Just to announce that we will be posting some recommendations regarding the evolution and strategic management of the UK G2G systems documented on this site over that last week or so. When I say we – well read on’t…
The extremely nice people over at Public Sector Forums (Hi Ian D. !) have been very kind about the overview of UK Government G2G Messaging Sub-Systems that I posted recently.
Public Sector Forums (PSF) is the leading online information service of it’s type focusing on all things ‘e-Gov’ and ‘e-Gov’ related in the UK – and I’ve been a fan for a number of years – ever since a friend of mine had an article posted with them (Alan Mather’s article ‘Ten Years of ‘e-Gov”).
Robin Wilton – one of Sun’s global Corporate Architect’s (with a particular focus on ‘Federated Identity’) and a co-chair of the Liberty Alliance’s Public Policy Expert Group (as well as being a participant in the Special Interest Group (SIG) on Identity Theft) said this about the PSF recently:
“Any readers who work in the UK Public Sector may already be aware of Ian Dunmore’s Public Sector Forums website (if not, check it out; it’s a look at UK public sector reality which is… frank and unvarnished, shall we say). To my frustration, I can’t get to the documents themselves, because (perhaps wisely) they don’t let tech vendors like me anywhere near the actual content, but even Ian’s regular newsletters are a welcome arrival in the inbox. He has a refreshing perspective and a great way with words. To the point: the most recent PSF newsletter included a link to the table of ID Fraud figures, so I headed over to take a look.
In a post about Sun Live ’07 earlier this year (which was excellent, by the way, and thanks to all of you who attended), Robin also had this to say about PSF: “These folks seem to know more about what’s going on in UK public sector organisations than the civil servants do themselves…” – so praise indeed.
So like Robin (above) and I, unless you work for a Public Sector organisation, you may find that you won’t be able to access the interesting content hosted by PSF, although the newsletter is still very much worth a read – and I would recommend subscribing if any aspect of your role touches into ‘UK Government IT’.
PSF has a really vibrant forum community, from across the whole of Government, and as such they have run an article on the work I’ve done looking at UK G2G messaging systems, with a goal of acting as a catalyst for discussion of the topic, and here’s the quote from PSF:
TECHTALK: G2G MESSAGING – A GURU SPEAKS
For the techies among you, especially anyone involved either with GC or working in central government. Wayne Horkan is Chief Technologist for Sun Microsystems for the UK and Ireland and – as a friend of ours puts it – ‘a ‘deeply passionate, technical guru who can conjure up a vision from a few words that few are sufficiently bright to grasp then articulate it in a detail that again only the brightest can grasp’. Wayne has worked on or reviewed just about every major IT project in government over the last few years and his is a voice to be reckoned with. Here we’re very pleased to bring you – lifted from his blog with permission – his fascinating look at G2G messaging systems currently running. This is important thinking and to be missed at the government’s peril since so far as he (or we) can tell it’s the only overview on the topic in existence and has therefore got to be a starting point for a sane look at enterprise architecture and shared services.
Pick it up at the following link: http://www.publicsectorforums.co.uk/page.cfm?pageID=3846
If you do work in the Public Sector, or Government, Education and Health (GEH) as it’s fashionably known, and you’d like to comment, just to let you know all the PSF forum comments will be ‘boiled down’ by the PSF team, and will go toward a set of recommendations we hope to jointly author regarding the evolution of the G2G systems in the UK. Obviously I’ll do the same with comments I receive here, and any I receive directly.
You can expect follow up postings on the subject that will give an update of where we are with the recommendations, and the recommendations themselves over the next couple of months.