Welfare To Work Contractors Announced

Welfare to work contractors announced Friday 29th May 2009 at 12:22

Support services company Serco is among the preferred bidders for the government’s flagship new welfare-to-work scheme. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) today published a list of companies expected to be awarded contracts worth almost £2bn. The new system, known as the Flexible New Deal, will be run by contractors from the private, public and voluntary sectors, and payments to them will be based on their success in getting unemployed people back into work. Serco will run schemes in the West Midlands, Manchester and North Wales, with its contracts expected to reach £500m. Among the other bidders, disability employment group Remploy will win contracts in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire, while private sector company Seetec will be the main welfare-to-work contractor in Birmingham. Final contracts will be signed in July, covering 14 regional areas with high unemployment. http://www.civilservicenetwork.com/latest-news/news-article/newsarticle/welfare-towork-contractors-announced/

Deaf charity boss wins top ODI job Monday 1st June 2009 at 09:56

A profoundly deaf charity boss is to lead the government's effort to improve disabled people's opportunities. Tim Cooper, currently a managing director at the Shaw Trust, who has been deaf since birth, has been appointed director at the Office for Disability Issues (ODI). Based within the Department for Work and Pensions but working with all government departments, the office was set up in 2005 after a government report recommended that, by 2025, disabled people should have the same opportunities and choices as nondisabled people. Cooper, who has been at the Shaw Trust for the past decade and is currently head of its work and independence division, said he was "really excited" by his appointment.

"There are some real challenges ahead as we step up our engagement with disabled people and build on the relationships with colleagues across government," he said. "This will help us to translate policy into tangible service delivery that supports disabled people in their day-to-day lives." Jonathan Shaw, minister for disabled people, said he knew Cooper would do a good job. "He brings to the post a great deal of experience and expertise, which will no doubt stand ODI in good stead," Shaw added. Cooper replaces acting director Stephen Martin. http://www.civilservicenetwork.com/latest-news/news-article/newsarticle/deaf-charityboss-wins-top-odi-job/

MPs call for new approach to knife crime Tuesday 2nd June 2009 at 10:15

The government should adopt a "public health" early intervention approach to knife crime, MPs have advised. A report from the home affairs select committee, published on Tuesday, said custodial sentences did not necessarily deter young people from committing more crime. Committee chairman Keith Vaz said there had been a sharp rise in attacks and murders involving a knife since 2006, with reports of children as young as seven carrying weapons. "We need a new tack here, at least partly based on making young people feel safer and reducing the exposure to violence in their lives," said Vaz. The cross-party group of MPs had been impressed by the work of youth inclusion programmes and groups established to help young people get out of gangs, he said. "It may be becoming a truism now, but we cannot escape the fact that at its roots this is about education and inclusion of young people before it is about criminal justice, and we strongly recommend that government adopts a 'public health' approach, that invests resources in prevention, to reducing knife crime," Vaz said.

"A rough estimate is that knife-enabled crime costs us £1.25bn a year. We heard convincing evidence of the long-term cost benefits of applying an early intervention approach, as well as the benefits to individuals and communities." Alf Hitchcock, the Association of Chief Police Officers' lead on knife crime, told the BBC that while the report highlighted a worrying trend of young children carrying knives, "we also need to be very careful to say that the vast, vast majority of young people do not". The increases in offences in specific areas could be linked directly to demographics and the level of deprivation, he added. "This is a generational issue and what we need to do is look at this in the 10- to 15-year term. "We have to look at the underlying causes of the violence and look very carefully at parenting, at how people are normalised in society, and address the violence, rather than addressing the weapon at the end of the violence," Hitchcock said. The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, said the report "recognises the hard work taking place up and down the country" in the Tackling Knives Action Programme (TKAP) areas. She said provisional figures show a 31 per cent reduction in teenagers admitted to hospital for stab wounds in TKAP areas between June 2008 and January 2009, compared to an 18 per cent reduction in non-TKAP areas. The programme is now being extended to 16 areas with £12m funding over the next two years, she added. "We are working closely with courts, the police, schools, charities, parents and young people to educate, enforce and most importantly prevent knife crime", Smith said. http://www.civilservicenetwork.com/latest-news/news-article/newsarticle/mps-call-fornew-approach-to-knife-crime/

Ex-MI6 chief bemoans state intrusion

Tuesday 2nd June 2009 at 09:34

The former head of MI6 has expressed concern about the loss of civil liberties in Britain. Sir Richard Dearlove, who led the Secret Intelligence Service between 1999 and 2004, told an audience at the Hay Festival that state intrusion in modern Britain is "striking and disturbing" in some areas. The number of stop and searches carried out by Metropolitan Police, for example 170,000 in the same period that police in Manchester performed 200-300 - was "mindboggling" and potentially an "abuse of the law", Sir Richard said. Now Master of Pembroke College, the London Evening Standard reported Sir Richard as saying: "I'm a great believer in proportionality and, as a citizen, I worry about the loss of my liberties. "But you know we have constructed a society which has great technical competence; and some of that competence isn't particularly regulated. "I think the important thing in the UK is that there should be very strict legislation and strict legislative oversight." http://www.civilservicenetwork.com/latest-news/news-article/newsarticle/ex-mi6-chiefbemoans-state-intrusion/

Security spending rises Wednesday 3rd June 2009 at 11:51

The government spent almost £48m on private security contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan last year, a minister has said. Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) spending on security has been rising in recent years, from £45.6m in 2007/08 and £45.4m the year before. A parliamentary written answer from foreign office minister Bill Rammell revealed that 72 per cent of the £29m spent in Iraq was paid to Control Risks Group for mobile security.

Other firms in both countries were used to provide "static security", intelligence analysts, vehicle maintenance and overseas security managers. Rammell said the amounts quoted represented "the contract values concerned and not the actual spend". http://www.civilservicenetwork.com/latest-news/news-article/newsarticle/fco-securityspending-rises/

FCO failed to spend £128m Wednesday 3rd June 2009 at 00:31

Improved financial management at the Foreign Office has been praised by auditors, despite a £128m underspend last year. In a largely positive report from the National Audit Office (NAO), the department was criticised for the underspend, which happened "in spite of requesting additional funds part way through the financial year". The NAO said the department had introduced measures to prevent a repeat underspend, and had made “significant progress” in developing its financial management capability. The report, published Tuesday, credited this to a number of factors, including the external recruitment of the department’s first qualified financial director, Keith Luck, in early 2007; his promotion to the board; and the Five Star Finance reform programme introduced in July of the same year. The support of senior accountant and non-executive board director Alistair Johnston, global vice-chairman of KPMG, was also noted by the authors of the report. Along with the department’s underspend, the NAO also expressed concern about the proportion of unqualified staff working in finance because it is below the central government average. Auditors said further training should be developed for senior staff, and targets set to reduce the department’s use of consultants and contractors. http://www.civilservicenetwork.com/latest-news/news-article/newsarticle/fco-failed-tospend-128m/

Delivery skills needed, says Sir Gus Wednesday 3rd June 2009 at 18:01

Leadership in the civil service has to improve, the cabinet secretary has admitted. Better delivery skills, a more collegiate approach to work and a slower turnover of staff were identified as key goals by Sir Gus O’Donnell on Wednesday. “I am very aware that we need to improve the quality of leadership in the civil service,” he told the public accounts select committee after MPs asked about staff attitude surveys which showed that, in most departments, less than half of staff had confidence in their senior managers. “The results are disappointing, we absolutely need to improve them and measures are in hand to improve them,” Sir Gus said. He said the new Top 200 group of senior civil servants, which meets every six months, had helped create a more collegiate atmosphere across the civil service. Changes had been made to training, so that officials got “some real hands-on experience of project delivery”, Sir Gus added. Top 200 officials already thought operational delivery was a bigger part of their role than policy, a reversal of traditional attitudes, Sir Gus claimed. Discussing how the rapid turnover of ministers hindered the civil service, Sir Gus accepted the chairman’s criticism that the turnover of civil servants is similarly problematic. “We are trying to slow down turnover so that we keep people in post,” he said, particularly in project work such as the Olympics. Committee chairman Edward Leigh also questioned if there is “enough ruthlessness in the civil service in terms of rewarding success and punishing failure”. Sir Gus believed that a “small element of performance pay is important to the system”, but he also thought changes could be made to severance payments. “At the moment it is very expensive,” he said. “It is something that we are currently

negotiating with unions on,” he revealed. “We do need performance management systems that are robust. If someone is failing, we should look at why. If it’s not working, we should let them go.” MPs also quizzed the cabinet secretary about a recent National Audit Office report on the capability review system. While generally positive about the innovation, the report complained that there was no benchmarking with non-government organisations. Sir Gus said that although he would have preferred a system that was more open to comparison, it had not been possible. Conservative MP Richard Bacon dismissed such claims: the real reason, he charged, was that “you wouldn’t have got it past the other permanent secretaries”. Sir Gus, who had earlier admitted that there had been nervousness about the reviews and a question over whether departments would take part, insisted that departments could only really be compared to themselves. He also said that similar review exercises had been attempted in the past and not been so successful: “This is the first time that we have had the permanent secretaries so heavily engaged.” MPs had also identified a divergence between capability review scores and how well departments met their public service agreements (PSAs). The Home Office, for example, had a very negative capability review report but had delivered on its targets. This, Sir Gus said, was to do with how the measures were taken. “There is more to a department being capable than it just meeting its PSA targets,” he said. In the future, Sir Gus told the MPs, the reviews would be more closely related to delivery, as well as looking more closely at innovation within departments and collaboration with other organisations – all areas highlighted in the NAO report. http://www.civilservicenetwork.com/latest-news/news-article/newsarticle/sir-gusbemoans-lack-of-delivery-skills/

DIUS 'to be abolished' Friday 5th June 2009 at 11:16

The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) could be abolished as part of the machinery of government changes. The ongoing government reshuffle may result in the department, first created in 2007, being broken up with its responsibilities moved to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) and Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). It has already been reported that the department is to lose science and skills, areas that will now be the responsibility of Lord Mandelson at BERR. Both areas were removed from BERR's predecessor, the Department for Trade and Industry, when DIUS was created two years ago. A director at the skills department this morning used social media site Twitter to speculate that Gordon Brown’s reorganisation would see the abolition of DIUS. “Don't know: you can't go for a coffee and blueberry muffin without your department being abolished,” the official wrote. Asked for comment, a DIUS spokesman said any changes to departments were the responsibility of Number 10. http://www.civilservicenetwork.com/latest-news/news-article/newsarticle/dius-may-beabolished/

Normington says goodbye to Smith Friday 5th June 2009 at 10:50

The head of the Home Office has praised the secretary of state following her decision to stand down. Permanent secretary Sir David Normington said Jacqui Smith had shown "exceptional leadership" during the her two year stint as home secretary. Smith is one of a number of cabinet ministers who have announced that they do not want to continue in the government, ahead of a major reshuffle.

The home secretary had told Gordon Brown at Easter that she wanted to stand down, following embarassing revelations about x-rated television channels that were claimed on her expenses, to focus on her family and her Redditch constituency. She had intended to make the announcement after the European elections, but the news was leaked just days before. She wrote to Home Office civil servants, stating that she had "been lucky to work alongside the best civil service in the world". She was also pleased "that the Home Office is now seen as a strong and effective department where people are increasingly proud to work – and they should be". But "undeserved intrusion and pressure" on her family "makes it difficult for me to devote the time and energy necessary to do myself – and more importantly a ministerial job – justice", she added. Sir David said Smith had allowed the department "to come out of our previous difficulties". The department was famously described as "not fit for purpose" by Smith's immediate predecessor, John Reid. Smith had allowed staff to regain their confidence, Sir David said: "In private she was always challenging us to improve; in public she was always supportive. We could not really have asked for more." http://www.civilservicenetwork.com/latest-news/news-article/newsarticle/normingtonsays-goodbye-to-smith/

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Love thy neighbour Friday 5th June 2009 at 11:04

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An innovative pilot scheme is encouraging civil service departments and agencies in the West Midlands to work together in a wide range of areas, from apprenticeships to vacancies. Ruth Keeling visited Birmingham to learn about a model with massive potential for improving the civil service’s operations It is well-nigh impossible to get civil servants in two different departments to work together; senior civil servants have no idea what those at the front line think – and even if they did, they wouldn’t act on it; the civil service is inefficient and will throw hundreds of thousands of pounds at even the smallest project, most of which don’t even work. Right? Wrong; or, at least, wrong in the West Midlands, where two years’ work, a tiny budget of £30,000, a three-person team and the assistance of staff in 14 departments and agencies has created Civil Service West Midlands (CSWM). Covering the 34,600 civil servants working for the 48 public bodies with offices in the region (representing eight per cent of all of England’s civil servants), the project has – among other things – made the fast stream accessible to civil servants who do not want to move to London, negotiated staff discounts with various firms, and broken down the barriers that prevent the easy movement of staff between departments (see box on facing page). Indeed, the pilot scheme in the West Midlands has proved such a success that it is now to be rolled out across all the English regions. The story begins more than two years ago. On visits to meet some of the 116,000 staff working at various Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) offices around the country, permanent secretary Leigh Lewis kept hearing the same complaint: why are lots of civil servants, doing a similar job in different departments just down the road, getting paid more than me? The answer, as unions angrily proclaim, is that pay decisions have been left to departments’ discretion for more than a decade. Aware that there was more chance of the cabinet secretary running naked down Whitehall than there was of the Treasury changing this policy, Lewis decided to turn the presence of thousands of civil servants in the region from a potential negative into an analloyed positive. While some of the 34,600 staff in the West Midlands might be prepared to move to London to further their careers, many will not, he says. His dream, he explains, was “to be able to offer people much more fulfilling potential careers without them having to uproot themselves and their families”. A conversation with cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell followed, and then a phone call

to Trudy Elliot, regional director at the Government Office of the West Midlands (GOWM), where the regional heads of public bodies had already been discussing coordination on areas such as staff wellbeing and skills. In early 2007, Sir Gus and Lewis travelled to Birmingham to meet all those regional bosses. “People really began to get it as we talked about it,” remembers Lewis. “They began to see that together we might be able to do much more than if we simply went about things separately.” An office manager representing 25 staff is likely to be shown the door if he asks the local leisure centre for a discount, Lewis says: “But if you say you have 35,000 members of staff, they ask you in for a cup of coffee”. In the two years since, programme manager Gary Lang explains, a “wish list” was produced by civil servants, and a number of regional coordination projects have been initiated and handed over to different departments or agencies (see box). Those chosen were usually already leading in an area, in order to avoid anyone reinventing the wheel. This method of getting things done has contributed to the low cost of the project, says Lang: “We have so much capability. We don’t need to bring outside consultants in; we can do a lot of this by ourselves using the people we’ve got.” The speed with which things have come together, he says, is “because there has been so much enthusiasm for it. It is a programme by the civil service for the civil service. It was a question of us all working together, like a family”. Talking to the people involved in the West Midlands pilot, I was struck by their commitment to and belief in the project. Lewis describes himself as “really chuffed”. “This is one of the most positive things that the civil service has done,” he adds. And Lang, noting that similar projects have failed in the past, puts its success down to the broad base of support for the idea. “We have the perm secs behind it, we have the departments behind it, we have the staff behind it and we have the unions behind it,” he says. There is also a real sense of teamwork. Lewis says that regional director Elliot, the senior responsible owner for the programme, is “the real reason this has happened”. Elliot, in turn, says “we wouldn’t have got this far” without Leigh acting as a critical friend, constantly pushing for more, and acting as a senior authority who could bulldoze the occasional obstacle out of the way. Such blocks, Lewis says, have been few and far between. “Once or twice we have got

snared in odd bits of financial bureaucracy,” he says. “That is where having a permanent secretary that can just pick up the telephone and say: ‘I think this is a good idea, so why don’t we just do it?’ has been helpful.” On the ground, the enthusiasm continues unabated. Ann Chinner, deputy director in corporate tax compliance at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), is one of the dozen or so senior managers on the CSWM steering group. She spends around 10 per cent of her time on the project; it is, she says, “quite a commitment”, but one well worth making because it is such “a completely fascinating piece of work” and because “it’s also a really good initiative for staff”. Probably the most popular aspect of the entire West Midlands project is the change to how vacancies are advertised to existing civil servants. In many departments, jobs were traditionally only open to staff in the grade immediately below that of the vacancy, and were sometimes only advertised to staff within the same organisation. Now, vacancies in the region are advertised across every department and agency in the CSWM group, and candidates can skip whole grades if they have the right competencies. Lang describes this as “the jewel in the crown” of the entire project, with jobs more widely advertised in the West Midlands than anywhere else outside London. “That was what this whole project was trying to do: create the opportunity that people in London were getting,” explains Lang. There have, he admits, been “sensitivities” to consider around departmental practice and union concerns. But staff have responded positively and departments are happy too, Lang says, because they have access to a wider pool of potential applicants and “are now seeing a higher calibre of applicants coming to interview”. Chinner says she and her colleagues “have been absolutely knocked over” by the vacancy scheme. “Staff and managers just love it,” she says. “We have swept away all the barriers for moving between departments. It is terrifically exciting for staff.” Such opportunities for staff are a real boon at a time when departments are reducing their headcount. One of the people who’s already benefited from the scheme is John Taylor, an administrative assistant (AA) at the DWP’s Disability and Carers Service in Birmingham for the past ten years, who has skipped the administrative officer (AO) grade to become an executive officer (EO). Before the vacancies scheme, Taylor imagined that he would wait another ten years before he was an EO – partly, he says, because so many vacancies are being filled by people whose roles have disappeared as

part of the headcount reductions. “I was looking for either a promotion or some kind of move, even if it was horizontal, just to do something different,” says Taylor – but for family and financial reasons, that search was limited to jobs near his home in West Bromwich. “I had done pretty much everything you can do at AA grade and, to be honest, I was quite bored,” he says. Taylor is also aware of CSWM’s benefits beyond its effect on his own career. “It has really highlighted the fact that there are a lot of civil servants in the area, that we are all part of an organisation and have the same goals,” he says. “Hopefully that is going to help people in the West Midlands more generally. As we become more joined-up, we are going to be able to provide a better service.” The part of the CSWM programme that is looking at joining-up estates and sharing facilities could produce one-stop shops, Lang says; indeed, some of the other English regions involved in the next stage of the rollout have been asked to look specifically at this area of joined-up working. Already, says Lang, in the West Midlands “crossdepartment working has really picked up at all levels: people are now picking up the phone and speaking to people they didn’t know existed before”. Such closer working could mean some financial savings for departments and the taxpayer, but Leigh Lewis is at pains to emphasise that economies have never been the driving force for this project. “That would be a really welcome outcome, but that is not what this is about,” he says. “What this is about is being able to offer more to the civil servants who work in our regions.” The programme may primarily benefit staff, but it will also provide solutions for a number of the challenges that the civil service has set itself. For example, by creating real career prospects outside London, CSWM may help the drive to move civil servants out of the South-East. It should also make the civil service more diverse: women can access senior roles without having to move their families to the capital; women who take time out to have children can return to work, skip a grade on promotion and catch up with their male colleagues; the drive to improve community engagement (see box) should mean Civil Service West Midlands comes to represent the ethnic make-up of the region; and greater ease of movement between departments will mean that if some units improve the diversity of their staff, those benefits can spread through the civil service. As part of the scheme’s national roll-out the cabinet secretary is now appointing

permanent secretary champions for each region – initially in the South-West, NorthWest and East Midlands. None of these will get full-time members of staff running their programme, as the West Midlands did, but they will get to build on the pilot region’s experience. However, expanding an idea from a pilot is always full of risks and it is very important that the new regions enjoy the same levels of buy-in and enthusiasm – and resulting success – as the West Midlands has had. The next stage of the rollout will not include the vacancies scheme until permanent secretaries make a decision on the recommendations contained with the evaluation report that Lang and his team are working on; its consultation phase has just been completed. Whatever the sensitivities might be, the civil service should endeavour to overcome them. It would be a crying shame if civil servants outside London – and, now, the West Midlands – were to miss out on these hugely improved career prospects, the jewel in the crown of the whole exercise.

Regional networks: what’s in it for staff? Apprenticeships: The first cross-government apprenticeship programme has seen 124 people start training for national vocational qualifications in areas such as customer service, business administration and information technology. Khalida Yeasmin, CSWM’s programme administrator (pictured left), is doing her apprenticeship in leadership and management, with regular classes on the theory and practicalities of being a manager. Currently these apprenticeships are available only to existing staff, and there is a waiting list of 117, but the aim is to open them to local unemployed people. Lead: Learning and Skills Council (LSC). Corporate and social responsibility: This includes engagement with the community. Lead: HM Revenue & Customs. Discounts: Money-off deals for staff have already been negotiated with Civil Service Sports and Leisure, the Civil Service Benevolent Fund, B&Q and Asda. Lead: Home Office. Diversity: Underpins every part of the CSWM programme, says Lang, from community engagement to career opportunities. Lead: Ministry of Defence (MoD). Estates management: With departments working together, the aim

is to provide more pleasant facilities for staff which are more sustainable and, potentially, better value for money. Estates lead: MoD. Sustainable development lead: Child Maintenance Enforcement Commission, funded by the Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. Health and wellbeing: Best practice advice for departments on everything from stress to workplace accidents. Lead: Department of Health and the Health & Safety Executive. Fast stream: Applicants to the national civil service fast stream can now specify that they would like to do their placements in the West Midlands, rather than London, and departments in the region have been asked to identify roles that are available for this. Lead: Cabinet Office and CSWM project team. Fast track: Currently in development, this talent-management programme is intended to speed capable junior officials up the career ladder. Lead: CSWM project team. Secondments: Something that staff asked for and that is currently in development is the chance to spend a few weeks in another department. This could be a precurser to applying for a job, or just give an insight into how a related department works. Lead: the Crown Prosecution Service. Skills for Life: Union learning representatives have been working on a West Midlands skills network. This could lead to departments sharing training provision, Lang says. Lead: the Council of Civil Service Unions. Vacancies: All West Midland civil service vacancies are open to any official in the region, regardless of their grade or their current employer, as long as they have the right competencies. Lead: CSWM project team. http://www.civilservicenetwork.com/features/features-article/newsarticle/love-thyneighbour/

THE DOZEN BEST PUBLICSERVANTDAILY STORIES OF THE PAST WEEK Brown is to lose Smith and Blears Jacqui Smith and Hazel Blears are to step down at the next Cabinet reshuffle Brown: 'I'm the best man for the job' PM says he will clean up the political system as his Chancellor repays fees Labour's citadel seats 'up for grabs' Labour could lose political heartlands in European and local polls, says Pickles 'We still support white working class' Gordon Brown warns 'hard working and hard pressed' not to vote for extremists 'An emergency budget is needed' Massive growth in government spending not down to the recession, says report PFI hospital 'should be bought out' Claim is made that taxpayers could save £217m if Norfolk hospital publicly owned Lib Dem pamphlet's four-letter insult Police may be brought in to investigate local election flyer's offensive language Knife crime is still on the increase Help is needed for youths in deprived city areas, urges select committee Turkey - not a bridge too far for EU A Tory government would back more expansion despite call for a referendum Social care is a 'ticking timebomb' Government should set up a panel to drive public debate on care, report urges Canteen culture 'still thrives in Met ' Institutional racism is still prevalent 10 years after Stephen Lawrence, MPs told

Teachers warn of more SATs delays But the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority denies that there's a problem

IS IT TIME TO MAKE PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION REALITY? Whether the furore over MPs' expenses is really an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and reinvent politics is open to debate. Lord Falconer can't seem to decide whether politicians should now be allowed to speak their minds or toe the party line. The Liberal Democrats are sounding more and more like the anarchy party, advocating real power to the people in terms of sacking MPs and bringing the government down. But maybe this is now the time for one of the Lib Dems' favourite policies: proportional representation. Maybe this would deliver real democracy to parliament. Or are people right to yawn every time a Lib Dem MP brings the subject up? After all, they have been banging on about it for an extremely long time. Take our online poll now and tell us what you think: Is it time to rescue democracy at parliamentary elections with a move to proportional representation?

To access any of these articles please go to: http://www.publicservice.co.uk/default.asp#poll

Leading e-government news and features for the IT professional 5th June Party websites could be under attack Tory website went down and the Lib Dems are experiencing abnormal traffic Exclusive: U-turn on airport ID cards In the airport trials, only new recruits will get ID cards, not existing airside staff Credit queries for passport applicants First time passport applicants may face questions about their financial history Security training for ID card vendors Shops that offer ID card enrolment services will undergo security training IT innovations will bring efficiencies Finding the less obvious efficiencies will require future technology innovations Pensions Trust loses 109,000 records An unencrypted laptop was stolen that contained the details of charity staff

Code for handling data is published To stop the data loss culture, a data guardianship code has been launched Lords threaten defeat on DNA plans Plans to hold DNA profiles for up to 12 years could be rejected in the Lords Senior doctor calls for NPfIT freedom For the project to succeed, NHS trusts should be allowed to go their own way US cyber security strategy revealed President Obama says cyber security has become a 'national security priority' Share data to increase the skills base Texuna Technologies' Patrick Lynch advocates knowledge and data sharing to increase skills and provide more benefits to the employers who collect the data To access any of these articles please go to: http://www.publicservice.co.uk/topic_section.asp?topic=e-government