Our Public Sector Director Afshin Attari recently sat down with Innopsis's Lynne Magennis and Michael Bowyer for a roundtable discussion on frameworks in the Public Sector.

The digitisation of the NHS (one of the biggest employers in the world) is a huge task, and it begins with the opening up of the organisation's underlying data network. Over the past year, the NHS's N3 network has been being migrated to a new network: Health and Social Care Network (HSCN). HSCN has been built by a number of co-operating suppliers, including Exponential-e.

As highlighted by a Retail CIO roundtable discussion held by Exponential-e, in order to compete with e-commerce "bricks-and-mortar" retailers will have to personalise their in-store experiences - and they'll need to do so with the aid of Digital Transformation.

In part one of this two part blog series, we look at why the high street needs Digital Transformation to survive and prosper.

The GDPR deadline day of 25th May has been and gone, but sticking to the legislation remains as important as ever. This is because GDPR is, in fact, not something that can just be 'done'; instead, it is ongoing and needs to be constantly changed and updated. The onus is on housing associations to comply with GDPR not just today, but in six months, a year, two years, and beyond. 

Cyber security is more complex now than ever before, and the implications of a cyber-attack can be much more disastrous. Organisations must consider not only the financial implications but the reputational damage that can arise following an attack. The proliferation of social platforms and the increasing needs of regulation, mean that security breaches can be publicised across the globe within minutes. Whilst the cost of launching a cyber-attack has reduced over the last few years, the cost of defence has risen. This is because there's a greater variety of attack vectors – means by which an attacker can gain access to your network. The methods deployed are so vast, compared to previously, that it makes it increasingly difficult to build an effective defence against. Highly sophisticated cyber-attacks are also using automation techniques to maximise their damage, to the extent where one piece of code can be used many thousands of times. 

When N3 contracts expired in March 2017, NHS Digital was faced with the challenge of replacing it. The idea was to replace a long-term single supplier contract with a marketplace of network options. 

In many ways, thanks to technology, it has never been easier to connect people. For the recruitment industry, this is particularly pertinent, as meaningful connections are precisely the foundations on which the industry is built. After all, people don’t trust companies - they trust other people. In our digital age, however, the industry faces a host of technology-based challenges.

By nature, recruiters always strive for effective communication; in a world where it’s so easy to hide behind a screen, they understand the need for a personal touch and taking the time to meet face-to-face. However, the very technology that now connects us is also in some ways to blame for our workforce seeming more disparate than ever.

For example, candidates often might not work near a recruiter’s office - indeed, they might be an ocean away - so video interviews have become increasingly popular over coffee-conversations.

Unfortunately, these are easily scuppered by poor connectivity, as offices within the sector tend not to have particularly complex IT environments. This means that recruiters find themselves stuck with legacy landline phones, turning instead to FaceTime on their iPhones to conduct interviews.

Problems also arise when it comes to communicating with clients. Customer service is key, but it can be difficult to deliver when the internet speed is too poor to handle Google Hangouts. For an industry that trades on professionalism, a crackling line can cause untold embarrassment. What’s more, the common practice of sharing files insecurely through shadow IT can cause all sorts of compliance issues. To recap, shadow IT describes IT solutions used within an organisation without the approval, or even the knowledge, of IT decision-makers; in our post-GDPR world, it’s easy to imagine the ramifications of its use if left unchecked.

With the UK recruitment industry growing rapidly yet recruiters simultaneously struggling with the quality of hire and talent scarcities, it’s clear that recruitment firms must maximise productivity and efficiency of its people and operations in order to remain competitive. This is where the value of Unified Communications and telephony service, underpinned by a robust and reliable network, becomes most apparent. Equipped with these tools, recruiters can carve out new ways to communicate with candidates and clients alike, future-proofing their business in the process.

This is especially important when considering how the recruitment industry is a barometer for the global economy; when there’s a slowdown in recruitment, there’s a slowdown coming in the relevant sector. As such, a people-first approach with technology at its core – one that promotes the importance of effective human interactions while harnessing the power of technology – is vital not only for the recruitment industry but also companies across all sectors throughout the world. With the right IT support network in place to facilitate this, siloed technologies no longer need to get in the way and prevent recruiters from doing the job they do best: bringing people together through unparalleled professionalism.

These state-of-the-art technologies are being used by architects to effortlessly showcase realistic project images to potential clients and stakeholders, enabling the latter to make any changes they want and give feedback on designs (or approval) in no time. 

But VR / AR / MR is just the latest flowering of Digital Transformation (DX) to be adopted by the industry - and depends upon the same underlying technology.

Digital transformation: opportunities and challenges

By nature, architecture is an industry defined by evolution, so its early adoption of DX should come as no surprise. In firms across the world, the design process has moved away from drawing boards and tracing paper towards computers. In turn, clients have become more demanding, making collaborative simulation and visualisation a key - almost compulsory - part of the design process.
Consequently, computers have had to become more powerful and graphics greatly improved to keep up with the rendering requirements; architects also require access to a centralised graphic store, and this access similarly requires a lot computational and networking power.

The Fourth Transformation: opportunities and challenges

As the Fourth Transformation takes hold - bringing forth advances in VR / AR / MR - technology is becoming increasingly immersive and collaborative. For the architecture industry, this means that seamless cloud-based collaboration between contractors, engineers and architects is both possible and highly desirable.

Such collaboration entails not only simple file transfers and data conversion but also, increasingly, the embedding of VR / AR / MR into business operations. The popularity of such technology has risen in the sector, thanks to its emerging value as an educational tool.

However, this brave new world of unified communications and virtual desktop infrastructure is powerless without the right network. Across the industry, gigabit requirements are becoming the norm; by contrast, only three years ago, 100mb would often suffice. In a bandwidth-hungry digital landscape, the network is the cloud - so it's easy to see why a cloud can only be as good as the network it traverses.

Conclusion

By harnessing the power of cloud computing and a robust, reliable network in tandem, architecture firms can set themselves apart from their competitors and respond super-fast to those last-minute emergency requests that can suddenly arise from contractors all over the world. By partnering with the right supplier as well, firms can stop worrying about business continuity, getting back up and running if their systems fail.