24plusnews.co.uk Rotating Header Image

Internet

Council saves £10 million by auctioning contracts online

Oct 20th, 2011
by Liz Holliday.
Comments are off for this post

At a time when some councils are squandering taxpayers’ money, it is refreshing to hear that one council has managed to save around £10 million by offering contract jobs to the lowest bidder online. In an example that other councils should follow, Leicestershire county council seem to be taking plans to save £79m over the next four years seriously by making savvy cuts wherever they can.

The thrifty council has made £9.6 million in savings over the past four years by using an e-auction website to find the best value for money. This makes it easier for the council to find the lowest bidder for their services and contracts and creates an open source for quick and efficient competition among bidders; it is also a move towards greater transparency.

Creating this auction website seems like a creative and commendable solution to the council’s money woes, and one that appears to be working quite well for Leicestershire. In fact, the council is using the savings on purchasing costs to help “protect frontline services”.

Councillor David Parsons told the BBC that such protection of priority areas includes money “reinvested in services for children and vulnerable adults”. Finding the right savings are important for councils, but it is important for councils to make savings and work more efficiently; to do more for less while saving money for the taxpayer.

And this isn’t the only example of how Leicestershire is looking to trim the fat – other resourceful solutions include sharing back office functions with Nottingham City Council for another £1 million in savings. In total, the council hopes to save £57 million (out of the planned £79 million) through general ‘efficiency savings’, with another £5.5 million coming from reserves, according to the BBC.

Councillor Parsons explained that £2 million in savings from the council’s communications budget and £7 million from management and administration will also be made. He clarified that by attempting to change how the council is run – by prioritising children and vulnerable adults, and focusing on spending efficiency – the savings have been made without sacrificing things like the education system, for example. According to Parsons, the exam results this year were “the best we’ve ever had in Leicestershire,” and have improved immensely from past years.

Though he also admits the council’s 1,000 redundancies may indeed have to go through over the next four years to make the £79 million mark, it is good to see that at least one council is being serious when it comes to reducing spending. It can do more though. Cutting down on wasteful “back- slapping award ceremonies” is just another way Leicestershire CC could cut costs without affecting front-line services. Perhaps other councils will take Leicestershire’s crafty savings as an inspiration to get creative when it comes to their own budgets.

Public sector organisations should publish lists of websites visited by staff on taxpayers’ time

Jul 18th, 2011
by John O'Connell.
Comments are off for this post

Yesterday, the Sunday Express reported on our Freedom of Information request about Departmental internet usage. We asked each Government Department to send us a list of websites their staff had visited, in order of frequency, and the amount of time spent on these sites. We also asked for details of disciplinary procedures linked to internet usage. The only Department that provided the information was the Department for Work and Pensions. They provided a Monthly list of the top 100 websites visited, in order of frequency. It didn’t quite fulfil our response, but they at least were able to easily obtain this information from their internet provider.

No other department could answer the main part of this request – what websites, in order of frequency visited, have staff been logging on to. That’s pretty damning. It should be relatively straightforward to hold this information centrally, or do as DWP did and ask their internet provider for a list.

As outlined in the Sunday Express report, DWP staff spent a lot of time on shopping websites. There were also lots of visits to nationalrail.co.uk and numerous holiday websites. Perhaps the civil servants were more keen on getting away then getting on with work.

Staff time is the biggest item of expenditure for most public sector organisations, so it’s crucial that time at work is spent productively to give taxpayers value for money.

We feel that each Department – and eventually all public sector bodies – should publish this kind of information as a matter of course. It’s simply not good enough that no other Department aside from DWP could get this information. How do they know whether their staff are focussed on the job?

Have a look through DWP’s response below and see what websites staff are visiting on taxpayers’ time.

Click here to download

Rural broadband is necessary, but doesn’t need to be government funded

May 19th, 2011
by Dominique Lazanski.
Comments are off for this post

In a debate today in the Commons, Rory Stewart MP will argue that the government target for rural broadband deployment needs to expand to include an additional 2 million people. The motion that will be introduced says, “rural businesses and rural communities across the UK are isolated and undermined by slow broadband … (we) urge Ofcom to increase the coverage obligation attached to the 800MHz spectrum license to 98%”.

Rural broadband rollout – both fixed and wireless – is a priority of the Coalition Government. They are committed to supporting and funding the rollout out by investing £530 million. £300 million of this will come from TV license fees while the rest will be made up from the government’s own purse.

Access to broadband is an absolute necessity to ensure growth, innovation, and economic success in this country. The Government, however does not need to pay for rural broadband. By creating a competitive market environment in which broadband operators can compete, broadband rollout would come through private sector investment.

Coming to a rural community near you, eventually

There are three key factors for private sector investment in broadband rollout. First, the government needs to lift the burdensome fibre tax. As I discussed in a previous post tax is collected for the laying for fibre and for the ‘lighting’ of dark fibre. Considering the taxes that these firms are paying to operate in the UK, it would seem a simple solution to remove the fibre tax in order to allow for more fixed line broadband access. Second, coupled with this issue, the access to ducts and poles owned by BT should be offered for a low or no cost to other Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Currently ISPs and BT are in discussion to set a market price for this access. To date the discussions have been unsuccessful and Ofcom is set to intervene and set the price itself. Ed Richards of Ofcom said recently that if this happens then access to ducts and poles would be delayed because Ofcom would be required to manage the entire process. This delay is something the UK economy can’t afford.

Third, access to next year’s mobile spectrum auction should not be limited to four major companies, but should be open to all who want to operate mobile broadband. Ofcom is attempting to deal with many various and complex issues around the spectrum auction and in doing so they are trying to correct distortions from previous spectrum allocations. In doing this, though, they have set spectrum caps which may limit the rollout to certain areas. The opening up of this auction and licenses provided in it could improve competition and speed up mobile broadband rollout.

I have only touched the surface of the complexity of fixed and broadband rollout in the UK. There are many other factors impacting the rollout. However, it is clear that if competition increases in the fixed and mobile broadband market we would not need government to pay for new broadband. Private sector companies from the UK and abroad have the technology and the investment needed and they are ready to participate only if and when the Coalition Government makes the environment more business friendly.

Net Neutrality and basic economics

Mar 15th, 2011
by Dominique Lazanski.
Comments are off for this post

In the run up to the UK Government’s round table meeting on net neutrality tomorrow, there has been a great deal of scaremongering over the fact that key stakeholders, ISPs, consumer rights groups and others in the UK will probably adopt an industry-driven code of transparency over one of net neutrality. The Guardian claims that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) discriminate on purpose or entirely arbitrarily. The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones claims that if content providers have to pay even a little to get their content distributed over the Internet, new and innovative companies like YouTube would never ever happen. Our friends at the Open Rights Group claim that ISPs are “evil”. And even Al Franken has weighed in by saying, “The one thing that big corporations have that we don’t is the ability to purchase favourable political outcomes.” But one thing is missing from all of these passionate, emotional outcries – basic economics.

Net neutrality is the idea that the Internet needs regulation in order to keep it free and open. It is based on the intuition that all Internet traffic should be treated equally without discrimination or management. The problem is that the open and free Internet that we see and use today exists because of the creation of ‘smart networks’ or networks that engage in Internet traffic management. These ‘smart networks’ prevent end users from experiencing more network congestion, stalling or any of the other issues one might experience on a ‘dumb network’. There would be no ‘smart networks’ if all Internet traffic was treated equally.

ISPs are the companies that have created and invested in these smart networks and, in spite of what the Guardian and the BBC might say, ISPs are businesses and exist because they serve customers who are happy to pay for them to provide a service. And ISPs have a financial incentive to offer customers what they want. They don’t exist to be evil or to be gatekeepers or to hoard power. ISPs provide a service that customers pay for. In turn ISPs invest in new network infrastructure, pay their employees, pay their shareholders and, yes, provide access to the Internet. I know that this might comes as a shock to many Guardian and BBC readers, but any business – including ISPs – can’t exist unless they offer something that customers need and are willing to pay for. After all, the market in the UK is very competitive and transparency will reinforce that. And in order to compete ISPs strike content deals to differentiate their offerings from each other. So that consumers can actually watch YouTube and iPlayer videos smoothly, by giving them priority over an e-mail where a delay of a few seconds isn’t an issue. Not all data is the same and ISPs can deliver a better service if they don’t treat it as if it were.

Dumb Network Business Plan

The 'dumb network' business plan

So here is my suggestion to all of the pro-net neutrality folks weighing in with their emotional scaremongering – start your own ISP. That is right, why don’t you start your own co-op, not-for-profit Internet Service Provider? Go ahead, light up dark fibre or lay your own. Pay the fibre tax. Hire network engineers. Buy switching devices and other hardware. Don’t strike content deals. Don’t partner with Akamai. Don’t manage network traffic. And try and make money. Prove us all wrong and provide customers with the alternative ‘dumb network’ that does nothing but provide Internet access. If there is a customer base for it, then the rest of us who don’t want Internet regulation will be proven wrong. Go for it! Quite frankly, I am going to leave my Internet connection with an already established ISP who has given me quality service.

Switch to our mobile site