simply due to complacency or human error. So it is vital to remember that you can encrypt your data at many levels and ultimately it must be a top level decision and action. The end user should never be left with a decision to encrypt or not.
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