It’s regrettable, isn’t it? The second junior doctors strike today. Yet, it is a manifestation of balancing increased demand against an NHS that faces a £22bn savings in efficiency by 2020. Successive governments have made pledges within their manifestos to protect the NHS. They have even assured increasing funding, at a time when other government departments have experienced significant cuts. It is in the interest of both sides to reach a compromise -- for government, doing so will reassure citizens that ‘the NHS is safe in my hands,’ and for doctors, it will ensure they can continue providing safe and sustainable care at weekends.

We are on the G-Cloud 7 framework. So, what’s the big deal? A lot, considering that Mastek’s Government Solutions are delivering on the Public Sector vision of positioning the UK at the forefront of data analytics globally.

The Retail Sector is leading the way in educating and creating user expectations in digital; however the Government must keep up.

Last Tuesday, we were fortunate enough to be joined by guest speaker Phil Pavitt, former HMRC CIO and now Global CIO at Specsavers, who discussed the lessons the Public Sector can learn from retailers in embracing Digital.

Here we discover 8 pieces of advice that can be incorporated to the Public Sector:

The iCMG (Internet Component Management Group) awarded HSCIC (Health and Social Care Information Centre) the Enterprise & IT Architecture Excellence Award 2015 in the Healthcare category. The award was bestowed for the architecture, design and development of the Identity and Access Management (IAM) system.

The numerous security breaches involving personal data have only served to raise the level of distrust that citizens harbour towards businesses and the public sector at large. It is therefore essential for government organisations to avoid security lapses and mitigate these risks by putting in place checkpoints such as Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions. IAM solutions are pivotal in addressing security concerns, ensuring that citizen data is secure and used solely for legitimate purposes by authorised individuals.

The UK government’s ‘digital by default’ agenda is here to stay. It is a long-term proposition aimed at providing easy to use, accessible public services. As the dependencies on ICT continue to increase, government departments have major IT changes planned.

Paper pushing at Whitehall has, interestingly, taken a turn for the better. Spurred on by the UK government’s deficit-reduction programme, it has moved to the digital world, as civil servants increasingly collaborate, record and report online.