Communications Electronic Security Group - All VoIP News

Microsoft's national innovation officer says government needs to give serious thought to smartphones, how to use the cloud, and move on from the debate about open source

The last group

Mark Ferrar falls into the last group. The national research officer at Microsoft UK describes his role as a strategic trusted adviser in the company's relationships with public sector elites, sharing perspectives on policy and research for the straightway five years.

A big part of that involves identifying the technologies that will become important to the public sector, and it is no big surprise to learn that Ferrar sees smartphones becoming increasingly important.

He says the recent guidance from the Communications Electronic Security Group on the use of the devices by the public sector has provided a boost, though much of the momentum is likely to come from people outside government. This will overcome one dilemma facing any internal developers: should they develop an app purely for their department or for wider use?

"The main thing around the government's approach is that smartphones are a consumer market product, so we don't focus on locked-in government services," he says. "The dialogue is about how to enable government data to be exploited by people outside."

This aligns with the trend towards making government data open for developers to use in new applications, furthermore supported by the renewed insistence on open standards. Ferrar says this will encourage the development of apps for operating systems just as Windows Phone 7, following the trend set by people working with the iPhone.

The techie realm - cloud computing

There is another big generic development that has as well attracted plenty of attention beyond the techie realm - cloud computing.

"Looking five years forward, one of the things beginning to gain traction is the approach to cloud across the piece," Ferrar says. "We've been investing heavily in cloud services, and get a 'wow factor' when talking to people who are worried about what the service providers or IT guys in their department are talking about. We show them administration tools and they can see they are specifically what they are using already nevertheless with an extra line that says 'cloud services'.

"It's a secure innovation on the internet that a patient can sign in to and have a richer engagement with a hospital," he says. "There's more complexity in the information on HealthVault than on the CRS.

This article is published by Guardian Professional. For updates on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.

Source: http://www.allvoipnews.com/communications-electronic-security-group.html

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