PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
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BCS welcomes the government’s Blueprint for IT CS, the Chartered
Institute for IT, has welcomed the
government’s Blueprint for IT and plans for growth and innovation with technology at its heart.
BCS chief executive officer David Clarke said: “As the Chartered Institute for IT, we are well placed to assist in driving the cultural changes necessary for a genuine and successful entrepreneurial UK.
“The UK has a pool of raw talent and a history of producing bright and entrepreneurial individuals. Yet turning talent into home- grown business success has faced cultural and structural barriers. The government has the opportunity to change and influence both, and a great deal to gain; the swift emergence of powerhouse technology companies on a global scale with capital-efficient models is testimony to the economic power of information technology and the internet.”
The Institute believes that with the urgent need for
job and value creation in the private sector it is even more important to create an attractive business environment and policy framework and to support the sciences and the commercialisation of research.
In the light of this, BCS particularly welcomes the announcement of the Innovation Centres. BCS brings IT practitioners in all sectors together with researchers and educators to tackle issues around innovation along with a wide variety of other topics.
David adds: “We believe clusters
in general can play an important role in enhancing levels of innovation. Clustering of activity can increase levels of knowledge exchange, the availability of skilled labour, and validation of business ideas/ prototypes, all vital for innovation to prosper.”
As the Chartered Institute for IT, BCS is committed to building this critical skills-base - improving its availability and quality through education, professionalism, networking and promotion of expertise. BCS has several levers to build and promote entrepreneurship within IT education.
BCS president, Elizabeth Sparrow, concludes: “The IT ecosystem already has amazing resources to bring to the table from across government, large and small enterprises, investors and academia, but rarely has the opportunity been there to connect them all more closely to give start-ups a real boost.
With our broad reach, networks and the depth of our members’ expertise, we are well positioned to promote the clustering agenda by connecting and coordinating the participants for the commercial and partnership benefit of these IT start-ups.
“More than that, one of the fundamental roles of BCS is to build IT understanding and capability, transforming this into positive social impact and thereby delivering on our mission of “enabling the information society”.
“We would like to offer our total support for the government’s Blueprint for IT and pledge that we will be looking at how we, as an organisation, can further this agenda.”
Coping with council cuts – ‘it’s time to walk the walk’ says CIPFA expert ransformation
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programmes aimed at allowing local
authorities to cope with the effects of predicted major reductions in budgets urgently need to start delivering results if large scale cuts to front line services are to be avoided, an expert from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy will tell a major conference.
Following the comprehensive spending review in October, the details of local authority
Nov/Dec 10
budgets will be announced shortly by ministers in the Local Government Settlement. Ian Frost, CIPFA’s
transformation advisor, will be presenting his analysis of the settlement at the CIPFA Local Government Finance Settlement Seminar (‘Where is the Money Coming From?’) at The Hatton, 51-53 Hatton Garden, London EC1N 8HN on Wednesday 15 December.
Ian Frost will argue that local authorities’ traditional approaches to cost management
such as vacancy management, spending moratoria and general efficiency savings will not be sufficient to deal with the very substantial budget reductions they are currently facing.
As authorities strive to minimise cuts to sensitive front line services, they will have to turn to more radical redesign and transformation of their services and support functions.
CIPFA has long argued that the cost and performance benefit of public bodies redesigning and
sharing services could be very significant.
Ian suggests that these initiatives need to produce real cash savings quickly if essential front line services are to receive the necessary degree of protection.
Ian Frost said: “The next three years will be about redesigning services to fit within much tighter budgets. Councils have been talking the transformation talk but now it’s time for them to walk the walk.”
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