Wednesday 14th May

Before I started my Socitm secondment I sounded-out various Newham colleagues on their interest in a meeting to consider the Council's engagement with the Community through ICT. There was general agreement that this was desirable, so a meeting was arranged, then postponed and rearranged for today. I went along because it's something I believe the whole public sector must get to grips with.

Newham has often led the field in community engagement through ICT, and for a long time had an "ICT in the Community Strategy Group" led by Social Regeneration. All the same, we struggled to mainstream developments – such as Digital TV, Smart Cards, Kiosk solutions and Newham.Net. The Council is very active still in TeleHealth/ TeleCare, mobile computing and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) for Social Care, and Choice-Based Lettings for Housing, with a host of new developments such as the Newham Directory and Collaboration portals for Health, Children Services etc.

With the impending development of Newham network infrastructure through the £9m Newham Telecommunications Convergence programme, which will provide an infrastructure that facilitates cross-sector working for the benefit as a whole, it seems still more important to co-ordinate community involvement and support through ICT.

The meeting attendance was disappointing, but there was a useful discussion. It was decided that, as part of the NTC project, to develop a proposal for a co-ordination role to be based in Community and Customer Services.


A few stories caught my eye today. I'm ignoring the one about ICT being an obstacle to flexible working because I think it's rubbish! However, I agree it's key to energy savings… http://www.ukauthority.com/articles/story2171.asp

…and speaking of Community engagement through ICT, the Whole Systems Demonstrator project, featuring Newham, Kent and Cornwall, and launched, last week, in Newham, was in today's news… http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2216465/government-tries-31m-telecare

I was also interested in the Gartner report on "Cloud Computing". I'm not entirely clear what this is! It's clearly more than just Software-as-a-Service, and the term obviously derives from the way networks in the ether (outside the corporate network) are always illustrated as clouds, but I am convinced it's the way our infrastructure will develop. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39413759,00.htm