Cloud computing is a good thing? Well probably, however it is predicated on the availability of cloud applications to run in the cloud (Cloud computing will change business technology, knowledge.computing.co.uk).

Problem - applications to service particular functional needs are frequently determined and bounded by organisational preferences rather than inherent characteristics, so software tends to reflect the likes and dislikes of the commissioner, which many others reject on a "not invented here" basis.

The solution is that there needs to be a consensus on best of breed functional flows before applications can be easily picked up. For  example, the accounting industry has a best-of-breed process defined by the  accounting standards and several hundred years of double entry book-keeping. Result - companies can pick up most accounting software and use it successfully.

A converse example is the industry and sector where I am employed - public education for 16 to 19-year olds. Here we have little common and even less agreed mapping of function in, say, the administration of students. This results in multiple vendors with differing packages which do not even meet
external constraints in standard ways. Here, and throughout higher and further education generally, institutions cannot see a way to introduce even limited shared services, according to a recent survey.

So, for us, cloud computing is just a dream.

Jim Blair

Exams are the lazy way to solve the problem of student plagiarism (Write 100 lines: "I must not outsource my homework to India", markkobayashihillary.computing.co.uk).

I've been using interviews with students for over a decade to address the possibility that a student has plagiarised their programming assignments. Having to explain your code and make changes to the code in an interview is a very effective way of guaranteeing that the student actually wrote the code, or at the very least understands the code well.

Martin, submitted on the web

Gary Strang wonders why the government doesn't help to retrain IT staff (Don't kill off skills, letters.computing.co.uk).

The answer is simple Ð the government is busy dumping IT staff from the civil service as fast as it can because its supposed commitment to IT is just more New Labour spin. Virtually all IT staff at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) have been sold off to the Atlas consortium, headed by EDS, and many of us are now facing redundancy.

For those few still remaining in the MoD some of the integrated project teams are refusing to pay for professional membership of BCS  as they "don't consider it benefits the business", despite a national agreement to pay professional fees.

If they have such little commitment to their own IT staff, they're hardly likely to help anyone else's, are they?

Stephen J. Coombs

What a load of drivel (Imagine a new global leader, www.computing.co.uk/2219896).

Demographers have been repeatedly and massively wrong about future population trends. If we cannot predict human numbers a few decades hence, what hope do we have of predicting the Earth's climate? Anyone who seriously believes we can predict the Earth's climate - and what impact humanity has on it - desperately needs to be kept away from sharp objects and matches.

And the only way we're going to get an 80 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 is by a forced de-urbanisation policy of the kind the Khmer Rouge carried out in 1970s Cambodia.

Finally, I would like to  repeat a question I've heard elsewhere - does our government propose to fix the world's climate before or after it's fixed the schools and hospitals?

Robert Sealey

Laptop computers are so convenient. Until you lose one (Unencrypted NHS laptop lost, www.computing.co.uk/2220345). But a laptop is like a personal organiser - personal. People think: "It's mine - how dare you tell me what I can and cannot do with it."

Think about how many times each day your personal data is entered on a computer. If government departments are incapable of enforcing data security then the battle to secure our privacy is already lost.
For every high-profile event reported there must be thousands less newsworthy that are not reported.

Peter Ridgers

Building Schools for the Future is perceived by some as a great invasion for schools (Vice-like grip,
letters.computing.co.uk).

John Jones needs to go into schools and see the excellent work that IT staff provide. I manage a team of six who are employed by the school to provide support exceeding the standards set out by Becta and private firms.

This high standard will be eroded and the best practice we employ will be replaced by private companies with shareholders who are more important than students.

John Richards

While I agree with much of what Paul Ashbrook says about open source software (Waste of money, letters.computing.co.uk), the school IT environment is very complex with schools typically running hundreds of often poorly-written pieces of software.

Most people in schools IT work towards bringing in as much free and open source software as possible, not least because it reduces the overhead of ordering and maintaining licences.

We are making inroads with individual applications, but we still have a long way to go. For example, our school runs Microsoft Office and Open Office in parallel and have done for several years, but a great deal of lessons taught in schools and the skills of staff are unfortunately based on MS Office.

Training time is very limited and training time for IT skills is virtually nil, so the upheaval of changing any application, regardless of its licensing terms, can  be very problematic. I am  convinced that is the reason few schools have solid plans for moving to Windows Vista or Office 2007.

As for Becta's framework deal, it is largely irrelevant. Anyone can look at Becta''s online software procurement platform, and I invite them to do so. It is woefully out of date and will not get better prices than any IT manager with half a clue could get in five minutes.

So now they are paying private firms to "sell" schools free software without any  experience of what schools want and need. Thanks but no thanks - let the taxpayers keep the £80m.

Sam P, submitted on the web

The advocates of punishing those who choose software suppliers such as RM for use in schools have missed the point and made a major error.

They have offered the "obvious solution" of training children to use Microsoft Office rather than use an "obscure" offering from others. Send them back to school before their ill-judged assumptions make an ass of them on a real project.

First, when examined properly, the requirement is not to train children in a tool but to educate them in using such tools and provide their teachers with the tools  they need to support that  education.

Microsoft Office is not a training tool but an operational one. It does not have any tools that track a pupil's  achievement of a new activity type or concept for the first time, nor can it record errors and suggest alternative methods - the educational software does. It does what it is designed for:
producing and manipulating office documents.

Second, over the past 20 years in IT, I have seen the difference in performance  in those who are expertly trained in one tool who stumble once the tool is changed. I have compared this with the results of those who have been educated in the underlying concepts and how adaptable they become when given the experience of another tool.

One supplier's dominance of the education market is concerning because of the lack of variation in education, but at least it is an alternative to simple indoctrination in the dominant product in the adult market.

While economies of scale are useful, adaptability and alternative strategies are needed for longer-term survival in the workplace. Educate first, train when needed.

Carol Long

The expertise built up through the Fujitsu contracts will be invaluable to the NHS (Fujitsu may lay off 700 NHS IT programme workers, www.computing.co.uk/2219727).

It seems essential that the NHS should negotiate a transfer of Fujitsu staff and directly manage their
continued work on the National Programme for IT. Of course there would have to be changes to top-level programme management, but perhaps more local involvement could be factored in this time.

When will the government learn that automatic outsourcing of development and programme management is not the way to transform public sector IT?

Patrick Newman

Why does the government not help retain IT staff? (IT training needs more government support, www.computing.co.uk/2219454).

My company struggles to train me - I can only do so much myself. I am actually thinking of moving out of the IT industry to earn more money, so why not help me and retain my 12 years of skills and experience?

Gary Strang

It costs between £25,000 and £50,000 a year to keep an inmate in prison, while their family often needs
financial help (Government turns to prisoners to tackle IT skills shortages, www.computing.co.uk/2218728).

Every individual given and taking the opportunity to become a law-abiding bread winner and taxpayer is of huge benefit to us all. While training is a good investment, schemes with private support and sponsorship are truly win-win. May there be many more such schemes.

Nick Bishop

The latest security gaffe at the Cabinet Office poses two key questions: Why were the documents printed and why did they leave the building? If national security is at stake, the opportunity for error simply cannot exist.

The repeated data losses prove the government still underestimates the consequences of human error.
Allowing staff to print confidential material means IT departments are unnecessarily fighting a battle on two fronts: internal and external.

Has it come to the stage where printers should be banned from the public  sector completely and a paperless office enforced? Were this to happen, IT could focus its efforts solely on
protecting electronic files.

Saying "this will never happen again" is not good enough. Unless the public sector takes dramatic steps to change its data protection policies, the risk of human error will continue to  threaten national security.

Robert Chapman,  Firebrand Training

What about the unemployed, such as myself, who would like to enter networking and cable installation within the IT profession? (Government turns to prisoners to tackle IT skills shortages, www.computing.co.uk/ 2218728).

What about those who have never done anything illegal or been to court or prison? How do people such as myself get this golden opportunity? Break the law and go to prison, I suppose.

Tam, submitted on the web

After years of under-investment, under-training, offshoring and devaluing of the second biggest industry in the UK, let's give jobs that require a high degree of trust to the proven untrustworthy (Government turns to prisoners to tackle IT skills shortages, www.computing.co.uk/2218728).

What's wrong with skilling up the unemployed who desperately want to get into IT? Although I suppose being able to hotwire cars would make you quite good at cabling.

This is another example of how this government has no idea about the IT industry. Give me strength.

John Watson

The reason diligent school IT staff must think about issues such as security and compatibility is because they are both responsible and accountable for the network (Vice-like grip, letters.computing.co.uk).

If we simply act like robots and do as we are told, do you imagine the staff who asked us to carry out the task will take responsibility for its failure? Of course not. They will point the finger of blame in our direction.

Many schools have very good IT staff because they have large and complex networks. With the abuse they receive from people who know nothing, they should expect better from those who profess to know it all.

Tony Forder

Further to my letter last month (In referendums we must trust, letters.computing.co.uk), I am dismayed to see how little subsequent comment there has been on the ever-increasing powers of the surveillance society.

Computing has attempted to bring these concerns to public attention, but it is a voice that is being lost in a storm of indifference.

While the people of Britain are concerned about their jobs, mortgages, excessive immigration, youths carrying knives, and the price of food and petrol, their civil liberties are under a comprehensive and sustained attack.

Unless the nation voices some sort of opinion on this subject it will suddenly discover that it has no privacy whatsoever, and the act of criminal discovery will become based on a monumental mash-up of disparate data held in what would appear to be innocuous and legitimate locations.

Just because data can be cross-referenced and combined in new and exciting ways, allowing for a detailed picture of an individual's life, does not mean that it should. There should be real limits in place, backed up by the most stringent laws to prevent this.

Computers have empowered a new age and made products and services cost-effective, but they can be used wrongly, in ways that are not immediately apparent.

People have shared many facets of their personal lives through the use of web sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. Coupling that information with data held in government databases can paint a picture that many individuals would  not want seen.

People need to develop an awareness of the surveillance society in which they now live, and start to define concrete boundaries. Sometimes the hardest thing to  do is exercise restraint,  but that is exactly what is  required of those in charge of the surveillance of  British society.

Some things are just meant to be hard; investigating a person's private life should be one of them.

Concerned of Liverpool

There is no need to have a passport, driving licence and identity card (New approach to ID card scheme). There must be a way to incorporate all three on to one card, which would save taxpayers' money in the long term.

I have an old-style driving licence and did not renew my passport when it expired some years ago. I can no longer do simple tasks, such as putting my property on the market with an estate agent, as they want proof of identity because of money-laundering laws.

Ian Severs

All monitoring by ID cards, biometrics and CCTV cameras is technology-driven (The surveillance society).

The technology exists to capture and preserve our lives and actions on silicon chips, hard disks and CCTV.

The information - or if you like, knowledge - thus recorded is power. And power is a buzz, especially
if government reserves this power for itself and its various agencies. So, of course governments are interested.

Bob McMurray

I'm glad there has been some improvement in the Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) system (Online guide curtails JPA teething troubles).

It was a disgraceful shambles when I was leaving the RAF 18 months ago. A reduction from 6,000 down to 4,500 queries per day is nothing to crow about though. In an eight-hour day they must still be taking a query every 6.4 seconds - and that's from those who are in the UK and aren't deployed on operations.

Paul McMillen

Partnerships for Schools chief executive Tim Byles said: "Building Schools for the Future (BSF) is not about taking things away" (School plan is to build, not demolish).

BSF will not be delivering the IT service, the service provider will, and it will wish to minimise costs to maximise profit.

So while BSF may not take things away, the service provider will - especially the IT technicians from schools - and allocate them centrally to save costs.

Proper consultation is  impossible because of the structure of the project. I participated as a school
governor in a consultation exercise. The local education authority (LEA) BSF IT team imposed last-minute changes in its contract with schools that seriously disadvantaged all the schools.
There was nothing the school governors could do about it. We could only discuss the school-LEA agreement, and not the real driver, the LEA agreement with the service provider.

On career development, some school technicians are working in schools because they want to serve their community and do not want to work for a large corporation.

They knew the job did  not offer much by way of opportunities in the  careerist sense, but offered different prospects.

Their choice to serve an identifiable social unit whose values they share  are destroyed by BSF IT.

The fundamental objection to the BSF IT project is that it is bureaucratic and anti-competitive. The LEA chooses the service provider prior to negotiating the terms of the contract, so the other businesses which might have bid are excluded before the exact service is  defined.The alternative approach would be to set interoperability standards and standard service contracts to create a genuine market in which
local suppliers and service  organisations could bid, and where individual schools choose to buy a service.

BSF IT is just a way of  diverting public money to large corporations in the guise of providing a service to schools. It is bad for the schools and bad for small UK IT  service providers.

Roger Hill, school governor

I am curious as to how the government expects MI6 to attract a world-class enterprise architect when its web site shows that it is paying below the market rate for such a job (MI6 holds IT staff recruitment drive).

MI6 is offering a salary range of £56,000 to £79,000, while the market salary, according to IT Jobs Watch, is £70,000 to £86,000.

I now see why the government suffers security lapses when, even for what are probably the most critical jobs in the world, it consistently fails to offer salaries which could attract the cream of the industry. I
hate to see what salaries it offers technology staff who work in other parts of government.

Jonathan Eaton

It is wrong to report that people will face jail for reckless data breaches, (Lose data and you go to jail).

The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act, which gained royal assent earlier this month, does introduce tough new sanctions for breaches of the Data Protection Act, granting the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) the power to fine organisations for serious and reckless breaches of the Act.

This change in the law sends a very clear signal that data protection must be a priority and that it is completely unacceptable to be cavalier with people's   personal information.

Another clause in the new Act allows the Justice Secretary to introduce prison sentences for the separate offence of illegally buying and selling personal information if the black market exposed by the ICO continues.

This threat creates a  powerful deterrent to those tempted to engage in this  illegal practice.

The ICO has repeatedly called for more effective sanctions against organisations that fail to live up to their responsibilities under the Data Protection Act, and we welcome the tougher sanctions.

David Smith, Information  Commissioner's Office

I read with interest your interview with Tim Byles regarding Building Schools for the Future (BSF) (School plan is to build, not demolish).

I note that he uses the mantra: "We are in the business of educational transformation; this is not a bricks and mortar project".

However, the examples he quotes are all linked to administration and facilities management rather than teaching and learning or the engagement of reluctant learners.

Where is the talk of personalising learning with engaging online resources sorted by learning type and ability? Where is the access to media-rich learning on an individual basis? Where is the principle of anywhere, anytime learning that allows our most able to access advanced learning material to extend their horizons, while at the same time allowing a child off school to catch up with missed work?

The administration systems are important, and engagement of parents in their children's learning is vital, but the learning activities are missing from this view of BSF. The danger of BSF is
re-creating the same education system in new buildings, and that will not transform education.

Our children deserve better learning environments than the tired and worn out schools they occupy. BSF is a long overdue investment in our education infrastructure and we must applaud our government for making this commitment. All is far from perfect, however. Is educational transformation at the forefront when schools are told by architects that, because of heat considerations, there should be no more than five PCs in a classroom?

Children find learning most engaging when they are trying something new in an environment where they feel safe and secure in case something goes wrong.

Well, BSF is certainly trying something new but as for feeling safe and secure?

Stephen Douglas
City Learning Centre Manager

What patients think about others having access to their medical records depends on what they have been told about who will have access (NHS must learn lessons on centralised patient records).

For example, what if men were told that if they are  prescribed Viagra it would be known by administrative staff for up to six months  after being issued? It is not just current medications that will be on the system.

What if they were told about the NHS secondary uses service, pharmacists,  researchers and so on - would that affect their view on access?

When I contacted a primary care trust about drugs such as anti-depressants, Viagra and medications used in a termination, they seemed to imply that this data would be uploaded. Would all women who had an abortion be happy about uploading anything that implied they have had such an operation?

Dave, submitted on the web

Despite calls to introduce pure computer software patents in the UK, many observers will be encouraged to see the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) appealing the recent Symbian court decision (Confusion reigns on software patents). It is worth reflecting on the importance of this move.

Judging from the US, where pure computer software patents can be granted, the evidence of success in
extending patent law in this field is mixed. The software industry in the US grew exponentially without pure software patents, suggesting they are not necessary to promote innovation and, rather than acting as an incentive, prevent competitors from developing in a similar field.

Extending patent law in this case is widely recognised as unworkable, particularly in a field where
innovation is usually accomplished in increments too small to be viewed as inventive steps, and where freelance businesses use the free and automatic protection of copyright protection.

Introducing pure software patents could raise the costs for small software developers to mitigate against risks surrounding research and development, thereby inflating the capital needs of  software development.

The government-commissioned Gowers Review of Intellectual Property agreed with this position, and recommended that changes in the current position on pure software patents, business method patents and gene patents should only be  made in light of economic evidence that they would enhance innovation to offset the considerable costs.

Many commercial and  individual software developers are glad the UK IPO is  taking a stand to listen to all interests in our industry, not merely vested practitioners.

Laura Creighton
Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure
www.ffii.org
Shareholder Report
www.reportlab.org

Pieter Hintjens
Director Imatix Ltd
www.imatix.com
General Secretary European Software Market Association (ESOMA)
www.esoma.org

Aidan Maguire,
Director Blue Fountain Systems
www.bluefountain.com

This government has inflicted huge damage on the education process, but it is not fully to blame for the fact that too few students are signing up to take IT degrees (Falling through the skills gap, letters.computing.co.uk).

I joined the IT industry in 1984 having taken a non-IT degree. I did so because the potential earnings were high. By the age of 23 I had a mortgage on a flat in London. I am now 44 and have no mortgage, having worked in the industry all my life.

Yet if I were a student  today, I would avoid IT. It is not well-respected in boardrooms across the UK, and pay levels have dropped dramatically. This is backed up by the technical vacancies on your web site, which seem to average about £30,000 after several years' experience. That is equivalent to my starting salary.

Students understand that to clear their debts and make a three-year degree worthwhile, they need high potential earnings. At the moment, IT does not portray that potential even if it exists. Before firms grumble about the lack of IT skills, perhaps they could try offering a decent salary.

Kathy Sadler

Last July, the Information Commissioner explicitly stressed to UK executives the need for more stringent protection of customer data. Yet a large number of UK public sector organisations are still being extremely remiss when using sensitive customer information  (Data losses revealed at
London councils).

Carelessly leaving information about vulnerable children in a pub - as happened twice last year at Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council - only exacerbates the public's concern.

Public sector bodies need to understand and address internal data infrastructures to prevent data being misused. Furthermore, they need to encourage an organisational culture that realises the vulnerability of  customer information and understands the importance of protecting it.

There are already enough threats to customer data from the criminal community, without organisations adding to them through an array of careless activities.

Jason Goodwin

You ask: are ID cards, CCTV and data sharing acceptable prices to pay for the benefits of improved services and better security? (The surveillance society).

Unless the benefit of surveillance systems is clearly understood by the masses it will never be popular.
However, the foundation of trust in such systems has not been nurtured. Such  need to start slowly and demonstrate that they cannot be abused by anyone.

Access should be severely restricted to those of the highest calibre for only the most important of reasons.

Protecting civil liberties must come first if such systems are to be tolerated, and the adage of "just because we can build it does not mean that we should" must be  revisited regularly.

Such systems can be abused, and that abuse can be directed at any segment of society with an ease that defies belief.

It seems wrong that access to such technology and power is being put into the hands of local councils or debt collection agencies.

The general population needs to wake up to the very real threat of the worst kind of sci-fi future - a dystopia - and that process starts with understanding.

A national referendum seems the only way.

Name withheld on request

I do not know where Dave Walker gets this idea that all civil servants are on high wages and good pensions (Public image, letters.computing.co.uk). Only senior civil servants are on good wages and pensions, the average civil servant working in a Job Centre, for instance, is on less than £14,000 a year, and is often overworked.

And no, more people are not being employed. In fact they are being made redundant, outsourced or are not being replaced. Those left behind are having to pick up the additional workload.

When your wages are this low, the pension will be low, with most paying extra to top up their pensions. I suggest you have a look at the PCS union web site to get the real story on how civil servants are treated. Remember this if you ever find yourself unlucky enough to have to use a Job Centre.

A public service worker

As the network manager of a Norfolk high school, we have seen the building of eight new classrooms under the Building Schools for the Future programme (Education costs, letters.computing.co.uk).

We chose to manage and run the project ourselves, leaving our local authority to rubber stamp and pay for what the school designed and agreed. As part of that I took on the management of the IT provision and worked with the nominated contractor to agree products and implementation.

With that, plus a free reign for the hardware purchase, we have IT provision in every room, capable of 1Gbit/s to the desktop. We have top-level industrial-grade equipment at 20 to 50 per cent below commercial costs, and our design and implementation phases were careful, steady and efficient.

The ongoing cost is about £45,000 per year to keep this level of provision up-to-date. We outsource nothing. We buy into no maintenance.

It is not hard within the current market affluence of highly skilled persons to recruit and retain in-house skills to deal with all non-warranty and also some warranty issues.

These options are open to headteachers. They need to have sufficiently competent staff and the appropriate management skills to be confident to take this step. The soft options cost more in return for having someone else to blame.

Stuart Johnson

There are always dozens of reasons not to do something – go live with a project, stand up and say “The King is not wearing any clothes” and so on (Shared IT is set to support frontline services).

Shared services often require a mindset change to encourage the “experts” – the managers who deal with the everyday issues – to begin collaborating with peers in different organisations to look for similarities rather than differences.

A key question is to ask whether the senior management team of an institution will encourage and then actively support their middle managers to suggest that many sacred cows should be offloaded to the abattoir. Or perhaps I have mixed my metaphors too much.

Paul Hopkins

How demoralising to see yet another example of IT systems being blamed for failure in meeting business deadlines (Concerns over child welfare IT continue).

Several years ago, government directives called for councils across the country to invest in computer equipment and software.

Social Services were additionally required to buy in applications that would support electronic case recording for all service users - adults and children - with each local authority responsible for deciding the most suitable application and  supplier.

Since then, several high-profile social cases involving children have rightly highlighted the need to tighten up the process. As a result, more structured methods of assessments and controlling workflow have been introduced - including eCAF and ICS - which require substantial upgrades to the computer systems already in use.

Unfortunately, some of these hitherto reliable systems are not upgradeable to the extent required and need replacing, involving substantial investment in new software, networks, staff retraining and data migration from existing systems.

The authorities concerned have been doing this as best they can within their timescale and budget and the fact that two-thirds missed the 31 March deadline merely reflects the amount of work involved. Having been involved in the training programmes of several authorities, I have seen these efforts first hand.

One positive aspect is that the business actually knows what is needed and is asking for the IT tools to make it happen, but in such a sensitive area the process cannot be rushed as any errors could have a negative impact on the very same vulnerable children whom these  systems are being installed to protect.

John McGhee

Ron Bumstead's letter advising people not to work for the public sector makes him sound as if he is overworked (Public image, letters.computing.co.uk).

The team numbers he quotes seem about right, if not extravagant - especially in the real world of the
private sector.

There are many reasons why Ron and others in the public sector are on low pay:The public sector works fewer hours; needs to employ more people to screw  in the proverbial light bulb because of more absenteeism and less work completed per person; and workers receive grossly over-subsidised pensions.

Count your blessings - after 35 years you will receive a good pension. If you were in the real world and contracting - yes, contractors get good pay, more than double your salary - you would need to invest a good deal of your income and pray it provides good returns for a pension.

Mine has not, and I am sure many more contractors have seen their investments dwindle while watching public pensions thrive.

Dave Walker

Politicians are adept at destroying an opposing argument, usually by not engaging with it. However, there are fundamental differences between a biometric passport and the proposed ID card (Does David Davis know what an ID card does? newsdesk.computing.co.uk).

The required biometric on the passport is a digitised copy of the photograph. Fingerprints, or some derivative of them, may be added, but are not a legal requirement. A passport is not strictly an identity document, although it is often used as such. Either way, its use is primarily for crossing national borders and establishing one's credentials in a foreign country.

The ID card is primarily a document for internal control and has a far wider and more worrying range of possible uses. The card itself, as proposed, will carry very limited data, but will link  to the National Identity Register, which in turn is  intended to link to personal data held across a range of databases.

The scope of this goes far beyond anything historically achieved by or intended for passports. David Davis can rightly be accused of oversimplifying the argument and the technicalities - something politicians are prone to do as they tend to assume the population is basically thick and/or of
very limited attention span. However, I think you are too harsh in writing off his position as a result.

The appropriation by a government of the control and ownership of the personal identity of citizens is a fundamentally dangerous, inhumane, anti-democratic act. There is no historical precedent that says the state can be trusted with such a degree of control over the private lives of the people.

If wickedness does not wreak havoc, incompetence surely will - and knowing what we know about human nature and large institutions, we will probably be faced with both.

Adair, submitted on the web

What planet is Robert Chapman on? (The lure of the public sector).

Is it planet BSF (Building Schools for the Future), or BSP as we call it in our school Ð Building Schools For Profit?

Has he even had a sniff of working in IT support in a school? Come to work in education IT, he says. Well I did, in 1998 when innovation, dynamism and thinking on your feet were key to driving forward IT provision in schools.

Now it will be a very different proposition - as other people quite rightly point out - when schools' technical staff are downgraded to time-constrained monitor monkeys who may not even work in one place but could be shifted around.

I know plenty of people who have jumped ship in the past three years as they see what is unfolding and would prefer to swim rather than sink with the BSF project.

I am employed in a BSF school and have had to  put up with the stress, heartache, uncertainty and mushroom management of the IT provision. Just the thought of rereading a proposal for one of our almost-built BSF schools sends a shiver down my spine.

I can see it now: wireless everywhere, hundreds of laptops in students' hands, computer-controlled door access all flooded throughout the school and all requiring expert on-the-spot support. It will be a nightmare, especially when the private company renegotiates our contracts after the two protected years, which it will do, and downgrades all the IT staff or even makes some   redundant in the relentless pursuit of profit.

Am I jumping ship? You bet I am, as soon as possible. Get out of IT in education before BSF gets in.

Saul Hudson

Mike Byrne raises some interesting questions in his letter (Who picks up the ID trail? letters.computing.co.uk).

If this government's track record on protecting our personal data is an example of the future, Mike will be in for a shock. His scenario of being tracked when buying petrol and using cash machines is already a reality.

From 2009 anyone leaving the UK will need to supply 53 pieces of personal information - see www.tinyurl.com/2ww86f - this could and probably will be linked to the  national identity register database. The government already allows commercial companies to access the  driver and vehicle licensing database.

Bringing all these together worries me a great deal. Mike is right that no real  debate has taken place as
to who controls all this data, and who allows whom to  access it.

Mike McNamara

The best way for government to make ID cards widespread is to do the following (New approach to ID card scheme).

Make it a criminal offence for anyone, government or commercial, to ask for further proof of identity when an ID card has been presented and an identity confirmation received.

Take responsibility for losses incurred when a properly executed identity check using an ID card returns a false result, whether the losses are the commercial organisation's for a false positive or the individual's for a false negative.

Make it a criminal offence to refuse other identity verification offerings, but leave the organisation freedom to set reasonable rules.

This would still allow the paranoid and the refuseniks to stay out of the system and possibly to stay out of it for only some activities.

Jim Blair

Businesses are quick to blame government, but the UK is just like the US in that businesses do not want to do what is necessary to protect themselves if they are key to the economy and the critical infrastructure (Cyber attack threat is ignored).

Yet they would protest if government set standards for securing their information assets. This is a classic case of "damned if you do and damned if you don't".

Name withheld on request

I read with interest your recent article: Child welfare IT hit by delays.

The March deadline was reviewed some months ago and a new target deadline of 31 May was approved by the Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF) for Phase 1B of the Integrated Children's System (ICS) project. Barking & Dagenham Council has been working closely with Anite to meet this target and everything is proceeding as agreed between ourselves, Anite and the DCSF.

We have an obligation to our community to deliver the best services in the most cost-effective manner. These projects are complex and take a great deal of time, resources and money, and we want to get it right first time.

We have successfully partnered with Anite on a number of projects in our social care department.
The mobile social care solution implemented in 2006 is one of the most successful projects undertaken by the borough.

Implementing ICS is tough. It involves substantial changes to children's practice, short deadlines and a complex change programme.

Anite has worked alongside us throughout the project and the end is in sight. ICS will result in significant service improvements and a reduction in risks for our service users and ourselves.

Sarah Bryant, head of ICT and e-government
London  Borough of Barking & Dagenham

Large suppliers hate innovation because it disturbs the status quo and it could threaten their dominance and profits (Innovation gets risk assessment).

Accordingly, at their behest, UK government has been forced - by dint of threatened withdrawal of consultancies, directorships, lecture tours and so on for MPs and senior civil servants in their dotage - to go to a great deal of trouble to eliminate small, innovative companies from public sector contracts.

For example, all NHS IT contracts are solely with the big five. Look at any public contract IT pre-qualification questionnaire and you will see that it is impossible for a small UK company to meet the criteria, thus they are eliminated. The contract goes to the big suppliers for up to 10 times the cost and they outsource the work to the third world to maximise their megaprofits.

In the US, public bodies are compelled to use a proportion of their expenditure on small companies, and until similar legislation is applied in the UK, innovation will continue to be stifled and the new industry leaders of the future will never be UK companies.

Name withheld on request

The computers for pupils scheme that offers free PCs to low-income families is bundled either with a 3G modem and a data limit such as 4GB per month, or recipients take out ADSL contracts, so there is no issue of them running up a large phone bill (PC gone mad, letters.computing.co.uk).

As for them being able to afford an Xbox but not a computer, this might be true - but it is a sad fact of life that kids would rather have an Xbox than have a PC.

Providing a family with a PC not only encourages kids but the whole family to use IT. I believe the notebook is school property, so any loss is treated as losing school property in the same way as any other equipment.

I agree that giving away laptops in this way is not the best use of funds - especially as notebooks become useless piles of junk after about two years and often do not even last that long in the hands
of juveniles.

I would rather they were given PCs than notebooks, or the money was used to hire  a good teacher or provide teacher training. Giving away equipment is not  education; give a student a pen and you have a scribbler, but fire his or her imagination and you could have a Shakespeare.

Steve, submitted on the web

You published a letter from me last month in which I pointed out the dangers of linkage between ID cards and various government databases (The thin end of a scary wedge, letters.computing.co.uk).

In that issue you also published an interview with James Hall, chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service (New approach to ID card scheme), in which he states: "We want to make it cheaper for the bank to secure identity and cheaper for the young person to set up that account."

So either the bank will have a device to check the ID card against an individual's biometrics or it will be able to access the national ID database to verify the ID card. It could be the case that both are required.
It is likely that the cards will be susceptible to fraud a short time after they are issued, so checking cards against physical persons will be unlikely to be accepted. That means banks will be allowed access to the ID database, if IDs are to be used in the way Hall suggests.

Will the government be allowed instant access to bank records? Where will it stop? Will they get supermarkets to check buying habits recorded by store cards? Will you be refused NHS treatment because you bought too many packets of butter?

Several of the original IT suppliers are now shying away from the project. I hope more will follow and that staff will have more regard to infringement of their rights than their employer's profits by refusing to work on this disastrous scheme.

Philip Kellingley

I have low pay and no future because of threats about outsourcing to the Atlas Consortium running the Defence Information Infrastructure project (The lure of the public sector).

My pay as a network manager is £26,000 - this is after 35 years of service, part of it as a radar engineer. I buy, configure and maintain 30 servers on a network of 1,500 workstations.

There are two people looking after the network and four low-skilled operator maintainers looking after more than 2,000 workstations and notebooks.

My advice: do not work for the public sector.

Ron Bumstead

The government has spent six years trying to find a plausible reason to force everyone to have an ID card - it cannot (Roll up, roll up, get your voluntary ID cards here, editor.computing.co.uk). There are no good reasons.

This is a piece of control freakery by Whitehall civil servants who want to compile a national population register because it would be convenient for them, with no regard for the  monetary or constitutional costs to the country.

They are hypnotised by the prospect of the Home Office becoming the pre-eminent government department - eclipsing even the Treasury - by interposing itself in every transaction between the
citizen and government,  and many transactions  between the citizen and  private industry.

It is every Home Office mandarin's dream - we would all have to have civil service permission to access healthcare, banking services or even pick up a parcel at the post office.

Think I'm exaggerating? Read examples on the Home Office web site at www.identitycards.gov.uk. Centralising this level of control over our everyday lives is pure folly. The ID scheme must be scrapped, immediately.

Andrew Watson

May I enter the debate on extending Freedom of Information (FoI) to private sector contractors? (Law change will raise costs for local council IT, www.computing.co.uk/2209584).

FoI was introduced with four main aims: openness, accountability, democracy, and inclusive access. Experience over the past three years shows the FoI Act has improved access to information for ordinary citizens.

Many private sector bodies already come under the scope of FoI. For example, public utilities delivered by privatised shareholder companies, such as gas, water or power; or local authority contractors providing waste, landfill, or road maintenance services.

Nearly all larger public  authorities have adopted the principle of consulting with commercial third parties where an information  request relates to their  business with the authority. Designating private sector providers as request handlers is just a logical step in this evolving bill of rights.

The new proposals may actually reduce bureaucracy. Currently, a request for  information about private sector work means consulting with the contractors. This creates additional  correspondence – when all parties are under pressure to meet the 20-day timeline

I challenge Socitm’s assertion that all organisations subject to FoI must have an employee dedicated to this work. Having worked with the legislation since 2001, I have never come across any obligation to have a single FoI expert. It is good practice, but only a few large councils have an FoI specialist.
Please do not knock FoI. It is improving understanding and trust in government processes. There is no
evidence it is reducing the quality of private sector IT services. This type of legal regime is a must in modern democracies and UK FoI is well crafted, well implemented and is here to stay.

Colin Tyc

The biggest privacy problem I have with ID cards – and I have seen precious little debate on this detail – is who has access to the audit trail and under what circumstances? (Roll up, roll up, get your voluntary ID cards here, editor.computing.co.uk).

There is massive scope for the ID card to turn into a people-tracker device by the government increasingly mandating circumstances for which ID card use is mandatory.

Perhaps in the future people will be forced to use their cards when spending more than £50, or buying petrol or visiting their local gym, to the point where it is impossible to live day-by-day without leaving a trail.

What is needed is a serious debate on who will have  access to the audit trail and under what circumstances, and whether or not the government will ever mandate the use of a person’s ID card.

Mike Byrne

As an IT manager working in the education sector, I disagree with the comment that "Building Schools for the Future (BSF) is providing many opportunities for innovation in the education sector" (The lure of the public sector).

Unfortunately, this is simply not true - IT BSF is about putting a one-size-fits-all approach into schools,
installing a managed service, run by companies that are more interested in profit than in the education of future generations.

Innovation in IT will be taken away from IT professionals and teachers in schools and placed in the hands of private sector companies, away from those who care, and given to those who want their Christmas bonus.

The article states that "IT managers and directors are often ahead of their private sector colleagues", and this is true, however, under BSF, those IT managers and  directors will either be  transferred to the private sector company or made  redundant. Under BSF, there will not be any IT professionals in education - it will all be outsourced.

The "dynamism, innovation and pace" of IT in education will die with BSF, as schools are forced to adopt a system over which they have no control, and no ability to tailor the IT facilities to enhance the teaching and learning of those whose education is in our hands.

IT managers sometimes get a bad reputation from teachers in schools for not seeming to be flexible enough - due to the need to balance the needs of teaching with providing a stable and functional IT system.

They are in for a shock  under BSF when they find the school has no real control over the flexibility and resources of their IT provision.The NHS project has taught this government nothing because it continues to try to shoehorn everything into the middle ground.

Marc Blake

Giving PCs to low-income families is another bonkers initiative (Government aims to bridge digital divide).

These people cannot afford a PC, but can afford the latest trainers, 20 cigarettes per day, £20 per week on pay-as-you-go mobile and an Xbox.If the area is that deprived, how long will it be before the thing is stolen, smashed, lost or damaged? It is not the cost of the computer - laptops are about £200 and
going down in price all the time - it is the huge phone bill they will run up if they get a phone line. That is what community centres and libraries are for.

What money-wasting morons governments are. Still, there is plenty more money where that came from. Tax the workers and let the indigent play on their free PC.

B Green

The concept of information-sharing platforms that allow vast quantities of sensitive and personal data to be shared across state departments and between caring professions appears to strike an obvious appeal for the government (Calls to scrap youth database).

But it is evidently not possible to secure networked information. In the past, we have relied on sensitive data being protected by keeping it in silos in GP surgeries, and shared by professionals on a need-to-know basis.

The idea of medical data being shared unnecessarily with social workers is disturbing and endangers patient/doctor confidentiality.

The potential value of the information to the shadow economy of such an integrated database should it be hacked, stolen or lost in the post might stimulate interest in attacking the system, and such a breach would compromise citizens' rights more than every other scandal that has broken to date.

Large, networked databases comprising huge quantities of diverse confidential data are therefore unethical, unsafe and must be abandoned for all citizens, not just children.

David E Bennett

It is very sad that the whole story about access and data sharing was missing from this article (NHS database must go ahead, say MPs).

It failed to mention the secondary uses service (SUS), which has staff with access to identifiable data, and it left out others, such as NHS staff at primary care trusts having access to identifiable data held by SUS and researchers.

My medical records are not held on computer because it is the only way my GP can stop others reading them. Patients can already access their full records, they do not need to be stored on a PC to be accessible.

Dave, submitted on the web

The £1bn lost by fraud and error through HMRC systems indicates a series of issues (HMRC should threaten EDS with court). It is remarkable that we continue to see such high figures, but there might be light at the end of the tunnel.

For years, private companies have used technology such as voice analysis to minimise the threat of fraud. Some firms are already moving to more effective techniques, such as predictive analytics.

The insurance sector in particular has been innovative in its anti-fraud crusade. By analysing customer behaviour, insurance companies have been able to reduce fraud dramatically, speeding up legitimate claims and improving customer service in the process.

Data breaches and fraud cases continue to hit the headlines, and it is clear that the government faces an uphill struggle.

But by taking a more innovative approach, government departments can improve transparency and efficiency.

Rachel Clinton, SPSS UK

There are far more important things surrounding the misuse of the internet that the government should be dealing with before it even thinks about media piracy (Government to attack download pirates).

The government does not seem to care as much when the little people are wronged, but any injustice to industry makes it pulls its finger out.

I doubt the entertainment industry is going to have a lean Christmas because of media piracy.

Dylan, submitted on the web

This is a joke, right? (Law change will raise costs for local council IT). Why does Socitm think that the private sector should not absorb these costs – it should.

This is about disclosing the tax burden to the taxpayer. If suppliers want local government business, they should bear these costs. This is akin to firms telling the customer, who is ultimately the taxpayer, that they will do the work but not disclose how much it will cost.

These suppliers and overpaid IT consultants will increase their costs and tie all this legislation up in as much red tape as they can to make it expensive and unfeasible to do.

Ben Rattigan

“IT is totally dry and boring” said your correspondent (Release me, Letters blog). He has obviously lost enthusiasm for computing. Imagine if those working on our big government projects were infected by similar individuals. Maybe we would all benefit if they left to take up a more suited profession  “mopping floors and cleaning up kitchens”. Do us all a favour: work in IT only if you enjoy it.

Dave Walker

If new laws target downloaders, I think a lot of internet companies will lose a lot of custom (Government to attack download pirates). Most people have the internet so they can download whatever interests them. I know for a fact that I will cancel my broadband subscription if this is made law.

Perhaps if cinema tickets and DVD hire were cheaper, people would not download as much. Most of the films being made these days are such rubbish that I cannot see why anyone would want to pay to watch them anyway.

Tony, submitted on the web

There are far more important things surrounding the misuse of the internet that the government should be dealing with before it even thinks about media piracy (Government to attack download pirates).

The government does not seem to care as much when the little people are wronged, but any injustice to industry makes it pulls its finger out. I doubt the entertainment industry is going to have a lean Christmas because of media piracy.

Dylan, submitted on the web