• IN THIS ISSUE:
• Leicestershire ‘data visualisation’ projects;
• Councils' E-Consultation Shortcomings;
• Bristol ‘green ICT’ website;
• National ‘Digital Hero’ award;
• Directgov January relaunch;
• Conservatives attack leaked IT report;
• Protecting our critical national infrastructure.

NEWS: Leicestershire Pioneers ‘Data Visualisation’ For Service Improvement

A series of pioneering projects using ‘data visualisation’ techniques to show how public services are used and what people feel about them was unveiled this month by Leicestershire County Council....

Read full story here, Leicestershire’s ‘data visualisation’ ...

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NEWS: A Fifth Of Councils Failing In E-Consultation

Around one in five UK local authorities (18%) do not have a specific area of their website for consulting local citizens about policy, according to a national audit carried out by e-consultation specialists Delib...

Read full story here, Council e-consultation failings...

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NEWS: Bristol ICT ‘Green Addict’ Website Up For Euro Award A ‘green ICT’ (information and communication technology) website launched by Connecting Bristol, Bristol City Council’s local digital partnership, has been nominated for a European energy efficiency award, a month after going live.... Read full story here, ‘Green ICT’ website... Back to index

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NEWS IN BRIEF:

Digital Hero: A woman who created a programme helping schoolchildren teach internet skills to elderly people has been named the UK’s ‘Digital Hero’ in awards hosted by telecommunications company TalkTalk with charity Citizens Online. The prize went to Gill Farringdon of the Swadlingcote District 50+ Forum in South Derbyshire, who receives £10,000 to help fund her scheme:

Quick link: Digital heroes

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TV Makeover: Directgov, the central web portal for UK central government and wider public services, will be relaunched with a TV campaign in January 2010, according to a report on UKauthority.com . It is believed that the distinctive orange colour scheme of the site will be replaced by a dark green:

Quick link: Directgov facelift:
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Conservatives Attack: A leaked government report on public sector IT has been placed at the heart of a consultative website built by the Conservative Party, with the stated aim of developing a “more ambitious, cost-effective and transformative vision for government IT” by pursuing “a completely different approach to making policy ... crowdsourcing and collaborative design”:

Quick link: Make IT Better

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- PITCOM Briefing: Protecting our Critical National Infrastructure: Life-Support Systems The National Infrastructure (NI) delivers the services essential to the safety and stability of the UK — water, food, energy, transport, financial services, and information and communication technology (ICT). Elements of NI are graded into five levels based on their importance. The top three levels (3-5) comprise the Critical National Infrastructure (CNI), which is overseen by the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI). But new methods are required to address modern threats like cybercrime and cyber-attack, writes Dan Jellinek... Read full story here, National infrastructure security.... Back to index