Dining with the Father of the Web

Over the last week, I’ve had one or two conversations with Microsoft and Buying Solutions colleagues about what was to happen to the PSA09 licensing deal. The introductory offer was initially available until15th June, which was always going to prove challenging for some to take advantage of, especially considering the compressed window of opportunity resulting in slippage in getting the contract agreed and signed. Several colleagues contacted me to say that, although they would benefit from the deal, they had insufficient time to get purchasing authority agreed by the deadline. A colleague from Buying Solutions ‘phoned me yesterday evening to let me know, “hot off the press”, that it had been agreed to extend the deadline to 15th December, which is great news. He was at today’s meeting to report on progress, and also to get LCIO Council input to the terms of reference for negotiation of an Oracle Public Sector Licensing Agreement, and representation on its Governance Board.


Today’s Local CIO Council meeting reconfirmed its commitment to openness – publishing its minutes publicly, and not just in Socitm members’ pages, so I’m not going to say anything about it here.


However, I intended, last night, to mention the mind-blowing statistic reported by Christine Connelly – that the NHS has amassed 10 petabytes (that’s 10,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of images in the 18 months since it switched to digital imaging for X-rays – (but forgot until now).



This (Thursday) evening there was a joint dinner for the Government CIO & CTO Council communities. Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt were guests; John Suffolk introduced Tim, who made a pre-dinner speech in connection with his new role as an adviser to UK Government on public information, in which we were all challenged to identify data that we could liberate to facilitate mash-ups, research and reuse. Andrew Stott, in his new role of Director of Digital Engagement, seems to have planted his people on tables to collect our deliberations.


As a senior local government officer I cannot comment on political aspects of “Opposition to the philosophy and practical implementation of Transformational Government is emerging as a key element in Conservative Party policy as the Tories gear up for the next election”, but I will say that, whatever your views about national ID cards and a”database state”, joined-up public sector infrastructure remains a key service enabler and a critical efficiency objective.

Actually, one of the things we did discuss at today’s LCIO Council meeting, was consideration of party policies and a future item to discuss how we’d effectively engage with Government of whatever persuasion, after next year’s election (but we had to send Roy Marshall out of the room because he’s not even allowed to think such thoughts!)