Getting more joined-up

This morning’s Socitm London branch meeting was held at the Mermaid Conference Centre, at Blackfriars. I was pleased to see great support from central Government colleagues - with updates from OGC Buying Solutions on the Microsoft UK Public Sector Licensing project, the DWP on Government Connect and DCSF on Employee Authentication Services. Geoff Connell (now Chair of the London branch – keep it in the “family”!) gave a short update on the Public Sector Mobile Portal http://mynewham.mobi (designed for viewing on your ‘phone) and I gave my Socitm update. The meeting finished with a great presentation from Ian Brooks of HP, today’s sponsor, “Innovation - from chip to chiller and beyond”, followed by lunch. Presentations will be on the Socitm website.


After lunch, I attended an EAS Board Meeting at the Sanctuary Buildings in Westminster. The main discussion was of the implementation strategy, different options for establishing the Registration Authority and the Operating Model. The fact that it’s accepted that EAS will now support multiple applications - initially Contact Point, then access to the DWP Customer Information System for benefits processing, then others - undoubtedly complicates the programme, not least from financial and delivery perspectives, but it’s great that we are now confronting these issues; discussion of pan-Government security is gaining traction.

Although John Skipper, in his update to the London Socitm meeting, said that remote access through the GC infrastructure will not initially be supported by EAS, we were told that remote access trials are being undertaken.

It appears that this year’s T-Government report will be delayed, which brings additional opportunities to ensure that the pan-Government security vision is developed for that report.