IT WEEK • 14 JUNE 2004
40 ANALYSIS Does the new e-government chief have what
it takes to make the dream of joined-up services a reality?
MANAGEMENTWEEK
WHERE TECHNOLOGY BECOMES BUSINESS REALITY
Editor: Madeline Bennett
BI boosts financial insight
Madeline Bennett
BETTER BUSINESS ANALYSIS
•
Business intelligence vendor Cogusiness intelligence (BI) vendors
nos has updated its PowerPlay
Cognos and Business Objects have
Olap server to allow more flexible
added new tools to their product
and detailed data analysis.
lines to give better insight into organisaIt enables business users to analyse
tions’ financial activities.
subsets of categories without help
from IT staff, Cognos said.
Cognos last week updated its PowerBusiness Objects has added a new
Play Olap server to deliver more detailed
financial analysis tool to its BI line.
and easier-to-manage analysis. PowerPlay
7.3 lets users create subsets of categories
by rule and by pick list, and lets them focus
– with a high-performance data cache to
their analysis in these specific areas.
enable faster analysis.
The latest version enables the creation
Karen Williams, vice-president of proof dimensional models combining data
duct marketing at Cognos, said the update
from multiple sources. Users can then govwill allow business people to carry out
ern drill-through targets by dimension
more flexible and detailed data analysis,
level, so that drill-through is limited to
without the need for assistance from IT
lower levels of the cube. In this way, analystaff. This will help firms respond more
sis becomes more targeted,
quickly to rapidly changing
the volume of information
business demands, she said.
sent is reduced, and network
“In addition, IT organiperformance is optimised,
sations will be more able to
said the company.
deal with strategic initiatives
Cognos has also impsince the user community is
roved the performance of
enabled to respond to many
PowerPlay – an underlying
of their own information
technology for Cognos fin- PowerPlay 7.3 gives more demands,” she added.
ancial planning applications options for targeted analysis
Cognos also announced
B
•
•
Firms ignore new threats
up or preventative action, even though
they suffered an average of 11 hours downK firms are not doing enough to
time. One in 14 said they had lost up to
monitor and protect their networks
£10,000 due to an attack.
against digital attacks, even though many
Caroline Miller, ServGate’s European
admit that they have suffered significant
marketing manager, said she was surprised
financial damage or lost clients as a result
by the lack of awareness demonstrated in
of breaches, according to a recent survey by
the survey.“We didn’t realise there’s such a
security vendor ServGate Technologies.
high level of ignorance regarding blended
Half the firms surveyed said they had
threats,” she commented.
been hit by “blended attacks” that use more
To improve defences, Miller advised
than one technique – for
firms to implement inteexample, combining virgrated security systems,
COMBINED ATTACKS
uses and spam. Almost a
combining antivirus, antiHas your organisation suffered
quarter of organisations a blended attack?
spam and worm-prevensaid they were unaware of
tion techniques.
whether they have been hit
The legal profession
Yes 49%
Don’t know
24%
by such attacks.
has recently been highNo 27%
Of the firms that had
lighted as a sector with
been attacked, over a third
poor safeguards. Research
took no subsequent clean- Source: ServGate
by security specialist Evo-
Madeline Bennett and Iain Thomson
U
itweek.co.uk
last week that it had joined the Business Performance Management (BPM) Standards
Group, established to help firms implement
BPM systems. Williams said BI systems
would be increasingly used for BPM.
Last week BI vendor Business Objects
also extended its product line, by releasing
a financial analysis tool to give companies
better insight into their financial operations. The Finance Intelligence tool contains six modules to help business managers analyse activities such as cashflow
and financial statement metrics.
Commenting on the new release, John
Van Decker of analyst firm Meta Group
said,“Products that provide financial intelligence enable organisations to improve
the management of their corporate compliance initiatives, while providing timely
analysis of key financial metrics throughout their organisation.”
Chris Caren, Business Objects’ vicepresident of corporate marketing, said
firms are aware of the benefits of automating financial information, and the new tool
will help them to identify financial trends
and the reasons behind business results.
tinyurl.com/2m4rk
www.businessobjects.com
lution Systems found that one in 10 UK
legal firms suffered an IT security failure
over the past year. Furthermore, one in 20
said it had lost clients or seen relationships
damaged as a result of a security breach.
Of the 100 legal practitioners surveyed,
almost a third did not have a comprehensive digital security policy, and two-thirds
allowed colleagues to open and check their
email accounts for them – even though 65
percent of respondents said risks to digital
security were growing.
“Clients are the lifeblood of any professional services company and mitigating the
risk of damage to company reputation
should be the top priority of managing partners,” said Ritchie Jeune, group chief executive of Evolution Systems.
Jeune said a significant proportion of
the UK’s 14,000 law firms are losing clients
because of security breaches. He added
that this news shows why firms in general
need to improve their IT security policies
and follow good practices.
CONTENTS
40 COMMENT How should firms deal
with government-backed initiatives
designed to boost IT education
and counter looming skills shortages, asks Madeline Bennett
37 ANALYSIS The newly appointed
head of e-government will need to
draw on his extensive industry
experience if joined-up services
are to become a reality
Suite helps
IT to align
with goals
John McCright
Peregrine Systems has enhanced its
service desk automation and enterprise IT asset management software
to help organisations realign their use
of IT to better serve business goals.
Peregrine has released its Evolve
Wisely model, which describes how
Peregrine products fit into a five-stage
roadmap that firms can follow to make
better use of IT assets. It has also
upgraded two key products: Service
Center 6 and Expense Control.
“We help companies manage critical relationships between users, IT
outsourcers and clients,” said the
firm’s president and chief executive,
John Mutch.“We think this stuff is
very concrete and pragmatic.”
Key enhancements in Service
Center 6 include a new Windows
client and a new web client, which
will reduce administration costs,
according to the firm. In addition, the
product’s user interface has been
enhanced with drag-and-drop capabilities and a navigation tree for an
enterprise’s entire IT system.
The suite’s Change and Request
Management components have a new
visual workflow capability to help IT
organisations better manage planned
and unplanned changes to their infrastructures. Service Center 6 also has
a new trend analysis feature that provides charts so managers can see the
status of issues in real time.
Expense Management, the first of
seven asset management apps to be
released, captures financial data associated with IT assets, helping users to
track and control expenses.
The firm has also made its software more useful for service-oriented architecture – including support
for JavaScript and Simple Object
Access Protocol (Soap) APIs.
www.peregrine.com www.eweek.com
39
© eWeek USA 2004
40 COMMENT How to
avoid skills shortages
MANAGEMENTWEEK
IT WEEK • 14 JUNE 2004
Help educate tomorrow’s experts
To counter the looming IT skills shortages, companies would be wise to take responsibility
and back government initiatives designed to boost IT education, says Madeline Bennett
he IT sector will suffer skills
shortages in the near future, if
industry predictions are correct.
The government-backed body Eskills UK recently forecast that specific types of expertise, especially
IT workers with good “soft” or
interpersonal skills, would soon
be in more demand.
Recent data from research specialist Foote Partners shows European and US organisations are
already paying more for certain
groups of IT professionals. This is
a good indicator of IT skills that
are becoming scarce, as firms tend
to offer greater rewards for staff
who would be hard to replace.
IT staff certified in security,
Linux or systems administration
are all in high demand at present,
according to Foote Partners – so
firms should make efforts to hang
on to them. The company also predicts there will be strong demand
for skilled professionals in wireless,
project management, web services
T
and storage over the next year.
So how best to meet the predicted skills shortages? One solution is
to turn to a third party – perhaps
outsourcing the development of
particular technology projects to
specialist systems integrators or
using the services of a consultancy.
Or firms could partner with an offshore services provider.
For those companies wanting to
keep IT development in-house,
training up existing IT workers with
new skills could prove a good option – especially with the availability
of e-learning modules that reduce
the need for expensive, lengthy
periods away from the office.
But these are both short-term
options that rely on the current
bank of IT workers. In the long term
the UK must develop the next generation of skilled IT professionals –
and this requires an earlier stage of
education, back in the classroom.
Giving school children access to
state-of-the-art technology equip-
ment and top-notch teaching to use
it is a sensible way of equipping the
UK with a future workforce fully
proficient in IT. But this will require
teachers who are fully versed in
using the technology.
It could prove a daunting task
for some teachers to gain the necessary expertise. Unlike many of their
pupils, most teachers did not grow
up with ready access to a computer
in their bedroom or at school. According to a survey of newly qualified
teachers carried out by the Teacher
Training Agency, only 55 percent
rated their ability to use IT in their
teaching as good or very good.
To address this problem, the
government launched a £5m
scheme last year to provide teacher
training institutions with the latest
IT equipment. Trainee teachers are
also now required to pass a skills
test in IT, to demonstrate a certain
level of technology proficiency.
The government has identified
IT as a “shortage subject area”,
E-chief must join up services
Public-sector IT projects have a mixed record, but the choice
of Ian Watmore as e-government head has been welcomed
E-GOVERNMENT ANALYSIS BY MARTIN VEITCH
he conventional wisdom may be that
and New Zealand. He has participated in
e-government has failed in its mission
public, private and hybrid projects valued
to offer “joined-up” government, and has
at billions of pounds, including deals with
provided a disparate set of web sites and
the NHS and Sainsbury’s. Watmore’s sucservices. However, there has been a more
cess culminated when he was made UK
positive reaction to Ian Watmore’s appointmanaging director of Accenture in 2000,
ment as head of e-government.
with responsibility for 7,000 staff.
The role is arguably the most imporHe has chaired the E-skills UK IT
tant job in UK IT today and has sent puntraining agenda and served as president of
dits scampering to read the runes of his
the Management Consultants Association,
CV. That résumé is short in employers, but
and he has worked with other bodies, such
impressive. Since leaving univeras the Council for Industry and
sity in 1980 he has worked for one
Higher Education, and Business
company, Accenture – or two, if
in the Community.
its former identity Andersen ConThe head of e-government role
sulting is included.
supersedes the role of e-envoy, but
The IT industry welcomes the
the contrast of Watmore’s pedigree
appointment because Watmore
background and that of outgoing
has a stack of hard-won big-proje-envoy Andrew Pinder is striking.
ect knowledge. His time at the
Pinder’s background was as a civil
consulting giant has taken him
service careerist, chosen, presumthrough the UK, Ireland, main- Watmore has
ably, because of his knowledge of
land Europe, the US, South Africa run big projects
Whitehall. Watmore, by contrast,
T
40
offers what Douglas Hayward of Ovum
Holway in a research note called “another
sign of the close links here [in the UK]
between private companies and the state’s
IT infrastructure”.
Watmore also brings a knowledge of
public/private partnerships and managing
outsourced relationships. As Hayward
noted, this should be a boon given the UK’s
experience of large projects. “We’ve put
great emphasis on improving the planning
of projects, the procurement and management of suppliers, the implementation of
projects, and the running and enhancement of the completed systems,” he said.
“We’ve pioneered the ‘intelligent client’
approach to service buying, and many public authorities have become relatively sophisticated judges and buyers of IT services.”
However, Watmore faces some extremely tough tasks, notably the introduction of
the national identity card scheme, the fulfilment of massive NHS and passport projects, and broader issues such as information
sharing across departments.
Well before he begins the job in September, the public sector IT management
group Socitm is already seeking Watmore’s
reassurance that local government issues
meaning that trainees could qualify for hardship funding of up to
£7,500. And, once the course has
been completed, new IT teachers
could be eligible for a Golden
Hello sign-on bonus of £4,000.
These initiatives could definitely
benefit if industry provided access
to additional expertise and equipment. So the next time your firm
receives an email about recycling old
IT equipment for local schools, or
an opportunity comes up for your
staff to help with local IT education,
it might be a good idea to say yes.
If it means your firm will eventually have a bigger pool of talent
from which to recruit, it could be
worth the investment. ITW
[email protected]
SUMMARY
Watmore will take up the role
• Ian
of head of e-government from
September this year.
is a 24-year veteran of
• Watmore
Accenture and its former incarnation, Andersen Consulting.
tasks as head of e-government
• His
will include major government IT
projects and reconciling conflicting
deadlines and integration issues.
be accorded their full measure of attention.
In an open letter, Socitm president
Chris Guest asked that “local government,
that vital part of government that actually
delivers 80 percent of public services to the
citizen, will no longer be overlooked in
central government policy-making on egovernment”. Socitm said that high-profile projects such as the government
gateway, UK Online, had not taken into
account the needs or budgets of local
authorities “thus compromising e-service
delivery to a huge section of the public”.
Guest notes that deadlines for various
projects are adding to e-government project problems. One of the most closelywatched elements of Watmore’s reign will
be to establish whether the albatross of
having all local government services online
by the end of 2005 will be killed. ITW
itweek.co.uk