Water Supply; Sewerage, Waste Management and Remediation Activities

Micro business (up to 9 staff)

I am most closely involved with smart cities, and particularly the water management dimension. It is the most important opportunity for growth for me.

Pervasive technology platforms providing access to data and information.

I like the Catapault schemes, these seem to have the right objectives to build bridges.

I am a start-up and finding it very difficult to fund the valley of death. I could have gone to a bank a few years ago, now I have to find an angel investor. It would save me so much time and waster effort if either the govt works with selected banks to free up investment liquidity,or else govt sets up a bank facility to invest in startups with strong business case.

Joint collaboration projects and technology transfer. More near market projects with development support/Investment.

Stronger information/data scientists. People who can translate between the application and the theory. Bring back industrial apprenticeships.

I am creating a semantic ontology for global water sector. This will enable open interoperability between sensors, IoT and decision-support models.

I will need to be very careful in my recruitment.

I provide a cloud service. Security and high-speed internet are the biggest issue as at the moment

Perception of my customers about security of thier data in the cloud.

Develop/faciltate exchange awareness of security techniques, threats and how to manage them.

Evolve new IT architectures, SOA and ESB solutions. Focus more on data integration and standards, See more examples of application of semantics in business context

The example given is the best I can think of right now

by working with companies like mine to bring practical examples of semantics, MDM and ontological modelling to business applications.

Establish strong reference case studies and promote the benefits heavily.

There is a wealth of advice out there. Users just need the confidence and understanding how to use search tools

I am building a new business model around M2M, it is going to deliver lower cost, higher connectedness in smart water systems.

Interoperable data standards

I am not aware of anyone having fully developed applications yet, but we are working on it. Probably the leading area is smart grid, but I intend smart water to be in vanguard. I believe ALIP is also a key transformation area.

Public and utility procurement function is risk avers and have strong procedures. It doesn't enable small companies with innovation to win public sector contracts.

The UK is amongst the leaders in IoT space. israel has some interesting technologes. i know very little about Asian market.

Financial and Insurance Activities

On behalf of an organisation

Large business (over 250 staff)

Yes. In addition, smart ports and mobile commerce are also important.

Key drivers for change are: 1. Businesses focussing on innovation to improve efficiency 2. Deliver solutions to comply with risk management & regulatory changes - Dodd frank, Basel 3 etc 3. Clean reference data and a desire to have real time transaction data

1. Focus on design and innovation working groups across all 5 areas. 2. Enable corporate venturing in start-ups, so that new technologies can be built outside the company and then cross fertilised with mainstream projects. 3. Launch an apprenticeship scheme to encourage young people to become developers and architects. 4. Create special training program's for certifying enterprise/product architects and ensure that at least 100 people get certified per month to accelerate innovation.

Barriers: 1. Lack of talent 2. Accounting principles that don't value Intellectual Property development as an asset 3. Higher tax regime in UK Benefits: 1. Funding Grants for training and technology advancement readily accessible for the right projects, including new patent box reimbursements 2.

Development of new accounting principles that are geared to monetising R&D/innovation, by ensuring that it directly improves the Market cap of companies investing in R&D in IT, rather than treating it as a depreciation write off.

Skills needed: Product and Enterprise architects Deficit addressed by: Identification of core architects and then train the trainer program for 100/month output

We use a design lab where our customers and staff co-create IT solutions using the latest technologies, in a simulated environment. We then use a larger team to commercialise the prototype built during design, paying careful attention to the original design principles. This innovation lab has helped create very usable mobile apps, data hubs and saas models.

We rely on training, both classroom and on the job, regular certification of skills and the insistence that technical staff publish white papers and write in select journals.

Benefits * lowers cost/transaction and capital expenditure * much quicker time to market Difficulties: * data security concerns by key clients which makes adoption harder

The biggest hurdles is performance of the application in a cloud vs. native environment. Secondly, the lack of data protection also hurts adoption.

Ensure data protection standards that can be easily followed.

They need to define their portfolio of data and the gaps, before they can exploit the use of big data.

Yes, open data will be a key area for government intervention. Also, government should be sensitive to 'location' and 'push notification' data standards.

Analytics skills will be critical and this can be enhanced by teaching managing by measuring, graphical, info graphical and pattern recognition skills.

Improved access to 4G and fibre optic broadband and wireless hot spots will enable greater use of buying & selling online.

Lack of established open source marketplaces for trading, especially those which are integrated to Host ERP systems.

Mostly through Gartner reports and Amazon.co.uk.

M2M enables efficiency with efficacy (read accuracy). Additionally, proprietary algorithms enable competitive advantage.

The creation of data "hubs and spokes" will mitigate this risk.

Multiple agencies and councils holding their data in different technologies and on differing non standard formats, will be a huge barrier. The effort to cleanse and make it ready will be an obstacle.

Edinburgh and Southampton.

The biggest barrier is the lack of clustering of world class technology, finance, legal and accounting firms, in close proximity to one another to build a smart city.

Dubai can be a good example, where clustering of similar companies has created an ecosystem effect that's enabled the smart city to grow.

Information and Communication

Large business (over 250 staff)

The one to add somewhere is robotics and/or automation. For example, cloud is, amongst other things, there to help people process information more effectively in their jobs whether it be big databases, CRM systems, Office Productivity, Back Office etc. Ultimately we ought not to need as many people doing what are often mundane processes - rather the process should be largely automated. The nation that gets this right will increase growth as the people will be freed to do higher level activities.

The increase in mobile data bandwidth will change the way people work and where they do it and also how and where they spend their leisure time

Education and Research have to be key drivers - UK has to be seen as the place for global businesses to invest but from a competence of the populace viewpoint and also from Government incentive viewpoint. If those two factors were positive, global businesses would invest and allow the local smaller supporting businesses to thrive and grow.

Benefits: UK Citizens keen to adopt technology, good mix of global technology companies here, good higher education sector, awareness of Cyber Barriers: Relatively behind on national technology infrastructure, Cyber threat sometimes seen as someone else's problem, UK economy fragile and not clear what our forte is so global players may de-emphasise UK. Other nations are overtaking UK in Higher Education.

Getting the points made in 4 above would help - its obviously difficult for a nation suffering necessary but severe austerity to do this but all the more reason to attract the larger players to invest in the UK as opposed to another nation. Developing and publicising the current R&D Tax Relief scheme would help and possibly expanding it to not just cover the initial R&D expenditure but also a level of the revenues that flow from what that R&D creates in the UK would help in many regards ie it would help keep the IP that flows from that UK-based R&D in the UK.

Innovative thinking, engineering, information technology, analysis. There has been a decline in the entry level job prospects for UK students esp with an IT background over the last decade and whilst there have been recent signs of improvement, there is an experience deficit that will inevitably play out over the next decade. Two things that can be done: firstly align policy so that it doesn't happen again and secondly, focus on fast streaming people to fill the gap.

We proivde systems to our customers to sell more effectively eg using our applied customer insight techniques. We also provide automated and self service processes for a range of activities such as payroll, HR, IT support.

Strog recruitment processes, working with graduate students on industrial placement whilst at university. We also do sponsored degrees and an advanced apprenticeship programme.

The key uses so far are for portals and websites and also for IT support tools (fault management etc) but there are few areas were cloud has not been applied or could not be applied.

See points raised in first section.

Businesses need to satisfy their customers and shareholders and employees. Where Big Data has a role they should expand its use eg very large unstructured data sets of information could be used to better analyse customer buying behaviours

Using more analytics on its own data and publishing the analytics as well as the raw open data would be one area - that would show government is committed and using the analysis to develop policy. Eg using crime data to expicitly inform policing policy and wider health datasets to inform on drug effectiveness

One area would be research into effective sanitisation of data to overcome privacy concerns whilst at the same time retaining the value of the dataset

Data Analysis, Mathematics, Systems Engineering and Information Technology. Government should focus on higher level education in these areas.

Improve the resilience of the UK infrastructure to Cyber attack and improve the means by which people can prove their identity though the latter is in progress.

It will be a building block to improve automation and so lowering cost by removing the need for human intervention. Simple "today" examples would be printers that already order their own toner or servers that order spares/replacement parts.

It is not clear this is a major problem. There is nothing wrong with silos - in fact it may help if there are initially silos and these are aligned with a specific area; that would help show strong progress.

Imagination, widespread fully usable fully mobile connectivity though this is improving

Glasgow has obviously just won a TSB grant but its about more than the where and about the what - smart mobility, smart energy etc

Perceived investment needs, a lack of understanding of what it means. Educational campaigns on what it is and the benefits will help

Generally http://www.smart-cities.eu/why-smart-cities.html covers the domain. The work done in Portugal on InovGrid was used by the EU as an exemplar for a SmartGrid approach.

Information and Communication

Smart people are more important than smart cities - three things have to happen 1 - rigorous relevant education, 2 - a culture of professional honesty and competence and 3 - the abandonment of process driven design and implementation and the introduction of a data driven design approach

Better educated stake holders, the elimination of rewards for mendacious behaviour

For the next x years Government should prevent all existing IT related state servants from having any say in the selection of IT suppliers for new i9nvestment projects and at the end a comparison made with ongoing projects

The cost of doing business when the government is involved is too high. UK trained staff lack vision, have a poor attitude to working hard and are riven by envy

talk to IT start up folk in the US and in UK - the differences are starkly obvious. The problems that need fixing are as much social and cultural as anything else

Get rid of celebrity culture, help the schools and Universities produce people with good social and work skills. Make IT education rigorous and ELITE

Data drives everything, this collapses complicated decision processes, fosters an emphasis on quality and leads to great agility. Financial reporting is based on a weekly cycle

Pick the best people from around the world. Invest in their continuing education. Allow them time for their pet projects

tend to use the 'cloud-ish' services to facilitate asynchronous updating of information, and remote servers - we avoid SAAS

In rural parts Internet connectivity is very poor, even in the Home Counties

Building the world's best IP infrastructure would be a start - the 'Internet of Things@ is going to be very demanding.

The current fad about Big data is just a distraction. It caters to a bunch of poorly educated system developers who do not understand how to properly configure serious RDBMS.

By pointing out the folly in pursuing this particular red herring

Technical Institutions should be ideally placed to point out the shortcomings of the Emperor's New Clothes.

Profound analytical skills combined with hefty doses of skepticism.

Help ensure the safety of online economic activity, avoid pursuing short term economic gains in favour of promoting long term growth - don't tax the life out of everything at the earliest possible stage

poor internet infrastructure, high processing costs

talking to existing online traders

huge benefits in terms of security, control, maintenance, ordering, safety - its a big part of the implementation of 'joined up thinking'

Britain's broadband infrastructure needs to be several orders of magnitude faster, with totally inclusive coverage, combining fibre, Wireless Distribution and Mobile as appropriate. Once this is done government should avoid bureaucritising the ISPs

lack of imagination, distrust, pervasive expectations of failure

government should stay out of this - leave it to smart people

Information and Communication

We have a cross sector offering

On behalf of an organisation

Micro business (up to 9 staff)

Real information security for the masses, delivered with minimum friction and easy to maintain and support.

Rights of the Individual to own his/her personal data; legal framework for individuals to take control of online and communications privacy; reduce fraud and associated costs by helping to make it easier for providers and individuals to establish security mechanisms that go beyond the simple user and password combination we have today.

Truly streamline the funding process for those businesses that need financial support and can demonstrate they have a product or service (at any stage) that positively impacts the information economy. We are losing too many good ideas and people because of arcane or tardy application processes and delivery mechanisms.

Lack of meaningful and easliy accessible funding; limited roster of experienced mentors and advisors; hard to access key influencers and decision makers in UK organisations that could be customers for new businesses. Provide incentives to individual business experts and organisations to "adopt" a new business; provide funding for commercial pilot projects; encourage UK businesses to outsource to UK startups that can solve problems for them.

Lack of meaningful and easliy accessible funding; limited roster of experienced mentors and advisors; hard to access key influencers and decision makers in UK organisations that could be customers for new businesses. Provide incentives to individual business experts and organisations to "adopt" a new business; provide funding for commercial pilot projects; encourage UK businesses to outsource to UK startups that can solve problems for them.

The information economy will rely on our ability to create software on an industrial scale. We do not have, nor are we currently delivering, the curriculum in our schools and universities that will fill the pipeline with the skilled personnel we need in the future. We need to move our children from being consumers to being creators.

We focus on helping individuals become the true owners of their personal data, to take control of their online privacy and ID, and to realise meaningful insight from all of the data they can glean from their product and service providers, from open data and from their day to day activities. We help commercial organisations establish strong, long-term, direct relationships with their customers built on a foundation of trust and respect, using the power of customer data to deliver products and services that customers really want.

You make it sound easy! We can ensure we have th wright technology by research, experimentation and testing. Staffing is the real problem area. We use UK freelance staff that have the skills we need to get projects underway and then try to transfer skills and knowledge to employees. Finding skilled employees that can transition into the organisation in a timely fashion to support our pace is very difficult.

Key uses: support timely sharing of information between geographically separated team members. Issues: security concerns. There is not enough openness amongst cloud providers, and not enough available ehnanced security options to deliver real comfort. Reliability has been a problem.

Meaningful, achievable certification for cloud providers. Independent standards body. Market the UK as THE place to keep your data, to do business in the cloud.

We need open standards, especially around data exchange. For example, Point of Sale. Get past the limitations imposed by legacy systems, e.g. Truncated transaction descriptions on bank and credit card statements.

The discussion need to address Open Data, Private and Proprietary Data and Personal Data separately. For example: Open Data: Proper sanitisation of Open Data is critical to ensure that identities a not compromised. Private Data: Commercial organisations need to have comfort and reassurance that they will not be forced to disclose data that rightly gives them a commercial advantage. Personal Data: Individuals must have rights to assert and maintain ownership of their data and the capability to truly control and manage their privacy.

They seem to be doing fine at the moment.

Technical skills taught in schools and universities that translate to the workplace, i.e. as well as the theory, teach the software development languages and tools that are actually used in industry.

Financial support for those that need it, when they actually need it and without requiring that they already have the money to spend. You need to understand that startup and early stage companies are not like established business. They cannot be assessed and measured in the same ways. We need funding mechanism that reflect these differences.

Imposition of tax regimes by other countries, especially the United States. Not suggesting that tax should be evaded, but it should not be levied more than once on each transaction, and it should be fair.

We don't. By our very nature, we are already experts. In some ways, it is simply institutional knowledge that technology companies should have these days.

Automated, secure data exchange based on accepted and useful standards is key to success in this sector.

Open standards, nothing proprietary, or at the every least, licensed technology that is available at a price that businesses can absorb and remain profitable.

Failure to create a culture that supports innovation and risk-taking.

Not familiar enough to provide an answer.

Deliver a culture that supports innovation and risk-taking.

It is time to end austerity and start delivering big infrastructure projects nationally. United Arab Emirates and China are exemplars of the commitment to improve existing or deiver new infrastructure on a massive scale and the resulting benefits.

Centre for the Mathematics of Human Behaviour, University of Reading and Cingnifi Inc

Financial and Insurance Activities

Digital Marketing and Targetting

smart cities important for modern urban living and infrastructure. Why dontt we have a living lab like CUSP? Cloud computing exists now. We use it: its a commercial reality and doesn't need public money. IoT should be much more specific - too much mission creep in that agenda. e-commerce essential. But Big data is founded far too much on informatics, connectivity and such, and not enough on analytics - which should be build on maths and stats and provide differentiation for users/exploiters. The biggest opportunity is analytics (inference, scaled up, real time, forecasts, attribution). But the big-data initiative is far too focussed of the "plumbing": the informatics

Having facilities or the connections is not a differentiator. Any country could do this. For the UK our analytics needs to be the differentiation, which can be build on our world class maths and stats; and our visionaries. We need a talent school for this, encouraging visionaries of any age, and CDEC has missed this entirely. We shoudl have a creative thread - where we demonstarte things at an ambition and scale that leave others gasping. The big data initiative will be a waste of time if it lurches to serve teh communities that have had HPC, GRID, CLOUD... instead we sgould be thinking of smat distributed systems and analytics that provide inference. I see wee the biggest driver as the avaliableility of data (colelcted for one thing but maybe used for another) in providing insights. Please be able to respond to visionary entrepreneurs. Dont focus on large companies which have the bandwidth to attend meetings but they do not really need a gov programme to role out their next generation offerings.

You have presupposed the five areas. One is missing (see above). The Gov should also set up a Brit School equivalent for digital economy entrepreneurs. This is missing form CDEC which start form beyond the development of e-entrepreneurs. A Digital Brit School cold audition and qualify applicants and then be exposed to learning and doing - exposed to roadmaps form large and small vendors and suppliers; encouraged to do social entrepreneurial projects; given access to facilities and technology experts in this space; encouraged to leave and produce radical start up businesses. Note they don't need to learn about technology (that is how to - but they can always hire people for that) they need to learn about upcoming disruptive technologies (road maps, roll out) that will create opportunities how businesses can work and when or why to.

Barriers are that we don't have enough emphasis on adventurous or radical analytics and visionary entrepreneurship

We need to find 100 budding entrepreneurs a year. We need to make the UK's excellent maths and stats base product more and better analytics champions. See recent article by Tom Davenport on Data Scientists in Harvard Business Review.

see above. In general the areas we in the UK should focus on are those where the data will be transformative and the sectors moves form being supply centric to becoming customer /consumer centric. This happened along time ago in retail with loyalty cards and e-shops. Now it is happening in mobile telephony, where value will have to come form added features and services (land grab over). Energy distribution and supply - smart meter - will be next!

I have founded a company that uses people's CDRs from their mobile phones to segment them by lifestyle and provide marketing, targetting and risk qualification in developing countries (whwre conventioanl recorsd aent avalaibale and credit risk scoring cannot work). This compnay founded in UK had to go to eth US to prosper because the VC community didnt understand analytics and is biased towards sectors having patents etc. See www.cignifi.com This was a loss for the UK but a gain for the US

Its about analytics not just about IT skills

We use cloud all the time. Security is a concern of customers but we can rely on cloud providers to cover this: why put in public money?

In general the areas we in the UK should focus on are those where the data will be transformative and the sectors moves form being supply centric to becoming customer /consumer centric. This happened along time ago in retail with loyalty cards and e-shops. Now it is happening in mobile telephony, where value will have to come form added features and services (land grab over). Energy distribution and supply - smart meter - will be next!

Better abnalytics Big wow factor demonstartions Strong entreprenurial involvement

Open data is a red herring in many ways. Its about compnaies getting a competitive edge - that will drive innovation. The openess of data will take away barriers to entry and act as a disincentive for cvompnaies to store dtata (since they will have to cover the cost of serving it back!). Though laudable the unintended consequence of midata will be to disincentivize innovative thinking and action.

Analytics and adventure. Provision of Digital Brit School for entrepreneurs - see above. Living lab like CUSP in NYC

In general the areas we in the UK should focus on are those where the data will be transformative and the sectors moves form being supply centric to becoming customer /consumer centric. This happened along time ago in retail with loyalty cards and e-shops. Now it is happening in mobile telephony, where value will have to come form added features and services (land grab over). Energy distribution and supply - smart meter - will be next!

Information and Communication

On behalf of an organisation

Small business (10 to 49 staff)

NO - only one is an application area (smart cities), the others are tools and technologies only and thus imho dont in and of themselves provide opportunities for growth (unless that is through UK plc developing global capability in these areas which is questionable). I certainly dont think they fit into most people's understanding of an information economy which to most including this observer is far more about what is done with information and insight that can be acquired as a result of the deployment of such tools and technologies that drive value, performance, productivity, improved decision making and so on across any given vertical (market sector) AND where UK plc already has some market presence. This would take the "information economy" into areas such as pharma, energy, biometrics, security, asset management, financial services, unified communications and so on. These are broadly commercial areas where government strategy would be to provide the right levers and incentives but where generally such enterprises are (broadly) driven by a fundamental requirement to deliver shareholder value/returns. These sectors are likely data and information rich already but perhaps analytics and insight poor; this is especially the case in the public sector where the opportunities of an information economy to improve services for citizens whilst doing more with less are substantially under-realised. From this perspective it seems very difficult for government to develop a coherent strategy for the information economy - its happening already to some degree (and always has been only there are more data and better tools now) and is primarily driven (and limited) by an organisation's capacity to understand what might be possible and to move towards that in the context of its own strategic objectives.

Government needs to understand the basics about the human condition - pollution, resource pressures (food, water, essential social services, land quality, air quality), happiness/quality of life - and focus on ensuring long term public security through a minimum level of rights for and access to the above. Government can use its own massive information resources to seek answers to these really big questions.

Not clear what UK strengths are in the information economy - most cloud, big data, e-commerce and internet of things investment is driven from overseas and even the Smart Cities initiative has more traction beyond these shores. UK has excellent intellectual resource in many of these areas (academic and commercial research activities in vertical markets/niches, consulting, open data) that should be expanded through secondary and tertiary education to equip UK plc with a cadre of appropriately skilled 20-somethings in areas such as data science, natural language processing etc who can then be recruited to find new insight and meaning from the ever growing public, commercial and private data banks in the context of their employers wider objectives. The "sector" certainly believes that a shortage of skilled people is a major barrier to realising the opportunities within the information economy.

There is a huge reservoir of expertise in the UK in this area and the evidence suggests that government activity/interest does to a great extent ignore the existing capabilities and practitioners, focusing instead on "silicon roundabout" and vanity start-ups. This is a major tactical mistake risking disenfranchising the existing players whilst at the same time failing to leverage their skills and insights. The obsession with "new" over proven is unhelpfull in a growth driven agenda. There is alsoo an obsession with the open = free agenda which undermines the ability for new and existing businesses across the spectrum of the information economy to construct achievable business plans with viable business models. The world cannot and will not subsist let alone grow on the basis of subsidy based (i.e. advertising funded) business models. There has to be a widesapread acceptance that a deliverable or output of value has inputs that cost and that to "grow" that value has to reflect those costs. So, make schools and universities part of the plan, harness existing strengths and be realistic!

Not sure that Government can provide a major stimulus to how enterprise harnesses the talents of its key people and a new generation of data scientists. And Government has to think very hard about how it squares the provision of essential services with investment in the public sector to improve those essential services. There is no question that such investment will bring those improvements but that's a hard story to sell against a backdrop of swinging cuts in the wider fabric of sociwety long provided by the public sector (libraries, arts, sports, care, travel etc etc).

As noted above, data science stands out but shortage of maths, physics, life sciences and related expertise means a global level fight for those that do exist. Investment via secondary and tertiary level support will help.

we are an online retailer of digital goods and services; we use all the data available to us to improve our processes and customer service and to deploying appropriate tools and technologies to achieve the same; we make judicious use of cloud, linked data, big data, open data and data analytics to drive our business forward. [but no one calls!]

we do the best we can do provide enough time to do enough research to identify what is coming down the track, whether it will be of utility to us, how we harness it, what the return on capital employed migth be from it

ability to deploy applications remotely for customers; ability to test various applications; scalabilty - able to replicate private cloud elements to public cloud; as a provider of specific hosted SaaS we deploy the cloud paradigm ourselves and for integration and availability to third parties

some client groups still have "trust" issues with the cloud; others are subject to inertia brought on by fear

the sole effort to date - G-Cloud - is worthy but has a framework that is inadequate for many providers to usefully showcase their capabilities and services. The whole SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, DaaS world is too dynamic to be easily satisfied in that way which is frustrating for all parties. And the language used caters to the insider. And the interfaces used are pre-historic in terms of UI, language etc. In the meantime "those that can, do" and have cloud based service platforms up and running with little or no awareness at government level. To change that government needs to reconsider the language and constuituency of engagement and focus on bringing more of the existing capability to the table.

in some cases, wake up! in all cases, not be diverted by the term "big data" (in 1980 100Mb was big data, its all relative) and instead focus on working how to extract value from data in the context of their current and future objectives.

big data analytics is the phrase du jour and could be usefully abandoned; it is notable that "big data" events now have an applications orientation rather than a tool/technology one and government would do well to think the same way. Similarly with open data, the structures and incentives need to be in place and as resources allow the skills should be built up and brought to bear on publishing what I call the "exhaust data" of the "business of government" as open data - metrics, legislation, transactions and so on. Third party strength lies in identfying which of these serve which purpose. It is a nonsense that ODI and ODUG have these kinds of remits and such limited perspective and engagement as it is to suppose that they can second guess discrete drivers across myriad vertical markets. The accelerating arc towards wider and more granular personal data access, as exemplified within the NHS data agenda, does not seem subject to rigourous critique either in terms of privacy and anonymisation (data analytics makes the most of 'mosaic' effects to render much of the anonymisation ineffective) or in terms of the coralling of that data by big business. This is a debate where the gate is currently open and little attempt seems to be being made to circumvent the outcome. This will likely lead to greater inequality in service access and provision as data analytics combine with the further shrinking of the state. Whether the growth of the information economy in this context is worth having is a debate yet to happen.

Equip themselves to train the next generation of data scientists and to provide a conduit from the broad school of data science to the ever narrower halls of individual vertical markets or disciplines by virtue of deeper linkages with research bodies and the private sector. The latter is of course intent on discovering their next new "whizz bang" and endless profit and as we have seen with healthcare (where little investment has been in curing diseases but plenty in developing palliatives) this shifts with the corporate need to satisfy short term shareholder requirements and universities have to be careful to strike a balance between being the source of discrete market solutions and the life blood of pure research. Many universities do have some of the resources to develop an improved understanding of how best to tease out the high vlaue nuggets from the data deluge that besets government and enterprise. Not all though have the back up to understand how to drive value from such capabilities via intellectual property licensing, spinning out new businesses and so on. Is that a limiting factor? I doubt it. Further, Government obsession with "practical" courses (and the media's continuing attempts to villify those that are not) flies in the face of plenty of evidence to suggest that the "powers that be" actually have no idea where the next best thing is going to come from and with every discipline now being a data rich one every avenue for growth needs to be kept open.

As above, equip our schools, universities and other higher educational outlets to develop the necessary skills in data science and related disciplines.

the online economy has been aorund for 15 years - can government really do anything to help at this late stage?

see above - being doing it for 13 years

automation, efficiency, prediction/forecasting, near-real-time behaviours, performance, analytics, productivity

coherent adoption of standards (and meta standards too that enable inter-standard interoperability!)

the language; the "internet of things" has no resonance with anybody apart from a very few niche technologists; the internet of things needs to be re-positioned and quickly; that would help towards smart governance too!

inertia; existing physical infrastructure and the associated ownership and asset management/upgrade plans; lack of willingness or ability to interoperate across the various industries involved - noto just all the utility providers (water, wastewater/sewage, elec, gas, telco/fixed, telco/mobile, telco/fibre, pipelines, tunnels, transport (local), transport (highways), rail, canal, EA and so on) which most peoplethink of as being the main stakeholders in a smart city but also all of the users of public space in a city - transport, green space, parking, markets, sportsd and leisure and so on - it cries out for joined up thinking if real problems are to be met with real solutions that gain the acceptance of the public either as a public or as a private good; lack of public engagement with the issues and benefits to be derived. Government likes silos and is naturally distrustful of too much holistic thinking and joining up as it acknowledges the inter-connectedness of everything so government has to have a change of mind set around smart cities, m2m and what they mean to the citizen beyond the ability to build new houses with zonal lighting etc etc.

Amsterdam, Rio, San Francisco

Information and Communication

On behalf of an organisation

Micro business (up to 9 staff)

Not necessarily as they do not focus sufficiently on the revolution that smart mobile devices are having.

Smart mobile devices will be the biggest driver of change in the near future as these have been adopted by the general public of their own accord. Traditional personal computers are on the decline and if you cannot take it with you it is less useful.

Ensure that the connectivity to make devices work everywhere (inc rural) is put in place. Smart devices are only smart when connected to Wi-Fi at the moment. Cellular connectivity is a poor second.

The UK is becoming less centralised and this is a strength as mobile offers the opportunity to create jobs where people live rather than having to move or commute to a city. However, rural connectivity is very poor.

The capital needed to start an information company is small so there is no need to focus on large amounts of it. More SBRI like opportunities and very generous small grant support is likely to assist the future SMEs to get started. Bank support is likely to be very limited in the current scenario.

Software and user interface design. Plus small business training, not large corporate stuff. Government should support private sector initiatives to offer this like the Learning Collaboration.

We develop "apps for industry" or mobile business services which integrate the use of smart devices/cloud computing and sometimes smart sensor/actuator custom hardware to create totally new business scenarios at relatively low development cost. This is the key for the future. Whereas a decade ago a company would need to find £m to develop and launch a product or service, the entry cost is now much smaller.

We are driven by the market, what do our customers want or can we dream of offering them that will get them excited enough to pay us to develop it for them. We then get the resources to do this. We can sub-contract in the short term.

Immediate and low cost access to an infrastructure that in the pat would have taxed many small organisations to put in place. We can develop a new service for a client and just hand it over. For our own documents, they are available 24/7 wherever we need to access them and we do not have to worry about backing up files.

Assuming that security is not breached in the future then there are no barriers. it is there and you use it.

Ensure that security is not compromised either by outsiders or undermined by fear of big brother accessing data.

For most SMEs they cannot comprehend at the moment what is the relevance. they create their own and it is proprietary.

Fund the academics to work out what it is and make it accessible to small companies.

As above, develop the concepts and make it real.

Recognise it is not just a mirror of a transaction that has been done on-line via traditional computers. The opportunity for transactions that are location dependent is huge and offers real new business opportunities.

None for us. We get our customers through on-line searches and service them on-line but we sell a service not a product. E-Commerce is bigger than finding an article and buying it but it is difficult for companies to know how to get "found" on-line by potential customers and there are a lot of people selling snake oil!

Huge, as it is the basis of many new services that will require developing and that is what we do. We are a new technology company and this is all about new opportunities made possible by technology.

Not sure it matters. The market will decide what is commercially viable and until we are there we will not know what it is. The last thing we need is a standards body trying to define what it should be and slowing things down and encumbering it with know alls who prevaricate.

Connectivity. If you live in the rural areas, even in high tech Cambridgeshire, it is awful be it via wire or through the ether. This is a big issue as arguably in the urban areas things can easily be connected or are connected already. Once distance comes into play the technical challenges exist.

No idea, I am not sure it is even a real concept yet.

Finding a commercial model for what it is supposed to be.

Not much from what I know of at this time. I have travelled quite a lot but have never found myself disadvantaged by not being connected. If it is little more than an advanced Oyster card it is much ado about nothing.

Information and Communication

On behalf of an organisation

Small business (10 to 49 staff)

requirement to cut costs and have more accessable data

promote standards for each category. promote best practice regarding security.

ease if access and adaptability to change.

focus on support and mentoring

understanding the manipulation of data and how it can be output into something meaningful to the business.

allowing remote access to data collection devices and viewing the resultant data on a secure web.

rigorous recruiting practices and high standards of internal training

scalable price, no capex, easy to scale when required, easy to view and manipulate data.from a number of devices.

tough infrastructure between data centres and main population centres. Efficient power generation.

remote monitoring and data collection

interoperability and standards in which all devices able to speak to all data sources.

restrictive practices by service providers and hardware manufacturers.

IT needed to support nanotech, 3D printing, a National ID Card - http://www.dgwbirch.com/papers/XX/05idreprint.pdf If we’re going to have an ID card, let’s have a 21st century ID card. David G.W. Birch. Director Consult Hyperion.

Deregulation of money printing to private individuals the world over (Bitcoin) / inflation of fiat money.

Sort out the National ID Card - along the lines suggested by David Birch: http://www.dgwbirch.com/papers/XX/05idreprint.pdf Amend Patent Act further.

Take the attitude expressed in the change of the Patent Act helping trial drugs in the UK to help software development: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/about/press/press-release/press-release-2013/press-release-20130226.htm

We can't, UK business angels are more risk averse, this is an observation and I believe cultural. We could attract more Valley angels to Britain... but global warming may have to be factual.

Stop taking brown bags from Microsoft in all places of Government for the procurement of Microsoft Office. Many government agencies use OpenOffice - there's even a Scottish Constabulary that uses OpenOffice. And nothing is going wrong. The domination of Microsoft is damaging young children's perception of IT, because using Microsoft Office is the only bar expected. The drivers of IT in the UK now today, learnt how to program on a BBC B, ZX81 or Spectrum. It's a twenty year plan and just needs the government to ACT!

Mobile integration to cloud services to provide good customer service.

Yes, email, CRM, invoicing, accounts.

Lean on Google / Amazon to provide separate infrastructure in the UK which could get signed-off by GCHQ and other security services.

HR Health and Safety Consultancy

On behalf of an organisation

Small business (10 to 49 staff)

faster and more reliable internet connection

faster and more reliable internet connection

faster and more reliable internet connection

we have the skilled people, but we don't have a robust sytem of matching the people with the employment.

our business provides most of its services online and would provide more if the broadband was faster and more reliable.

we skills match employees and research better and more reliable ICT.

being able to work anywhwere that a computer can be acessed

instead of spending billons on high speed trains for 2035, get high speed fibre optic broadband to all areas.

they can provide networks of research facilities

invest in broadband instean of high speed rail

not relaible enough or fast enough

greater benifits, by lowering the cost of travel for work. it will also reduce conjestion in the area, if people did not travel so much and using M2M would help

Small business (10 to 49 staff)

Yes but won't grow unless superfast broadband is rolled out to all of UK not just urban/city locations. Need to look at data integrity issues -

Barriers - again broadband is big issue if outside major connurbations.

Need banks / investors to be more willing to invest. The internet is fast moving - they need to be as well.

Cloud computing allows for virtual working. Skype for meetings, websites for marketing etc

Start up so used contacts within industry to find right staff.

Efficient method of virtual working, moving/storing large files etc. Issues are down to broadband too slow.

Only issue is security and integrity (of data) of cloud service company.

There is still concern about 'how safe or secure' is my data. What happens if cloud service company folds? What happens to my data - these questions need addressing.

Sorry to bang on about it but their customers need good broadband access. That's affordable!

Outside the UK, issues with trust.

just learning about this - sounds fascinating. EU on board but nothing from UK on web about this.

Somebody out there knows more about this than me...

Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities

Micro business (up to 9 staff)

Perception of potential for cost cutting

Poor broadband is increasingly a problem (rural SME)

My work demonstrates that IT user skills at low and higher levels continue to be recognised as a weakness; these skills are the most widely recognised as holding buinsess back. I do not have the information in relation to IT professional skills.

Just beginning to use cloud through testing an IPad in business use.

We don't. We are very small and rather technophobic

Not knowing real potential and cost benefit issues

Complete high level TNAs and fund a limited number of what may well be high cost training

Foresight and budget to develop attractive products and services for online distribution

Information and Communication

On behalf of an organisation

Small business (10 to 49 staff)

Digitising Criminal Justice, linking courts, Police, prisons, probation and the private sector and reducing paperwork is a huge opportunity that needs to be driven against the natural resistance to change that these sectors exhibit.

The need to remove cost through increasing efficiency and to share information to reduce double keying, fraud etc.

The Government needs to engage with the UK SMEs who are the strengths that already exist in the sector. Clearly that is already being attempted but results take time.

The main barriers are large ICT systems integrators, who despite years of costly failure still win the vast majority of the Government's IT business. The risk taking environment is poor in Government and many civil servants are paranoid about talking toUK SMEs in case that is seen as somehow breaking European rules.

My company has bid for trials at the invitation of a large ministry. For six months we bid one trial then another. Finally the agency decided to do nothing this year because of budgets. Risks were not taken and what we were doing was not communicated to high enough levels. Government in this example needs tomove more quickly and be more decisive.

OIn our industry the apprentice scheme has helped and we are training people in-house.

My companies use ICT to provide and sell services some of which are ICT related services. ICT is vital and we have approximately 250,000 users of one service alone for xsecure messaging and payments.

We are an IT company so we are always surveying the market fornew ideas and skills but we are of a sufficient size to be able to build skills in-house.

Our company provides some services through "cloud computing". I see it as an extension to existing technologies rather than a one-size fits all technology. Different technologies have roles in different areas e.g. you would not do the HMRC income tax calculations on 1,000 small PCs but neither would you run realtime processes requiring sub-second response on a cloud system. Of course you CAN do either of those examples if you have money to burn.

We are an SME. We do not see cloud computing as an end in itself. We will achieve our own business and commerical aims by whatever technology is best suited rather than seek to use a particular technology.

By using UK suppliers as the UK Government is likely to be the biggest user of such services.

No comment. This is not an area where we have knowledge or expertise.

No comment. This is not an area where we have knowledge or expertise.

No comment. This is not an area where we have knowledge or expertise.

No comment. This is not an area where we have knowledge or expertise.

In our case allowing such expansion while assisting in attempts to reduce fraud.

We have effectively curtailed overseas online sales due to there being too little fraud protection.

We have been doing it for several years and have a number of advisers.

Since our niche is that of criminal justice where the spread of technology is very controlled M2M communication presently seems far fetched.

On behalf of an organisation

Micro business (up to 9 staff)

Rural areas (lots of businesses working from home with inadequate infrastructure.

Improved awareness and adequate/competent training

Ensure competent education & training - especially software use and integrating technologies

Inadequate affordable, relevant training. Too many of us struggling to learn as we go without any support.

Need quick, straight decisions on finance (e.g. grant applications), help for process as well as product, students coming out of education with understanding of how the technology works and what it can do.

Need for students to understand practical applications and potential of technology and how different technologies interrelate. Teachers need adequate training and support to keep up to date and pass on knowledge to students.

Developing internet interactive learning programmes using range of technologies/platforms + use of cloud to teach management skills to young people through real time, real money projects.

With extreme difficulty. We are a microbusiness with real problems in getting existing staff trained (relevance and affordability), students don't understand cross-platform working.

Just starting to use cloud - to allow joint working across locations. Poor broadband provision is a problem.

Poor broadband provision in rural areas & difficulty of accessing reliable, impartial information.

Providing reliable, impartial information, adequate training and trustworthy and timely support.

Recognise that most businesses are SMALL and don't have in-house support.

Access to and cost of finance. Cost of on-line payment systems for microbusinesses.

Other small businesses & FSB.

Concerns about making rural economy uncompetitive.

Information and Communication

On behalf of an organisation

Cloud computing and the internet of things are the most important in my view. We have a generation of young people growing up who are 3D virtual world ready and these technologies have huge potential to transform public services and save money in the future but not enough attention is being given to this trend and the associated potential for online 3D virtual worlds to provide a fourth channel for public services and business innovation and growth. The USA and Asia are way ahead of the UK in this area which is a tragedy as the UK has the creative, technical and innovation potential to be a world leader in this area

austerity BYOD Bring your own device broadband skills global business networks

A pan government and multidiscplinary approach that support innovation and collaboration. Too many programmes are putting irrelevant barriers in the way of innnovation. Why should innovators be good communicators - we have lots of good communicators - lets let innovators and entrepreneurs get on with invention and match those to people who can seek out and understand the potential and sell it. Lets simplify the funding process -

Funding mechanisms that disadvtange microbusinesses are an on going issues. For example, current TSB process embed inefficiency by effectively rewarding businesses with high overheads.Define a fixed price / contribution towards staff costs perhaps at the rate of volunatary sector pay scales, irgnore overheads as an eligible prject costs and make business pay for the capital / sftware assets the needs for their research - especially if they get to keep those assets at the end of the project. Also,make sure that small uk based businesses who cant get bacnk finance dont loose out to inward investment startups backed by overseas investors - not sure how you do that but the risk is TSB funding funds research which ultimately is commercialised else where and doesnt generate an ROI for UK PLC

Make funders of R&D ensure more end users are involved in the assessment of applications for R&D and innovation funding. We appear to have a system which is chronically lacking in diversity at all levels and is not putting in place porgrammes to improve participation and involvement of end users in the processes of R&D and innovation, Ultimately commerrcial success is all about investing in innovations that meet end users needs - the only way to ensure the right innov ations and R&D is support is to ensure end user involvement.

1) organisational and planning skills 2) verbal and oral communications skills for a wide range of setting (online and face to face / via phone) - we go to great pains to teach written skills at school - why dont we adopt the same structured approach to verbal /aural communcation skills and social behaviours? 3) employablity soft skills - team working, collaboration, presentaions 4) technical skills 5) learning to learn skills

We specailise in the use of 3D virtual world technologies to - enable more sustainable, accessible and cost effective / flexible ways of working for all our staff and customers - increase the inclusion of people with disabilties in our workplace - to enable us develop and sustain international partnerships and support growth and innovation with partners all over the UK and internationally

Our company has embedded a learning culture at all levels of the organisation and ensured that it has worked toward and sustain quality through industry standards/accreditation such as the Intellect Business Professional Certification. We also encourage our staff to make suggestions and proactively monitor the tech horizon and have developed strong industry and HE links to help us keep up to date with technology. We are also passionate about inclusive innovation and encourage all our team, stakeholders and customers to be inclusive innovators whenever and whereever they can. As Gandhi said, "we must be the change we wish to see"

We use cloud services for email, accoutnacy, collaboration and offer 3D virtual world cloud services. The difficulties are the costs of setting them up, the risks associated with an still unproven market, low customer awareness, high technical and security risks (or perceptions of risks). The benfits are flexiblity, cost effectiveness, innovation and competiton as a driver for quality improvement and added value. I wiould like to see more emphasis on social impact in government procurement of cloud services

More investment in R&D funding for collaborative research, more programmes to tackle inequality, more emphasise in all procurements on hard and measurable outcomes for social value as a criteria for value for money

More training and more access to staff with relevant skills

Improve skills and increase the diversity of the big data community of innovators, researchers and businesses. Broaden and clarify definiations of BIG Data and all the other data related jargon that goes with it

More case studies to demonstrate the commercial potentail / value from investment in BIG data plus more training and support to help reduce the costs for companies of information assurance of BIG data

mathematical skills intellectual curiosity and problem solving teaching people in the IT indistry how to adapt to communcation styles of people with disabilities such as autism who often offer exceptional skills which are relevant to BIG data related work and research but who might struggle to compete in terms of traditional communciation skils

Lack of awareness of 3D virtual worlds and the particular complexities and issues (such as IPR) of 3D virtual goods

Open standards, more end user involvement, more sharing of good practise internationally

Lack of investment, lack of awareness and lack of skils

China is investing in "liveable cities" - definately one to watch

Information and Communication

On behalf of an organisation

Micro business (up to 9 staff)

I sincerely do not believe that it is the gorvernment's business to try to 'back horses' like this. Several of the so-called 'sectors' you have listed are nothing more than buzz words rather than solid areas for economic growth

Getting any new technology known to and available to businesses, especially innovative SMEs.

You need to get businesses (especially numble SMEs) into bed with the innovators and academia who are driving new tech

Benefits are the relative low-entry costs to many new technologies (especially Internet-based ones). Barriers are universities hordeing intellectual property.

Biggest barrier is universities being over-protective of IP to the extent that they won't share what they know without draconian legal restraints and unrealistic demands for revenue from commercialisation. Universities want to behave like public sector when it comes to research and then like private sector the moment something potentially lucrative comes along. They can't have it both ways otherwise no one will want to do business with them

Aside from specific technology skills, there are not enough people with an entrepreneurial inclination who might start new businesses. I'm not convinced top-down government initiatives are the answer here - it requires more of a community-approach to getting businesses going. Could government fund startup communities or accelerators?

We're a web and mobile development agency who not only build for othr customers but also get involved with joint ventures.

We try new technologies wwhenever we get an opportunity.

Cloud is an over-blown gimmick. It just means that someone else is taking responsibility for hosting and the scalability of that hosting. We use it where appropriate

Current commerical provision is absolutely fine - the market is doing its job and government does need to get involved.

They need to know what it is! Sounds like another buzzword.

Government needs to religiously make all possible data available. Start with the taxpayer-funded Ordnance Survey data!

Academics who have the mathematical and statistical expertise to unlock data will be very important. Once again it comes down to whether they are willing to get involved without being massively controlling over ownership and IP.

Maths, computing and particularly stats. But there's no point if universities then make it difficult for academics to commercialise what they know.

UK is one of the most well-connected countries in the world. Only things it could do is help people on low incomes and rural areas get connected. Also speed up rollout of things such as 4G

IPO, HMRC, Business Link, etc.

What is Machine-to-machine communication? - another buzzword that noone but government uses.

Keep the Internet free and neutral. Do not allow big corporations to divide it.

Nowhere. local government are always way behind on such things.

Main barriers are just how dickensian and slow local government is about initiating such things.

Singapore is pretty good at rolling out technology in a timely fashion. e.g. their electronic road tolling and travel smart cards which were years ahead of the London congestion charging and Oyster cards respectively. Its not the technology its the people in charge that are the problem

On behalf of an organisation

Micro business (up to 9 staff)

Government should provide opportunities for the sector to take forward more generalised and broad research-based projects than currently delivered through the TSB

Access to capital investment is the largest barrier and Goverment should examine creating a business investment bank, similar to Enterprise Ireland. Barriers include HMRC, who still make it very challenging for startups. A special startups division of HMRC (without the complexity) would help!

Because it's so difficult to raise investment capital in the UK, the majority of startups end up selling out to established foreign businesses. Addressing this requires an investment/tax regime in the UK which is tuned to the needs of innovative startups.

There is a skills deficit because of poor general schooling and now with limitations on foreign employees being brought in, this posistion has been made significantly worse. Government should relax immigration controls completely and immediately for company-sponsored employees and over time ensure that secondary education is improved substantially from its current low ranking in world league tables.

We are using cloud computing and data exploitation to radically change the way that the travel industry conducts business on the web.

Through personal introductions in what is a relatively small sector.

The key benefits are the absence of infrastructure investment needed. Some legislation has not yet caught up with the fact that cloud services may be foreign owned, and this can be a problem.

There is a view that 'cloud is cloud' but in fact cloud is only regional, therefore for international coverage, cloud services have to be employed in each major region.

Government should work to ensure that legislation which applies to cloud services is harmonised globally.

Businesses require a new attitude to address the current approach of hoarding data. Non-personal big data should be more easily accessible for startups to use.

Government can lead the way in making data available more widely.

Big data innovation can only be exploited if companies can be certain that the data sources will remain available and affordable once commercialisation has been successful.

Understanding mathematical techniques and having an enquiring approach are the key skills needed to exploit big data. Providing access to UK universities for foreign students and improving UK education will help deliver these skills.

Ensure that investment is more easily available.

The capital investment required to expand.

Information and Communication

Medium business (50 to 250 staff)

While these are all important areas, it is absolutely vital to remember that the key to an information economy is not the data or infrastructure in itself, but the ability of these to contribute to knowledge and understanding of business performance. For this reason, it is important to focus on increasing understanding of appropriate uses of data, the types of questions that can be answered by different data structures, and the methods that can be used to get the most deep understanding out of data. A multidisciplinary and multi-sector approach to creating better knowledge and information from the massive amounts of data that we are now capable of storing is key: quantitative methods are great for telling us the what, where, and how, but it is only qualitative methods that can contribute to questions about why certain effects or behaviours are observed. This must come from better communication across informational sectors: public, private, and academic, to create high-quality methods training and best-practices.

The ability to communicate effectively when dealing with massive amounts of data is enormously important. It is key to remember that data is only important when it contributes to information: when that data is employed effectively in order to generate knowledge. Strategies for effective communication, including better training in communication methods of big data, quantitative methods training, and strategic thinking (including qualitative training!) would benefit this industry on multiple levels: by providing an economic opportunity in the training/education knowledge economy, and by building a cohort of effective business and public sector communicators who can then contribute to the informational needs that span across all business sectors. Visualization especially will become increasingly important in the knowledge economy as a communication method that is intuitive for people who may need to gain knowledge from big data but who are not comfortable with traditional mathematical and statistical methods.

The UK should seek to form partnerships with knowledge economies around the world, creating a environment conducive to skills transfer and knowledge transfer of best practices. The UK should make every effort to create an innovative and flexible sector that can keep pace with rapidly moving information economy developments around the world. It is no longer possible to think of competition (and indeed, innovation and collaboration) taking place in each nation in a vacuum: the global economy is far too integrated to take a granular approach.

One of the main barriers to the UK information economy are business policies that are not supportive of research and development in this area. This takes the form of restrictive immigration policies that are preventing knowledge and skills transfer across borders: it is now difficult for the UK to export the high skill levels it is developing because students are no longer attracted to the UK as a first-choice higher education destination (an observed, measured effect in the last few years.) Further, because it is increasingly difficult for skilled workers to come into the UK, the benefits of research and developments from abroad are not being taken on board by UK industry and higher education sectors. This is especially obvious in the fact that highly skilled workers, entrepreneurs, academics and innovators from outside the EU are not supported in the current immigration structure, which lacks the flexibility to include career paths that are currently only in their infancy. Restricting the path of sponsored visa tier 2 migrants to a set list of job codes and titles is a surefire way to stifle creativity and innovation. Such a list can never cover the comprehensive skills needs of the UK economy, being only a retrospective and rather arbitrary assessment of the types of skills required in the UK and the type of working structures that can meet those requirements. I have nothing to say concerning benefits of the UK information economy business environment.

The best way to support growth is to recognise that in a global economy where products are transferred globally, skills must be treated as an equivalent commodity. The best skills in the information economy should be attracted to the UK, and the very best of the skills in this country should be nurtured in the same way that manufacturing interests are, and exported to markets where information economy skills are needed--which is everywhere.

The UK is already recognising that a quantitative skills gap needs to be addressed, and measures are currently being put in place to create a cohort of highly skilled quantitative-trained workers. However, this should not come at the cost of marginalising qualitative skills: it is only through utilising a balanced methodological approach that true understanding can be created, which is the goal of the information economy. Not just to store and curate data, but to create knowledge. The role of government in this is to support skills training, partly through existing initiatives or those soon to come, and partly through facilitating better connections between industry and academia. Skills transfer can benefit both sectors and dialogue between them needs to be strengthened.

Our company lives on data. We sell products via the internet, provide services there, contact customers through our own website and through social media. On top of this, we collect an enormous amount of data in order to measure both performance of our products and to predict future user behaviour. This is also used to experiment with new business developments such as increasingly complex digital products. Our data management involves several systems deployed through the Web for business users: so both our front-end systems (website that customers interact with) and back-end systems (information for measuring business performance) are heavily dependent on ICT.

There are several procedures in place to ensure that business development needs are constantly under consideration and that the business is able to access (or to train) people with the right skills.

I am not party to business strategy decisions concerning technical adoption.

There are two main barriers to the use of Big Data: the first are the technical challenges in creating a Big Data infrastructure, including reporting. The second is business understanding of what Big Data can and cannot do for them. Big Data, whilst very useful if applied correctly, is not a panacea or an oracle: businesses still need to ask the right questions and devote time to strategic thinking about what the data they have available is actually able to tell them, and how business behaviour will change as a result of that knowledge.

The government can assist businesses in strategic thinking about data needs and data security concerns. This can take the form of training, consultations, and policy statements.

As a person with an academic and a commercial background, it is my belief that both higher education institutions and the private sector would benefit from greater communication and skills transfer concerning Big Data. Universities are highly skilled at developing appropriate ethical policies for data and taking the time to consider a long-range view of the social and political benefits of data. The private sector, however, has moved much more quickly in terms of developing tools and techniques for analysing Big Data and I believe that universities and public sector institutions could benefit from private sector methodological expertise, as well as the other way around.

Technical skills such as quantitative methods and computer science or ICT training are of course very important. But even more important is an understanding of what Big Data can be used for: a philosophy of Big Data that approaches it as one in a range of methodological techniques available for discovering information that can provide for the needs of businesses to measure performance and to predict future consumer behaviour, etc. These skills should be considered in a multidisciplinary and multi-sector way, in concert with qualitative skills training.

We successfully market to consumers both within and outside the UK.

I am not involved in strategic decisions about online trading.

Greater automated processes of informational transfer (collection, collation, and cleaning of data) would free up more hours for data analysis and development of new tools.

Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities

Many others. Trying to rank them is near-impossible.

1. Getting the banks (both clearing and merchant)to free up working capital; 2. Getting decent, professional advice for the entrepreneurs - revive the most successful scheme ever done in this area, the old DTI's "Enterprise Initiative". I worked as one of the few IT/Business Strategy/Marketing/QA advisors who was not tied to a supplier, or creaming the work off as SUBS did and almost all of my SMEs survived and thrived. Later, I helped set up the DTI SME website, via Fujitsu. 3. Stop looking at the five areas and follow whatever the entrepreneurs want to do. That's what they'll be passionate about.

See above. You seem to have an obsession.

Benefits: 1. Lots of smart potential entrepreneurs coming out of the colleges, etc; 2. Good Incubation resources. 3. Lack of "usual" jobs, forcing potential entrepreneurs to consider the option. Barriers: 1. Banks, who encourage entrepreneurs to buy assets, just as security for loans, when they should be leasing, so they can be nimble; 2. Accountants, who are more interested in avoiding tax than generating wealth, because they've mostly never run a wealth-creating business, they have an HMRC-created monopoly; 3. Major ICT players, who play the FUD card almost all the time, shutting entrepreneurs out of public-sector work.

For the technologists, commercial skills. For those commercially-minded, technical insight.

Was a genuinely impartial ICT consultant for 30+ years, but government seemed to want to sponsor what were effectively salespeople.

Now retired. Still active in BCS and setting up Entrepreneurial support in NW England.

Ensure that ICT consulting professionals genuinely avoid conflicts of interests, instead of ignoring the issue.

Use genuine advistors, so they can lose the fear involved.

Introduce an effective "clearing" process, defining levels for access limits.

Provide tools and processors that can handle Big Data,subject to clearance limits.

Most entrepreneurs will not have the skills for Big Data, not the time to earn them, so use the relevant Unis to sort this issue.

1. Get a decent Google definition of "Online Economy". If they can't answer the question, what chance does the average overworked entrepreneur have? 2. Decent, impartial, trustworthy advisors.

None. Already do it and have for 30+ years.

Simple, cheap, effective, flexible communication. The Internet.

See Google answers on this - they are smart.

Are there really any apart form bandwidth, which is mainly down to BT and the use of glass instead of copper and decent MSANs.

BT Online's effective monoply. Break it.

Information and Communication

Most of these terms are IT industry jargon which is not yet widely understood. They are all relevant, but need to be explained, communicated and debated.

As ever, the on-going demand for more and better services, delivered and supported efficiently, and making better use of resources (ie money) than what they replace.

Extend and support the use of SFIA for skills analysis and capability building

Barrier: inconsistent or non-extistent skill definition and deployment. Needs better benchmarking, using solid foundation such as SFIA.

Capitalise on and dissemminate the experience of the universities that are good at this. Teach entrepreneurism in schools. Find role models for young people. Continue to attack the dependency culture. Encourage responsibility, discourage "entitlement". Explain interdependence (per Steven Covey) etc

Enterprise architecture, Business process engineering, competent and articulate Business Analysts. There is a major shortage of properly trained analysts with teh right skills and tools, and this is not widely understood. Raise teh profile of BA, get govt sponsorship and cerate an identity and knowledge base (similar to PRINCE and ITIL). Establish centres of excellence (like Portfolio office)

better broadband, and decent 3G connections country wide

a revolution! - again in education of benefits - whats in it for me?

Suspicion and lack of imagination

Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities

They are important but in terms of our SME the order is Big Data (with its links to Open Data) and Cloud Computing as effort here will faciliate access to data and support the translation of data into knowledge.

The key drivers are increasing access to large datasets and the barrier to entry of the cost of hardware (and software) to hold/manipulate/store/interpret the data. Cloud offers the opportunity for SME's to access what they need, when they need if and remove the barrier to entry by reducing cost/risk, promoting innovative use of the facility. Open Access to data will be critical going forward and there needs to be action to bust the cartel that exists on knowlegde publications namely: UK Govt supports University research, research is carried out by individuals who create new knowledge and offer it for publication (free of charge). Learned individuals peer review the paper (free off charge) and it is published then owned by organisations that have not contributed but charge for access. All publicly funded knowledge generation should be freely available. This creates more, big data that can be analysed by SMEs in pursuit of the generation of further knowledge.

In all areas: Understand the requirements; provide the infrastructure; support success.

Barriers are cost and risk related. Provision of infrastructure goes a long way to reduce risk aned therefore provide additional innovation and opportunity for exploitation of the information economy. Direct support for novel ideas either by investment or loan facilities would also be of benefit.

Emphasis is often placed on start ups when a more balanced approach is required when supporting those businesses that have already demonstrated success.

Qualified staff are expensive and hard to attract when as an SME in competition for skills of interest to large multi national corporations. Efforts to address this by direct 'skills acquisition support' would be helpful. Thought must also be given to supporting those studying in the key areas (for our business) of bioinformatics and chemoinformatics and other specialist areas in order to ensure that we have the necessary skills available.

We use IT as the core of delivery to our customers; as a means of ensuring our proceses are efficient; to provide access to our data systems and to manage our continuous improvement capabilities.

Our requirements based methodology for selection and our purchasing policy ensures that we have the right technology and our recruitment policy and Job Description focus along with our technology strategy ensures we recruit the right skills

We are in the process of considering Cloud based solutions for our internal needs as a precursor to working with customers to determine how the cloud might enable our business relationship.

Key barriers are based on security concerns and the fact that it would be a huge cultural shift for our businesss.

provide a government backed, secure infrastructure

Access to the right data is the number one challenge. Legacy data needs to be digitised in an appropriate format. A common onlology and dictionary of terms across the industry would need to be created in order to assemble the data in a form in which it could be analysed. Analytical and visualisation of large data in a way understandble to humans would be the next challenge. System

Why do universities have to be the vehicle for the commercial exploitation of big data? SME's already in the knowledge economy already have the skills and market awarenes to be the channel for support for exploitation. Universities have a large amount of legacy data that they cannot access as it is not digitised.

The ability to conceptualise large datasets and format the storage in such a way to maximise the flexibilty for analysise and interpretation is key. Big Data on its own is just data until it is transformed into useful knowledge

I have not comments in this area

We use secure internet to deliver our software to customers but the commercial relationship is managed traditionally. Our markey is b2b and therefore the scope for ecommerce is limited.

Background analysis and knowledge creation.

With no knowledge of what is involved my uninformed opinion would be 'gimmick'.

Information and Communication

On behalf of an organisation

Micro business (up to 9 staff)

ICT Energy Efficiency underpins all the other sectors so should be considered a sector by itself

Energy Efficiency, regulation and cost

Develop and extend Greening Government ICT Strategy across all public sector organisations. Consider specific ICT legislation and incentives (tax rebates, grants, green deal)

Lack of co-ordinated approach, too many agencies dilute message. Bring back CCTA, develop strategy with multi-agency approach

Create a TECHNOLOGY DEAL in the same format as the green deal, include ICT energy efficiency products and services in commercial green deal

Cloud Skills, Data Centre technicians, application programmes, horizon scanners and futurologists. Yes, no skills deficit. Develop training, Govt, Industy and BCS for instance

SME, so owner develops own skills or uses peers, and uses external contractors as required

Ease of use, quick and relatively easy to set up, low or no cost. have security concerns but back up data to home device

Mandatory use of G-Cloud service portfolio in whole public sector, Governent owned and operated energy efficiency data centres or in commissioned Data Centres from marketplace

Research and Identify opportunities in structured format, consider entire re-organisation of business processes, publish own data and use open standards

promote publishing of commercial and public data (subject to confidentiality) mandatory use of security protocols, heavy fines for data breaches, outages

Develop internal big data programmes, publish results, use android app market to determine price levels for commercialisation of products. Too many too mention

App programmers, project managers and strategists

Co-Ordinated approach, again too much information form different sources dilutes message

None, we sell all our services via our website, promote using social media, and can accept payments directly into bank accounts

We consult on B2B benefits of M2M/IOT as a Green (Sustainable or Resource Efficient) IT V2 activity

HS Broadband, Local Network of T1 Data Centres, M2M Directories, self populating

Lack of HS Broadband, Planning for Local T1 Data Centres, Reluctance of organisations to publish M2M details, lack of strategic knowledge of what M2M/IOT is

Lack of understanding what a smart city is, by most of the organisations contracted by Government to deliver and advise smart cities

HS Broadband everywhere, free WIFI access, co-ordinated approach, central authority, Mostly in APAC.

Water Supply; Sewerage, Waste Management and Remediation Activities

On behalf of an organisation

Micro business (up to 9 staff)

sustainability sector is important. specifically around electronic waste.

access to finance for micro businesses. more than £500-£3000

larger and more varied categories of tax credits to help start ups

too much emphasis on mentoring. application forms are too long. assessor's are too close minded and lack the ability to appreciate new business models. the patenting process is too burdensome. it should not cost to find out if the idea is not novel. if anything, more mentors who can assess the likelihood of being granted a patent for free are needed, not ad hoc business advice.

stop forcing micro businesses to partner with advisors, universities, etc. banks are not going to lend. funds should be distributed via lotteries. companies should pass a minimum threshold to be eligible for the lottery. UK manufacturers demand to own the patent in order to build simple prototypes. This motivates entrepreneurs to search for overseas manufacturers. Inexpensive 3d CAD designs cost a fortune. It's scandalous. We should be able to go to, say, the British Library with our ideas and have someone help us translate the idea in to a 3d image - for free and without them claiming credit. While we are there, we should get a list of recommended manufacturers who will help us develop the prototype without taking our IP. Most importantly, acknowledge that the bureacrates you have in place simply strangle innovation through their decision-making.

the skills are simple. people with ideas. there is no one degree that can address all the skills needed. the ideas are more important. government and industry should invest in the ideas. they should not judge the ideas. just invest in them. they should, however, judge the quality of the individual. just not the idea.

we sell goods and services on our website.

we solicit feedback on the user's experience. if staff can address those needs, we have the right staff.

benefits include lower costs, can outsource tasks internationally to contractors. we use the cloud for our website/e-commerce

full cloud adoption is expensive.

it is a waste of time. the international market has this covered. companies will migrate over when they are ready. jobs in cloud services will always be outsourced to contractors in developing countries. the uk government hastens outsourcing by promoting cloud services. besides, many of the figures on the savings, etc, are bogus.

companies should say on their website what data they are willing to share with the public. they should take requests for data types and start collecting the information. companies should operate under a Freedom of Information Act governance structure, tailored for industry considerations (legal, privacy, etc)

The government website offering statistics for big data is a mess. The government should set an example in the first instance. Whomever is managing the process currently is failing. Government should find out why. Your barriers are likely to be similar to the industry's.

Similar to above. Universities should collect data allowing them to increase their commercialisation rates. Big data is only good when it starts from a problem it is trying to solve, collects the necessary data that reveals this problem and then makes changes to processes, people and technology.

Statisitical analysis is not important. People who have tangible work experience identifying, analysing and solving problems are key. Academia do not have these skills as they do not work hand on in companies. At most, they consult at a distance. Big data is useful in the hands of people who have a history of consulting. I do not mean the McKinsey's of this world. I mean consultants who work at multiple levels within an organisation and take responsibility for delivering change.

when will this survey end? why is there no progress bar? how inconsiderate. countries are in competition over placement of their websites in search results. UK should acknowledge this reality and help UK companies appear first or second.

VAT is unhelpful. multilingual webpages are expensive chat forums are expensive facebook is unreliable- they keep closing my business page eventhough I have numerous likes! UK companies are silly about not advertising non competitor sites on their webpages

no way!!! abort survey!! huge

without a sound environmental (recapture) strategy, an Internet of Things strategy is selfish and unsustainable.

you can't change much through construction. anti clutter policies on highways make it difficult to place products on the streets. local councils are narrow minded.

the UK needs leaders to talk about what specific environmental or technological challenge they want to address. Boris Johnson backs the wrong horses but at least he addresses specific issues.

Information and Communication

On behalf of an organisation

Small business (10 to 49 staff)

The population that lives in rural areas is of as great importance because of the potential economic impact of better connectivity: not just through e-commerce but also the ability to reduce commuting congestion through viable home-working.

Distributed workforces made possible by always connected employees. Can potentially be used to reduce strain on public transport infrastructure and the roads.

Regulate BT Openreach to provide a less monopolistic service. Raise the target for minimum connectivity speed for ALL UK residents (including those in rural areas) to 15 MB/s. Encourage lending to SMB's from banks (the reality is that current lending is not flowing).

The UK business environment is well structured for information economy enterprise but the residential and private user-base requires higher internet access speeds to be more valuable consumers.

Better educate our children to see technology as vital & lucrative (now we have such inspirational role models for them). Carefully manage the patent system. Encourage commercial development of University projects.

Better education in English (communication with correct grammar & spelling) and technical skills (Maths, Physics, Electronics, Computer Sciences).

We use and provide integrated technology systems to make our residential lives more productive and enjoyable. We are at the forefront of making the internet of things a useful and efficient force in modern lives.

We work in technology so we are well informed on the best practices and seek to implement them. We hire the most talented people we can find to work here (and sadly they are often not UK-born because the quality of UK candidates is often significantly below that of similar aged people from Australia, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia etc).

Always-on access to data and in-built data redundancy. Connectivity issues (either from the ISP or from local cabling, such as BT's creaking copper infrastructure) are the major difficulty as they interrupt communication with the cloud.

We have fully adopted a wide range of cloud services.

Better internet connectivity for all UK residents with a minimum target broadband speed of 15 MB/s. Encourage and legislate the roll out of fibre infrastructure.

Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities

Business representative organisation/trade body

I would add: 1) Embedded, NFC and mobile, although they might also be considered under the umbrella of IoT. 2) Efficient spectrum management to ensure that there is optimum growth capacity & performance/reliability and associated with the minimum of necessary infrastructure investments e.g. Weightless Initiative, Fibre-to-the-Home (freeing demand upon wireless capacity), etc. 3) eGov 2.0 & 3.0 (Web 2.0 and 3.0) and related aspects associated with Future Internet, e-Identification

Public expectations and demands for new mobile or Internet based services. Government drives and investments to promote greater efficiency within public services. Technology advances. Investment environment. Accessibility to skilled labour and motivated thought leaders.

Through joint collaboration back the best possible opportunities to exploit European opportunities - don't leave Europe all to the Germans and French (and a few Irish) to exploit. Promote UK technology adoption exploiting international successes such as the Raspberry Pi. Seek opportunities to encourage innovation, especially ideas with export potential. Make the UK IPR process cheaper and easier to encourage more UK generated ideas to be protected and, published. Encourage a focus upon quality e.g. encompassing privacy and security features needed by the market. Work towards preventing standards from stifling innovation through their over-dominance. Provide a research welcoming environment. Through an evolving Gov. policy (the right soft leg./hard leg. mix) make the boundaries large enough and as clear as possible. Boundaries reinforce the emphasis upon 'quality'.

Don't know. Perhaps more information could be made available and publicized too.

The UK Gov. could formalize a process for funded field testing within public services to encourage transition from lab-to-field. Ideally this would be where there are potential public service opportunities from the R&D. Every public service should have an innovation adoption strategy and open proposal/tender process in association with local industry and academia.

Innovation. Leadership. International experience. Technology skills. I am unsure if there are enough people in the education pipeline and the question rather depends upon the evolution of from the demand side. Industry and Government should publicise the wealth of future employment and venture opportunities, perhaps making more public the UK successes both at home and internationally.

The Internet is essential to connecting with markets, keeping abreast of customer needs and interacting in real-time around the world quickly and efficiently. It minimizes the need for time-consuming and expensive travel. It also provides an opportunity to learn what others are doing and retrieve valued data and information.

Through engagement in European and Member State initiatives and, working within the ICT sector. There is insufficient resources devoted to training which arguably limits potential maximum efficiency being attained.

Cloud use offers many advantages but it is not more widely exploited due to a number of concerns. Risks to access, content ownership, access rights, data security are amongst the greatest challenges.

See response to question 9.

Like a number of Banks who received the support from the Government through them providing lender of last resort there needs to be a trusted party's commitment to maintaining a stable and secure Cloud environment. Suitable hard and soft legislation is need to support the shaping of commercial Cloud landscape which builds user trust. Possible considerations include: Mandatory copies of data held within the UK borders: Support for an ABTA style organization to ensure the continuity of Cloud services even if Cloud providers cease to operate: A legally enforced commitment to maintain the terms offered when users accessed the service or to return data to the user for free if there must be changes: An industry privacy and security code of conduct.

First and foremost devote time to understanding sources, types of of information. Second to assess how this information might contribute to meeting their current or future objectives. Thirdly see if there are potential new opportunities from the availability of this information. Fourthly assess how the information may be best processed and presented. Fifthly identify quality measures and controls to ensure that the informations true value is understood and monitored.

Open Data and Big Data need to be addressed with care and consistency. Open Data use guidelines would be assist in avoiding over reliance, security threats, legislation breaches, privacy challenges, etc.. Big Data and Open Data skills need to be addressed through appropriate education which addresses all aspects including data analysis/statistical tests of relevance.

Maths, Psychology, Philosophy and ICT are the key skills. It is important to avoid the Big Mess from Big Data in being able to formulate the questions, understand the potential challenges of shared information and the limitations, grasp the computational processes to derive and measure value and, know the potential and limitation of ICT.

Government can define policies which encourage world class trusted Internet accessibility and performance. UK companies should be encouraged by Government to communicate in appropriate ways adapted to the user messages which engender trust and confidence in ICT including, promotion to users.

The principle challenges are reliable and high speed connectivity, information security, ICT technology and service costs, particularly mobile/roaming charges.

M2M applications are so broad it is impossible to pin-point a value. M2M adoption would benefit from the value proposition being studied and shared.

Time. Eventual technology convergence and maturity will overcome the Internet of silos. Noting that the Internet of silos creates some important and valued "fire-breaks" preventing future security breaches from unrestricted contagion. Silos are not necessarily bad and indeed can be good. Government should encourage industry to determine an IoT road-map based on structured arguments and supporting data.

Lacking Government investment and Government appreciation of the value opportunity. Lack of a trusted environment, remembering that we are building upon the Internet with all its many known flaws (ref. issues with Cloud, privacy, security, governance, etc.).

Cambridge and City of London. Perhaps elsewhere too.

Local Governments do not want to share data and probably never will. Look at the Smart City environment across Europe today for proof, each city with its own application and no/very limited sharing of information. Outside of Europe there is evidence of virtualization of devices and data with what appears to be the deliberate intent to mislead the public (ref. Presentation by SAP of Japanese Internet connected radiation sensors).

Real and virtual world both have value. Establishing trust is key. Security must be agile. Privacy protection and public privacy education not only positively impacts individual freedoms it also protects all society critical processes which require authentication of identities e.g. On-line banking, eCommerce, voting, etc. = reduced operator costs, wider trusted participation; increased security and safety.

Information and Communication

Micro business (up to 9 staff)

Cloud is core tech which drives the others. Data curation is issue in knowledge economy

Realisation by users that services are available when and where they want. Change in value as time and place increase in meaning

Find ways to bridge between human service design and technologies.

Division between academia and business remains great as rewards for academics are still biased to more research and papers not risks of commerialisation. Good environement of design innovation but not transferred to govt/local agencies

Open innovation platforms and sandboxes for discovering similar work/new partners, places to try ideas and clear financial aid in scaling up (not starting up).

Crossover skills of art/design plus coding/manufacturing still missing. STEAM education idea seems worthwhile

Better mobile communication networks everywhere (still very patchy in country). New businesses in media creation and distribution cannot work without core pipelines

By working in partnership with other micro businesses with skills needed (not direct employment - co-working)

Use cloud for data and media storage. Allows work sharing across users and places. Slow/non-existent mobile data links cause problems

Faster, better mobile data links that are clearly identified and advertised where they are available. Be clear where we can do business.

Information and Communication

Yes e-security Organisational authentication online eID Child Protection online - so children can learn online and access information safely

Trusted websites that can recognised Internationally

Find a way to authenticate the origin and source of information

Legislation is poor in the are of Internet, e-commerce, SnS, data protection and the term of what consists of 'consent' online.

Motivate investors to invest in the UK research... like with the Patent Box initiative...

We need to build a strong skills in accountability and audit - regulatory authority for online contractual exchanges, if Scotland could manage this area they they would be managing a core area of the Internets Future.

ensure the CTO is up todate

The suggested expansive use and quantity of data sets held by private organsations is alarming and cause for concern, especially when it has been officially recognized by the WEF that “Who has data about you? And Where Is the data about you located? Are impossible to answer today” (World Economic Forum, 2013, p. 2). The concerns that stem from ‘data processing, collection and transfer’ and how an individuals data will be used, that is held within data sets undertaken by private organsations. Therefore there is the need to review “the operation and effectiveness of what constitutes consent” (Liberty, 2007). This has particularly been picked up in the area of loosing control over ones data...

Increase the funding for Universities in Computing Research... to look into authentication of organisations and the development for audit trailing data within data sets. For example in the areas where there is ‘data mining’, ‘functioning creep’ and ‘data portability’.

Increase the funding for Schools of Computing...like with nurses... subsides the educational fees in targeted areas.

Set up a UK Congress for ICT with WCIT WISTA input.

Server disruption, malware and phishing

Scotland IS, Scottish Enterprise but the best has been some of the linkedin forums for IT professionals

On behalf of an organisation

Accessibility and application will determine growth opportunities.

Ability to respond to 'CHANGE' bearing in mind quality, skills, knowledge and flexibility. If the sector has highly skilled people with a huge knowledge on how to be innovative with little resources it we serve as an advantage to the sector which is very competitive.

Partnership and collaboration working have become house-hold names,. In reality there are challenges to unlock their potential. Transparency and openness should be the foundation, so that every other element relating to having a robust information economy will become a reality. If resources are hawked and ICT outcomes are ambitious it produces an 'unsettled' economy instead of a thriving economy. We want to ensure that we are taking advantage of being a 'Global City' with high quality goods and services as well as technology that is reliable, fast and consistent for others to adapt. There must be terms and conditions that are agreed to play the role of a 'spring board' with realistic and manageable outcomes bearing in mind costs with proper monitoring and evaluation systems in place to monitor progress and unforeseen contingencies.

We are living in a 'World' that expects the delivery/ work done yesterday for tomorrows presentation. Timing is crucial in business and if the time is wrong every other thing goes wrong. You can have the greatest idea, vision or product, the most important element in a business is 'TRUST'. If you have a certain time you open and don't stick to it customers go somewhere else. This is the first barrier to overcome. Technology helps to reduce travelling time and late appointments by speaking via a mobile phone or attending an on-line-conference. Often times we think of our business and neglect the environment and that is why 'Climate Change' is affecting us all. Bio-degradable products, recycling more,pollution, oil-spillage and wasting water all have their benefits and effects on the environment. The government can't give what it doesn't have and financial assistance from other'Governments is a cajole. At the same time, if you don't have the right information technology systems in place you are already disqualified to compete among multi-corporations that have invested enough in both human, financial and intellectual property to dominate the business scene. Every business has a culture that it embraces and if a business struggles with having a 'Customer First Approach',then it will create partnership barriers especially being limited in accessing joint-working opportunities. A product without customers is a 'dream to come true'. Businesses must learn how to engage in politics, meaning branding their products in a way that the Government will be willing to procure and give out contracts to viable and credible businesses. And this includes paying tax and dues on time and delivering contracts that promote and 'celebrate business success. '

The government has to provide enough financial and mentoring support for business start-up. Otherwise we have mushroom businesses spring up over-night with little or no capacity to break-even. Research and innovation are crucial for development but the results are not accessed at the right time even though we have technology to support access of information. Some businesses cannot afford the software or the salary of the staff to operate it.

Highly qualified staff trained in the UK. We tend to bring in staff and consultants from other countries that don't have a base here and share limited resources. The Government can't afford to have a low-skilled workforce as technology has stages in terms of its operations. More people need to b e trained and our Schools, Colleges and Universities should be well equipped with top of the range quality information technology.

We have a website and have joined various businesses as members so as to access quality information and provide a Customer First Service. Most of our transactions are done online and we only print when necessary to contribute towards the carbon emission promise and to save energy by switching off electrical appliances when not in use..

Giving staff an induction on the use of equipment as 'Health and Safety' measures. Equipment bought has a guarantee and is of high quality. We compare prices on-line and at a cost-effective rate. For best practice, we work in partnership with an umbrella organisation that supplies all the necessary paper work in electronic form.

As a small business it will take a while to fully explore the benefits of cloud services.

The Government has to invest more in the UK's provision of cloud services.

They need to build in the capacity to manage Big Data.

They need to have the licence to do it and the resources to manage it.

Literacy and numeracy skills are essential, how to critically analyse data and use information technology for back-up systems.

Provide literature as information and guidance to support them.

Reading information through Google.

Through case studies and best practice.

Information and Communication

There needs to be compulsory programming education in schools to reallycreate a competitive edge in the UK

THere needs to be a total change it the way it is taught in schools currently its worse than useless with children being taught how to use powerpoint etc. This will not revolutionise the economy.

Information and Communication

On behalf of an organisation

Small business (10 to 49 staff)

e-health! Smart supply Chains (eg Smart Grids)!

We see opportunities for a new “trading paradigm” for data rich assets in the space where Open Innovation meets Big Data

There are major policy issues here. Eg how do we deal with the international nature of data? How about ownership, permission, trust when data is used in unforeseen ways

Moving policy forward quickly to catch up with the fast moving status quo

Standards, guidelines, good practises which cut across/harmonize the traditional stovepipe sectors

We (span out from a UK government think tank) manage an international consortium of blue chips, academics and policy makers to understand the landscape where Open Innovation meets Big Data

We “borrow” them from University of Cambridge

The challenges lie in the global nature of clouds and issues of security

The challenges lie in the global nature of clouds and issues of security

Alignment of practises at least with Europe ..possibly world wide. There is an opportunity for thought leadership here

Understand the value of data and find ways to trade it! There is a perception (put about by Open Data) that data has to be given away for free!!

Understand the difference between Open Data and Open Innovation!!

Lots .. inspire new trading models ; help people with seeminly incompatible data sets work together ; fix the policy gaps

Training at a much higher level than programming computers. This is about Meta Data

We are reasonably good at this

We see the opportunity to run a new consortium in this space – it is a natural theme to bring companies and academics together to learn faster

Lack of standards – fragmentation – incompatibility of solutions

Its moving forward fast (see Birmingham) .. but not as fast as in New York

Getting the right players in the room and inspiring them (we are on this case!!)

Look at the New York project

Information and Communication

On behalf of an organisation

Small business (10 to 49 staff)

Yes, and the IoT is by far the most important of all.

Regarding the IoT it will be the availability of a ubiquitous, custom-designed radio solution that can deliver $2 radios with 10 year battery lives that will spur massive growth (eg see Weightless.org)

The Internet of Things (IoT) has generated enormous interest over the last few years. Predictions of 50 billion connected devices are frequently made, along with enormous increases in productivity and growth. But few seem to be focussing on what is actually required to make it happen.
The concept of the IoT, often known as machine-to-machine (M2M), is that myriad devices from electricity meters to dustbins to street lamps to home appliances could work better if they were connected to a central network. Meters could send readings more frequently and be told to reduce household loading in periods of peak demand. Dustbins could signal when nearly full, optimising the collection process. Car park spaces could be monitored individually with drivers directed to a free space. The applications are near endless, but they are not really an “IoT” – more a simple machine to central database connectivity. It’s hard to imagine someone browsing the Internet to discover whether their dustbin is full, or one dustbin talking to another. Instead, each machine sends data directly back to the central database run by its “owner”.
An IoT network has three components:
• Sensors that go into devices to measure something – such as the amount of rubbish in a dustbin.
• A communications system, typically wireless, that is used to send the data from the sensor to the network.
• A central database that collects the information from a particular set of devices (eg all the dustbins in Cambridge) and generates some outcome (a modified collection schedule).
The first is relatively trivial. Sensors are widely available at almost zero cost. Attention is focussing on the other two. Indeed, most attention is given to the database issue. There is an assumption that the IoT will generate vast amounts of data and that this will require new methods of analysis. An industry has developed around the concept of “big data” with software to deliver distributed processing. However, it’s debatable whether there really is an issue here. Take smart metering – with about 24 million buildings in the UK if each meter generated two daily readings of about 100bytes each the daily data volume would be 4.8GBytes – less than the memory on most laptops today. The processing is fairly trivial. There will be hundreds of different applications but each one will likely have similar data volumes and be handled on different machines. The proponents of big data suggest that the real gains will come when all these different data sources are combined to allow clever cross-processing, but it is hard to see how jointly analysing smart meter readings and car park space availability will be valuable. Of course, innovative new ideas may emerge but these will happen after the IoT is already well established with available data sets. We do not need to worry about them now. So the storage and processing of the data generated is not an issue.
This leaves the second element – the communications network. It is tempting to believe that in a world of broadband mobile connectivity this should not be an issue, but the type of networks that are perfect for people are far from ideal for machines. The generic requirements for IoT communications are:
• Extremely low cost – ideally less than $2 for the initial hardware and less than $2 a year for the communications fee.
• A battery life of 10 years or more – nobody wants to frequently replace the batteries in their smart dustbin!
• Ubiquitous coverage – manufacturers and providers need to know that wherever the devices end up they will be able to communicate.
No available communications technology can deliver this. Short range systems such as Bluetooth and Zigbee provide low cost and long battery life but only islands of coverage. Cellular systems provide near-ubiquitous coverage but at high cost and with very limited battery life. The problem is clear when we look at the bids for the communications network for the UK’s smart meters. The three remaining bidders between them are offering four different wireless technologies in an effort to try to find something that approximates to the requirements. Until there is a single, dominant and obvious wireless technology, widely deployed around the world, the vision of the IoT cannot be delivered. This is the show-stopper for the IoT, the reason it has not happened to date, and yet something that seems to be little recognised by IoT proponents.
There are proposed solutions to this. There are some proprietary technologies in the US and France – but proprietary wireless technologies never make it to global standards. There are some attempts to tweak 4G technologies to be more IoT-friendly, but this akin to designing a pick-up truck by tweaking a Ferrari. The most promising is an open standard called Weightless, pioneered out of Cambridge and with the backing of companies such as ARM and Cable & Wireless. This makes use of the emerging TV “white space” spectrum to deliver a technology custom-designed for the specific requirements for machine communications.
Having the wireless technology available is only the first step. Networks must then be deployed and devices upgraded to “smart” status. Again it is easy to assume that an industry that is so excited about the IoT will just get on and do this – and it may. But the problem is that many of the main applications are Governmental, or heavily regulated. For example:
• The smart grid communications network is being procured by DECC.
• Almost all smart city applications are run, or paid for, by local authorities.
• Many healthcare applications would require the support of the NHS.
• Transport applications such as road congestion monitoring are the responsibility of the Highways Agency, or for trains of Network Rail.
Not only are the applications biased towards the public sector, so are the benefits. Improved productivity would occur most immediately in delivery of public services, and general improvement in GDP and productivity are of direct relevance to Government. It seems likely that Governmental involvement in the IoT would accelerate its availability and indeed may be necessary to bring it about. In this early stage, intelligent Government procurement may also be an excellent stimulus to innovation.
How to proceed in this space is an area for debate. It may be that the Government should initially develop a “positioning paper” on IoT setting out how it believes it can benefit the UK and the steps it sees as necessary to bring it about. With its ability to enable assisted living in the home, reduce carbon emissions, lower congestion and engender growth this may be one of the most important current innovations that a Government could enable.
In summary, the key issues are:
• The IoT is critically important to address societal problems and deliver growth but may not happen if left to the private sector.
• Governments should put together a holistic strategy for the IoT spanning myriad departments from health to transport to energy and including local and regional authorities.
• Intelligent Government procurement of appropriate wireless infrastructure services and smart devices could rapidly drive innovation and speed the delivery of benefits.

As above, most IoT systems require Government procurement which is not yet happening.

By being a smart procurer of innovative new solutions. This will provide a massive boost to start-ups and similar who otherwise would not be able to generate early revenue.

We use Cloud systems to provide complete network management services to operators of complex radio networks.

Mostly through hand-picked recruitment of experienced staff we already know or come strongly recommended. This is relatively practical within a “cluster” such as Cambridge.

By generating as much data as possible through the procurement of IoT solutions such as Weightless, and then making this data publicly available.

See (3) above. Note also recent reports suggesting that the IoT could boost productivity by around 1% per year – there is no other new concept that would have this same massive influence on growth and productivity in the UK.

A single, general purpose, wireless IoT network is the key requirement to enable widespread IoT deployments. This will allow data from myriad applications to flow through a single system in a similar format, enabling cross-application data processing as appropriate.
However, it is far better to concentrate on actually implementing any IoT, regardless of whether some applications are in “silos” – which they inevitably will be – than trying to produce a “perfect” solution and never delivering anything as a result.

The underlying wireless technology. See description in (3) above.

Support and procurement from City authorities is needed to encourage companies like Neul to roll out the necessary wireless technology solutions.

In Singapore there is clear Government drive to implement a smart city with working groups established and strong signals from the highest levels in Government encouraging participation.

On behalf of an organisation

Cloud, as it’s now known is just a hosted service; it’s only the marketing men that have given it this year’s tech “buzzword”. We are currently using a hosted service as our secondary datacentre and another for a core line of business application, SAP.

The long term strategy is to remove the primary datacentre, which is growing tired and in need off considerable investment and move to the secondary datacentre.

The key benefits to this are the speed in which we could move and the “ready-made” facilities.

We as an organisation do not need large investment and the overhead of maintaining a location, power and the plethora of other responsibilities that come with the management of large datacentres.

To date the only issues have been around migration away from one datacentre to another, and these are mainly around data logistics.

Overall the experience has been positive which has allowed us to make the decisive action of reducing the data contained on premise and utilising shared environments.

Government should look to investment in Government run and provided datacentres.

From first-hand experience in local government, the benefits of centralising datacentres was visibly cost beneficial.

Local parishes being able to share data resources with large boroughs not only allowed for a shared data & cost model, but also to the reduction in physical local datacentres and the cost benefits associated with this.

This logic if applied commercially would benefit the Small/Medium businesses sector.

Effective exploitation and usage of any collections of data within a business can only be achieved by first ensuring you have a high quality, well defined, and strongly managed/governed dataset to build upon, and secondly by having the correct strategy, tools and infrastructure to take advantage of this data. Traditionally, businesses have been shown to be guilty of “data overload” where there are lots of duplicate/misrepresented/unused data items, making it difficult to determine what should be used, and whether it is correct. This is further complicated by multiple data silos, as well as multiple or dispersed operational reporting, MI reporting, and analytics departments within one organisation.
When expanding these considerations into a “Big Data” space, the same rules apply, although they need to be considered from a slightly different perspective:
• While rare intermittent data quality errors will be hidden by the aggregation/trending that occurs in big data analysis, fundamental failures in aligning converging inputs could result in significantly incorrect analysis which is harder to recognise and correct at a later period. Governing the interfaces, definitions, and their quality must be a proactive, continual improvement process.
• A Big Data strategy needs to be thought out in even greater detail than a standard data strategy… the risks of getting it wrong can result in a excessive or wasted investment in high spec hardware, Big Data consultancy, and new skill building.
• Consideration of how and why data is gathered in the first place should not be taken lightly. While there may be a temptation to collect and store every piece of customer/product/transactional/etc. data available to allow for a “potential” analysis at a later date, such activities may come at a price when it comes to
o Legal – Are you allowed to hold this data?
o Customer Experience – Will your customer face slower service due to increased required inputs or analytics systems logging every transactional event? Will they find the resulting increased knowledge of them shown by your customer services/ application/ marketing campaigns intrusive?
o Ability to exploit – Will the business analytics team be able to understand what they have available to them, and effectively use it?
In general, before trying to do it all, with all the data you have, it is imperative that the data is collected, managed, and then gradually exploited.

Through practising what it is preaching, and (more importantly), publicising significant wins achieved through this method. Real-life usage of the large sets of government/public sector data to bring about demonstrable efficiency gains or service improvements. E.g.

- Public Transport – Analysis of Bus/Tube/Rail transactional data to determine investment needs and resulting benefits realised through investment

- Health Services – Scientific research using the masses of health data maintained by the health services

- National Security – Electronic comms analysis etc.

Also, the provision of government resources (computing power and/or data itself), and partnering with those in business/academia/charities who are undertaking Big Data projects which could delivery social and economic benefits to the UK as a whole. Research charities, (for example Cancer Research) could struggle to fund the necessary skills and infrastructure needed to utilise Big Data in their research at optimum levels.

A similar level of commitment can be seen by the US government in 2012 which introduced it’s “Big Data Research and Development Initiative“ - http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/03/29/big-data-big-deal

Through focussed modules in this area. Generally speaking, university and higher education can be light in their focus on data storage, management and analysis in a practical sense in applicable courses such as Computer Science and Business Studies… it is left for the students to be educated by their employers at a later stage.

Universities are obviously already massively involved in research and development, so it goes without saying that they should ensure that their methods of data collection, manipulation and analysis are at the cutting edge of technology.

The opportunities of online economy are endless – whatever we do today offline is an opportunity to do online.

The principle barriers are opening up the channels for small business, the third sector, the public to conduct online sales without the overhead of an IT team. The key is to examine the barriers to online versus offline. Cost (access to affordable resources), Capability (people and skills), Capacity (infrastructure)

Providing access to skills and capability to develop the online experience by becoming a global centre of excellence on innovation and reducing the threat of commoditised services via cheaper off-shoring. Creating an affordable resource pool.

The B2B environment whilst using the same principles of the B2C often has different specifics which makes the cost of developing The online solutions prohibitive to the smaller players. The support for small businesses if we want these to survive and thrive. The cost of logistics, the taxation loop holes that drive warehouses offshore.

Ensuring that the infrastructure and bandwidth exists to enable rich media technologies is ahead of the progression of requirements. Ensuring legislation protects the consumer but supports the growth and is relevant to size of the entity and purchases involved.

Advice for trading online comes from industry players – website developers etc but little outside of this and it is fragmented and often learning because of the relative infancy of the market – the world often quotes the Amazon experience – which is akin to the supermarket experience, cheap, convenient and standardised.

And where is online going, we have 3d printing, simulators, I want it now mentality, all devices capable of doing everything and anything we want, the typical worker now wants a consumer experience in the workplace.

Information and communication

Open Data; “Open Developers”

a. More developers ought to be trained

b. Computer Science ought to include teaching a number of programming languages

Technology: see Shift Happens

Open Funding:

a. the TSB calls are a waste of time

b. there should be ‘happiness is small numbers’

i. monthly support rather than big sums

ii. different types of funding for start-up, sustainability, R&D, rescue before bankruptcy or closing down

a. Benefits
i. Young enthusiastic creatives

b. Barriers
i. Not enough techno-expertise

ii. Not enough seed funding
iii. Mainly only VC style far too late

iv. Old ‘angels’ who are used to making money out of money

a. Talk to the SMEIA Committee whom I Cc

b. My attempts to find either clients or investors are a ‘proven track record’

a. Real programmers not just web related

b. Data Scientists

c. Open Knowledge Managers
i. What used to be librarians

My method to layer multi-dimensional data should be used to build smart knowledge portals

a. I’ve approached government whenever and wherever I could, but...

b. BIS could build a major flagship operation

My company consists of me, my laptop, a tablet and a non-smart phone

a. I continue to learn after having studied mathematics and computing

I’ve become an IBM Business Partner

I’m expected to pay which is impossible without having clients

Get access to well organised domains with files

Lead by example

a. Build Smart Knowledge Portals for Open Data

Organise ‘Knowledge Managers’

a. Do for the Nation what Teradata do for commerce: provide a uniform approach

Data Science, Knowledge Management

Provide quick and easy funding opportunities online

Funding to pay software developers and build a company

Going to Meetups and online

Software as a Service is my business model

Become agile, lean and mobile in terms of policy and attitude

I am German and have lived in Geneva before coming to London; See Shift Happens

On behalf of an organisation

Higher education should be recognised as a key sector. The success of the information economy will rest upon learning and advanced training, not just smart deployed technologies and services. Indeed, this is a critical “internet moment” for the higher education sector, and these information economy sectors have much to offer that moment.

The main driver of change will be Open Data, via Linked Data, especially from the public sector. This is critical to support the emerging Big Data economy.

There is a need for sustained research support in the area of Big Data, with a focus on i) lowering the cost for users who wish to exploit the massive amounts of data which are available online and ii) addressing the new privacy concerns, which emerge when so much data is available about people, but these data are distributed across a variety of sites, using different formats and schemas.

Benefit: The main benefit is the better understanding of the (dynamic) world, which can support better decision-making. This can be built on with effective support for training and research with Universities.
Barrier: Stakeholders not releasing their data; and fear of the effects of doing so. This can be overcome by programmes of joint research which demonstrate the advantages of openness, and the value to be gained from interconnecting data and services with others businesses.

The commercial success of the information economy will require data science training around the topics of: semantics, visualisation, statistical analysis, information extraction and machine learning. Both our business leaders and our engineers need to learn to leverage these things for business value. Learning is the key.

The basic skill that information economy workers and managers require is an understanding of “Data science”. This discipline must be supported by ICT and design skill, but is a field in its own right. The skills deficit in this field needs to be filled by targeting support on University initiatives, in particular those which are well suited to the needs of people already in work who need upskilling, such as The Open University and the part-time learning and emerging MOOC sector.

The Open University uses ICT in a number of innovative ways, most recently with the release of our “OU Anywhere” app, which provides students with easy access to their course content on mobile and tablet devices.
We were also one of the first universities in the UK to have content on iTunes U and today, along with Stanford in the US, are the top content providers in this channel. Both Stanford and The Open University have achieved over 60 million international downloads.
We were the first UK University to release all its public corporate data via our Data hub Data.Open (see http://data.open.ac.uk), and we continue to innovative around this with a range of business apps and services using linked data and semantics.

The Open University champions research-led teaching and innovation in all our core business units and we have effective training programmes for staff and leadership initiatives. In addition, we have a number of dedicated technology and innovation units including our Open Media Unit which provides services on all free learning we produce, and our Knowledge Media Institute which leads on the application of semantics and knowledge services to learning – driving our vision of an information economy future.

We use cloud services for a range of business uses such as the deployment of high bandwidth content at scale. However, it is also of value for service discovery, service aggregation, and cloud interoperability.

The key to the success of business uptake is the integration and aggregation of data sources. Semantic and linked data technologies are critical here.

Government can clearly add value by seeking to harmonize regulation between the Telco and the IT industry on data privacy and security, connecting Linked Data and Big Data initiatives.

One clear requirement from Universities would be via the provision of Big Data ‘Science’ training for the next generation and for industries themselves. However, there are a number of additional research priorities that are very important.

The first key priority here is the development of research programmes for novel methods which automatically analyse, enrich, annotate and integrate data sources, to maximise the value of these data analytics to users and developers. The pragmatic goal needs to be to minimise the effort users need to invest to go from ‘raw data’ to data that can be effectively used in applications.

A second priority would be support for the development of tools (data search engines) to facilitate the tasks of locating and selecting relevant data sources on the basis of specific user requirements, both at domain (e.g., I need data about milk consumption in UK) and meta level (this data must come with an Open Database License).

Finally, we need to support the development of usable and efficient online privacy/personal information management technologies based on the construction of semantic models of personal information, data propagation and their consequences on users’ online exposure. In particular, it is essential to support web users in monitoring, visualising and making sense of their own online activities and the data associated with these, in order to maintain some degree of control over their online exposure.

As stated in the response to Q5; plus support programmes for new big data workflow engines such as Hadoop.

IoT development needs to include support for semantic and service technologies, to ensure that the data exchanged by the upcoming multitude of devices on the new internet can both scale and be effective.

One significant barrier is in the support and training of a new generation of computing and design students to help create and sustain this new industry. The Open University has redesigned its first level computing syllabus to help fill this emerging gap. Our “My Digital Life” course offers a learning infrastructure that allows complete novices to experiment with, and learn about, Internet-of-Things technologies by engaging in a range of activities that include collaborative and collective programming of real-world sensing applications (http://bit.ly/fN0xuk). Extending the reach of such initiatives is critical to our future business success in this field.

The Open University has been working with Milton Keynes Council and a range of corporate and SME partners to take forward the MK Smart City initiative, which is highly developed. As a new city, this has particular potential in global export markets for city systems in newly urbanising areas. Our HEFCE Catalyst fund application, now shortlisted, proposes to underpin this initiative with a large-scale data hub to support finding solutions to bottlenecks to growth arising from water, energy and transport demands (a full proposal is due for 22 April).

One valuable government level initiative would be the provision of free, (or very cheap) city-wide, robust wifi to improve the experience and uptake of more mobile and ubiquitous services.
There needs to be a single forum or partnership locally where win-wins can be identified, e.g. measures to reduce water consumption will also reduce energy consumption (because so much domestic water use involves heating water).

We see the main potential to be in supporting the UK’s leading position in taking a view across whole urban areas, with Government assisting with identifying export opportunities in overseas markets, e.g. rapidly urbanizing areas, where the smart city concept is not yet developed. The key here is that always investing in hard infrastructure solutions to support growth may be unsustainable. There are more cost-effective soft infrastructure approaches (such as using data feedbacks to promote behaviour change) that can reduce the need for additional hard infrastructure.

Worshipful Company of Informations Technologists / Pacpec Investments

Information and Communication

The fundamental growth areas underlying these are software and bandwidth. Electronic payment processes will also grow hugely as will information services (on line data bases from all kinds of sources including sensor based data bases). Storage issues in terms of hardware and software will also be huge opportunities. Several of the 5 areas are 'buzz word' terms that are virtually meaningless.
Furthermore, this does not address the time frame being considered; my comments relate to the period from now until 2020 only

Aging populations and demand for increased productivity at the macro level. For other areas the need to reduce costs of operation in a global economy will affect all organizations including governements. Most importantly the growth of citizen involvement in all aspects of their lives fed by the Social Media revolution. And investment in technology will continue to drive innovation.

Educate young people; make relevant courses at university level free and increase fees for parasitical professions such as the law and social services. Alllow unlimited immigration of people with skills that the information industry (however defined) requires.
Set up a DARPA like government department reporting at the Cabinet level that will issue research contracts.
Make sure that there are tehnologically savvy people in policy making positions and not the drones that seem to be commonplace today.

Lack of knowledge in the governement, accademia and industry at highest levels; we have the wrong people in place.
The financial industry in UK is a dead loss when it comes to understanding and investing in technology. We are behind virtually every other major and developing country this area.
A major benefit that should be built on is the ability of UK technologists to strive in a poor support environment. The will is there but not the environment.

They all need money; not government money in teh traditional way as that has too many strings. DARPA like or NASA like in early days would be good role model. MITI ii Japan was good for many years although not now. China has a good model.

Software development; financial venture skills; telecommunication skills; all digital engineers; most importantly qualified managers who understand technology based issues not general law or finance.
Great lack of these skills now.
Get the universities to produce these; make it atractive to go into hard disciplines rather than easy ones.

All my companies are in the Internet space. (Small 'i' for Internet means small minds; UK is only major country with this peculiarity). The above ways are no longer innovative; if you are not usiing them now you are backward.

Cloud computing is just another buzz word that describes the computer utility concept that has been around successfully for 40 years. It can be and is used for all aspects of a business infrastructure in either a utility mode (where the user or a third party provides the software) or application mode (where the vendor provides the software).
The major benefiits are cost and scalability as well as security and the ability to quickly apply new technology, especially software and communications capability. A utility can also provide rapid local expansion across the globe.

For most organizations it is ignorance and the desire by in-house organizations to 'keep conttrol'!

Track what is happening (possible useful role for government to support at the macro level as the Chinese do). Difficult to mandate as every industry is different. Encourage industry associations to share experiences. Get the DARPA agency to support research and demonstration projects in key industries.
Data by itself is useless; it needs to be translated into information and then to knowledge. So define what is going to be done with the data and the concommitant benefits. Promote successs (the vendors will probably do anyway!)

In all these areas provide aggressive security and effective prosecution of those who steal trade secrets. Open Data is another buzz word!

This is not just one quesstion.
The universities and OTHER researrch institutions should compete for grant funds allocated by industry and partner with associations or other groupings of companies in the executio of the projects. It is no good doing research in a vacuum. If there are well managed organizations involved from the start in research, the results will feed into the commercial world by osmosis (see growth of the Internet and the Web as examples).
It is not the role of Universities to exploit the benefits of Big Data (whatever that may be); that is a non sequitor.
It must be organizations that do so.

They vary by industry; to be succcessful organizations must be able to apply the analysis. Most importantly they must be able to adjust their organizations which means intelleigent and knowledgable management as well as flexible labor.
The education system is not geared to this at the application level and probably should not be. It needs to produce generalist skills which industries must appply to their specific needs and opportunities.

Make it advantageous through taxation. Use the carrot appproach.
Provide security and enforcement; the US is a good role model. The UK is renowned for loose security together with countries like Nigeria. Government must ensure that its police and justice systems are world leaders in this regard. That needs education and suppport.
Ensure that telecommunications bandwidth is cheap and available. Don't allow monopolies or oligopolies in this area. Encourage competition at the expense of established organizations. Let any organization set up neworks. Get rid of regulations and regulators wherever possible yet prosecute vigorously those who break the law.

Other peer companies, vendors (always the best source of information on their competitors), associations, consultant companies, media, etc. You do not win by collecting information but you sure lose if you don't!

Definition of this in Wikipedia is too limited as it only refers to RFID connnection. There are other means of linking passive devices (sensors) and active devices (machines). In my sectors there is no direct application.
For the economy as a whole there are enormous cost, environmental and competitive benefits from networked devices and machines, For example, ATC (air traffic control) can reduce pollution, cost and time travel (hence increase productivity) through spacing based on improved network connection technology. Simlar for all traffic operations.
Device to machine communications can eliminate the need for cash which would have huge benefits to the economy (watch Singapore)

Who cares? Do what works. We do not need any central, general directives. Just make it possible and profitable in industry areas. The legal systems need to keep pace. That is where Governement needs to spend effort far more than it does now. Loook at digital property rights for example.
Again security needs to a fundamental process as the openings for criminal and terrorist activity will be

Inertia, legal systems, lack of knowledge and lack of incentives

Lack of knowledge; inertia; unions who want to protect jobs or inflexibility in organizations; poor management.
If by Governement this question refers to 'Central Government', then it needs to impower and encourage local government (whether city, town, county or village) to adopt technology and processes that are relevant. Provide the people with incentives to vote in knowledgable representatives and then have managers who can plan and implement. Make sure there are local govenment managers in UK who are qualified (e.g. with Masters degrees in Public Administraion with specialty in technology as there are in US)

Look at cities like Palo Alto an Austin. But do NOT jsut look at what is happening now. Look to lead not follow.

While we believe that these five sectors are hugely important we would add a sixth sector: sustainability/climate change. As energy prices continue to rise and awareness of the tangible threats posed by climate change grows, the information economy will help to provide innovative solutions to the fundamental challenges of our time.

We believe that the internet is still at an early stage of development and offers huge opportunities to disrupt existing business models. The internet enables the creation of powerful networks of influential users which can drive disruptive change and progress. This is at the very core of the internet and big data.
With regard to sustainability, rising commodity costs such as energy, water and waste disposal, are forcing businesses to become more efficient in their consumption of environmental resources. We believe that government and businesses will increasingly look to the internet and big data to drive transparency of environmental efficiency within their supply chains.
We believe that the UK Government can play a key leadership role in promoting the use of information technology by encouraging businesses to transparently share efficiency improvements in the use of environmental resources.
The government must also ensure that businesses of all sizes have access to enabling technologies such as smart meters, in home displays and energy management software, so that they can efficiently measure and improve their own environmental performance.

SMEs are famous for their innovation and will remain integral to the UK’s successful information economy. Supporting them wherever possible is essential and we therefore welcome the Government Procurement Service’s (GPS) recent announcement that 10% of total government procurement now comes from SMEs.
However, our analysis of government spend suggests that large businesses are still disproportionately favoured in terms of winning procurement contracts. We used the internet, big data and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) processing to analyse government spend by department as reported on www.data.gov.uk.
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We would welcome greater clarity on how the government will measure its stated aim of a 25% increase in SME procurement in an effective and transparent way. Large organisations often find it hard to obtain high quality data on departmental spend with SMEs.
The government should continue to lead the way by ensuring that all data is aligned with open data principles (addressable, structured, traceable, and reliable). This will help ensure that the UK makes full use of the high-quality ICT services that its SMEs provide.

The English language, ideal time zone and popularity of London as a European business centre give the UK huge advantages. The UK should build on these natural advantages by placing much more emphasis on providing education and tax incentives to invest in new technological and creative ideals, particularly around the internet and big data.
The UK should brand itself as the “Silicon Island” where innovative ideas are proactively promoted through support from business, government and educational institutions. The themes in this consultation are directionally correct, but should also include sustainability/climate change where the UK Government has already taken steps to differentiate itself from the rest of the world.
We are concerned that certain issues on the green agenda are being side-lined due to the economic slowdown. New technologies can support the lead already taken by companies such as M&S to improve sustainability and security throughout supply chains, particularly relevant in wake of the horsemeat scandal. Initiatives such as the National Sustainable Public Procurement Programme must be backed and fully implemented across all government departments.
The UK should try and find a way to emulate New York City’s (NYC) approach to encouraging innovation. There are a number of excellent examples that Mayor Bloomberg and the NYC Government have promoted, such as a partnership with Cornell University to create a dedicated technology campus.
NYC has also invested directly in funds supporting small innovative businesses and has developed various tax incentives to support SMEs. The NYC Government encourages a strong and vibrant Venture Capital (VC) community which is investing in new creative ideas.
The Mayor of London’s ‘Smart London’ board is a good first step in achieving this.

In addition to greater procurement from SMEs, we encourage the government to continue implementing tax incentives for SMEs and VC firms whose activities are related to the themes outlined, such as the Enterprise Investment Scheme. Other SMEs, such as Funding Circle, have already suggested that a reduction in income tax on individuals wishing to lend to UK businesses would result in greater investment in a wide variety of SMEs.
There should also be greater recognition from other government departments of the role that the information economy can play in helping to meet their objectives. SMEs in particular are crucial in enabling the successful implementation of policy initiatives such as the CRC.
DECC, for example, should work with SMEs to find innovative solutions to reduce carbon emissions from industry supply chains and transportation. Only by fully quantifying these emissions can we make genuine progress in terms of meeting binding commitments on reducing the impact of climate change.
The UK should also leverage its university system to attract students and investments from around the world. While not directly linked to information technology, the UK should not create barriers where it has real and meaningful competitive advantages.

The UK must strongly encourage the combination of creativity with numerical and ICT skills in its education system. This unique blend will be vital if the UK’s information economy is to stand up to increasing competition from Asia and other developing regions.
In particular, programming, computer science and statistics should be encouraged in secondary education. Training more statisticians and ‘data scientists’ is critical.
The UK should encourage (not discourage as is the current practice) the best and the brightest in ICT skills to seek their education in the UK and give them good reasons to stay after their studies are complete.

We have used the internet, big data analytics and M2M integration of data to develop a powerful and innovative way for businesses to report, share and compare key environmental data in a free and open way. Over time this will help produce more efficient use of the planets resources. (see response for more detail)

We use rigorous IT hiring practices to ensure that the team has a deep knowledge and capability of data management and analytics. We spend considerable resources to ensure that we have the latest IT equipment whilst also making use of cloud computing throughout our production and operations.
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We also have VC investors who are well-skilled at how the internet and big data can be used to fundamentally disrupt an industry.

We believe that cloud computing is a cost effective way for small businesses in particular to source IT infrastructure. The UK Government should promote cloud based solutions.

They should actively join online networks in order to learn from one another and encourage best practice. After all, big data works best when businesses pool their data. amee enables such data pooling in a transparent way as all the contributed data is accessible to other users.
Big data has the potential to save time and money, for example with supply chain insight, provided it is presented and communicated in a user-friendly format. Businesses must be well connected to the internet and be willing to share key environmental data for free.

Government must help the private sector communicate the immense benefits that exist for SMEs and supply chain owners if they accurately collect and share big data. As such, government must also be at the forefront of efforts to secure the growing provision of data so that businesses and individuals continue to engage with the big data movement.
Government must lead the way by being open and transparent about all aspects of its supply chains. Where appropriate it should integrate its own big data platforms with relevant partners in the private sector to make all-encompassing, user-friendly online networks. An extension to mandatory environmental reporting would also help the success of big data analytics in field of sustainability.
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Open Data, whether big or small, helps everyone pool knowledge. Although issues regarding privacy and security are well known, by working with organisations such as the Open Data Institute (ODI) businesses can implement best practice.

We strongly agree with the government’s belief that the Internet of Things is an enabler of increased efficiency for business, especially in regard to supply chain management. More advanced online networks provide a new lens regarding supply chain risks and connect businesses that want to be transparent about sustainability. In the wake of the horsemeat scandal this is as important as ever.
M2M communication can help large-scale matching of supplier records and bring together financial and environmental data in a manageable way.

The General Council of the Bar of England and Wales

Barristers vary in their adoption of cloud services, from those who use no such services to those who make heavy utilisation of cloud services to enable ready access to client data in the course of a necessarily mobile business. There will also, undoubtedly, be a number of barristers who utilise cloud services without necessarily being aware that they are doing so (using remotely hosted email services, for example).
Whilst some of the lack of adoption is due to a lack of awareness of the opportunities offered by cloud services, it remains the case that concerns about compliance with data protection requirements and other regulatory compliance, both with implications for client confidentiality, are significant barriers to the adoption of cloud services by barristers. These are issues that can potentially be overcome, but require a degree of technical knowledge to resolve which is not universal. These issues are also barriers to adoption of cloud services by solicitors and other professionals but the self-employed nature of the Bar means that barristers are less likely to be in a position to employ staff to create and administer solutions to these issues.
The lack of certainty over these matters arises from the nature of cloud computing: the reliance on a remote third party to provide cloud services, with no control over the systems used in providing the services. Many cloud services providers also rely on outsourcing some or all of the hardware or software elements of the service to other third parties who may, or may not, be identified to the end user of the services.
4.4. A general overview of these issues can be found in the CCBE paper on Cloud computing (http://www.ccbe.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/NTCdocument/07092012_EN_CCBE_gui1_1347539443.pdf)
4.5. With regard to data protection, the data centres utilized by cloud services may be located outside the EEA in countries which have not demonstrated compliance sufficient to satisfy regulatory requirements of the Data Protection Directive and implementing national laws. Whilst it is possible to store data outside the EEA without infringement of European data protection laws, this requires additional levels of oversight by the user of the cloud services so that the user is aware that the data is being so stored and takes specific measures to ensure that appropriate data protection standards are in place in respect of such data storage. As noted above, the self-employed nature of the Bar means that barristers may not generally have knowledge to confirm that the required standards are in place, or ready access to those with such knowledge.
4.6. The regulatory compliance concerns arise because Rule 702 of the Bar Code of Conduct requires that a “barrister must preserve the confidentiality of the lay client’s affairs and must not without the prior consent of the lay client or as permitted by law lend or reveal the contents of the papers in any instructions or communicate to any third person … information which has been entrusted to him in confidence …”.
4.7. Rule 702 could be interpreted as meaning that a barrister using cloud services could, without taking specific steps to secure data, be in breach of the Bar Code of Conduct. In practice, compliance with the data protection regulations appears to satisfy the requirements of Rule 702 but, as noted above, it is not
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always straightforward for an individual barrister to determine whether or not a specific cloud computing service does fall within the European data protection rules.
4.8. Besides the Bar Code of Conduct, there is also a question as to whether the use of cloud services could result in a loss of legal professional privilege over communications between a barrister and a client. Case law indicates that the use of cloud-based email will not automatically result in a loss of privilege, although the majority of such cases have been heard in the United States and so are not binding in the UK – they are, however, a useful indication of likely judicial thinking in this area. These cases have only considered email communications, rather than (for example) communications in the form of transmissions of data for storage of legal advice documents in a cloud service. The question of the status of data in transit between the barrister’s computer and the cloud service also remains uncertain, as such transmission is commonly made in encrypted format.
4.9. There are however concerns about the exercise of powers of disclosure by non-EEA governments in relation to data stored in cloud-based servers, in particular in the US, where it has been said that the Patriot Act can be deployed to order disclosure of data held on servers within that jurisdiction without the knowledge of the user Of even greater concern is the [US] Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act 2008, which allows US agencies very wide powers to intercept data originating from non-US persons, and to do so without a warrant. The use of this power is not restricted to areas of international terrorism or counter-espionage, but “relates to the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States” and does not require the agency in question to suspect wrongdoing. Unlike the regime under the Patriot Act, not only the data controller involved but also the companies operating the servers on which data is stored will be unaware that data is being intercepted. This legislation has been described in a European Parliament Report
(http://www.ibanet.org/Article/Detail.aspx?ArticleUid=E414EC1B-1479-4DEA-B2D6-08D6C855E14A) as a threat to the sovereignty of the EU.
4.10. These concerns are exacerbated by commercial pressure from companies, such as Microsoft who are very substantially increasing the cost of MS Office Licences to smaller businesses (including barristers) whilst simultaneously pressuring existing licence holders to migrate to the Microsoft 365 cloud. Though Microsoft will say that any data stored on such cloud will be held on servers in the EEA or a US safe harbour, in fact their standard contractual terms for cloud services expressly reserve the right to Microsoft to store data anywhere in the world.
4.11. Thus, there is a twin pressure on the adoption of cloud services by barristers: those who are generally aware of the potential benefits may be inhibited by the uncertainties over data protection, especially from US surveillance
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legislation, and those who are unaware of the dangers and uncertainties may blunder into adopting a cloud product which exposes them to the risk of inadvertent breach of Data Protection regulations and/or Rule 702 of the Code of Conduct.

Given that one of the key concerns is uncertainty over the location and integrity of data stored in cloud computing services, a standard approach to allow users of cloud computing services to specify which jurisdiction their data should be held in would be welcome. At the very least, a cloud computing service should make it clear where data is, or potentially could be, held and should be required to notify users in advance if there is to be any change to the jurisdictions in which data could be held in order to allow users to decide what they wish to do if there is a possibility that data may be held in an inappropriate jurisdiction.
5.2. Cloud services need to be trusted in order to be viable for anyone working with sensitive data. However, the privacy and security practices of cloud services are not always as clear as they should be and in many cases little specific information is provided beyond vague claims to respect privacy. In this area, Government could assist by working to develop an agreed framework for transparent policies in respect of data privacy, security and data breaches. It would also be helpful if such providers were transparent about the potential for non-consensual disclosure to local governments or authorities so that the risks can be assessed.
5.3. Such a framework would enable consumers of cloud computing to make better informed decisions when selecting a cloud services provider. These principles could, and perhaps should, form part of a harmonised European approach to rules on data protection and data security. The cloud services sector should also be involved with this, perhaps considering a sector privacy code which provides greater clarity and transparency for users of the service, setting out not only their data protection procedures but also data handling procedures.
5.4. Trust should further be strengthened by seeking to minimise the risk of the harvesting by foreign intelligence agencies of data relating to UK data subjects or under the control of UK data Controllers. To this end, HMG should co-operate with the European Commission in putting pressure on the United States Government to adopt less disproportionate means of data surveillance.
5.5. Further, to reinforce trust, the consequences of cloud services security violations need to be strengthened. The Computer Misuse Act 1990
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provisions, in particular, should be further developed to ensure that the UK has viable and appropriate penalties (civil and criminal) to deal with such violations. Sufficient resources should also be allocated to enable such strengthened measures to be enforced.
5.6. Any Government initiative in relation to cloud services data needs to be consistent across different departments, and to work in conjunction with partners outside Government – including regulators, industry and consumers as well as privacy groups.
5.7. On a practical note, investment in the provision of reliable and reasonably high speed broadband services throughout the UK is essential to enable business to make use of cloud services. A barrister in chambers in central London should have access to sufficiently high speed broadband access, but a barrister on circuit and working principally from a home office will often not have access to internet speeds which are practical for cloud services. A lack of internet access in courts also means that every piece of potentially relevant data stored in the cloud must be retrieved and stored locally if access is required in the course of court proceedings.

For Big Data analytics to be successful in a wide sense, individual rights to privacy must be maintained and protected. The needs of the data subjects must be considered, not simply the potential for innovation and growth within government and industry. Individuals should not be regarded as simply commodities for business.
6.2. A coherent legal framework over data storage and processing – including protection, retention and access – is essential for any consideration of increasing access to data and to properly distinguish Open Data from private data. In particular, the security of processed data as well as the underlying data needs to be ensured and enforced. Transparency and reporting requirements should be set out to ensure that data breaches are properly reported and the affected data subjects informed of the breach.
6.3. The Government should further work to ensure that any framework preserves the existing rights of individuals to privacy and that existing regulatory requirements over the use of personal data are maintained.
6.4. An educational approach may also be required, to increase the possibility of individuals understanding their rights with respect to their personal data and to also understand the potential implications of making data accessible on
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open platforms such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter etc. as well as apparently private cloud facilities which may either be hosted outside the EEA or be subject to disproportionate foreign surveillance.
6.5. In addition, the intellectual property law implications of accessing such data need to be addressed – regardless of whether data is open or private, such data will generally be protected by intellectual property rights (generally copyright or database right) in at least one jurisdiction. As currently laid down, UK intellectual property laws appear to require that users of such data should, generally, obtain the permission of the intellectual property owner before using the data (see, for example, Newspaper Licensing Agency v Meltwater Holding BV [2011] EWCA Civ 890). This is the case even if the data is readily accessible, unless the owner has clearly consented to such use

Marketing terms coined to provide catchy handles for trends in ICT. What really makes a difference is how technologies are being applied in new industry sectors to transform the way they work.
One area missing from the list where the UK does have leading companies is in cyber security. The extensive use of ICT in a range of sectors in the UK where security is paramount, such as financial services, health care and the public sector, means the UK has also developed an extensive industry in information assurance and cyber security. As part of the EEA, the UK is also part of the world's most mature data protection regime and, as a result, seen as a good place to hold sensitive or personal information.

The Information Economy, and increasingly all business, is absolutely dependent on the availability, speed and reliability of the internet. The UK government's biggest influence over the Information Economy will be in ensuring the communications infrastructure continues to be able to cope with increased demand, both from the areas of growth identified here but also continued growth in consumer and business use of mobile and broadband internet. Equally important will be the need to ensure the reliability of power supply to end users but also to back-end data centres – the heavy lifters of the Information Economy. Any view in the market that supply in either of these two areas is at risk will deter any long term investment in the UK and impair the development opportunities for UK Information Economy suppliers.

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In order to support this standardisation and commoditisation of IT, customers should be able to rely more on independent third party review or accreditation of cloud services.

Key to being able to exploit Big Data is whether and to what extent anyone can claim proprietary rights in Big Data – be that the data itself or a database comprising that data. There is no simple answer to this as it will often depend on the nature and source of the data, whether or not is structured and who has done that structuring. Existing legal frameworks in respect of confidential information, trade secrets and intellectual property rights – most specifically copyright and database rights – are all relevant, but without providing definitive answers. This is not an issue specific to the UK as many jurisdictions are only now awaking to the fact that their legal systems do not provide sufficient guidance on the proper protection of Big Data.

The value of an organisation could be substantially increased where it actually owns, has access to and is able to use and analyse Big Data in compliance with the law. Clarity over the assessment of the proprietary rights and the legal framework around their exploitation is vital for any kind of trade or evaluation of Big Data and therefore a pre-requisite to any investment being made. By seeking to establish some certainty in this area the Government would likely encourage such investment.

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A significant proportion of tech start-up companies engage in e-commerce activities. Whilst the current Government has actively promoted the tech start up environment in a variety of initiatives more can be done to encourage this sector.

One of the key differentiators between the tech start-up environment in the UK , as compared with the US West Coast, is the demand for the start-ups to develop a positive revenue stream within a very short space of time.

Many successful recent US tech start-ups have taken some years to develop a revenue stream (eg. Facebook and LinkedIn). It is unlikely that if these companies had started life in the UK that they would have been encouraged to develop to the same extent as in the US. The “Freemium” approach to building a customer base through free services has become an accepted business model in the US.

This is not just an issue of the statutory framework in which start-up companies operate. The more significant issue is the desire of the UK funding community to see a positive revenue stream developing almost from the first day the start-up opens for business. This places strains on UK tech start-ups so that a greater proportion of UK tech start-ups do not succeed through their early years.

The Government should review the tax environment and incentives for investments in tech start-up companies so that the UK funding community focuses more on capital growth and eventual long-term profitability, rather than shorter term revenue generation.

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Government provides a range of services across a range of facilities on a local, national and international basis – both to its own staff and to its citizens. The Internet of Things has the potential to help change the effectiveness with which these services are delivered and the costs of doing so. We hope the Government investigates the potential in this area through its various procurement activities. Of course, large operators have a role to play in integrating systems and taking risk on large projects but the real innovators in smart technologies are in the SME space so Government deployment of Internet of Things applications on a pilot basis and then supporting larger deployments has the potential to boost this fast growing sector.
Upfront cost allocation is a key issue. Many Internet of Things applications will have an economic justification on the basis of efficiency gains or avoided costs over a medium to long time frame but require capital expenditure. The Government estates, subject to appropriately addressing security concerns, can provide a test environment for many Internet Of Things applications where the business case is still theoretical and technologies need to be deployed live to fully understand the benefits they can bring.

An often overlooked example of how the UK might become a global Smart tech hub is provided by a region, rather than a particular city. For example, the SMART Cornwall initiative, supported by Cornwall Council, has a clear vision of making Cornwall the heart of a new Smart energy eco-system.

Unlike Smartphones or Smartcards, the "Smart City" is a marketing buzz word or policy label, rather than a coherent technological change or solution. It also overlaps almost entirely with the Internet of Things and Big Data (few Smart City projects would not also fall into one or more of those categories). We welcome the fact that the Consultation Paper has clearly defined the objectives it would wish Smart Cities to achieve (i.e. where "Smart" means ICT enabled). Nevertheless, we suggest that Government critically re-examine whether a focus on Smart "Cities" is better than approaching ICT-enablement from a perspective that is not so specifically tied to solely urban terminology.

The phrase Smart Cities usually serves as a catch-all for all manner of potentially beneficial ICT deployments, some of which may have special relevance, in an urban environment, such as those designed to combat traffic congestion. However many, perhaps most, Smart City solutions would seem equally relevant in sub-urban or rural areas (Smarter Grids, for example, can assist in load balancing in cities, micro-generation in rural areas and demand side reduction in both) or may even have greater relevance to rural or sub-urban locations (such as e-learning or telemedicine). It may be that UK policy should focus on Smarter Communities rather than Smart Cities.

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Superfast broadband is still not established throughout the UK. SMEs located in rural areas may not have access to this.
Software development for embedded and applications software. There is still a significant software development industry in the UK and it needs to be properly and continually developed further
Internal business based communications systems to replace email
Data protection. Much more could be done to prevent fraud, theft and compromising of data.
Systems integrity in an increasingly hostile cybercrime environment.
Social media – the continuing development of facilities and systems
Online advertising is an ever increasingly sophisticated medium
Large volume storage facilities and their management in the context of “big data”.

There is currently not much in the way of architecture designed to support these opportunities
Driver = scale/spend/variability
Competitive pressure
Cost reduction/efficiency/IT budget reductions
Service improvement
Regulatory compliance
Increasing productivity

Many people argue for light touch government – providing an effective environment and then letting industry get on with it.
In the area of Security – the creation and compliance with government standards could be a way to stimulate opportunity
Fund concept demonstrators, particularly for public sector applications
Produce better school leavers with the skills and education to take advantage of the opportunities.
Increase IT literacy in government circles, particularly where there opportunities for the effective use of IT.
Provide better education/awareness in courses at civil service staff college. Perhaps the industry could help produce courses or material.
Make government departments easier to deal with for SMEs
Joint effort
Teachers in their 50s need education in IT principles and application.
Better engagement with the young who are more aware of technology and its uses
Agency like DARPA giving out research grants to stimulate research and exploitation

Government has a barrier to SMEs selling their products and services into government. Companies under two years old are barred from selling to government. This is where a lot of innovation takes place.
Government to consider the US model where 15% of contract value is given to SMEs within large contracts
Introduction of a fast tender scheme, particularly for smaller contracts
Government procurement needs simplification and removal of the bias towards large companies (who are just as likely to fail to deliver as smaller companies!)
Lack of connectivity
Awareness of commercial opportunities
Access to capital to help growing businesses

Provision of safe research environments with appropriate infrastructure environment for testing products. This may be what the Catapults are intended to provide.
Better IP protection
English government needs to pump prime new products. Scotland and Wales do! Regional development agencies focus on jobs rather than products
Not good at commercial exploitation/negotiation. Current government policy seems to be “go to India”! Can we train and educate people better.
Encourage internal entrepreneurs within big companies
For technology start-ups, provide a web forum such as the UK Advisory Network – see link: http://www.ukti.gov.uk/pt_pt/investintheuk/ukadvisorynetwork/inwardinvestorsupport.html
Which provides a web portal for small businesses to advertise marketing, financial, R&D, business planning, etc. expertise to the IT start-ups to help them take their ideas to market.

Can there be something similar to the Energy technology institute which provides public sector coaching and helps with companies development
Government encouragement and involvement in more prototypes
More communication between big companies, govt and SMEs
Government – testing prototypes for government use
Encourage more people to train in IT by offering fee help and subsidies, recruit more teachers with relevant IT background or experience
Promote IT as a rewarding career
Course fees written off in technology

What is big data? Provide a good definition.
- Opportunities to do things differently
- Provide some good examples of commercial opportunity
- Anti-fraud/instant verifications through pattern recognition
- E.g insurance/banking/selling info
- Hundreds of new products opportunity– market gain arises out of taking data out of own domain
- Prediction of buyer activity
- Aggregation analysis
- Financial risk exposure

Provide sandboxes for IT innovation to collaborate between universities and IT enterprises to share ideas and test new products

Agile thinking
Systems architecture is different
Skills in business processes
Broader understanding in boardrooms
Rapid prototyping modelling
Awareness of business development opportunities

Providing predefined websites for companies (SMEs. Start-ups) to advertise their products and services globally for nominal/no costs
Government should provide easy buying system, e.g. SMEs bid online

Common international standards
Complete open interoperability between different medium of exchange: access should be user defined, not defined by the infrastructure software and hardware. Legislation could help to open up accessibility

Broadband
Cross industry co-operation
Understanding and awareness of IOT
Successful commercial models/examples
Curriculum and syllabus for IOT
Embedded software and systems knowledge
Security issues
Data protection issues
Proprietary developments
Protecting intellectual property

Oyster card
Contactless cards
Why only cities? What about smart countryside!

Lack of understanding about smart cities – what they are and the commercial benefits

Dubai Internet City is a model to avoid: used to control communication and increase prices

Information and Communication

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Business representative organisation/trade body

These sectors are all very important to the UK economy but many of them are with us now. Seems to be a lack of ‘stretch targets’ in the list. Others might be around video, knowledge management and social informatics. Surprised it doesn’t include digital public services as huge potential for export if world class solutions are developed.

Scarce resources, cost reduction/productivity improvements, export opportunities, increasing ease and lower cost of use, increasingly digitally skilled citizens, better information on which to base decisions

Develop meaningful partnerships, establish pilots/innovation labs, develop ability for rapid response, smarter procurement, keep pace with industry

Skills, skills, skills and access to finance. The information industries are facing significant skills challenges as the economy becomes increasingly digitally enabled these shortages will only get worse. We need a range of skills interventions such as conversion courses to upskill people for the industry. More VC funding for innovative companies – establish a 21st century version of ICFC/3i, encourage more US VCs to establish UK presences

Use a combination of ICT, with some solutions in the cloud, for our communications, CRM, document management and financial systems. Website and social media are key marketing channels. This and use of skype etc for team working enables flexible working. All of these have increased productivity considerably over the last few years

Good question – combination of market information, advice from members and use of training

We use several cloud computing services but all quite general and run by large companies. We have had few problems with these – except when our broadband goes down. The one issue we have had is the need to upgrade our broadband but the additional cost is more than covered by the productivity benefits

Challenges around security and where the data sits need to be addressed; showcases and demonstrator projects

New algorithms and analytical and visualisation tools, and people with new skill sets which combine statistical analysis with data modelling; data science skills

Raising awareness around the opportunities; supporting research, continuing to release data sets for open data

Close working relationships/collaboration with industry, support on skills development. Harnessing big data will support research in a range of fields.
We’re helping to prepare a bid for a ‘big data’ innovation centre with the Scottish Universities and industry.

Promote greater awareness of the opportunities; support development of skills for the e-commerce industry, highlight the export opportunities, encourage development of e-commerce supply chain

Huge range of opportunities – smart cities, remote health, body monitoring/predictive healthcare, smart grids, tourism and creative arts etc

Common standards, interoperability, open systems

Security and interoperability

Don’t think it has yet but lots of work underway

Need to encourage adoption and spread of existing technologies – and avoid the ‘not invented here’ issue

Lots of pockets of good practice eg Amsterdam, Toronto but need to take best practice from a range of places where appropriate and develop our own as well

Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities

on behalf of an organisation

Are these the most important for suppliers?
Smart cities – tough but not impossible for UK suppliers with niche offers
Cloud computing – possibly a missed and disappearing opportunity for UK suppliers
Internet of things – could be a major opportunity if supported appropriately
Big data – could be a substantial opportunity, although under threat following loss of Autonomy
e-commerce – already a major opportunity, probably past its peak.
Are these the biggest opportunities for growth?
New ways to provide interaction with information and entertainment can always disrupt and always offer opportunities for a long-term technology duopoly to emerge as with ARM/Intel, Apple/Samsung, Google/Microsoft.
The User Experience interacting with portable devices still has a long way to go and may create some surprise winners over the next 10 years.
Migration to the world’s biggest cities seems an irreversible trend yet cities consume enormous resources to mitigate their vulnerability to asymmetric attacks and ICT has the potential to reverse or stabilise the trend.

What are these the drivers of change in these areas?
Smart cities – cities are efficient places for people to interact, yet have terribly inefficient infrastructure for personalised mass transit; they are also highly vulnerable to disruption from disease or terrorism so providing information to ease citizen’s lives and make them feel/be more secure is key.
Cloud computing – at one level is purely an extension of outsourcing to specialist providers with the advantage of elasticity for organisations with unpredictable or rapidly accelerating capacity demand.
Internet of things – a transaction cost reducer by disintermediating data-gathering for utility meters to in-store clothes racks to – maybe one day – the fridge
Big data – potential to predict customer / user behaviour and preferences better so as to target products / services more effectively but may yet suffer from data-sparcity and/or privacy issues.
e-commerce- - tried and tested convenience model that lowers entry barriers for new retailers.

How should government and the sector work together to build on strengths?
Smart cities – needs city-by-city scenario planned approach to apply appropriate technology for city’s ambition
Cloud computing- needs national attention to CT/VAT tax arbitrage that disadvantages UK-owned players.
Internet of things – needs embryonic UK players like Neul to be nurtured and protected against US acquisition before they grow to global scale. Encouragement of lower US taxes on repatriated profits would help.
Big data – pragmatic attention to information security issues, followed by skills development and openness to immigrant expertise from any country
e-commerce – attention to tax arbitrage and nurturing of UX skills plus encouragement for development of competitive user interfaces

Politically, UK
Economically, like its major EU partners – France, Germany and Italy – UK has a large but stagnant, high-cost / high tax but competitive, economy with minimal prospects for overall growth
Sociologically, UK has an ageing, relatively-affluent population but real GDP/head is falling slowly due to the stagnant economy forcing a managed decline in living standards
Technologically, UK is relatively advanced and open to adoption of new technology, especially for consumption of entertainment and acquisition of goods; however UK has an ageing infrastructure and is not so good at developing or applying technology to increase productivity through transformational process change or substitution.
Legally, UK is open and fair to citizens and companies
Environmentally – we dither too much over the environmental aspects, largely because any imprecise science becomes prey to short-term political debate rather than long-term logical decision.
However UK is a high-cost, competitive economy with an ageing infrastructure and population and significant obstacles to free movement of non-EU talent

There is no shortage of research, innovation, start-ups or innovative products and services however many of these efforts are misdirected:
Too much R&D is upstream mystery-solving and too much innovation is focused on instant gratification / consumption rather than long-term infrastructure / productivity improvement with little regard to downstream exploitation let alone value-creating innovation for the UK economy
A higher proportion of grants, tax-breaks and government support in UK and abroad should be skewed in favour of businesses that are likely to increase UK exports and wealth or reduce costs of delivering essential services within UK

UK has fewer of the science and engineering graduates critical to modern knowledge-based societies and many of the top students in those areas are only welcome during their studies in UK and positively discouraged from staying here to contribute to our national knowledge base and wealth.
We need to attract more investment by those individuals and overseas companies that truly raise our knowledge capital

Not particularly ground-breaking, just pragmatic use of accessible technologies that impact output quality, timeliness or cost.

Mostly by monitoring/assessing industry and technology developments by watching what companies actually do and offer not just the hyped product/service announcements. But, after all, that is core to what we do.

Only minimal use for email hosting and forwarding; cloud services have too many hidden communications and security costs to make them suitable for many small business applications.

No significant use of cloud computing services due to:
lack of need of highly-scalable facilities or multi-user mobile access. and lower cost of ownership offered by avoiding excess communications charges combined with higher confidentiality provided by in-house platforms

Cloud services have to be massive and be accessed by low-cost fast broadband to be cost-effective. Currently US suppliers invoicing through Ireland and other low-tax jurisdictions have exploited a compelling cost advantage over potential UK-owned suppliers and BT retains a strong grip on provision of fast broadband.
Achieving CTax equivalence with Ireland and creating a national competitor to BT have to be priorities if this market is not to disappear completely for UK-owned suppliers.

With the caveat that big data is only a partial guide to the past – not all data will – or should – be available in one place for analysis and the data is inevitably historic, our businesses are a long way from exploiting big data effectively. Even Facebook, Google and LinkedIn which all have massive access to our personal data, simple data structures, massive computational resources and some of the best data scientists available on the planet with software deployed incrementally and rapidly are a long way from even placing adverts accurately.
Those five things seem key:
• Computational resources – far beyond resources normally available
• Simple data structures – needing a focus on what actually matters (eg social graph)
• Algorithmic efficiency – simple pieces of data analysed simply to infer new facts/fill gaps
• Access to data – overcoming Europe’s antithesis to sharing by removing “personal” from identity.
• Incremental evolution – at least daily increments in functionality
Fundamental is the need for technically-literate staff at the core to build and evolve the algorithms and systems.

All government data and much in Universities has been funded, like BBC content, by the UK taxpayer and thus should be made available freely to UK business and citizens. However, controls and incentives are needed to ensure that overseas-owned businesses exploiting UK data pay an appropriate fee for the privilege.
Government can also resolve the “personal sensitive data” issue by mandating use of a national identity number to index all personal data (physically separating the person’s identifying information from the information itself whenever these are stored or communicated) and to require by law all indexed data to be stored and communicated in encrypted form.
Somehow, government has to make citizens aware that careless gossip/communication of other people’s information could indeed cost lives.

Universities are funded by the UK taxpayer and thus their data should be made available freely to UK business and citizens. However, controls and incentives are needed to ensure that overseas-owned businesses exploiting UK data pay an appropriate fee for the privilege

Big data analytics success depends on the availability of:
• Computational resources – far beyond resources normally available
• Simple data structures – needing a focus on what actually matters (eg social graph)
• Algorithmic efficiency – simple pieces of data analysed simply to infer new facts/fill gaps
• Access to data – overcoming Europe’s antithesis to sharing by removing “personal” from identity.
• Incremental evolution – at least daily increments in functionality
So key is availability of the technically-skilled staff to deliver this capability along with the social scientists to help resolve the personal security issues.

The on-line B2C economy is doing pretty well at present as far as retail is concerned, although VAT and Corporation Tax arbitrage favours non-UK locations and operators for many fulfilment operations. Reducing taxation levels – and government spending - is probably the only remedy long-term.
G2C has attracted attention through the so-called “digital first” policy which seems to be being pursued in an autocratic way by eliminating competition rather than by making the on-line channel to government the most compelling. Very few government services need to be accessible “on-line on the move” so these can be optimised for tablet and PC access rather than the more restrictive and expensive SmartPhones.

We don’t trade on-line but outlaw.com offers a far more approachable / understandable service than any Business Link or BIS offer.

In the short run, M2M will facilitate ad-hoc integration of small area networks for applications as diverse as home media networks, personal fitness / health / wellness monitors, home (cyber and physical) security, event registration and networking.
In the medium term, M2M will simplify many data entry tasks that currently require duplicate entry of information – from uplifting stock information to facilitate restocking (bringing M&S scanning to the home) to identity checking and ticketing.

This will never fully happen. The internet is not really built on adequately-secure technology to make a single network desirable.
More secure protocols alongside widespread use of encryption / identity protection are certainly needed to build a horizontally-layered (v. vertical silos) layered internet of things.

UK can, by definition, only develop and deploy some 5% of the IOT. It needs international cooperation (eg on spectrum but current structures (ITU etc) have become too politicised to achieve a short-term outcome).
In practice, Neul and its partners have the potential to create a workable infrastructure – not unlike WiFi – using meshes of interconnected devices that – with order – could evolve into a low-level Internet-like network.
Other fabless UK technology companies are very much in the game of designing components for IOT but there will be massive, well-financed competition that may lead to Neul and others being acquired by US or Korean companies.
We have not nurtured our potentially successful players through the stages of global growth. We must learn from the lessons of Plastic Logic and Autonomy so their successors remain independent like ARM. This growth stage from $1B to $25B market capitalisation is the real “valley of death” for UK technology players.

Aged infrastructure in UK cities makes widespread deployment expensive, as demonstrated by the disruption created by installation/upgrades to fibre-optic installation.
Complicating the issue are fragmented governance of major cities that reduces the chances of a long-term strategic vision being developed that guides/accelerates solution of planning issues.

Essentially “new build” cities in Africa, Asia and Middle-East seem to lead understandably.

Information and Communication

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Large business (over 250 staff)

All five are fundamental to the growth of the information economy. However they are not silos but rather cross-cutting themes. Most “information economy” applications in practice will sit in more than one, sometimes even all five areas. E.g. a “smart city” is essentially a “cloud” of “Internet of things” devices where “e-commerce” services such as traffic optimisation are provided on the basis of analysing the “big data” of that cloud. In that sense, there will also be more than five essential areas, and one of them needs to be security at large (people, process, technology). Security cuts horizontally across all those issues and is a key enabler for the effective functioning of any of those technologies which are likely to become targets for cyberattacks. The notion of security includes aspects of resilience (critical information infrastructure protection - CIIP), integrity, confidentiality and availability of information, as well as authenticity of identities and devices

A main driver for change will be optimisation:
- More efficient deployment of products
- Better organisation of flows
- More reliable delivery of services
- More effective enforcement of policies
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- Improved ability to analyse, forecast and meet all kinds of demands at a large scale in real time.
These will also be the drivers for security: the better the information economy ecosystem performs and the further it reaches, the more critical and the more severe any disruption is likely to become. Security will be business critical in all areas of the information economy, Faced with an increasingly sophisticated, fast evolving and very adaptive cyber threat landscape, CIIP and network and information security need to be thought of in advance, built in from the start, and maintained and upgraded continuously. This means significant growth and development opportunities in security solutions both for large infrastructures and broad based product and service deployments, as well as niche applications.

Public-private partnerships should be sought and encouraged pro-actively so as to:
- maximise the market potential for innovative “information economy” solutions and promote technology uptake both by maintaining a policy environment conducive to the quick expansion of new solutions, as well as by leveraging the purchasing power of the public sector itself (pursue the digital first policy);
- allow grassroots innovation to flourish and bring new products and services to the market without being stifled by premature regulatory intervention, excessive supervisory control, technology-specific requirements or disproportionate red tape;
- trust business operators, both service providers and users, to self-regulate to the extent feasible, rely on information sharing and dissemination of best practices in the most effective and pragmatic ways suitable to the particular areas of applications concerned, and involve the private sector fully wherever authoritative regulatory intervention is considered;
- preserve the openness of the UK market both outward and inward, i.e. leverage the global nature of the “information economy” to maximise the UK’s export potential (to the EU, to the Transatlantic market, as well as globally) while remaining open to importing and taking up the best solutions that others have to offer

The UK business environment is among the most innovation and investment friendly in the region and this should remain so (in particular corporate law, labour law, access to finance). But the finite size of the UK’s domestic market is a barrier quickly reached in many areas of the “information economy”. Therefore it is in the strategic interest of the UK to ensure, in particular vis-à-vis the European Union, that the UK’s ability to attract investment and innovation is preserved, and that no new barriers are erected that would hinder the export of information economy services from the UK to Europe and to the rest of the world.

A two-pronged approach of “encourage” and “don’t hinder” is recommended:
- Encourage go-to-market by making it as easy and straightforward as possible for promising and worthwhile ideas to access venture capital, leveraging also European, national and local public subsidies wherever available;

And avoid deterring entrepreneurship through administrative burden, regulatory constraints or prior red-tape. Given that the target market for many services will quickly expand beyond the borders of the UK, this “don’t hinder” policy should also follow through EU legislation and policies, as well as international or bilateral instruments (notably free trade agreements) with third countries.

The future developments of the “information economy” are hard to predict. On top of the ubiquitous demand for highly qualified and skilled engineers, every information economy area will develop novel needs for new skills. It will be important to keep an open mind to the “new professions” that emerge and to avoid stifling businesses’ ability to fill these positions with the most suitable workforce, as opposed, for example, to imposing “old school” qualification requirements or conditions of nationality or residence in employment choices.
The transition towards the “information economy” will mean that many jobs of tomorrow will no longer be done like jobs of yesterday. Teleworking is just one early sign of that change. Given the pace of progress, several generations of digital technologies will come and go during one’s professional career. Education, professional training and life-long learning will need to deliver workforce which is not only qualified for a certain specialty at a given point in time, but also has the potential to adapt rapidly to emerging technologies, new products, new services, whole new markets.
Meanwhile, ensuring a high level of cyber security throughout the “information economy” will require not only very highly qualified specialists to be available to every organisation, but also thorough security-awareness and security-conscious behaviour of all the workforce. “Cyber hygiene” will need to become part of everyone’s basic set of skills, much like reading, writing and counting, and education to that effect should start as early as in primary school.
Until these development mature, as regards the present situation and the immediate future, Government should encourage more structured programs of internships, apprenticeships, university placements, etc. where young people can gain practical knowledge and experience, a better understanding of industry needs which would serve to increase the pool of quality candidates. Currently many such programs are difficult to implement due to the associated employment obligations

Symantec develops and provides state-of-the-art ICTs, be they cloud products (e.g. hosted system management services), big data applications (e.g. reputational security, Global Intelligence Network), e-commerce solutions (e.g. Norton webstore), or “smart economy” specialties (e.g. SCADA security, smart grid component security).
At the same time, Symantec is also a massive user of new technologies, with heavy reliance on cloud solutions for, among others, business process management, finances and accounting, HR or IT.

We endeavour to carefully select our contributors based on skills and merit, attract and retain talent, reward merit and provide continuous access to, and training on, the latest technologies. This is an everyday effort in a very competitive market where the demand for highly skilled individuals is soaring.

In areas like business process management, HR or IT, the key benefits are reduced costs, economies of scale, efficiency in enforcing and updating policies, better global visibility and benchmarking of performance and delivery across the company. Issues and difficulties typically arise from the fragmentation of compliance requirements across different markets, notably for example between the EU and the US, or even between different member states of the EU. For reasons pertaining to diverging tax, accounting, labour, privacy, copyright, or consumer law requirements, certain cloud solutions cannot be deployed equally in all jurisdictions. A typical example is the discrepancy between national privacy regulations across EU member states, requiring for instance IT security policies to be designed and enforced differently in one country than in another. This type of market barrier hinders the deployment of optimised cloud solutions, makes it more difficult and more costly for companies to maintain consistent performance levels across geographies, and can ultimately harm competitiveness and international growth for UK companies.

The cloud is a new generation of IT commoditisation solutions, but not a panacea. Some kinds of data, certain kinds of computing tasks are best served from the cloud, others not. Choosing cloud solutions rather than other options for a given IT function should be a
9
responsible business decision like any other: it should be made in consideration of the fitness for purpose, of the risk, of the cost and of the benefits involved in the envisaged cloud solution. If on balance, for a given function, the cloud solution is not the optimal one, then it should not be chosen. Therefore “only partial” adoption of cloud solutions should not in itself be viewed as a failure. In terms of policies to promote the cloud, the important thing is to educate potential users on the need for them to properly analyse whether a cloud solution is suited to their needs before adopting it.

International experience shows that countries successful in attracting cloud businesses are those which:
- Facilitate and encourage business creation, establishment and development in their territory through a business friendly legislative and administrative framework;
AND
- offer suitable resources and infrastructures to sustain large scale data flows and processing operations (available qualified workforce, stable energy supply, fast, resilient broadband connectivity across the whole territory of the UK also to encourage teleworking and entrepreneurship in rural areas);
AND
- Provide the necessary guarantees for customers and authorities from other jurisdictions to consider them as good places to be importing cloud services from. Typically, this involves national legislation in key areas (e.g. company law, privacy law) being perceived
10
as sound and trustworthy by international partners, as well as transparency and openness of national authorities for cooperation in cross-border enforcement matters.
Dialogue and cooperation between Government and industry must be pursued to ensure that Government is continuously informed of UK companies’ experience in doing business across borders.

Leveraging Big Data requires:
1- Raw material, i.e. access to sufficient quantities and quality of data (public sector data, publicly available/open data, privately held large databases);
2- Production lines, i.e. the availability of relevant and up-to-scale processing infrastructure (existence and access to large computing facilities, in and outside the UK, through high performance resilient and secure communications networks);
3- Markets, i.e. demand for and uptake of the results of the processing (easy go-to-market, customer and consumer base able, equipped and willing to use such services across all kinds of platforms and settings);
4- And a robust compliance framework, i.e. appropriate legal conditions to actually be able to collect the data, to process it, and to commercialise the products derived from it.

The Government can act on all four levers:
1- Publicise what data resources can be made available to the industry, including in particular data held by Government;
2- Encourage and support the development of large computing and communications infrastructures in the UK;
3- Create conditions that will increase the uptake of Big Data applications, for example by developing and rolling out such solutions in public procurement projects, community services, etc.;
4- Ensure that no unnecessary or disproportionate legal or regulator hindrances to the collection and use of Big Data are maintained or introduced, in the UK or more broadly in the EU.
Alongside these, it must also be ensured that competition among the different market-players must be preserved and enforced, as without doubt some dominant players will rise.

Universities themselves have numerous ways of contributing to developing Big Data, notably through:
1- Conducting academic and base research in the area of large scale analytics;
2- Cooperating in joint ventures and research projects with private sector by contributing knowledge, expertise, facilities, infrastructure, or welcoming new investments within their premises;
3- Making available the large databases they themselves hold;
4- Engaging with international partner organisations, foreign universities and academic circles to transfer knowledge and exchange best practices;
5- Developing their own public advocacy on the benefits of Big Data so as to build the academic case for it next to the industry business case;
6- Researching the legal aspects of Big Data and formulating policy and legislative recommendations moving forward.

Similarly to question 6, future applications of Big Data are likely very broad. It is difficult to foresee now what exact skills will be the most needed or the best suited to one or another area of Big Data use in future. Surely technical and legal expertise, scientific knowledge and skills will be indispensable. At the same time, there can be no finite list of skills needed for Big Data to happen. The role of the education system is to equip the UK’s future workforce with the ability to adapt flexibly and quickly to new opportunities and challenges as they emerge. The focus of the education system needs to shift from acquiring one-size-fits-all static knowledge to developing dynamic skills to constantly acquire new knowledge, develop new expertise, across several product and innovation cycles. The culture of cyber hygiene in particular should be a core element of the basic skillset.

Three key factors will be essential:
- Fast, resilient and secure communications infrastructure to underpin the online market and build trust and reliability;
- Domestic rules and practices that facilitate doing business online (ranging from making available user-friendly e-government services to supporting online payments, to upholding the legal value of digital transactions and digital evidence). This should include also an effective law enforcement framework against intellectual property infringement, electronic and economic crime.
International rules which reflect these same priorities beyond the UK market and maximise the free trade potential in cross-border e-commerce. The EU internal market is a strategic asset in that respect, and so should the forthcoming transatlantic free trade agreement be as and when it is adopted.

Symantec already achieves a substantial share of its consumer sales online, notably through the Norton web store. The barriers to effective cross-border e-commerce which we occasionally face would typically have to do with diverging and sometimes onerous national
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legislations in the areas of consumer protection, payment regulations, data privacy, or copyright, as well as the costs of online platform development. It is important that European harmonisation efforts in these areas be followed through consistently, without being undermined by diverging or derogatory national rules, for example in the area of consumer law applicable to online services, digital content. In that respect, the measured and principle-based regime devised in the latest EU Consumer Rights Directive should be enforced as is across all member states. Moreover, in particular for consumer-facing cloud services to develop further, it is also important to preserve as much as possible the “information society service provider liability” regime created by the EU e-commerce directive.

Symantec is a large multinational organisation. On top of the expertise available in house and online resources, we also cooperate with trade associations and legal firms, we participate in public private partnerships, we leverage distribution channel partners and engage directly with our consumers and customers.

M2M communications allow for enhanced automation, more accurate control of processes, reduction of failures due to human errors, quicker detection of malfunctions and more efficient remediation, better enforcement of policies, better visibility into performance, better predictability of future trends, etc. Obviously, these are all possible benefits for any business or sector which chooses to embrace M2M communications.
At the same time, from the security perspective, M2M communications also involve their significant share of cyber risk. Essentially, a botnet is an M2M network. DDoS-type cyber-attacks are generally conducted using M2M communications. Even more importantly, a deliberate malicious intervention in M2M processes can have serious consequences including in the physical world. And clever engineering can go a long way in fooling the vigilance of human supervisors. Stuxnet was an example where automated physical uranium enrichment centrifuges were literally self-destroying while, to the human control agent, everything just looked normal.
Therefore reaping the business benefits of M2M communications won’t be possible without comprehending these security challenges and addressing them upfront.

For the Internet of Things to happen, it is important to avoid the introduction of technology-specific requirements in, or artificial barriers between, different sectors and applications.
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Technologies, platforms, applications should be able to work with each other on the basis of common, international, technology-agnostic, market-based, industry-driven and voluntary standards, without any undue obstacle or hindrance, whether regulatory or technological.
At the same time, this is without prejudice to the need for each sector, for each application to secure their perimeter according to the risk they face. Indeed, such openness of the Internet, while very beneficial to the economy and society, is also appealing for cyber criminals and other malicious players. All the more so as the Internet gives them access to more and more “things” beyond traditional computers and smartphones, extending for example to vehicles, industrial control systems or physical infrastructures. Increased interoperability between technologies and sectors also means broader distribution of vulnerabilities and higher exposure to cyber threats. Therefore, every player in the ecosystem should develop a culture of in-depth security. This, among others, also involves the shared responsibility of all legitimate players to exchange information indispensable to collective threat awareness and preparedness. The Government has an essential role to play in making this happen by putting in place all relevant platforms, incentives and safeguards in the UK as well as with international partners.

Currently the main practical obstacles are that:
- the number of Internet of Things devices (e.g. electricity smart meters) deployed is still relatively low,
- the back office infrastructures to collect and process data from such devices still need to be built in many potential future application areas,
- in some cases, interfaces will also need to be built to connect massive amounts of new
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devices to the broadband copper and mobile networks.
- and there is a lack of security awareness for the infrastructure security challenges of the Internet of Things because so far, the focus has been way too much limited to data security/privacy risks only.
All these points should be addressed by technology if sufficient policy drive is there, and profitable business cases can be built that will attract investment. However, delivering all that will depend on:
- Operators’ legal ability to do such data processing lawfully (importance notably of the privacy framework);
And the high level of network and information security and resilience essential to business continuity as well as to user trust.

Manchester has a plan based on sustainability, broadband, and smart grid/smart meters, which definitely points in the right direction, although the actual implementation of some elements may occasionally be delayed.
London is broadly praised for Smart Governance and Transportation (including the Congestion Charge scheme).
Glasgow will start on the same path imminently, thanks to the recent £24M grant from Central Government.

As explained earlier, cyber security is one concern. Government should facilitate education for system administrators in cooperation with security vendors.

In Europe, Amsterdam is a benchmark for sustainable mobility/transportation, and Barcelona a leading example for electric vehicle technology and green innovation.

Information and Communication

on behalf of an organisation

Micro business (up to 9 staff)

The five selected sectors are certainly important and areas in which a successful information economy will develop, but I think this strategy is currently starting in fundamentally the wrong place. These five areas are in effect application areas of an information economy – success in these areas would be a symptom of a successful information economy but this strategy should be considering the underlying factors that will make success in these sectors possible.
At the highest level the underlying factors could be classified as: legal, infrastructure, standards, education and business finance and these are areas where the government (and only the government) has the potential to make a real difference. The strategy should consider which activities in these areas are required to make the information economy successful and so stimulate progress in the five identified sectors.
Example issues to address includes:
- sound legal basis for online activities: crime/security, licensing and copyright for the digital age
- tackling fundamental issues around the balance of privacy and useful sharing of personal information, leading to a state where people can make an informed choice
- ‘pipes’: stimulating widely available access to high speed internet connectivity, preferably without prejudice to the types of information transferred through it (net neutrality)
- education: ensuring young people learn the fundamentals of how the digital world works - to become effective/empowered online citizens and to develop the skills that will be needed to develop new products and services in future.
- appropriate finance for digital startups - R&D grants, stimulating private sector to provide appropriate early stage finance, get banks actually lending to relatively risky small businesses. Information Economy businesses are usually cheap to start and move very quickly. Existing funding mechanisms eg via TSB are often not well tuned to this type of activity.
Underlying the Smart Cities, Internet of Things and Big Data strands is a common theme of accessing and exploiting data that was not previously available – either it wasn’t collected, or it was not possible to get timely access to it, or it was too difficult to combine data from different sources. The internet (and more specifically the web, i.e. using the HTTP protocol) is the key to moving this data around. Architectural principles, like giving external machine readable access to the ‘building blocks’ and underlying data of a service via APIs, and separating the representation of data the application that uses it are essential to making this possible. Existing government policies around requiring use of open standards in government IT, open data and linked (‘5-star’) data are helping to address these issues.
But this is a new field and there is a lot of work to do to make this approach more widespread. Aside from spreading capability and best practices, there is research work to do in areas like distributed querying and managing the process of keeping local copies of changing data up to date.
Solving these problems effectively will enable rapid progress in application areas like Smart Cities, Internet of Things and Big Data and is also crucial for substantive progress on the government’s Open Public Services agenda.
Progress in e-commerce is already rapid. Two factors stand out that could accelerate it further.
One is reducing friction in online payments: making it quick and secure to pay online, even for small amounts, and making it quicker and cheaper for online vendors to accept online payments. It is still a relatively painful and expensive process (fees of around 5% of sales for small companies) to accept credit cards online.
The other comes back to effective sharing of data: machine readable descriptions of products and services for sale and of buyer needs would allow new approaches to discovery of online offerings and could support significant supply chain automation that would have a huge benefit to large businesses. Some early work on this seems promising (eg ‘GoodRelations’ for describing products, http://www.heppnetz.de/projects/goodrelations/ , and ‘Vendor Relationship Management’ initiatives) but there is a long way to go.
A ‘web of data’ strand to the information economy strategy would lie somewhere between the requirements to set an appropriate business environment (legal, physical infrastructure, education, funding) and the near-market application categories like Smart Cities, Big Data etc. However I think it is also a key part of the infrastructure needed for an optimal information economy.

Legislation and regulation is something that only the government can address. Education is also something the government should look at.
Government and private sector need to work together in areas of infrastructure, finance, better approaches to online payments, innovative approaches to data availability – government can apply it’s usual tools of subsidy, tax systems, public sector purchasing approach to affect these.

Benefits: highly educated workforce, effective rule of law, government policies on open data and open public services, investment via TSB and others to stimulate these sectors.
Barriers: lack of access to appropriate early stage finance for small fast-moving risky technology companies. Public sector procurement processes that favour large slow-moving suppliers (though this is changing for the better through G-Cloud for example).

Appropriate early stage finance to get more companies started. Ongoing finance to keep companies growing rather than selling out early. Celebrating success stories of UK high tech entrepreneurship.
Encourage universities to stimulate and support entrepreneurship in their students. (Some good examples already exist, for example Informatics Ventures at Edinburgh University).

Yes there is a skills deficit. This may be decreasing as young people grow up more familiar with web technologies than the current workforce.
Regarding the skills needed to create new companies: technology moves very fast so rather than teaching specific technologies, education needs to concentrate on the fundamentals and making sure people have the basic understanding and capabilities to exploit new technologies.
Ensuring high quality maths and English teaching is probably most important. (English language skills are an essential part of high tech business that is often overlooked in these discussions – like other business, most of it is about effective communication of ideas).

We provide cloud services/Software as a Service as part of our company offering. We use cloud servers to power these services – we don’t own (and have never even seen) the servers that run our company. We use cloud services for office automation (mail, document sharing, backups etc). While we have a physical office, we make significant use of remote and home working, using online tools for communications (skype, email, online document sharing etc).
This means that our business has extremely low capital requirements, which means that we have been able to grow it so far using a ‘bootstrapping’ approach.

Getting the right technology is easy: cheap and reliable ‘cloud’ computing is becoming steadily more available. High quality and free open source software meets most of our software needs.
Getting the right staff is more of a challenge because as a company that is developing new technology we are only interested in very talented programmers and designers and naturally there is a lot of competition to get the services of those people.

Benefits: low cost of operation, low cost to change hence supporting flexibility, pay in proportion to use making getting started easy.
Difficulties: no serious difficulties experienced so far. Security and disaster recovery needs to be taken seriously.

The G-Cloud initiative for public sector procurement is very positive.

This naturally depends a lot on the business. Partly it is a change of mindset, to realise that new kinds of data can be collected that were not previously available and meaningful analysis of this data can now be cost effective.
But it still comes down to understanding your customers, understanding your cost structure and deciding how to analyse data to serve customers better.
Not all useful data is ‘big’. Collecting and analysing the right data for your business is the important thing, but the change with Big Data is that the cost of collecting a lot of data and sifting through it for actionable information is now much cheaper than it used to be.

Yes, balancing security/privacy with increased access will become increasingly important. At the moment there is a lot of ignorance about this issue. Most members of the public don’t really know how their data is used and while having a suspicion that it is mis-used, generally accept it. An informed debate needs to take place: what benefits can arise from being more open about personal data, who gets these benefits, how is it controlled, how can the individual have control of their own data.
Government starting to implement a ‘government as platform’ approach, building on the existing good work around open data to create genuinely open public services will be a big contribution. The government should also use Big Data analytics itself to implement genuinely evidence based policy. This will involve collecting new kinds of data and making it possible to combine data from different sources – implementing the ‘web of data’ and linked data ideas discussed in Question 1.

The most important thing is a sound grasp of mathematics. More specific techniques can then be easily learned, developed and applied.

Reduce friction in online payments.
Standards for machine readable descriptions of products and requirements for discovery and supply chain automation.

We well mainly to the public sector. Procurement processes mean that we generally need a purchase order before we can sell anything and have a traditional process of sending invoices. (On the plus side, government is very good at paying invoices quickly). If government became more open to buying online (with credit card or equivalent) then we would sell more directly online.
As we tend to have a relatively small number of high value sales, this is not currently a problem for us, but may have a bigger influence on companies that sell a lot of low-value items.

Online :-) There is a lot of advice available on the internet from other people in similar situations.

The Internet of Things is essentially about gathering new kinds of data and using it to provide new kinds of services. It is one strand of the web of data discussed above, that can then feed into specific applications, eg in a Smart City context, or in a data analytics/Big Data context.
It involves better understanding of the the environment, behaviour of people (perhaps people in the role of customers or potential customers of a business) then finding ways to act on that better understanding.

Use of existing open standards for communication and data representation.

It has some specific technological requirements around cheap low-power devices and communications mechanisms that need further R&D.
It is a good example of a situation where the balance of privacy/security and effective use of personal information needs to be investigated.

I don’t think it is well-developed anywhere. There have been a few promising experiments around the idea but there is a long way to go.

Cost of data collection devices.
Use of open standards and protocols. We need to avoid big infrastructure companies setting up their own proprietary and closed smart city siloes.

San Francisco car parking is a very good and well documented example. (http://sfpark.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/sfpark_aug2011projsummary_print-2.pdf)

Manufacturing; Information and Communication; Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities

on behalf of an organisation

Business representative organisation/trade body

Smart Cities; cloud Computing and Internet of Things most important. Rural connectivity the most important outside the 5.

The UK has already invested in a variety of schemes to develop its innovative capacity.
-----If the UK is to be a creative engine, developing new business models for the information
economy, then BIS should accelerate the innovation process from idea creation to proof of
concept and prototyping.
-----One of the most popular initiatives from the TSB has been the SMART grants which
focus on proof of market, proof of concept and prototyping. This scheme has 10% chance of
success for applicants, which almost certainly means that good ideas are being rejected.
----- To enable SMEs to develop their ideas, for opportunities in the Information Economy or
otherwise, funding schemes that facilitate Proof of Concept or Prototype Development
should be significantly increased. We suggested to our membership that the at least 5 fold
increase in the TSB SMART award should be made; lifting the a target success rate from
10% to 50%.
90% of respondents agreed with this recommendation. Other useful feedback that we
received was that it was not clear how successful the current scheme actually is. An
independent audit of the performance of the current SMART award scheme should be
conducted (to actually test that the 10% of applicants who are awarded grants are actually
moving their products to market.

Technology is the enabler for innovation. The Tier 1, vertical sector groups (such as
automotive and aerospace), should all include representation from the technology supply
side to ensure that UK SMEs are aware of upcoming opportunities, and that the vertical
sectors are aware of the technology capability available from UK SMEs.

Refer to the ETN report following the consultation for the House of Commons Science &
Technology Committee review into “Commercialisation of Research”
Review the report at: http://www.etn-uk.com/hocvalleyofdeath.aspx

Refer to the ETN report following the consultation for the House of Commons Science &
Technology Committee review into “Commercialisation of Research”
Review the report at: http://www.etn-uk.com/hocvalleyofdeath.aspx

Five areas of focus are identified by BIS as being the most important for the UK – smart
cities; cloud computing; internet of things; big data; and e-commerce. We have also identified
Rural Connectivity as a key area.
These are all areas may represent one or more of the components for the business models
of the future; they do not necessarily rely upon "breakthrough" or "disruptive" technologies.
The "new" business opportunities that these areas present will rely more upon creative input
to identify business applications (that most likely reduce costs or improve efficiency), and at
the heart of these new business models, system design and integration will be key skill-sets
to build these opportunities.
In short: systems that integrate hardware and software to manage data (real time or
otherwise) and control applications and/or interfaces will be the drivers that will deliver these
new business models.
So, what are the key skills needed for the UK to build and maintain a strong information
economy?
------It is the 11 to 17 year olds who are going to invent and design the business models of
the future.
------These innovative solutions will incorporate hardware (IoT, M2M) and software (Big Data,
7
Could computing), and a generic skill-set to understand how to integrate these technologies
will be necessary.
------ We need to see the establishment of technology clubs in schools for this age group,
that demonstrate the "art of the possible" for electronic systems (integrating microcontrollers,
sensors, displays, control systems and applications)
------- The Government needs a serious investment for our 11 to 17 year olds to foster this
skill-set in schools. Each school should run its own "Technology Club"
93% of our survey poll respondents agreed with this statement.

We design microprocessors. Our designs are used in over 90% of mobile phones and many other objects

on behalf of an organisation

Large business (over 250 staff)

The five sectors are right. They overlap with each other in some important respects: in particular there are close links between data/cloud, IoT and Smart Cities.
Internet of Things (IoT) is a wide concept which covers a variety of important areas for economic growth and development. These include e health ( remote monitoring of the chronically ill in their homes), better environmental monitoring of e g buildings, improved security for premises and transactions, smart energy ( including both smart meters – which could be smarter than currently planned), connected homes, etc. All of these specific areas will spawn growth opportunities.
We should not overlook the fact that new developments are still ahead of us in mobile connectivity, where for example a new emphasis on designing more secure systems is likely to increase the growth of eg mobile banking.

In some cases further technological progress is needed, not necessarily in designing the products, but in ensuring interoperability ( so that a consumer can be confident a device bought from one manufacturer is able to connect with a range of other devices). This will be key for IoT.
In other cases, we need to get the business model right. To some extent IoT has already started: there are a number of B2B applications (eg in logistics) and B2C applications (eg in car insurance) already in place. Businesses will take up IoT for B2B purposes if there is a cost saving/efficiency gain for them to do so.
In other cases some public sector involvement is necessary in, for example, promoting smarter traffic management, street lighting or e-health applications.
One problem is public sector finances: in some cases Local Councils may not want to invest in smart street lighting, because the payback period stretches across an election date. Community Health budgets may not have an incentive to invest in remote health monitoring because the payback will show up on a different budget – the primary healthcare budget – as fewer people have to be admitted to hospital. At the same time there needs to be thought on how to encourage patients to have confidence in remote health monitoring, which may be unfamiliar to many of the elderly and chronically ill.
For retail consumers much will depend on the perceived advantages of the service and ease of implementation.
In some cases a key issue will be whether and how data gathered by IoT devices (or Big Data in general) can be used. This is a difficult area: consumers need to be confident that their data is not misused. Regulators should be careful to ensure that regulation helps give consumers confidence in data protection, while not unduly holding back business model innovation involving new ways of using the data. Getting this right may be essential key to unlocking the potential of some aspects of IoT.
It might help to think of the complexity of the different sorts of data: some could be anonymised data e g for public health purposes, or traffic management, or generic market research. In other cases, consumers will volunteer data and happily agree to its use for a variety of services. In others, there will be concerns around ‘observed ‘ data. (These categories have been worked out by the WEF.)
In addition, data is, unlike most raw materials, re usable for different purposes. This is another factor regulators have to bear in mind.
On smart Cities, the Glasgow pilot will be an important opportunity to test some of the issues (as will work planned in London).
Government Policy has the chance to lead also in e g setting high standards for smart meters, helping to shape the public debate around data protection ( including in the EU)

Some ideas on the broad levers the Government could use are in the answer to Question 2 above.
More generally the Government should do more to champion the sector. This is not just about software: important though that is. It is also about stimulating the right interest in designing (and manufacturing) appropriate products, protecting IP, developing the electronic systems community, leading by example in public policy issues etc
The Government could usefully work with some companies interested in this area to share expertise.

E commerce is already very successful in the UK. This shows there is a well informed, adaptable and skilled population willing to engage in the information economy. This helps stimulate business to work in this area. (But there is more to be done: if IoT, e health, smart cities etc are to become a reality we cannot leave people behind.)
Incentives like the patent box have been helpful.

There are two aspects to this: one is the issue of start ups out of the universities. Here, it is probably true to say that great technology is not enough. Tech companies also need good business acumen. We need to integrate technology research more closely with management expertise. Various options are possible, including a wider use of joint honours degrees (management and computer science) or promotion of online MBAs, or linking engineers more effectively with a pool of business expertise i e by drawing on such expertise in appointing advisory boards.
Then there are issues about how start ups grow. Mergers are sometimes the most viable way, and regulators need to understand that the market is global in reaching any decision on competition implications.
Funding can be another problem: companies often struggle to progress from small start up into a medium sized company with a steady order book. Venture Capital can play a role here, including through funds in which public money is invested alongside private sector money. One problem is that most such funds are looking at returns beginning to be delivered after five to ten years. This may not be long enough for companies in this sector where upfront development lead times can be quite long.
The second aspect is how best to utilise research done at Universities through companies already operating in the market. The KTNs are an attempt to help bridge this gap.

The shortcomings of STEM teaching are well known. There are various aspects to the problem. One is that in general, it its only children from scientific parents who are most likely to take up science at school and university. To increase the pool, we need to attract children from non science backgrounds too. This can be done through focussing on good role models, particularly in schools.
ARM has entered into a partnership with Code Club and the Raspberry Pi Foundation to foster a long-term improvement in the provision of ICT talent in the UK by inspiring and encouraging the development of skills in Computer Programming and STEM subjects from an early age.
Code Club offers primary school children the opportunity to learn the basics of programming through a fun and interactive environment called “Scratch” (developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The clubs are typically run by technology sector volunteers alongside school teachers.
Code Club aims to create clubs in 25% of schools across the UK by the end of 2015 and ARM is committed to helping them achieve this goal through financial and mentoring support as well as championing the concept to government, schools and across the UK technology sector. During 2013, ARM plans to work in conjunction with Code Club to expanding the range of educational materials to include more advanced programming languages such as Python and to develop a specific project for the low cost Raspberry Pi computer. A group of enthusiastic employees has already stepped up to the challenge and is in the process of forming 12 Code Clubs in schools local to ARM offices.
Support from the Government could help Code Club get wide traction.

We make extensive use of ICT/Internet to conduct business with our partners, and to provide them with ongoing support. We also use ICT widely for internal communications – important in a company with operations in several parts of the world.

As an IT company, we seek to recruit highly qualified computer scientists (most of our staff have two degrees in computer science). This is not easy. We are fortunate in being able to recruit to our offices worldwide. There is a clear shortage of requisite skills in the UK.

Cloud services raise many of the same public policy issues as the Internet itself, namely liability (including across borders), security, data protection.
In addition there may be questions about the energy footprint of the cloud, given the energy consumption of big data centres. We are interested in looking at how that energy footprint can be contained, including by using ARM microprocessor designs (which focus on power efficiency).There is an opportunity for the UK to lead in this area.

Business needs above all to have confidence in the business model for data analytics etc.
The public debate around use of data is in some ways polarised. We need people to have confidence in how their data might be used. Government could help shape the debate.
As suggested above, the debate might start by bearing mind three types of data: (i) volunteered ( in which case permission – implicit or explicit – could be obtained from consumers), (ii) observed ( the most sensitive, where the benefits of allowing data capture need to be clear), and (iii) anonymised ( which may be less sensitive and which can provide useful public policy and marketing insights). (These categories have been worked out by the WEF.)
The debate might look also at the benefits from using data, and the rewards available to consumers for sharing it.

See the comments on Question 12 above. Helping to shape the debate could be an important contribution from Government in this area.

Big data will open up new employment possibilities and skills in the area of data analytics and data management. This is an important element: the Information Economy can deliver jobs not only for computer scientists!

ARM uses the internet extensively.
My personal view ( from other experience) is that there are two problems which hold some companies back. The first is security: particularly if a company is trying to sell abroad, there can be worries about the security of online payment arrangements. A number of companies are working on aspects of online security, including Trustonic, a JV involving ARM.
A second issue, is the perceived difficulty of building a brand online from scratch. It is still the case that for the most part the retail business conducted on line involves branded goods which have build up their reputation off line ( through bricks and mortar sales, advertising etc).

The benefits are significant. Last year ARM launched a new low power microprocessor design which is targeted at microsensors ( essential for the internet of things, which can be broadly defined as the ability of any object to be able to sense information about itself or its environment and to transmit that information somewhere else). IoT has huge potential, globally.
To some extent IoT is already starting (see above).
Some key sectors which will benefit will include:
(i) energy ( with better management of energy consumption through more precise control of how and when products use electricity - and eventually involving links to the smart grid );
(ii) e health, where IoT offers the prospect of remote monitoring of the chronically ill in their homes, leading to more preventative treatment and less expense on primary /hospital care;
(iii) security, which provision of better information on security of premises;
(iv) insurance, through better security (above) and through calibrating premiums eg for drivers more precisely according to how they drive ( again, this is already happening);
(v) automotive, through wider use of telematics ( remote connectivity form vehicles, which eg can enable automatic software repairs and upgrades);
(vi) traffic management, with better data on minute by minute traffic flows;
(vii) street lighting control, etc.
(viii) Retail, where improved logistics will save costs while enabling maximum just in time delivery and stock management.
(ix) Smart homes.
(x) Logistics, through making just in time deliver smarter, or timing the public refuse collection runs to coincide with the time when bins are full etc.

In addition, it is likely that IoT will stimulate new growth in other areas, including through analysing and using the data collected through IoT (subject to the points made above), and developing demand for new services. In this way IoT can help stimulate wide economic growth, creating new employment opportunities for a variety of sections of the workforce, not just ICT professionals.

Interoperability is key: consumers need to know that the equipment they buy from different suppliers for different products will work on the communication system they install at home or in the workplace.
Interoperability has several facets: one is what part of the spectrum will IoT use. Ofcom have recently held a consultation on setting aside White Space for these purpose, which we supported. But other options are also possible.
Interoperability will also involve the software systems which IoT will use.

(i) Leadership: there is a role for the Government to start to generate interest in IoT by using it in services for which it (or local Government ) is responsible eg e health, traffic management etc
(ii) Awareness: another aspect of this would be for Government to help raise awareness of the potential benefits of IoT eg to save energy, improve traffic, manage health. The current smart meter specifications do not include the ability for a meter to ‘manage’ energy consumption rather than simply inform consumers how much energy is being used. The idea seems to be that once the meters are installed, consumers will see how much they are spending and upgrade to more sophisticated energy management systems. Maybe. But Government could usefully work with interested parties to see if this process can be stimulated.
(iii) Interoperability: ( see above).
(iv) Business models ( see above).
(v) Pilots. We hope the Glasgow pilot ( and work being done elsewhere ) will stimulate interest.

We are looking forward to seeing how Glasgow implements a smart community with the recently awarded TSB funds. Some other cities, including London are also working in this area.

(i) Funding: IoT is sometimes a classic case of invest to save, but the short-termism of many Councils works against it.
(ii) Budgets: in healthcare, the community care budget is often separate from the primary care budget. So there is no incentive to invest on one in order to save on another.
(iii) Business model: cities could extract advantage - both commercial, and public policy - from the data IoT will provide. But this remains a sensitive area .

The countries which are perceived to be in the lead ( eg in East Asia) have put significant government support behind developing eg IoT.

All represent good opportunities

The missing piece is the interaction between the private and the public sectors
The public sector (central and local) is by far the single biggest customer in the UK for
ICT related goods and services. Whatever the future intentions might realise1,
currently purchasing decisions are measured in £100 millions and the outsourcing
contracts in £billions2. A crude analysis of the expenditure on ICT3 reveals that it
represents significantly more than 5% of government annual budget (excluding
pensions and welfare)4.
The decisions taken within the public sector affect the rest of the ICT economy. The
public sector is not merely a customer for IT. It is an actor in the ICT marketplace
(potentially monopsonistic).
The appointed digital champion5 has declared that government should force people online, with online the default option7. Moving public services on-line affects the rest
of the economy in almost all its aspects:
• Filing tax returns online is a legal requirement for non individuals8 9 10 and
presented as the option for all taxpayers11
It's not only tax, the Meteorological Office will be replacing12 a weather forecast service
that works on all computers with one that excludes open solutions13.
This issue is addressed more fully in the questions concerning barriers, below.

In December 2011 BIS published an economic study on innovation and growth14 with
specific attention to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT):
The relationships between competition and innovation are all the more
complex as they are likely to differ across industries and sectors, and in
some industries collaboration must be encouraged.
With network externalities, for instance, the more users join a particular
telephone network, the more valuable the network becomes to those
users, as they are able to contact more people as the size of the user
base increases. This can lead to very large market shares for leading
firms and products and high barriers of entry.
ICT-enabled forms of collaboration […] exhibit scale economies. As
virtual networks grow, the control of interface and compatibility
standards, amongst other issues, also increase in importance.
In the telephone network example above many users could participate because of
interoperability.

Standards are the often-overlooked foundation of technology and innovation. As other
studies undertaken by BIS indicate:
• They are an enabler of economic growth16.
• Standardization is a key part of the microeconomic infrastructure: it can enable
innovation and act as a barrier to undesirable outcomes17.
Earlier BIS economic studies highlight the role of open standards for competition18 :
• Open standards are essential to maximise network effects19
• Proprietary standards (i.e., those controlled by a particular supplier) can raise
barriers to entry20.
Despite the policy intentions of Cabinet Office, government departments are paying
scant regard to the requirement that they should use open standards. Problems arise
because some of these services require specific software and without that software
these services cannot be accessed, for example:
• joint filing with Companies House21
• verifying a National Insurance number22
At first sight a requirement for specific software might not seem too onerous as part of
the overall costs of doing business though it is unclear why government should be
imposing unnecessary costs.
But there is a bigger issue that particularly affects businesses. In circumstances where
they cannot guarantee that products are “100% government compatible” they cannot sell a computer system unless without changing the business model and charging for
unnecessary licence fees.
Such practice creates an unnecessary block to a source of growth in the SME sector of
the economy in a number of ways:
• preventing micro-business refurbishing operations based on Linux or similar
open source software (OSS), e.g., “laptop refurbishment and repair”) with both
lower costs and greater spend in the local economy
• stopping hardware being reused that might otherwise end up being recycled for
scrap – unnecessary replacement costs
• creating environmental costs including wasting energy (it takes more energy to
make a computer that it will ever use during its life time) and causing
unnecessary landfill
By contrast for the most part, for example, on-line banks “just work” and any problems
that persist can be resolved by choice and exit.
The standards that enable interoperability between diverse technical architectures are
technical design decisions with significant economic and political implications.
From an economic standpoint they can produce externalities such as those enabling or
impeding competition and innovation. Their underlying intellectual property
arrangements can establish policies regarding economic competitiveness, how
innovation should proceed and opportunities to compete23. Standards also make
political decisions about the degree to which societies can access, produce or share
knowledge24 such as the UKG “open data” initiative25.
Public sector ICT should be implemented in a manner that creates the fewest
opportunities for adverse unintended consequences26:
In a modern innovation system, the number of avenues for anticompetitive
action can also be limitless. Risks of failure are high and the
line between who is a competitor and who is not becomes blurred. In this
context, real monopoly power can be difficult to observe and detect.
A very good understanding of the system-like features of the knowledge
economy is crucial if enforcement is not to deter innovation.
There is no evidence that Government IT policy is taking into account its wider effects
on the knowledge economy. Open standards, properly defined, can allow “natural
monopolies” to form in a given technology while ensuring full competition among
suppliers of technology27.

Whatever support the government chooses to offer we suggest that removing barriers
to open standards so enabling OSS will have far greater economic value than the
value of the “Catapult” budget (£200m) for commercialising the outputs of Britain's
academic research base.
The role of an open environment may be found in the 2012 strategy28 of the
Universities' Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC):
[it] includes: open standards, open source, open access, open data, open educational
resources, open science, open innovation. This is the most effective way to support
knowledge transfer and ensure that universities and colleges can play a leading role in
stimulating the knowledge economy.

The Secretary of State for Education (DfE) illustrated the importance of OSS when he
pledged to reform the computing curriculum in schools29
“Instead of children bored out of their minds being taught how to use
Word and Excel by bored teachers, we could have 11 year-olds able to
write simple 2D computer animations using an MIT tool called Scratch By 16, they could have an understanding of formal logic previously
covered only in University courses and be writing their own Apps for
smartphones.”
OSS gives the freedom to use, adapt and share it with others in contrast to the
limitations in the current situation as observed by one commentator31:
Spending five years learning how to get Excel to do my maths homework
for me just wasn't stimulating enough - but my teacher's skill sets didn't
stretch further than the basics of Microsoft Windows. Upon leaving
school, if there had been a job which focused solely on basic spreadsheet
formulas, I would have been the front-running candidate.
We need to ensure that we are producing the next generation of
technology specialists, designers and developers, rather than the current
production line of Microsoft Office-proficient workers. […] it needs to start
at school.
DfE could do worse than promote Young Rewired State, an initiative for students aged
18 or under32:
Its primary focus is to find and foster the young children and teenagers
who are driven to teaching themselves how to code, how to program the
world around them
A challenge is set to build digital products: mobile and web, using at least
one piece of open data.
or publicise Google's annual initiative for students aged 13-1733:
[A] contest to introduce pre-university students to the many kinds of
contributions that make open source software development possible.
Either initiative would be a good precursor to participation in the CV building
opportunities available to undergraduates from Google's “Summer of Code”34:
[A] global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for
various open source software projects. We have worked with several open
source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund
several projects over a three month period. Since its inception in 2005, the
program has brought together over 4500 successful student participants and
over 3000 mentors from over 100 countries worldwide, all for the love of code The Welsh Assembly Government ICT Strategy35 highlights the importance of OSS to
the local economy as it enables reuse of local skills rather than relying upon global
providers.
Bristol City Council also demonstrates such understanding36:
“Our aim is to do all we can to see a higher proportion of money from our
IT procurement ending up in the local economy and supporting the city's
innovative software companies”

Our members work across the entire spectrum and deploy solutions based on open
standards and OSS. This gives us nowhere to hide and no ability to lock-in our
customers. The business model is based on customer focus.

By, engaging, working through and with communities of interest formed on accepted
principles37

The government should take steps to prevent barriers and ensure that market
concentration is avoided. For example by addressing such issues as the current
ICANN proposal to make “.cloud” a closed registry

The importance of open data is recognised in the recent Cabinet Office consultation38:
Open Data enables accountability; it improves outcomes and productivity
in key services through informed comparison; it transforms social
relationships – empowering individuals and communities; and it drives
dynamic economic growth.
Open data is predicated on open standards. Data cannot be open unless access is
also open.
The [open] definition can be summed up in the statement that “a piece of
content or data is open if anyone is free to use it, reuse or distribute it- subject
only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share-alike39
Security and privacy are a subject in themselves best addressed by a governance
regime that causes real pain for those with responsibility for failure.

An education system that focuses on concepts and not products, emphasising
openness as discussed in the answers above

Remove barriers and promote interoperability at discussed in the answers above
A public sector that pays no attention to the need for open standards, interoperability
and the importance of a level playing field40 for software can too easily overwhelm local
initiatives to enable the use of OSS41 and suppress sources of economic growth.
For example the benefits arising from opening up public data in the UK (which is
partially enabled by open standards) range from £1.6bn to £6bn annually42.
In 2003 one study43 on the importance of OSS in the public sector concluded:
Open source software, such as Linux, typically uses open interfaces.
Some commercial software uses open interfaces, some uses proprietary
interfaces. Open interfaces typically lead to a larger, more robust, and
more innovative industry and therefore software with open interfaces
should be preferred by public sector officials, as long as it offers comparable quality to proprietary alternatives.
Because Linux is open source platform software, adoption of Linux can
help spur the development of a country’s software sector, in part by
promoting the training of programmers that enables them to develop
applications that run on the Linux platform The adoption of the Linux
platform may well promote the economic development of commercial
software to run in that environment.
The value of developing this undeveloped market may be assessed by considering
that 86% of proprietary software spending goes outside Europe and reduces local
company margins44.
The outcomes that might be expected by a vibrant OSS sector may be illustrated by
examining existing markets for services as they exhibit the expected characteristics.
It is a mature market with informed participants and consumers have access to all the
information they need:
• The ability to supply provides "threat of entry" into the market.
• The supply side for services has low barriers to entry and exit with the
resulting pressure on pricing.
• A local supplier of services is more likely to be able to offer the same for
less than a distant supplier.
• Innovation is both enabled by access to skills and knowledge and is a
necessary feature to drive differentiation
• Exit from the market can only be avoided by innovation and excellence.

The inability to be 100% compatible with public services as discussed in the answers
above

In general the principles contained in the BIS studies already cited apply across all
sectors of the economy.

A good model of the way forward for the internet of things is provided by a reminder of
the underlying principles of the world wide web
W3C attribute the web's success to Sir Tim Berners-Lee's decision in 1993 to make his
intellectual property rights to the web royalty-free. W3C members contributing to
standards sign away royalties to avoid placing too great burden on a standard.45
Any activity that creates barriers to openness or walled gardens on the World Wide
Web runs contrary to the original design intentions of W3C46, reiterated constantly47
A submission to the US Govt. Federal Trade Commission48 expands on this issue and
on the monetary values involved:
A fundamental reason that the Internet and the web have seen such
remarkable growth, rapid innovation, and an extraordinary creation of
value for the entire world is that people can build new things on the web
without asking anyone for permission.
The Internet is powerful because it is common infrastructure based on
public, royalty-free standards as mainstream, common, accepted,
important and as overlooked as the public standards that bring us
running water, the electric grid, and the highway system. These RF open
standards provide substantial value, both to consumers and to the
businesses that interoperate with them.
Recent examples help put a real price tag on this value. Google acquired On2 Technologies last year for $124.6 million. Google then released
On2's flagship product, software to enable a royalty-free patent licence
as part of the “WebM” video project. Google also recently acquired
Global IP Solutions for $68.2 million, and has opened up its technology
for developing other standards, royalty-free.
Royalty-free Internet standards such as these constitute investments
totalling billions of dollars, and serve as the foundation for a significant
fraction of the US economy.
Traditionally, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (RAND) licensing has
been the goal of government attempts to ensure fairness in the role of
patents in standards-setting. RAND is generally believed to be neither
reasonable nor non-discriminatory, and in a royalty-free environment this
is especially true. There are now many business models that would be
destroyed by any per-unit licensing cost.
Multi-billion dollar companies such as Microsoft (market cap $204 billion),
Google (market cap $164 billion), and Skype (recently acquired by
Microsoft for $8.5 billion) give away end-user software such as web
browsers or Internet telephony at no cost, creating a potentially unlimited
liability if they had to deal with RAND standards.
Smaller companies would be harmed even by a legal requirement to
count how many copies are distributed. Mozilla, (makers of the Firefox
browser) for example, distributes the vast majority of its software over a
large network of volunteer mirrors and Content Distribution Networks
over which they have no direct control.
There are also numerous third-party download sites which provide an
enormous array of software downloads for free, funded by advertising
revenue. This business scales precisely because they do not have to ask
permission or negotiate a relationship for providing accurate download
statistics to each vendor whose software they distribute.

A failure to balance intellectual property rights issues with the resultant increase in
transaction costs, e.g., open standards do not create significant danger to intellectual
property rights generally49:
Reliance on formal rights affects a minority of British firms, with less than
15% of innovative large firms using patents to protect their innovation, and less than half of that when it comes to SMEs. More firms use
secrecy, speed to market or complex design to protect their technical
innovations. Most commercial value rests in relatively few IPRs, and
even fewer IPR owners.
The study also shows that for software, strong protection of intellectual property rights,
has negative effects on innovation:
[...] increasing patent density is associated with diminishing contestability,
with the suggestion that patent ‘thickets’ may reduce the scope for new
entrants to innovate. This appears to be true in areas such as software
and other technologies where innovation is sequential. This leads the
review to recommend that the UK should not encourage the spread of
patents to areas where their effectiveness is open to doubt [...]
contestability appear to be linked to productivity performance.
Too wide a topic for this response, the Patent Box50 may create such an effect.
An analogy may be be made with the effects of a Tobin Tax51

All of the answers to the foregoing issues of interoperability and the network
effect apply to smart cities

The Corporate IT Forum recognises the economic importance of these five sectors for growth but
also cites as important to the information economy: access in rural centres; digital support to the
older generation; social media; mobile; global ID management; internet security/e-crime unit;
innovation; education and training with a review of national curriculum; smart grids.

Forum members believe that Smart City concepts, mobility, shared knowledge and a better
infrastructure with global access will drive opportunities. Equally important is the need for the
professionalism of IT, clear and well defined career path and recognised qualifications.

Forum members believe that Joint ventures, partnerships between educators, business, finance and
government are the key areas of focus.

Benefits: Global business hub, competitive market, Time zone,
Barriers: privacy legislation, regulation, lack of understanding
Ideas: incentive programmes, tax breaks, buy British incentive, investment, access to funds

It’s about providing the right framework for partnership, innovation and education/skills. Level the
playing field through coordination and collaboration with the major Industry bodies (e.g. The Forum),
better R&D investment, tax incentives and access to funds for start-ups.

ICT skills shortage should be high on the agenda of Government as ICT skills are critical for the
workforce of the future. The demand for ICT skills is not just about the quantity of skilled employees
needed but also their quality. There is insufficient home-grown IT talent.
At the moment technology is from the US and skills are offshored to low cost economies such as
India. There is broad consensus that current education system in the UK does not produce people
well prepared for business challenges. The most critical need is for employees who can operate
across technical and business silos such as architects and IT leaders. There is a skills deficit in the
basic statistical understanding Information security, design and integration engineers are examples of
specialised skills currently missing.
Education is key. Educational programmes should be aligned with the needs of the businesses.
Technical skills should be supported by understanding of business realities, strategic thinking,
communication skills as the role of IT shifts from performing technology oriented tasks to assume
much more business oriented responsibilities
The rapid speed of change in technology requires teaching concepts not specific technologies,
education and business need to stop being prescriptive.
Strong links between governmental bodies, educators and industry should be built to ensure high
employability.

Technology is recognised as one of the single biggest factors in business and economic growth.
Business innovation is more often than not implemented through a technological platform. Make IT a
change agent by using new technologies and services to support and develop alternative business
strategies. Examples include e-procurement, cloud based systems for an increasingly mobile
workforce, mobility and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), data exploitation for new product
development.

Members have critical need for improved talent strategies. The survey reveals a range of approaches
but often they consist of rather tactical activities such as professional recruitment and development.
Outsourcing is a short term solution which potentially can harm long term supply of right skilled
people within organisation. Companies recognise that they need to identify those with the
ability/aptitudes and attitudes and then train them
It is difficult to design and refine short and long term skilled workforce strategies.

Outsource non-core activity. Free up IT infrastructure and remove cost. Difficulty in obtaining
Management Information from Cloud suppliers.
Typically we have only used cloud computing today for data that is not business critical and
therefore could be off line for some time. The benefit of this service being in the cloud has
been cost and scalability. Generally the service has been very reliable, but this service was
perfect for the cloud, where as it's been difficult to move other services that require integration
and or cost more.
Key uses: data storage Key benefits: No impact on business Issues: terms of
business/contracts
Security & Lock-in
We are considering adopting Cloud Services. Cost is the main driver, while Information
Security concerns are the main issue / difficulty that have arisen.
Benefits include rapid "stand up", only paying for what we use, access the SME perspective
from across the industry and reduction of internal support requirements. Issues include: risk
mitigation, security, vendor lock-in, data/information portability and non-standard service
provisioning (e.g. an analogous provider rating system like CMM or other certification
Considerations around information security, privacy and risk. Confidence in service levels.
Complexity of integration with internal services.
Collaboration via email, instant message and document working. Meetings/desktop sharing.
Benefits - less travel, better info sharing, more agile Problems - transparency of cost, SLA,
geographic dispersal of intellectual property vs., geographic boundaries/laws

Perception of Information security risk or risks of breaching data requirements. Organisational
inertia. Perceived integration overhead. Concerns about whether service will have longevity
we need.
The main reasons are on premise integration with existing assets that we need to sweat and
overall costs, as we typically prefer to capitalise costs.
Key barriers: Legislative compliance including DPA, lack of credible certification i.e. ISO
27000 certification, and cloud services unwilling to address key legal/security requirements
Information Security concerns, in particular data residency.
Organizational barriers have slowed us down more than technical. Cloud changes the way we
handle support, budgeting/procurement (revenue vs. capital spending) and security so there
needs to be parallel activity to realign and agree on best process.
The same barriers constrain our greater use of cloud services.
security of information
Security concerns are always paramount. Transference of service - i.e. I decide Microsoft
o365 is expensive and want to move to another provider - how easy is this, risk etc

More suppliers need to be in this market place to create competition. There is a danger that
the large suppliers will capture all the work and smaller suppliers will disappear.
Lead by example, and ensure businesses are sharing best practice and working together to
address real security concerns and dispel myths surrounding the topic.
Due to legislation and laws, it is much more difficult for the public sector to go cloud; hence
the Government could be doing more to ease this path.
Legislate for mandatory minimum business and security requirements
Provide a PaaS service for government agencies that could potentially be extended to private
companies.
Educate the industry about how to approach decision making about the risks (we take what I
suspect is an overly cautious approach); Work with Vendors to ensure legal requirements are
clear so they can meet them.
Endorse standard practices and certifications that would reduce the consumer burden to audit
every provider on every engagement.
Certification schemes in some of these areas - e.g. security and risk levels.
guideline on acceptable security
Define a standard for some of these areas to minimise risk/increase transparency

Big Data collection, analysis and usage have slowly become one of the strategic IT priorities not only
for the vendor community. There is a case for arguing that the term ”Big Data” should be clarified
and extended to cover “management information” and so organisations It strategies are not about
“Big Data” or “Next Generation Data” but more about the layer above the present information on any
device to the audiences thus allowing them to make informed decisions

Definitely security, government has to provide not just an example of how to manage data in a
secure fashion but also have the necessary security principles and legislation to prevent
people being penalised for making their data available. There has to be a 2 way benefit.
In promoting the use of clear English to define and explain what Big Data is and how it affects
both companies and governments and individuals and their right to their own data.
Clarification of data privacy legislation and most of all for us as an international player,
ALIGNMENT WITH OTHER COUNTRIES, ESPECIALLY THE EU. DAVID CAMERON
PLEASE TAKE NOTE!!!
Accept that Big Data is a term generated by IT Industry to promote products and treat it
accordingly. Open Data and Big Data are not even remotely connected
Run its own successful Big data program as an example. Provide electronic access to open
demographic datasets. Provide the right balance between privacy and availability through
legislation, code of practice etc.
The laws regarding the use of private data by companies are unclear, particularly around the
use of personal information by a 3rd party under contract. Effectively if you want to get a
specialist company to analyse an in-house employee survey that contains personal data, then
each employee has to formally agree that the data can be passed to the 3rd party. It's the
same with customer data.
I am not convinced the government has a part to play in this other than maybe using
examples of their own use of big data and the benefits it has brought them.
Increasing access. Ensuring free access to the relevant data. National broadband capacity to
encourage internet users to access sites. Remove cookie restrictions.

Again the key to success is a strong partnership between universities and businesses. Businesses
need better, faster and simpler tools and universities can play a role in developing those tools,
methodologies and technique e.g. in conducting research on the value of different analytics methods
and new algorithms. Security, compression technologies are not only but commercially viable.
Universities should engage with local communities and provide them with analysis and segmenting
data to optimise their services. Patent/IPR and incubation ensures commerciality and exploitation of
Big Data.
There is a danger of research being just swept up by the large consultancies then we won’t see a
group of new, small businesses develop wide ranging services.
Increasing the statistics and design methods of many courses would help produce a generation of
mangers capable of understanding Big Data. Marketing and selling courses should include a module
on Big Data as well as Business Management and traditional IT/BI courses.

Many member organisations do not have Big Data. Instead they are capturing and trying to analyse
newer types of Data- Next Generation Data. Communities have to be given skills and tools to
analyse data themselves. Teams should consist of people such as business domain experts,
statisticians and data experts. Analytical and statistical skills need to be combined again with wider
business skills.

Broaden access to high speed Internet access. Provide incentives to Service Providers to
upgrade infrastructure in rural locations. Invest in ecommerce start-ups and innovative
projects.
There are a number of challenges in taking advantage of the online economy. These are
based around security and compliance making the cost of entry very high. There is also the
uncertainty created by the ever changing way search engines calculate your ranking. These
all add up to needing specialist skills and knowledge making online trading difficult to cost
justify even for large businesses. Simplifying the requirements would make a significant
difference.
Further investment in the technology infrastructure (e.g. optical cabling) to enable businesses
& home to more easily collaborate and integrate

Access anywhere from rural areas, high cost of using data roaming when overseas. Customs
restrictions, in-country laws on local taxes etc.
UK - Regulatory controls for promoting products

Not aware of any knowledge base.
Internal expertise and external contract resource.
Private sector - consultancy and service providers

We are a global engineering company and data synchronisation between regions is a benefit.
The benefits are significant around communication of alerts as well as new technology such
as near field communications for payment capture. The technologies could also be used in
stores for communication of appropriate offers and information to make shopping easier. The
system will also help in Energy with the introduction of smart meters and people seeing their
usage via smart devices or online.
Greater volumes of trading - reduce cost, improve profitability, growth

Non-profit shop fronts/Malls that allow SMEs to compete without having to invest in sponsored
links.
Openness. There are a multitude of standards around differing uses of the internet. These are
not just policies but methods of communication particularly around maturing internet
technologies such as cloud computing.

We need to innovate and build differentiators in a global marketplace. We need to look where
we are world leaders (e.g. major Global Financial Market leaders) and why we have been
successful.
The internet is not all pervasive in the UK. To change this you would need to make the
internet a 'must have' or advantageous technology for most if not all of the populous as well
as make it affordable to connect to.

Based on the information in http://www.smart-cities.eu/model.html is based on existing
capability. Its not a model that the Government is providing investment to achieve.
Nowhere strikes me as particularly good at the moment.
London only

No proactive schemes or investment to achieve Smart City status. Provide a template,
governance, and investment.
Infrastructure investment
Communication – there does not appear to be a single or widely understood definition of
‘Smart City’. We need to talk the same language.

Telecentre development in Malaysia, Scandinavia. Benefit communities by providing internet
access facilities, support and training will underpin a growth in ecommerce. Will also have an
impact on home working reduction in commute traffic and work/life balance.
I have noticed there is significantly better overseas communication technology and tend to be
more free access to wireless technology. The government should support better access for
mobile devices.

UK's ambition to grow a strong information economy will be
hampered if more robust safeguards are not put in place to rein in
unfair contractual processes. It is critical that creators can negotiate
on a level playing field to get a fair share of the money that consumers
pay for the content that they create.

This Call for Evidence has a necessarily broad focus. The issues at stake are no longer
limited to what used to be called ‘the ICT sector’ but flow out across the economy, with
implications for all sectors. The consultation is right to identify that ‘the use of digital
technology and information is a key element of most parts of the economy which means the
strategy has the potential to make a real difference not only in the UK’s IT sector but across
the whole economy.’ The Internet and the innovations associated with it are changing every
sector and while the impacts may vary one thing that is consistent across all sectors and
which Google believes should be a key focus for the Government is the demand that they
create for new skills. The UK has the opportunity to become a global hub for the worldwide
Information Economy, particularly given our strong headstart on ecommerce, but we will
need to make sure that we have the digital skills if are we to realise our potential.
Addressing the skills gap, therefore, should be the key area of focus for the Information
Economy Strategy.

19. The consultation asks what would likely be the key drivers of change over the next five
to ten years and it is right to identify, for example, Internet computing and datadriven
innovation as likely to be key components of big change. As we grow from a global Internet
16 http://www.ukces.org.uk/assets/ukces/docs/publications/evidencereport53retail.
pdf
6
of two billion users to one of five billion users, business and Government in the UK should
consider the opportunities and challenges that will be created with the shift in language,
culture and markets. However it is, of course, impossible to predict the future with certainty:
so while Government is right to seek to understand what might happen next, it should be
cautious about seeking to constrain it. Policies designed for the Information Economy need
to be flexible and technologyneutral,
if they are to be successful.

Help for startups and innovators
20. The UK Government can support the innovation that underpins the Information
Economy and has begun to do so in a number of ways. Opening up data and shifting
procurement online are both good steps and, if their value is to be fully realised, should
become the default setting for Government. The recognition and championing of Tech City
are also important and have helped establish the cluster on the world stage. Coupled with
the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme, these steps are helping to make the UK a more
attractive option for foreign investment in tech startups.
21. There are also reforms that need to be made to allow innovation to thrive. The reforms
to copyright, proposed by Professor Ian Hargreaves and supported by the Government,
need to be put in place as quickly as possible. This is not just vital for the UK tech
community, as the Coalition for a Digital Economy have made clear, 17 but also to stop
innovation in other sectors, such as scientific and medical research, from being held back
by outdated copyright laws, designed for the age of the tape recorder, rather than the
Internet. The fact that copying a CD onto an iPod, something that millions of British people
do every day, is technically in breach of copyright demonstrates the importance of flexibility
in laws governing technology. In this regard, Google would encourage policymakers to be
cautious not to believe that what worked for previous technologies can simply be lifted up
and applied to the Internet. In particular, the Internet should not be treated as if it is the
same as a mobile phone network. Its scale and structure make it quite different.
Help for ecommerce
22. The Internet has made it easier than ever for businesses to set up and grow online and
these low barriers to entry are helping to drive growth and lower prices for consumers.
Across the board, Government departments who are considering new legislation or
17 http://www.coadec.com/openlettertothegovernmentonadoptinghargreavesrecommendations/
7
regulation online or for business should be required to consider the implications for the
hundreds of thousands of small and medium sized businesses online. As the largest
Internet economy the UK has a leading role to play in Europe to ensure that new regulations
and directives, such as those around Data Protection, are designed in a way that will not
needlessly strangle UK businesses in red tape but instead enable UK businesses to
compete on a global stage.
Help for the old economy to adapt and grow
23. Many of the biggest challenges, for example in the competition for the new skills that
new ways of working will require, will be for those businesses who do not consider
themselves to be part of the Information Economy. As it builds its strategy for the
Information Economy, Government should consider what it can do to help the transition of
these companies and organisations.

Competition for computer scientists, programmers and developers is global. Other countries are also putting an emphasis on digital skills: Israel now has the highest number of engineers as a proportion
of the population? in Mexico 130,000 computer engineers graduate every year. In the UK,
uptake of computer science remains low and accounts for only 0.4 percent of A levels
taken. This is having an impact within businesses: 66 percent of employers are dissatisfied
with digital skills of their workforce. This is something that the Government should focus on
at the heart of the Information Economy strategy.

As well as those with some training or education in computer science, we also need
those with midrange skills, particularly data analytics.
McKinsey Global Institute, in their study Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity, estimate that in United States alone businesses will not just demand 190,000 employees with deep
analytical skills but 1.5 million ‘datasavvy managers’. MGI point out that these ‘datasavvy
managers’ need not be computer scientists, nor require three year university courses:
‘people in these roles simply need enough conceptual knowledge and quantitative skills to
be able to frame and interpret analyses in an effective way. It is possible to develop such
skills through a single course in statistics and experimental design.’

In their analysis of the retail sector, UKCES identify a wide range of new specific skills set that businesses will be increasingly demand, including:
-a greater demand for ICT skills in the design of online shopping websites,
managing logistics, the introduction of instore
technologies (e.g. EPOS),
and collating information about consumers?
- more emphasis on managing warehousing where the shift to online sales is
pronounced?
- the development of marketing / financial skills which are able to target
promotional campaigns at customers with a given consumer profile (via data
collected through instore technologies or online registration).16
While many of these changing skills sets are driven by technological change and the
impact of the Internet, the skills themselves are by no means purely tech skills. Mapping out
business demand for and the current provisions of skills in these areas would be

24. ‘Cloud computing’ is one of those terms that is frequently used and rarely defined but a
useful description is offered by Andrew McAfee as ‘an umbrella term for a rapidly growing
industry’ that he more simply divides into three broad layers: infrastructure as a service
(computing capacity), platform as a service (software development technologies), and
software as a service (software programmes).
Internet computing: Stronger businesses
25. Internet computing typically benefits organisations through more effective mobile
working, higher productivity, more use of standard processes, better ability to enter new
business areas and the ability to open up in new locations. For example, 19 Spanish bank
BBVA moved 110,000 employees to Internet computing productivity tools, not with the goal
of cost savings, but “to promote innovation, make faster decisions, and increase
productivity”.20
Internet computing: New jobs
26. Last year alone, it is estimated that Internet computing services helped organizations of
all sizes around the world generate more than $400 billion in revenue and 1.5 million new
jobs. In the years ahead, others estimate Internet computing will 21 create 800,000 jobs
across Europe, with 240,000 of them in the UK (compared to 160,000 in Germany and
100,000 in France),22 and 0.10.4
per cent GDP growth in the EU.23
Internet computing: Small business
27. The benefits of Internet computing are by no means limited to large corporations. While
the total cost savings increase with firm size, the largest percentage savings are realized
by small firms.24 McKinsey estimates that at least onethird
of all SMEs make extensive
use of Internet computing technologies, and those that do have benefited tremendously,
using new Internetbased
services to perform the functions that entire departments once
performed for large corporations.25

28. The consultation is right to identify datadriven
innovation (or ‘big data’ as this
consultation calls it) as a key driver of change. More data is generated today than ever,
thanks in part to the proliferation of smartphones, social media, and sensor networks.
Companies collect increasing amounts of data from business partners, suppliers, and
customers. Data is so common that it’s often considered a “byproduct,”
generated and
collected with no extra effort involved. And data is only going to get bigger. McKinsey
projects a 40 percent growth in global data generated per year.26 This trend affects the
entire economy, not just a few sectors. For example, by 2009 nearly all sectors of the
United States economy had at least an average of 200 terabytes of stored data per
company with more than 1,000 employees.
Unlocking data’s potential value
29. Datadriven
businesses in the UK are growing faster and acting more innovatively than their counterparts. NESTA’s 2012 research study of datadriven businesses in the UK shows how a small but significant group of UK companies – what they call ‘the datavores’ – are using dataanalytics
to drive their businesses. Their report 27 shows how these businesses, which account for around one in five of all online businesses, grow faster than others. These ‘datavores’ have a number of defining features. they gather online customer data intensively, subject this data to sophisticated analyses (such as controlled trials and
data and text mining), and use what they learn to improve their business. NESTA also
report that these ‘datavores’ are more innovative than their competitors, in products as well
as processes.
30. A 2011 study by researchers at the University of Texas found that increasing the
usability, quality, and exchangeability of data positively impacts business by improving
employee productivity, return on equity, return on investment capital, and efficient use of
company assets.28
31. As economic sectors accumulate more data, the economic potential of that data also
increases. For example, McKinsey estimates that the efficient and effective use of data
could provide as much as $300 billion in value to the United States healthcare sector.29
Similarly, data in the EU’s public administration sector could generate €250 billion in
annual value. Datadriven
innovation and decisionmaking
in the US retail sector holds a
60 percent potential increase in retailers’ operating margins. And the global use of
locational data alone holds the potential for a $600 billion potential annual consumer
surplus.

32. The Internet is powering retail growth in the UK. Doubledigit
growth in online sales
helped overcome an otherwise tough Christmas period.30 ‘Clickandcollect’
came into its
own in 2012, so that despite a slight fall in the number of overall shoppers, when people did
get out to the shops they bought more per trip.31 Integrated Internet services, such as
‘clickandcollect’,
have become an integral part of the British High Street experience, with
consumers researching online and buying instore
and spotchecking
prices on their
smartphones. And the strength of the UK’s online retailing at home is helping to strengthen
our position abroad: UK retail parcels to the USA increased three fold last year.32 So while
the Internet brings challenges for retailers, it also brings huge opportunities.
33. Companies now have the ability to grow and scale globally very quickly. In the view of
Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist, ‘the early 21st will be the age of the
micromultinational:
small companies that operate globally.’ This is in part due to lower
barriers and lower costs. The availability of open source tools, Internet computing, and
virtual office infrastructure has driven down the cost of launching an Internet venture from $5
million in 1997 to $50,000 in 2008.
34. The Internet helps companies not just to grow but to scale more easily. Julie Deane
founded The Cambridge Satchel Company in 2008 with capital of just £600. She set up a
basic website at little cost and with no prior training. Within six months, her turnover was
£30,000 and by year end £200,000 and by 2012, turnover was over £1m.33 But because
her company was Internet based, she could grow her shopfront
with little friction or risk.
35. The growth of ecommerce is also due to the ease with which companies can reach
global markets. Scott Phillips has built up a business in Hartlepool selling reconditioned
golfballs:
what started out as local company has grown into a global exporter, with stock
delivered worldwide and prices displayed in multiple currencies.34
36. Intermediaries, such as Google, play an important role in supporting UK ecommerce.
Google’s tools help businesses not only to advertise to new global markets but to use
analytics to identify and target them and to use tools, such as Google Translate, to speak to
them.

Information and Communication; Administrative and Support Service Activities; Public Administration and Defence; Compulsory Social Security

on behalf of two organisations

Business representative organisation/trade body; Local Government (New Economy – representing Combined GM Authority)

We would agree that the five areas identified above will be very important over the next 5 to 10 years. However, in our view, it is equally important to consider the impact that digital convergence will have on other sectors and the new opportunities this will present.
Convergence is transforming businesses across all areas of the economy and in particular the finance and professional sector. However, it will be equally important within those sectors which have in parts been slow to embrace the opportunities presented by digital – including the manufacturing and construction sectors. For example, the convergence of the digital with the manufacturing sector is transforming the way goods are being produced through the innovation of 3D printing. Building Information Modelling, which Greater Manchester is one of the leading areas in the adoption of, is driving digital technology into the construction industry and its supply chain, creating demand for technology, connectivity and skills. These changes will be transformative and will need support structures in place to enable businesses to fully exploit them. In particular it will be these areas of convergence where there will be an increased requirement for computer programming and related skills in sectors of business which traditionally have not needed it.
Consideration should also be given to smarter energy and social media business as important new areas of development.

The most significant driver of change is the improvement of the digital infrastructure which is now opening up greater potential for all types and sizes of business to exploit the adoption of new services such as voice over IP and cloud computing. This market has been severely constrained by its inability to sell such services to SMEs still operating on less than 5 mbps connectivity. Worse still we have come across a number of examples where those services have been sold to businesses which are subsequently unable to use them because of poor bandwidth and/or poor quality of service. As a consequence the image of the digital industries has not been helped – and unless addressed this could create cynicism amongst the business community about the benefits of embracing the digital economy.
Businesses are seeking to drive down costs through holding less stock. At the same time the market is demanding more tailored products and services which are delivered on a just in time basis. As mentioned above new digital technologies within the manufacturing and construction industries are now making it possible for bespoke products and buildings to be manufactured using the latest 3D printing and other machinery to meet individual customer requirements. This new technology will also enable new entrants into the manufacturing sector. Manchester was the first place in the UK to pilot this through the creation of its Fablab in the north of the city. In partnership with MIT the Manufacturing Institute has set up a facility where people with new product ideas can access the 3D printing equipment they need to produce prototypes. This convergence of digital and manufacturing will lead to new innovation and the emergence of a multitude of new advanced digital manufacturing businesses able to produce bespoke products quickly and affordably.
Markets are also driving change. The requirement for Building Information Modelling (BIM) to be applied in future government contracts is encouraging the construction industry to exploit the benefits of having data in place to ensure new buildings are managed and maintained as efficiently as possible. This will require landlords to be much more digitally aware to fully exploit the benefits. Given the success of the approach to BIM, the government might consider other areas where contract opportunities can help to drive adoption of digital technologies.
As a further example, the BBC in Greater Manchester now requires all of its supply chain to send content as digital files (rather than sending tapes by courier) which has necessitated its supply chain to upgrade the quality of its connectivity where possible – or even consider relocation. Though, given the nature of the workspace required by companies such as set builders, this is creating a tension between availability of suitable workspace and access to sufficient, cost effective connectivity.
Our aging population combined with the need to reduce health budgets is certain to lead to an increase in remote monitoring of patients through devices attached to the person and within the home. This will drive the development of new digital related industries, which is an area where Greater Manchester has a number of projects in collaboration with our large health sector piloting new technologies.
As a greater proportion of retail spend moves online, and shoppers ability to use mobile technology to comparison shop whilst out of the house increases, retailers, both large and small, are being forced to adopt e-commerce. Some are abandoning their town centre units, whilst others, such as Venus Flowers, who have taken control of their own search engine optimisation (SEO) having been let down by consultants, are adopting the technology to supplement their more traditional route to market.

There has been far too much emphasis on the value of high-speed connectivity instead of promoting the new services and opportunities that businesses could access through that connectivity. In Greater Manchester we are seeking to drive business uptake of connectivity through aggregating demand amongst businesses to reduce costs. Working with key providers the government could support this through voucher schemes for business, such as those being developed for the Urban Broadband Fund, but extended into revenue as well as capital support areas, to enable them to get a package of digital services together with the connectivity needed to operate them. In addition the Government can ensure there is a clear regulatory environment that allows for flexibility and innovation in the way the connectivity is delivered and distributed.

Greater Manchester recently undertook a survey of its digital businesses which suggested that the most significant barriers to growth were: access to finance; access to new markets; local trading conditions and skills. We will be following this up with one-to-one interviews with businesses over the coming weeks so that we can better understand these key issues.
Outside of the digital sector the most significant barrier for businesses seeking to exploit opportunities is to be the lack of knowledge and expertise within businesses to fully understand what the difference it could make to their business. The UK suffers from a lack of skills, particularly within the STEM subjects, necessary to develop new ideas and implement them.
It is evident from the research that we have done in Greater Manchester to date that most of the SME community see the benefits of being online and having a web presence. The most significant challenge now is the shift in thinking required by many businesses to allow digital solutions to change the way they undertake their business. This will require some support interventions. For example our evidence suggests that there is reluctance amongst businesses to move to “the cloud” because of security concerns and fear that any loss of connectivity would prevent the business from operating. Whilst it is also important that leading edge services are being developed by UK businesses so that the benefits of take-up remain within the UK economy instead of flowing to companies overseas.
It is also evident that there is a lack of skills and knowledge (and funding) to maintain data security – especially in the light of the emerging data security regulations.

The ongoing work to develop the Digital Industries Strategy in Greater Manchester confirms that many new business starts in the digital industries start at home. Turning those businesses in commercial successes is dependent upon getting the injection of people with a diverse set of skills, expertise and creativity to input at the right time in the development of the business.
Creating the right mutually supportive culture where this can happen is critical. The establishment of peer networks led by the industry itself is beginning to happen in the digital & creative sector in Manchester. This is needed to sit alongside more traditional start-up business support to provide support and encouragement.
Investment in R&D within existing businesses presents a challenge from both a funding perspective – in terms of access to finance – and in relation to nurturing the talent that drives innovation. Our research suggests that innovators within existing non digital business are often individuals who do not fit with usual convention and need the necessary time and space to develop new ideas. Initiatives like Google Squared (which was a model developed in Manchester through Hyper Island) have sought to bring like-minded people together with respect visionaries to encourage creative and collaborative processes with some success.
Access to finance has been identified as a key factor in businesses being able to develop new products and services and bring them to market. Use of crowd funding as alternative to VC funding for starts up within the digital sector in becoming increasingly successful. However, investment for existing businesses remains a challenge. Innovation vouchers are available which amount to £3,000 for research. In addition, funding is available from the Technology Strategy Board for projects from £50,000 to £1m, though this is proving difficult for businesses to access successfully. A scheme offering more flexible mid- range R & D commercialisation grants for our businesses would help address this problem.
Whilst we are at the early stages in our analysis of the sector it is clear that consideration needs to be given to deal with digital industries in a different way to other sectors if we are able to fully exploit its growth potential. They tend to be run by non-traditional managers who often chose to limit the growth of the companies (usual to around 30 employees) because they want to be able to maintain a particular closely knit creative way of working.
Our approach to stimulate take up of digital service in Greater Manchester for non-digital businesses will be to leverage the expertise within the digital market through the establishment of panel of businesses that are selected to cover the areas of support required.
It is also clear to us that there needs to be a reconsideration of the relationship between SMEs and universities to reverse the traditional approach where research has tended to be academia led and businesses invited to particulate. Mechanisms need to be in place to encourage businesses to bring forward live briefs for projects (with genuine market potential) requiring R & D that can be developed in partnership with the universities sector.

Current evidence within the sector in Greater Manchester confirms that the level of prior qualifications is high. Over a third of businesses in the sector have more than 70% of their staff qualified to degree level.
Nevertheless, there appears to be limited direct investment by employers in developing the skills of their staff. 40% of our digital content businesses provided no training at all in the last year.
The sense is that while there remain many roles that are difficult to fill, and employees and freelancers have a desire for training and education, employers do not currently meet that demand.
In terms of skills supply, there is much more to done to align the output of the skills system with the current and future need of the sector. Employers report that:
• There are significant numbers of hard to fill vacancies. Applications for digital content roles are plentiful but lacking in key skills. Programming roles often have a shortage of applicants.
• There is a significant issue with mismatch of applicants’ abilities to the needs of the job. Employers need substantial technical skills allied with strong management and customer service abilities
• Innovation is crucial to the industry and new developments in digital technology demands constant redevelopment of business plans and employee skills. This presents major challenges to those who are seeking to provide up to date skills training to employers and individuals.
• Specific gaps identified via national research include understanding different technology platforms; multiplatform skills; management, leadership and entrepreneurial skills; IP and monetisation of platform content and the ability to create new, innovative ideas and then monetise them using a variety of platforms.
The most significant skills deficit in Greater Manchester is in computer programming. Evidently this is also the area where the UK has the highest drop-out rate – 24%. We are looking to understand better why this is happening and how we might address this apparent system failure.
Our digital skills strategy is in development and will aim to identify and put in place measures to address the areas of market failure in meeting skills demand in the sector. This work will include extensive interviews with businesses across the sector to get under the skins of this critical issue and determine what interventions are necessary to address it.
Our evidence to date suggests the following:
• That there is disconnect between HEI and SMEs (much of the best talent from our Universities is “hoovered up” by the large international corporations to the detriment of our high growth SMEs) – measures are needed to address this
• The fast moving nature of digital industries means that many software developer graduates leave university with programme knowledge that is two years out date and a lack of collaborative working skills – a mechanism need to be put into place to have universities work better with businesses to ensure the graduates’ expertise meets business needs. For example the development of a wide ranging internship programme with SMEs as an integral part of study could only help.
• There are too few young people taking the STEM subjects needed as a bedrock for the digital industries. Interventions are needed at 14 to 19, including University choice, to highlight to young people the opportunities in the digital industries that can exist from taking STEM subjects.
Part of the development of the strategy will include determine where there are transferable skills within the existing workforce and part of the graduate pool that might be generic to the digital industries (e.g. collaborative working, project management) and could be better utilised to support the growth of that sector.
Greater Manchester is in the process of developing its approach to the implementation of the Employer Ownership of Skills. Through working with the business community it is clear that the characteristics of the digital sector require a different approach to addressing the skills shortage – in computer programming and coding. Initiatives such as “overtraining” where business train more people than are required to meet their own needs in order to provide skilled labour for its supply chain.

Most of the businesses in Greater Manchester, similar to business across the UK now use ICT for business records; research via the internet and communication through email. An increasing number are moving to Voice over IP to reduce costs and a few are taking up Cloud Services to support sales teams out on the road. There is evidence that cloud service companies are having difficulty embers sell its product in the areas/industrial estates with poor connectivity. Our dialogue with businesses has reveal that they consider that cloud computing presents a significant risk for businesses – many are put off because of concerns about security and the business impact of temporary loss of connectivity.

There is strong anecdotal evidence that the choice of technology by business happens in an ad hoc way. In some cases businesses are sold products, (e.g. cloud computing when they have inadequate connectivity available) which do not meet their needs. This tends to happen because of a lack of basic knowledge and expertise within businesses about how knowledge services might help the business to grow – and what the pitfalls are. This is an area that needs to be addressed. For some Companies, digital development will be a prerequisite for survival. In the first instance this needs to be recognised by the business itself at the top level – and then secondly expertise needs to be brought in from the digital sector to explain in layman terms what a difference it can make. For example by bringing in a non executive digital director.
In terms of skills - our research has found that digital companies tend to have a highly qualified workforce. A third of the digital companies we surveyed had over 70% of their staff qualified at degree level. However, only 40% of the companies surveyed said that they had training plans in place to help ensure the staff had the right skills.
Despite the high level of graduate recruitment there is concern within the Chamber Membership about the quality of the graduates coming from the University system. Many digital businesses said that the graduate they had has were considered to be employment ready and lacked the skills necessary to utilise the latest software platforms.
The business survey suggested that 35% of Greater Manchester businesses used a recruitment firm or websites; 35% recruited through word of mouth and 16% through the job Centre. Only 4% used educational establishments as a way to recruit staff. 66% of businesses said they had vacancies that were hard to fill – half of those respondents said that the reason for recruitment difficulties was due to the low numbers of applicants.

The principal benefits to businesses we have spoken with include improved communication with sales teams; supporting staff when they are working from home and ensuring that the latest marketing and promotional material is accessible by all the company as soon as it is available. The flexibility in the number of licenses taken for software packages offered by the cloud allow businesses a greater freedom to vary staff numbers, without having to take on costs for licenses that they may only need for busy periods.

The barriers to adoption have been concerns about security and having connectivity available 100% of the time and the speed of connectivity being inadequate to use the service effectively. In many areas that do have NGA, they are limited to one supplier, the only way to protect against problems caused by a failure of this service is to take on expensive Leased Lines or Microwave solutions

Improvement of connectivity to the more remote industrial parks and estates. In Greater Manchester we are encouraging businesses to get together to aggregate demand so that remote places can be more attractive the market.

There is a general lack of understanding about the nature and opportunities offered by big data – this needs to be addressed together with a shortage lack of analytical skills which would better enable businesses to exploit this area.

The government needs to provide businesses with confidence that their return on investment in this area will not be limited because of excessive regulation because of over sensitivity in relation to privacy.

The Universities can provide the additional capacity to enable businesses to better interpret the data that is available through promoting the availability of research interns for SME‘s.

Data analyst and research skills will be required to fully exploit this potential.

Most businesses now recognise the value of the online economy, at least for email communication, marketing activities and information management. To integrate it into the way in which the whole business operates is a major step which carries risk and therefore requires a good understanding the potential opportunities at Executive level, as well as funding to move forward. Executives often lack this understanding and therefore can be fearful of such change. The digital consultancy sector which is seeks opportunities by selling to those businesses face long lead in times as they educate the leaders in those businesses in the value of embracing it.
The challenge for government and industry therefore is to create the right conditions for the digital industry to sell the new products and services that can make a difference to business.
This could include incentivising the digital consultancies to take non-executive strategic roles in companies to help more them forward.

Advice and points of referral is currently part of the offer for businesses through the Greater Manchester Business Growth Hub.

This potential opportunity is not on the radar of the Chamber member businesses. It needs to be promoted much more widely – with specific case studies demonstrating how businesses can exploit it

A number of cities are undertaking good work on this. In Manchester we are working with the Technology Strategy Board and engaging with the business sector including the likes of Siemens, Microsoft, Cisco and Arup, The concept is best understood and developed in Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol and London. Manchester is currently forging partnerships with other European cities where the concept is possibly further developed, including Amsterdam, Helsinki and Barcelona with a view to accelerating our progress.

The definition of a smart city is still not really understood sufficiently enough to understand what is involved and benefits that can be generated.

City governance structures and culture are not sufficiently organised yet to put data right at the heart of the way they engage with citizens, plan and organise infrastructure and work with delivery partners. It is still seen as an ‘IT’ issue and not something which should be outfacing linking strategies around planning, housing, transport and economic development.

Data is key to a smart city; yet there are a number of issues in terms of collecting the data, ownership issues and its usage which need to be addressed.

Amsterdam is a big player in this field, hence our engagement with them to learn. Amsterdam Smart City provides a good first stop. They have created a clear vision and framework across the city through a public private partnership and board, this is something we are replicating in Manchester. However, as mentioned Helsinki and Barcelona are others.

As pioneers in the key areas highlighted we see opportunity in the following areas. Cloud computing presents an opportunity to leverage infrastructure at a lower cost and provides a rapid deployment, fast to market solution for businesses. Big Data allows businesses to harness the power of data and open up new revenue streams and develop new products based on understanding customers better and creating more personalized and focused offerings. Ecommerce is the biggest opportunity for growth as global markets open up to UK customers. The concept of a smart city at this point is somewhat meaningless without significant investment into infrastructure. Internet of Things in our opinion is not an important driver of growth today.

The main drivers of change are cloud computing and mobility. Cloud computing provides a dramatic reduction in costs for businesses to deploy technology in their business including e-commerce. Mobility provides merchants and traders the ability to trade wherever they are and for customers to engage anywhere across the globe. This combination of elements provides the environment of change in which the analysis of Big Data will become more valuable as it is used to build up stronger and more versatile business models and consumer offerings.

Educating the business community in the ease of deploying solutions is the driver behind momentum in the market place and is core in building strength in the sector. Building lasting relationships with education and industry will drive innovation in the space, and provide a consistent stream of skills required to bolster and build on the strength of the Information Economy.

There is a strong infrastructure for mobility in the UK which, coupled with the leverage that businesses get from the various ‘world class business centres’ around the UK, provides an opportunity to exploit opportunities in the Information Economy.
The barrier to this is lack of knowledge resources. The Government needs to invest in the creation of a resource portal with webinars and libraries containing information on all the key areas highlighted, alongside resources dedicated to building digital businesses. Education will lead to continued innovation and growth in the sector.

The UK is handicapped by lack of capital for innovative business startups. Investment is required to support the commercial success of the Information Economy. For any businesses that create jobs, there should be tax incentives and we believe that Capital gains tax should be removed for investment in all new businesses. This will make investment into the sector a much more attractive prospect as investment is risky enough without the tax on profits.

A knowledge of available services and opportunities such as cloud computing, remote part time tech resources and multiple other advancements will make a huge difference in supporting the growth of the information economy. The Government needs to invest in the development of a learning database that contains webinars and libraries of information on the sector and business within it. The Government needs to maintain this repository and highlight best practice examples in the industry and showcase UK forward thinking to the rest of the world.

As a pioneer in the field our company (including Powa, mPowa, Venda, Locayta, Aigua, BuyaPowa) uses cloud computing to facilitate SaaS solutions to large global clients, allowing us to provide low cost, agile and rapid deployment of industry leading ecommerce, mCommerce and social solutions globally in multiple languages and locales.
We provide optimized end-to-end global commerce solutions which provide our clients with improved business performance, reduced cost and increased profit.

We have a rigorous interview process that tests whether the prospective employee has suitable skills necessary to do the job. This involves writing software with another programmer who is able to judge whether the candidate fits our needs. We have an active discussion forum whereby people can talk about their job and whether they require any additional materials, hardware, software or training to do their job.

We are a pioneer in cloud based services. We have witnessed it bring about an array of tools ranging from collaborative document creation and file sharing to platform hosting solutions. These services have lower setup cost to their traditional on-premises or self-managed alternatives and reduce the commitment in defining a set specification for forecasted use. This responsive behaviour allows for more effective and cost sensitive allocation of resources based on requirements in the immediate rather than predetermined figures. The flexibility of a pay-per-use pricing model that also encompasses future upgrades, on-going support and management of the service increases the value proposition of cloud services in a business environment.

One of the major concerns of using outsourced cloud resource is the dependency on third parties and their ability to deliver a service that could be mission critical to business operations. Security of data is another point of friction in the matter, given that inherently B2B services will be dealing with business data of which some will be of confidential nature and handing over financial, product or customer information would have its associated risks.

As a pioneer we don’t see barriers. We are an evangelist among cloud computing. We are constantly pushing toward the future of the platform and how it can facilitate new and exciting platforms and services.

The low barriers to entry in the software development industry mean that startups and SMEs are able to develop cloud service offerings and compete with established providers by targeting verticals and producing niche solutions. However there is little confidence in allowing these solutions to replace integral business processes, as there is no reputable endorsement. One approach would be to work with this market to create a set of standards similar to Service Level Agreements seen in commercial contracts, the monitoring and benchmarking of these metrics could form either a preferred suppliers list or an industry grading system by which customers could then gauge the quality of the service.
The Government could then help to market and promote the value of these individual service solutions as part of a greater mix of solutions available.

Better analysis of data drives revenue growth as business performance can be tracked and assessed.

Well analysed data is a valuable asset when making business decisions and provides the basis for improved products and services in turn developing and supporting new revenue streams.

Insights from data into new and emerging market dynamics will to make your business more agile and ultimately more flexible and pertinent to changing markets.

Data will essentially provide limitless sources of information about customers and how to cater for needs better. This will ultimately lead to more solidarity in customer bases and improve income streams.

Big Data can provide a massive wealth of opportunity to businesses of all sizes in this respect.

The Government needs to promote the importance of data analysis on a business level and at a customer level to businesses of all sizes. Data analysis will allow businesses to understand their customers and target audiences better which will inherently lead to stronger sources of revenue as needs are met by refined products and services.
A Government portal/repository of information on this is paramount in educating businesses of all sizes in the importance of data analysis and in the future of Big Data and how to align its usage with business practice.

The Government again needs to facilitate knowledge exchange over the big issues via a repository of webinars and information. A centre of learning needs to be developed for people to access information easily and quickly so that the benefits of Big Data can be exploited at educational and commercial level.

People don’t know about Big Data. It is a massive opportunity but it is a huge area to digest if resource is not available to break it down and analyse. Businesses struggle to leverage benefits that can be gained from Big Data as a result. The Government needs to identify areas of value and ensure that it is kept simple and manageable so that business can leverage the information and increase potential gains.

Investment in education and infrastructure is needed to facilitate the migration of offline businesses to the online space. Increasing awareness of the ease of access will reduce the barrier for small businesses in getting online with their products and provide confidence that developing an online presence is key to future growth.
For larger businesses the online space provides a global incentive as the shop/national boundaries disappear and market space can be viewed globally. For larger businesses there should be a support infrastructure to optimize the reach and influence of products, leveraged by UK Plc.

As a pioneering business within the sector we would not see there being any barriers to buying and selling online in both the UK and internationally.
Our business model provides integrated multi channel commerce strategies globally. These overcome all language, localization and optimization barriers and are provided on a success fee basis to our customers.

We have capabilities in house that provide innovative solutions to all online trading questions. As pioneers within the sector we are setting a benchmark in online trading for a range of international clients.

Machine-to-Machine is a concept that has neither the infrastructure nor the investment to be a priority at the moment and as such is not currently actionable. As such we would not really prioritise it as an area of potential benefit as it stands.

London is leading the UK’s convergence to a concept of Smart Cities. The transport sector is one example of this, with the Barclays Cycle Hire using networked technology to facilitating a greener form of travel. The other obvious inclusion in this category would be the Oyster card, which is coming up to 10 years in operation. This has reduced the number of paper tickets issued and number of transactions at ticket offices. London is also home to “Europe’s largest free Wi-Fi zone” at no cost to the taxpayer.

The difficulty in implementing such a solution is the vast number of stakeholders involved in converging to smarter cities.

Hong Kong's use and adoption of smart cards for public transport, car parks, shopping and building access is a wider implementation of the Oyster card scheme which London uses for transport, combining these services would allow increases in efficiency seen by the scheme across the board. Another interesting scheme is the stakeholder consultation platform that Vienna has implemented, where technology has been an enabler in dealing with transportation, carbon reductions, land-use panning and other socioeconomic topics.

Information and Communication

On behalf of an organisation

Business representative organisation/trade body

Amongst Intellect members there was general consensus that these five areas are important and sources of future growth for the UK information economy (IE).

The following points were raised by Intellect members for your consideration:
• These are important but are not sectors fundamentally. They are more a mix of concepts and technologies that would benefit the traditional sectors such as Transport, Education and Government. There are overlapping issues that could lead to other opportunities. For example: smart cities need to be able to deal with the big data problem, particularly in M2M exchanges; cloud computing and the internet are inextricably linked and the concept of e-commerce (finding, procuring, delivering and paying) clearly needs to be developed to support the sectors mentioned earlier.
• I’m not convinced that these are in fact discrete sectors. Big data and cloud computing, for example, could be elements of a smart city solution. Big data (for which read analytics) and cloud computing are technology solutions. Smart Cities and e-Commerce are markets. Internet of Things is a cross between the two. This isn’t an issue necessarily, just as long as the strategy understands this and is suitably structured to know that it is addressing both horizontal technologies and vertical markets, and appreciates that they will overlap.
• The selected themes, whilst important, ignore traditionally strong industries where the UK is regarded as a leader, for example, media & broadcasting, financial services, high tech engineering, low-power electronics and security. Big data and cloud services can be (and are) provisioned anywhere in the world. Businesses are mobile and will rapidly relocate services to wherever makes financial sense. The consumers of such services are also global. There is very little that is still country specific. So, an IE is built on the fundamental enablers of skills and the business environment (tax, law, security). It may help to identify the levers that are at government’s disposal (for example tax, regulation, education and awareness raising) and where they can have a material effect. For example, changing privacy laws could make the UK a more attractive place to base cloud services.


In terms of other growth opportunities which should be considered, the following were suggested e-Health, Cyber Security, Smart Grids, Data Centres and Financial Services. Cyber Security in particular is most obviously a threat to the growth of the IE, but it can also be turned into an opportunity if UK industry develops cyber defence skills and capabilities that can be exported to other countries that face similar threats.

A number of areas were identified by Intellect members as the key drivers of change which will create opportunities for the sector. The following ideas were put forward:
• The pressing need to be more efficient and more innovative to reduce costs and improve services in both the public and private sector will be a crucial driver of change.
• Urbanisation and the involvement of citizens in the governance and running of cities. As cities grow and become more complex, there is a need for a more coordinated approach to deliver everyday services for urban dwellers. Transport is often said to shape urbanisation and already one can see more integrated solutions emerging for providing travel information across urban environments. However transport is only one example and the challenge to provide sustainable development in ever more congested cities requires that information about the city is leveraged as effectively as possible. As citizens become more connected they expect to have visibility of city services and shape the services that the city provides. Successful city authorities will find ways to involve citizens in the running of their cities and demonstrate accountability through greater openness and inclusivity.
• Ubiquitous connectivity will be a driver of change and power new business services and models. Faster and more available broadband, mobile access to the internet through LTE providing bigger pipes and areas such as online TV will mean that we are more digitally connected as a nation. The level of connectivity in both the public and private sector will be a fundamental driver for the future growth of the IE sector and the wider economy.
• Rising fuel and energy costs could result in the creation of cottage industry (using local resources rather than foreign). The need to use our energy in a more efficient way will be a driver of change and an opportunity for the sector.
• Cyber attacks are likely to be both more prevalent and more complex which is a threat to the IP of companies operating in the sector. Improving cyber security is therefore fundamental to the future growth of the IE.
• The exponential growth of information will be a critical driver. Businesses will use data to inform, analyse and improve their business. This leads to improved tools requirement in Data Management, Data Analytics and Business Analytics which will open up other opportunities. The ability to process and understand data will provide companies with a competitive advantage and is an opportunity for companies both in the sector and the wider economy.
• Another area to consider is ownership of data. Government mandated access to your own data for could drive new ways in which you may use that information. Being able to centralise your information and use in many applications (one account with all your details but then used on Facebook etc) is another potential driver of change.
• With regards to cloud computing, it is becoming commoditised and the differentiator will be storage. The key will be interoperability of standards which will allow customers to move providers.
• In relation to the internet of things, fundamental to this is making IPv6 work as every connected device needs an IP address. Government needs to support the shift through the gov.uk website adoption and work to raise awareness.

The areas identified by Intellect members were as follows:
• Skills - It is vital that government and the sector work together strategically to develop the skills needed to sustain and build an IE. This should include offering incentives for training and a proactive programme of IT apprenticeships which deliver for both the industry and the individual.
• Open Data - Government should continue to promote and enforce open data initiatives as this is a vital enabler for the IE. In some areas of the IE, the need for open data and associated working methods have however to be balanced with the need to protect national interests and information. Government should assess the impact of the IE on national security frameworks and regulations so that companies with expertise in both are able to contribute to emerging opportunities in the IE while safe-guarding national interests. Both industry and government need to work together in setting policies, standards, planning, legal and strategic frameworks, and sharing of information.
• Innovation - Government should continue to support the IE as an area of strategic importance, via the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and Research Councils. It is important to invest in and facilitate larger collaborative projects through TSB, effectively to force UK companies to work together more. This will help to ensure that TSB spend is focused in areas that will result in most value for UK plc.

The main benefits of the UK business environment identified by Intellect members were as follows; a reasonably educated workforce, a generally pro-business environment, a strong IP Protection regime, R&D tax credits, a number of thriving tech clusters, a strong legal system as well as a long history of creativity and innovation. Technologically, the UK is relatively advanced and open to adoption of new technology, especially for consumption of entertainment and acquisition of goods. It was also felt that the UK benefits from national open data initiatives but that these needed to be accelerated and deepened if solutions that are beneficial to the citizen are to emerge.

The main barriers of the UK business environment identified by Intellect members were as follows:

• The sector often finds it difficult to recruit and identify the staff with the necessary technical skills.
• Access to finance is a major issue (especially for small and mid-sized firms) in the sector with investments in technology often seen as too risky by traditional sources of finance i.e. banks. The UK has also historically suffered from a lack of venture capital funding.
• The benefits of the IE are becoming clearer but the threats are less well understood by the business community. There are clear efforts underway to improve the cyber-resilience of the IE, but it is early days and continued work by UK Government and industry is required to achieve a resilient environment in which the IE can develop.
• Greater clarity and understanding is required on ownership and responsibilities where personal information is involved in the IE. Government can help with the education of citizens and enterprises in the privacy aspects associated with the IE.
• Government procurement practice can act as a deterrent for many smaller firms in the IE sector looking to win public sector contracts.
• Potential for rapid grow may lie with the SME communities that can grow their new operating models in parallel with their businesses growth, adopting new technologies as they become available. However, in UK there seems to be a “barrier” preventing SMEs from becoming the new superstar companies. Many good ideas are exploited outside of the UK, where all of the research was funded in the UK.
• The IE by its very nature is not tied strongly to geography. Government needs to therefore ensure infrastructure, regulatory environments and incentives are sufficient to attract organisations to base themselves in the UK rather than overseas.

The areas and issues identified by Intellect members were as follows:
• Clustering of businesses and physical agglomeration is important for productivity and growth. It is imperative that we ensure sector-based clusters are developed in appropriate areas and in locations where a capability already exists that can be built on.
• Too often the focus is on SMEs and start-ups for their innovation value. This is something they can often do better than large companies, but large companies can bring the ability to scale new solutions, provide interfaces to customers and partners, and provide supporting capital and investment. Providing support to established businesses to encourage an eco-system based on partnering is therefore vital.
• Innovation is not simply about technology at a low readiness level. We must apply some thought to crossing the “chasm of death” to successful products in successful businesses. A risk-averse approach which does not encourage industry or government to deal with the “chasm of death” problems between research and product clearly is at the heart of the problem – we often forget that larger companies know how to do engineering and production. We need to join the dots more effectively.
• There is no shortage of research, innovation, start-ups or innovative products and services however many of these efforts are misdirected. Too much R&D is upstream mystery-solving and too much innovation is focused on instant gratification / consumption rather than long-term infrastructure or productivity improvement with little regard to downstream exploitation let alone value-creating innovation for the UK economy. A higher proportion of grants, tax-breaks and government support in UK and abroad should be skewed in favour of businesses that are likely to increase UK exports and wealth or reduce costs of delivering essential services within the UK.

The areas identified by Intellect members were as follows:
• The government should undertake a skills analysis of likely graduate capability in the next 20 years and encourage academia to provide the relevant capacity. An analysis of job opportunities and predictive analytics would seem to be a good starting point as are consultations similar to this one.
• The new ICT curriculum is a good start, but needs more Government money and effort behind it plus broader industry engagement. There also needs to be a vocational ICT route (for entry-level technical jobs) as well as a computer science graduate route.
• Developing entrepreneurial skills through training is also vital. This needs to be embedded in career advice throughout education, but also made available to the unemployed and start-ups/SMEs to increase business creation and business survival rates.
• It may be that we have many entrepreneurs willing to develop new ideas, but not with the awareness of ICT, business and the power of data as a commodity. We should therefore work towards better awareness and facilitate training in these areas.
• We should develop the skills and awareness piece with the involvement of Government, academia and industry. Recent work on the Space Innovation and Growth Strategy (SIGS) is a good model for this where there is a theme allocated to skills and awareness.
• Government and industry together must work to address STEM take-up problems. We must get more children interested in the topics and wanting to complete their studies to enter in a technical career.
• UK has fewer of the science and engineering graduates critical to modern knowledge-based societies and many of the top students in those areas are only welcome during their studies in UK and positively discouraged from staying here to contribute to our national knowledge base and wealth. We need to attract more investment by those individuals and overseas companies that truly raise our knowledge capital.

Intellect members mentioned the following initiatives:
• We have a Business Intelligence and Technology team monitoring changes in business practice and technology. The mainstream business regularly engages with customers and has product management systems in place to ensure we go in the right direction. We then skill according to our plans.
• Generally there are recruitment and retention issues with IT staff. We are all fishing in the same “small” talent pool. The key is to ensure that IT skills are constantly refreshed. Potential new recruits will also see this as a reason to join a company. The environment changes so rapidly that someone who is in a business for 10 years but without constant training is likely to be less knowledgeable than a new starter.

The following suggestions were made by Intellect members:
• Leverage the message that data and systems held in the UK is looked after by dedicated professional businesses working to strict UK and European guidelines.
• Promotion of standards for mobility and user centric Service Level Agreements
• Promotion of a Cloud Provider Maturity Model including processes, procedures and security.
• Promotion of research into security and mobility issues for cloud computing.
• Working closely together to identify what skills are required in this area, what the skills gaps are and how we can address them collectively.
• Working together to ensure the G-cloud programme delivers for government and is an economic opportunity for the sector.

Issues identified by Intellect members were as follows:
• Increase awareness: Evangelise across the whole enterprise in the business opportunities arising from enterprise data, existing open data or future novel combinations. Awareness must cross function (i.e. from sales and marketing through operations to I.T.) or widespread access and exploitation will not be achievable.
• Be realistic about the opportunities (e.g. services that are more timely, precise and user contextualised) and threats (e.g. cognitive overload, security, privacy) and the prerequisites necessary to deliver value (e.g. open and interoperable formats, data cleansing procedures, distributed processing architectures etc).
• Tools for the Everyman - Businesses need access to analytic tools that enable decision makers to touch their own data. The tools must be (a) easy & engaging to use i.e. go beyond expert systems only suitable for use by trained data analysts; and (b) are reliable and resilient to use i.e. users can trust integrity of not just the tools, but the underlying data (this requires tools that communicate information provenance and confidence in a straightforward manner).
• Data for Business Sake - Businesses must neither ignore (nor be afraid) of the risks that ‘everyman’ big data analytics poses – rather embrace (while managing effectively) the resulting decision complexity as an opportunity for business efficiency, new commercial services and improved existing services etc. Getting to grips with this is quite complex and joint industry and government working groups should be set up to address this.
• Fundamental is the need for technically-literate staff at the core to build and evolve the algorithms and systems.

The areas identified by Intellect members were as follows:
• Procurement - Public sector procurement which encourages the exploitation of big data while mandating suitably high levels of information assurance, a consequence of which is to raise confidence within industry that big data security and privacy is a high priority and hence worthy of strategic investment and development.
• Use it themselves - make changes to the new Gov Protective Marking Scheme quickly and effectively.
• Engage with suppliers that have spent the time and effort to understand the technologies and Government requirements. Work to provide mandatory standards that suppliers must adhere to.
• Promotion - Government should promote current business exemplars (from start ups to large enterprises to public sector) that are based on exploitation of big data. Continue to extend availability of government data that is in a computer accessible form (semantic form, formal ontologies). We should also ‘big up’ big data as part of the government’s localism and local growth agenda. This would raise awareness in the local civil and business populations about the opportunities for improved local services and economic growth driven by big data.

The ideas identified by Intellect members were as follows:
• Academic institutions should be encouraged to work collaboratively with industry whilst allowing the industry to keep Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).
• All government data and much in Universities has been funded, like BBC content, by the UK taxpayer and thus should be made available freely to UK business and citizens.
• Understanding and dealing with Big Data may be a science in its own right rather than a subset of a computer science, or business studies. Wikipedia found 22 US Universities responding to a search on “analytics”. Similar search for UK universities retuned mostly “Business Analytics”, and mostly at non-Russell Group Universities (other than Manchester). There is a danger of Analytics being kidnapped by business studies.
• Big data analytical methods are used in university already. Manchester for example used these methods for looking for the Higgs Boson in the Tera bytes of data being generated daily by the CERN experiments.
• The way in which tools are used to solve the “needle in a haystack” problem do need to be adapted to the type of data being analysed. We can work with universities using these tools for things like the Higgs-Boson experiment and get their assistance to look for perhaps less esoteric information.

The areas identified by Intellect members were as follows:
• We need data analysts, business analysts and programmers knowledgeable in current standards. We also need the business leaders of tomorrow to embrace data science. There needs to be pragmatic attention to information security issues, followed by skills development and openness to expertise from abroad.
• School ICT and more encouragement of STEM subjects - Generalist secondary school education that goes beyond teaching ‘computer literacy’ (e.g. using Excel) and instead teaches programming and ‘big data literacy’ (e.g. using open data).
• Specialist education opportunities - Specialist secondary school education (e.g. University Technical Colleagues) with industry partnerships/sponsored syllabuses that include teaching big data from the perspectives of computer science, cognitive science, cyber security and information science.
• Computer science and mathematics - The algorithms that prevent big data information overload; the architectures that enable massive and scalable distributed processing of big data.
• Cognitive science and informatics - The human computer interface that provides trustworthy, engaging and intuitive user experiences, thus enabling decision makers to confidently interact with and understand big data.
• Cyber security and privacy - The techniques by which big data integrity is maintained or loss of integrity is recovered from; the systems that enable decision makers to take control of their own risk appetite when accessing big data.
• Research opportunities - Academic and industrial research funding opportunities (e.g. Technology Strategy Board) that focus on not only advancing but crucially commercialising state-of-the-art in big data from the perspectives of computer science, cognitive science, cyber security and information science. Commercialisation implies overcoming the valley of death, which typically requires strategic long term funding opportunities.

The areas identified by Intellect members were as follows:
Growth and efficiency
• M2M should offer efficiencies through business process improvement and more data for evidence-based decision-making. It can also lead to efficient buildings and more efficient cities in the long term.

Rail and road transport
• IoT-based solutions are already being deployed with NFC-based communications being used as a basis for ticketing, enabling mobile phone-based payments.
• Combining location information from users’ mobile phones would enable more personalised and accurate passenger guidance information to be supplied to travellers.
• Deploying IoT on the general engineering infrastructure would enable greater instrumentation of the rail environment and provide operators with more accurate information on the state of their infrastructure.
• In the future, IoT infrastructure may be deployed along major routes to provide advance warning of congestion, hazards, road condition, weather conditions, etc.

Other potential benefits raised include:

• Access to more data for greater efficiency, security and safety. For example to complete tasks and programmes at lower cost or with less waste, and in a more timely manner. Specific examples include; monitor equipment health and pollution management.
• Underpinning the data associated with the IOT automation is the ability to support long-term, strategic planning decisions. This comes back to analytics – how to make sense of lots of low level data.
• In the end transactions carried out by M2M should be more efficient and less costly and ultimately less prone to human error. There are considerations about security that will need to be handled and therefore trust in these solutions needs to be established.
• In the short run, M2M will facilitate ad-hoc integration of small area networks for applications as diverse as home media networks, personal fitness / health / wellness monitors, home (cyber and physical) security, event registration and networking. In the medium term, M2M will simplify many data entry tasks that currently require duplicate entry of information – from uplifting stock information to facilitate restocking (bringing M&S scanning to the home) to identity checking and ticketing.

The areas identified by Intellect members were as follows:
• Government encouragement (or even mandation) of a few common and open standards.
• Information sharing platforms are required that enable data collected by the IoT in the individual silos to be shared between domains and silos. Complex environments, such as urban transport systems or city services, will produce an increasing amount of data via the IoT. However if the data remains within the silo that produced it, opportunities for leveraging that information elsewhere will be lost. Information sharing platforms are central to providing discovery/publish/subscribe capabilities to foster cross-domain exploitation of data.
• Access to this information should be open, wherever possible. It may be beneficial if the information sharing platforms support controlled access to information for some classes of information, but the overall tendency should be towards openness to encourage open innovation and broad usage.
• Standards - What makes silos; privacy, security? These will be difficult to overcome as privacy and security tend to ensure that information is contained in silos in many instances.
• This will never fully happen. The internet is not really built on adequately-secure technology to make a single network desirable. More secure protocols alongside widespread use of encryption / identity protection are certainly needed to build a horizontally-layered (v. vertical silos) layered internet of things.

Obstacles suggested by Intellect members were as follows:
• Other economies being more proactive and thereby gaining a competitive advantage.
• As the realisation of IoT-based systems in complex environments, such as cities, involves the cooperation of many suppliers, some standardisation, either de jure or de facto, is arguably required to avoid the incompatibilities and inefficiencies that will otherwise arise.
• Some IoT-based information is personal and measures need to be in place to protect the privacy of individuals, while not removing so much fidelity as to render the information useless. Individuals have differing attitudes to their privacy and in some cases these attitudes can be legitimately influenced by incentives. Privacy concerns are not an immediate obstacle to the development of IoT but if the public were to lose confidence in these systems’ ability to respect privacy, the reputational damage could be long-term.
• UK can, by definition, only develop and deploy some 5% of the IOT. It needs international cooperation (e.g. on spectrum but current structures (ITU etc) have become too politicised to achieve a short-term outcome).

The areas identified by Intellect members were as follows:
• It is premature to say that the Smart City concept is well developed in the UK, or anywhere else for that matter. The UK government was at the forefront in championing open data and many more countries have adopted this important enabler. There are examples where some of the principles underlying smart cities can be seen in operation and providing benefits to citizens but they are few and far between, e.g. transport information in London across many transport modalities.
• The UK Future Cities initiative is at an early stage but it was encouraging to see the quality of the short-listed proposals. The Smart Cities concept is understood, even if it is not well developed.
• The Mayor of London has recently set up a ‘Smart London’ board which includes academics, businesses and entrepreneurs. It will advise the Mayor, help to develop a ‘Smart London’ vision and is part of the Mayor’s broader ambition to make London a global tech leader.

The areas identified by Intellect members were as follows:
• The existing infrastructure investment and diverse ownership, plus cost of roll-out. Legacy infrastructure is a particular issue and the way in which the UK deals with smart cities will be different from those cities in the developing world.
• The widespread adoption of smart city concepts is complicated as each city has different priorities and consequently it is not a matter of applying a tested pattern. For some cities, unemployment and skills development is critical, for others crime control is the top priority and for others economic success may be causing sustainability issues. Each of these cities will apply smart city concepts differently to address its highest priority concerns.
• The TSB’s sponsorship of the Future Cities programme and BIS’s sponsorship of the development of PAS 181 are useful first steps and it will be interesting to follow the progress. There is unlikely to be a single pattern for a smart city, it would be beneficial to sponsor a number of pilots, each with distinct social/economic priorities. Additionally, the UK government should put mechanisms in place to share “best practice” while cities experiment with differing approaches.
• The major barrier is often engaging government departments and local authorities to support delivery. Systems are often siloed and not suitable for integration. This needs a whole new way of thinking. Small projects, from the ground up, slowly creating a capability around new solutions and services will eventually make the market.
• Aged infrastructure in UK cities makes widespread deployment expensive, as demonstrated by the disruption created by installation/upgrades to fibre-optic installation. Complicating the issue are fragmented governance of major cities that reduces the chances of a long-term strategic vision being developed that guides/accelerates solution of planning issues.

5 The present document makes no mention of education other than higher education, but there is a crucial role for colleges and other education and training providers in upgrading the skills of the present workforce, and in preparing young people for future work. In the latter role they are of course joined by the schools sector. Further a great deal of vocational higher education is provided by FE colleges, in particular the part-time provision often required by adult worker retraining or upskilling.

6 There are a number of current and proposed policies which would seem to work against this strategy, or at the very least have not been coordinated with it. For example:
• Reductions in training funding
• Adult training loans
• Further major changes to apprenticeships
• Proposed return to programme led provision
• Proposed changes to level 2 provision
• Proposed reduction of number of vocational qualifications
• Raising of the participation age

The five key sectors outlined by the consultation present major opportunities to attract investment, foster the growth of start-up and spin-out businesses and enable existing indigenous digital businesses to expand. In Tees Valley, such chances are strengthened by the area’scompetitive advantages, including the DigitalCity partnership initiative, which is creating a vibrant, successful and self-sustaining “supercluster” in the Tees Valley based on digital technologies, digital media and the creative industries. The initiative is spread across the Tees Valley with projects based at Teesside University, the Boho Zone in Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland and Stockton, and also has a rural ‘satellite’ at Barnard Castle in County Durham. European funding has played an instrumental role in setting up DigitalCity and in helping it to become an innovation powerhouse for all things digital. For example, to date through the current ERDF programme (2007 – 2013), the DigitalCity Business element of the initiative has created over 140 new businesses and over 400 jobs, with a return on investment of almost 10:1.The creative industry as a whole in Tees Valley currently numbers over 800 companies (a 50% rise since 2005) and already employs more than 5,000 people (source: DCMS, 2012).
Tees Valley’s digital sector is predominately built around computer gaming and animation. Forexample, Middlesbrough digital firm Double Eleven, based at Boho One, has an indefinite exclusive development deal with Sony to work on games for its Playstation platform. It also won Small Business of the Year at the 2012 North East Business awards. Furthermore, Lygo International Ltd are industry leaders in designing, manufacturing and supplying accessories for all major video gaming platforms and, as Europe's largest private label games company, they ship and stock in excess of 5 million units a year. Their Corporate HQ is in Darlington. In addition, Teesside University is the home of Animex – the International Festival of Animation and Computer Games – where animators, directors, artists and designers share knowledge and skills to promote the art of animation and computer games. Now into its second decade, Animex exists to bring artists, designers, directors, producers, professionals and students together for a week of events and activities revolving around the creation of animation and computer games. Such experience allows Tees Valley’s digital industries to harness these qualities and diversify into associated growth sectors, such as e-learning, engineering design and assistive technologies to support the health and social care industry. Businesses in Tees Valley doing so include Amazing Interactives, experts in 3d animation for health and education and DigitalCity based business Psaeon, developers of 3d visual online tools for the likes of St John Ambulance. It is an expanding area, epitomised by Dynamic Motion Detection; a Teesside University spin out firm from the Social Futures Institute of the University. The firm have entered the global ‘exergaming’ market and have joined forces with an Australian BAFTA-winning video games designer to market its Shadowboxer ACTIVE product to a burgeoning fitness entertainment market. ShadowBoxer ACTIVE harnesses photorealistic 3D computer games and sophisticated motion capture technology to allow players to train in a virtual gym, punch along to their favourite music or fight against an opponent. The Tees Valley already has leading firms in e-commerce, such as Visualsoft in Stockton and Fifteen Digital in Darlington, in cloud computing, including Appamondo, and is ideally placed to take advantage of nascent sectors such as big data, smart cities and the internet of things. On the latter, Tees Valley firms see geo-coding as a future development where the internet becomes more localised as consumers and businesses increasingly demand access to information pertaining to their locality.
While the five sectors all over major opportunities, there is a major danger in defining the ‘most important,’ given that it is almost impossible to tell what will evolve in the next few years. For example, of the list, how many would have featured ten, or even five, years ago? Other sectors that need to be factored include online security, a major opportunity and one which is not mentioned in the consultation. Further detail is therefore sought on the Government’s Identity Assurance Programme which aims for government to set standards, but for the private sector to produce identify solutions for public services. With £10m allocated to such a programme, we believe there are big opportunities for Tees Valley firms to grasp.

In addition, artificial intelligence, bionics, plastic electronics, nano-technology, mobile and desktop manufacturing are likely to experience growth, with many considering the latter as leading the way to the third industrial revolution, where designers can sit next to the robots building their designs and make adjustments in real time. Crossing all these growth opportunities are the horizontal issues affecting digital businesses, such as funding, appropriate accommodation, particularly for business incubation, and the need for collaboration. The Information Economy strategy should, consequently, be adaptive, flexible and adjustable to the fast developing modern world.

There are a number of drivers for change which could impact upon the sector and upon the ability of UK firms, particularly SMEs, to exploit these. The Tees Valley Local Enterprise Partnership has developed a Digital Sector Action Plan, which1 identified a number of drivers of change in the information economy, including;
• Ability to recruit experienced staff or access skills Digital City Innovation is the home of ideas, graduate talent and academic expertise, generating exciting new digital businesses, connecting business to the University’s research and development base, and addressing the digital challenges and solutions of the future. Led by Teesside University, and funded by the University, European Regional Development Fund and the private sector, DCI delivers a number of programmes, including the DigitalCity Fellowships scheme. This allows talented graduates from a range of disciplines to turn innovative business ideas into reality, with the support of world class facilities, professional mentoring and funding.
Tees Valley firms have reported that recruiting skilled personnel from Teesside University has proved successful, but that more experienced digital staff are harder to come by with many preferring to relocate to other creative hub destinations, such as Newcastle, Manchester and London. Retaining graduates and experienced staff in Tees Valley is thus a key challenge.
• Access to angel/venture capital investment
In a tight lending environment, the ability of digital firms to access capital to build, grow and expand their businesses is critical. Government should continue to put pressure on banks to improve lending conditions and offer more flexibility to business support organisations and venture capital investors to put their money into digital SMEs. With angel and venture capital investors starting to view high-growth firms as offering a good return on investment, a number of firms that offer good growth are struggling to raise finance on a similar level. This is compounded by a comparatively low visibility of such investors in the Tees Valley in contrast to those in major cities. Although this is starting to change, through North East Finance and other bodies, more opportunities are clearly needed in areas such as Tees Valley and a change in investment culture needed to genuinely get the sector moving.

• Collaborative opportunities
Partnership working between universities and the private sector should be encouraged and further strengthened. Programmes such as those run by Digital City provide best practice examples of this. DigitalCity Placements provide SMEs with tailored graduate support and an opportunity for companies to apply fresh thinking and skills to particular business issues through three to six month placements. Graduates are supported by a DigitalCity mentor. There is also a need to work further with voluntary and community organisations and DigitalCity holds highprofile 'sandpits' – foresighting events that bring together industry experts, practitioners and researchers to develop the thinking on tomorrow’s challenges and tomorrow’s digital solutions. The potential for collaboration is something that the LEP is key to harness and progress in order to promote the benefits that digital innovation and creativity can have on traditional business models in the wider economy; thus generating further opportunities for digital companies.
• Specialist business support
In Tees Valley, the digital sector has benefited from Teesside University’s world-renowned expertise and reputation in digital media and digital technology and the incubator space and support provided by DigitalCity. Since 2008 through DigitalCity, Teesside University has helped to create 200 new businesses in the digital industries. Supporting high-growth businesses and start-ups, particularly through effective research and development and to keep up with the massive rate of technological change, is thus of real importance. Government can play in role in devolving decision making, infrastructure and investment prioritisation to a more local level, such as Local Enterprise Partnerships, who can co-ordinate and join up activity across an economic area.
• Business accommodation
Aligned to this, first-class incubation accommodation and creative space to work is essential to the digital industries, driving innovation and collaboration. In Tees Valley, the Boho Zone has expanded to incorporate six buildings across the area, along with new centres at Redcar’s Creative Hub and Stockton’s Dovecot Street due on stream. These offer specialist incubation accommodation and facilities for digital firms at competitive pricing. To truly capitalise on such developments, superfast broadband infrastructure is vital. Tees Valley Unlimited is working closely with partners across the North East and Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) to ensure future roll-out, but more investment is needed to ensure major digital locations have access to the superfast broadband they need. Although these drivers present the ‘usual suspects,’ there is a need for each factor to be properly geared towards the key digital sectors, which may require a paradigm shift in government thinking and delivery.

It is vitally important that government works with industry to overcome the barriers identified in question 2 and one of the key vehicles for doing so is the devolution of investment and funding decisions to a more local level. The Tees Valley considers it is imperative that decisions on investments are made locally, and are determined using local experience and intelligence and the expertise of working with local partners. Local decision making ensures that duplication of investment and activities is avoided, local initiatives are joined-up so that the impact is greater
than with just stand alone projects and is not disjointed, and significant added value is demonstrated. There is ample capacity for the sector to prosper in Tees Valley with the help of excellent support networks, such as Digital City Business and Teesside University. Teesside University offer the highly regarded Digital City Innovation fellowships; these offer a £4,000 payment, expert business start-up mentoring and an innovation training programme for digital start-ups, as well as 24/7 access to fellowship labs, equipment, hardware and software and access to film/sound studios. The programme was awarded more funding in 2012 to expand its programme until 2015, create more jobs in the Tees Valley and cement Teesside University’s position as a global leader in digital. Having created 200 companies since 2008, this has generated considerable economic impact for the local economy and continues to drive a thriving digital community. A key ask of government is, in order to grow the information economy, to continue to open access to structured data as it has done as part of the transparency and big data agendas. As central government is a custodian of highly useful and relevant intelligence, further steps are required to open up large datasets for the private sector to deliver innovative commercial solutions to everyday problems. Access and use of big data is thus essential.
Government should look to shift policy focus towards encouraging the creation of new digital businesses, particularly through tech-incubator systems as aptly demonstrated by DigitalCity Business in Tees Valley, rather than concentrating upon attracting a large multinational, such as Google or Facebook, to London. The latter approach can draw talent away from areas such as Tees Valley, reducing any economic impact.

One of the clear benefits of the UK business environment is the people. In Tees Valley, there are over 2,500 students at Teesside University’s School for Computing, which has a reputation for digital excellence and was named one of the top 20 places in the world for courses in animation and computer games. The University hosts the Institute for Digital Innovation, assisting digital start-up companies in an incubation style environment. Furthermore, the University hosts the annual Animex festival, with attendees including the likes of Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks. Through the expertise of Teesside University and the local further education system there is a mass of skilled staff in the area. All 6 main Tees Valley colleges offer bespoke digital training for students, from web design and development to animation and computer gaming. Over 2,400 students take ICT in Tees Valley colleges each year. The major barrier to Tees Valley firms tapping into the opportunities presented by the information economy is funding. Poor access to, and visibility of, finance in Tees Valley is hindering private sector growth, with a survey of 400 companies in Tees Valley, including many in the digital sectors, identifying access to finance and cash flow as significant obstacles to business growth. In fact, 41% of firms whose access to finance was not met in full subsequently had to scale back expansion plans.2 This applies to both bank finance and venture capital. The sector-specific barriers are those identified above; firstly the lack of incubation and collaborative space for digital firms. Tees Valley is lucky to have the Boho Zone’s sites and Teesside University’s Institute for Digital Innovation which helps foster and grow spin-out and start-ups. However, there is clearly a need for more such provision. Secondly, broadband
infrastructure is another hurdle. The Tees Valley does have some of the best superfast broadband infrastructure in the UK, served by both Virgin and BT, with faster speeds than Leeds, Manchester and Milton Keynes. However, rates are still patchy, particularly in rural areas and, although a limited amount of money is available through Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK), to make an impact, more investment is required.

A further barrier to business growth in the digital and information economy is taxation. The Tees Valley Enterprise Zone was among the first EZs to be approved by Government with businesses on these sites able to benefit from tax relief. With digital identified as a key growth sector for Tees Valley, three Enterprise Zones have been designated specifically for digital businesses. This means that companies that utilise digital technology to develop, design or produce a digitally delivered, product or service will be able to benefit from up to £55,000 of business rate relief for five years by locating at Central Park in Darlington, North Shore in Stockton and St Hilda’s in Middlesbrough. The enhancement and extension of such zones would be of enormous benefit in encouraging skilled graduates from Teesside University and others to set up their business knowing that taxation would not be an obstacle in their way.
The need to improve the ability to export products and serve foreign markets is also essential to this global industry and increased focus from UKTI should be dedicated to improving company support in this regard. This can help identify the right markets for the business’ need and assist the firm to enter this area. In a recent Tees Valley survey of over 400 companies, including many in the digital sector, only 6.5% of SMEs said they are currently exporting, a significant untapped resource.
There is a further requirement to ensure that the digital sector, which operates ‘faster nd leaner’ in terms of business start-up and development, is better able to benefit from investment and research and development. For example, the Technology Strategy Board model could be considered to be too slow-moving and bureaucratic for digital SMEs.

Tees Valley businesses are leading the way in terms of digital innovation, developing new applications and products for mobile phones, tablets and ipads. Such firms are experts in ecommerce, cloud computing, character design animation, sales tools for i-phones, mobile market research and much more. Digital businesses are increasingly seeing Tees Valley as the place to be, with, in 2012 alone, investment and job creation at the likes of Visualsoft, Amplience and Appamundo. The Tees Valley is also home to the Centre for Design in the Digital Economy ( d a b ), at Teesside University, which adds to this capability by being an research and development resource driving the commercialisation of the virtual worlds of the 3D web through partnerships with commerce and industry.

Tees Valley firms are increasingly looking to new markets and next technology developments. For example, based in Stockton, Challenger Technologies specialise in sports mobile web applications, such as the iView Mobile App which allows customers to use mobile apps to access realtime football match day information. While in Middlesbrough, iSnapshot is a growing digital firm which produces sales tools for i-phones and has seen considerable growth in demand from South Africa.
A ready example of how generating such export-led creativity has paid off is that of Middlesbrough-based Thap Ltd. Based in the DigitalCity Business flagship building Boho One, the firm has created six new jobs after winning business from global internet company Clicksco. The contract was secured thanks to links forged via the Digital City Business team who travel internationally spreading the word about the Tees Valley and its digital cluster. Clicksco specialises in moneterising internet usage and has more than 200 websites attracting tens of millions of hits per month – the company is Yahoo’s number one partner in Europe. To ensure that the UK’s research and innovation in the information economy field is translated into commercial success, there needs to be further strengthening of the ties between higher education and business to create a system that; encourages universities to undertake relevant and world-class R&D, as defined by the digital industries; encourages the right kind of R&D to be undertaken, adopted and presented as best practice; truly motivates SMEs to perform R&D; and creates business support systems that are best suited to exploit R&D, a model epitomised by DigitalCity Business in Tees Valley. A one stop shop of information where businesses could easily understand the opportunities, along with the funding and support available, for example through UKTI and others, would be of benefit.

Tees Valley is fortunate to have Teesside University and its world-renown digital, animation and creative expertise based in the area. However, the key challenge is to ensure that young people leaving education have the requisite knowledge, skills and experience that the digital industries are looking for. Particular skills gaps include coders, with the need for this to embed coding in schools, while a rounded, balanced education is required. Key skills to be encouraged should be around the core subjects of science, engineering – particularly plastic electronics and nanotechnology – computer science and psychology. Apprenticeships based in the information economy could help provide the new skills base required in the UK to compete with the US and East Asia.

Encouraging young people into the digital industries in the first place is vital; particularly those experiencing youth unemployment and not in education, employment or training. Highlighting the types of opportunity available in the information economy is therefore essential. Digital City Business is doing just that, via its programme of school engagement, as is the Local Enterprise Partnership. Government can play its part too by initiating a paradigm shift to highlight the ‘Geekchic’ perception of science and technology and inspire future generations.
TVU has developed detailed and easily accessible LMI to support and inform young people in their choice of career and subjects undertaken at school, college or university to give them the best access into training and job opportunities. Skills fairs have been held, videos developed – including for the digital industries – and lesson plans and CPD events for teachers and careers professionals created to inform them of the exciting, sustainable careers Tees Valley has to offer. The Tees Valley Skills Portal encapsulates and exemplifies the range of LMI available in one place (the link to the Portal is here: https://www.teesvalleyunlimited.gov.uk/tees-valleyunlimited/
information-hub/skills-portal.aspx).
For the future, independent organisations like LEPs, who are well connected to local companies, can provide that vital conduit between business and the education and training sector. LEPs are in a perfect position to take a holistic view of what is best for the wider area and business base rather than purely the needs of a single business, training provider or age range.
Two further skills challenges for the information economy remain; firstly, to learn best how to understand, structure and interpret the vast amounts of information and data that currently exists and that will be available in the future; and to try to foster a more enterprising and entrepreneurial spirit through the education system.

Cloud services, where data is stored remotely, are increasingly becoming important in a business environment where more data capacity and flexibility is required. Cloud services also offer job creation opportunities for the UK. For example, in Tees Valley, appamondo are a cloud computing firm which moved to the Boho Zone in Middlesbrough in 2012. They are focused on deploying and supporting cloud technologies that are fundamental for the future of small to medium sized business. Developed around Google Apps for business, appamondo are the only authorised resellers in the North East. The business, formed in 2012, has already aided companies from a variety of sectors including engineering, HR, finance, IT, and even horticulture. The risk in terms of cloud computing as a target sector is that the hosting of cloud services can be located anywhere in the world, providing that communication, security links and costs are workable. There is not a huge incentive for vast data centres and cloud computing provision to be based in the UK in comparison to more affordable places across the globe. Although Tees Valley does host one of the world’s greenest data centres, run by HP at Wynyard, Government can workto form strategic partnerships with broadband infrastructure providers to improve infrastructure.

The analysis of large data sets offers many opportunities for UK firms to exploit; businesses need to learn, understand, apply their entrepreneurial mindset and then innovate.

Government can add the most value to this growing area by creating a policy that understands the reality of data, including; a smart understanding of the security and privacy issues that emerge from Big Data and Open Data; that empowers individuals to decide their own security and privacy ‘settings,’ giving people responsibility for controlling that; that educates people as to the new reality in regard to their data; and that frees firms to drive enterprise and innovation. Government can open up access to open data feeds contained within 'Big Data', which relate to public domain, government and enterprise based data that could be used by businesses in order to understand the current UK public sector landscape better and leap-frog non-domestic IT businesses. Government can also work to increase awareness and educate UK industry as to what 'Big Data' is by means of inspirational examples with tangible economic benefits.

Universities has the same ask of government; the need for the opening of more datasets and the creation of a system which truly supports spin-outs and start-ups to innovate and turn ideas into reality.

The same skills are needed for Big Data as they are to the digital sector as a whole and as outlined in Question 6

Along with helping local firms to overcome the barriers outlined above, such as finance and exporting, investing in infrastructure is of immense important. Improving bandwidth, online security and payment mechanisms are critical to helping deliver opportunities that create local economic growth. Tees Valley already has a number of prominent firms operating in the e-commerce sector. For example, Visualsoft, based in Stockton, has grown at an average rate of 110% year on year, from22 in 2009 to over 100 today, supplying major high street retailers and fashion giants across the country. In fact, digital firms in Tees Valley service clients from Channel 4, Google and Dunhill to Nickeoldean, Pearson and Superdry. The area is home to Europe’s largest private label games company in Lygo International in Darlington, plus Double Eleven, who recently won an indefinite exclusive development deal with Sony to work on games for its Playstation platform. Furthermore, since 2006, Fifteen Digital Marketing in Darlington have delivering social media and digital marketing campaign services to UK cross sector clients including JVC, KFC, Millie’s Cookies , Costa Coffee, Best Western, Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn. Specialising in search engine optimization, email marketing and e-commerce websites, plus social media reputation monitoring, social media campaign management and ‘101’ social media and digital marketing workshops. Government can help by providing smart support for companies moving and diversifying into ecommerce
and the online economy.

There are potentially significant new business opportunities for UK technology companies as the Internet of Things gains traction and radio-frequency identification (RFID) usage is made ever more commercially available. Exemplar applications and organisations should be heavily promoted.

The two vital steps required to ensure a true Internet of Things is to, firstly, ensure full and fast broadband coverage across the Tees Valley and the UK. Secondly, there needs to be an awareness campaign to demonstrate exactly what the IoT is and how it can present real business value.

As well as the sectors mentioned in the consultation, we think that the Government may also which to consider:
Mobile
Social
Semantic web

As well as technology knowledge and expertise, we also need people who are able to understand the application of those technologies in a business context, and those who are able to communicate the implications and values of technology to a wide variety of audiences. Whilst deep technical skills are important, increasingly value comes from understanding how to exploit and apply the technology. That requires a broad spectrum of skills and knowledge to support the technology skills, including an understanding of business, finance, industry domain, and human psychology.
Additionally, understanding the value and application of information and data, and how it should be managed and exploited, is key. This includes an understanding of how information should be managed, structured, and described to optimise its value and usefulness, as well as knowledge of the technologies themselves.

Ordnance Survey is a business that has led the way within its sector in the use of ICT. With much of our income coming from digital products and services, ICT and the internet is integral to the way our company functions.
All OS products and services can be requested on-line. We use the internet to distribute our data products to customers and partners.
Increasingly we are moving to providing on-line web services based on this data, removing the need for customers to have to manage and process the data themselves. This includes being an early adopter of the use of Linked Data to publish our information.
We have launched a mobile application to give access to leisure products provided by Ordnance Survey.

Additionally, ICT is at the heart of the way Ordnance Survey runs its business.
We use high-precision GPS-based technology, and associated ICT technology, to manage the capture of data.
We are using leading-edge technology to manage our core data assets, and automate the process of deriving content and products from that data.
We have embraced the use of cloud-based technologies, using platform-as-a-service and software-as-a-service solutions. Additionally we have implemented our own internal private cloud, which has enabled us to provide a more efficient, flexible and responsive infrastructure.

Given the technological nature of our business, IT skills are not the exclusive domain of the IT department. Other parts of the organisation (e.g. Research, Product Prototyping) are also involved in looking at new technologies and assessing their usefulness and appropriateness for the organisation.
Within the IT department, we carefully manage the set of technologies that are used for core business applications and services, and review this on a regular basis. However, it is sometimes a challenge to keep abreast of the ever-changing technology landscape. To alleviate this we are developing closer links with other technology-focused parts of the organisation to encourage sharing of knowledge and experiences.
Ensuring that Ordnance Survey has the right IT skills to exploit the technology is a challenge. Given the organisations dependence on technology we have consciously retained a full IT capability. This has enabled IT to be a partner with the broader business, rather than just a supplier of resource. Keeping those skills current and relevant as well as providing day-to-day operational demands can be challenging. Additionally the breadth of skills required by an IT department means that skills in certain areas are often at a premium. We have a policy of using contract resource to plug these gaps on a short-term basis (primarily in new developments), and of using technical specialists via. framework agreements where there is a longer-term need.

Ordnance Survey has been an early adopter of cloud services within government. We are using cloud computing services in two ways:
To provide a rapid, flexible, scalable and cost-effective computing platform for deployment of customer-facing applications and services. Examples include the provision of web mapping services on an Amazon cloud platform.
To provide off-the-shelf commodity applications for use by both customers and internal staff. Examples include HR, Time Recording and Idea Management applications.

The initial attraction of cloud services was the ability to get services and infrastructure up and running very quickly, alongside a minimal up-front investment due to the pay-as-you-go nature of the services. Additionally the opportunity to have access to a potentially unlimited compute resource, allowing rapid scaling of services, has allowed Ordnance Survey to relatively quickly and easily offer a service that can meet spikes in demand without an excessive investment in infrastructure. The use of cloud-based applications has removed the burden of having to implement and manage equivalent applications in-house. To date our use of such services has been primarily to provide standard corporate functions (e.g. HR, time recording), allowing scarce resources to focus instead on core, value-add activities.
Whilst the benefits of cloud services are many, they have also presented a number of challenges. Lack of standards (for example, in management of the infrastructure, and in security and access management) have meant that integrating cloud services into our existing infrastructure has sometimes been challenging. We have had to use specific approaches and solutions for each integration. The point nature of many of the cloud services (i.e. they provide a single function) has also created integration challenges, such as the potential of creating islands of disconnected data and services. The effort required to alleviate some of these issues (i.e. development required to integrate data between different services) can lessen the benefits of adopting such an approach.
From a financial perspective, the pay-as-you-go model of cloud services is an attractive one, but costs can very quickly mount up without careful monitoring and management. For example, long-term costs of computing platforms can easily exceed the costs of a more traditional, internally hosted approach if not managed well.
The ease with which cloud services can be procured and used presents challenges from a corporate governance perspective. Identifying and understanding the risks inherent in the use of such services, and putting in place appropriate controls to manage them, without losing the advantages of cloud services, is an ongoing issue. The location of cloud services is a particular example – whilst one of the features of cloud-based services is that the physical location of those services should not be important, security and legislative requirements implicitly place some restrictions on where services, and particularly data, can be hosted, thereby removing some of the flexibility inherent in such an approach.
Finally, availability of services is an important issue. If services go down, you have little control over the situation or ability to influence return to service time. Compensation may be paid, but it is often minimal and unlikely to represent the full value lost

See response to previous question. Whilst not a barrier to adoption, the lack of standards, particularly in how services can be integrated with one and another and with existing in-house infrastructure is a hurdle that makes adoption of such services harder than it could be.

The Government and the sector can work to strengthen further the UK’s provision of cloud services by actively working to encourage the creation and adoption of standards across cloud implementations. The government is already encouraging the wholesale adoption of open standards for data and services, with a well-reasoned rationale that this will remove some of the technical barriers to sharing information. In the same way, adoption of common, open standards across cloud implementations will allow organisations to better integrate clouds services with each other, and with an organisations internal and legacy infrastructure.
Assuming that legislative and other drivers that make the physical site of a service and its data important, the government should also encourage more cloud providers to provide their services from UK-based data centres. Alternatively, encouraging the definition and adoption of appropriate international standards that cloud providers can be certified against would also be beneficial.

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, believes that the five sectors identified in the Strategy will be
influential in providing opportunities for growth, but they are by no means exhaustive. Nor do we
consider these sectors to be standalone as there is significant interdependence across the
sectors together with a continued reliance on other emerging solutions in social media, mobility
and cyber security.
The Strategy should adopt a more holistic view in addressing the information lifecycle. The information economy consists of all aspects of the information lifecycle (creation, management,
transformation, distribution, usage and storage of data, information, and knowledge objects),
therefore any enabling technology (cloud, mobility, internet of things) or applications (smart cities, ecommerce)
or emergent attributes (big data, social media, cyber security) must also be taken into
account when formulating a strategy.
The international dimension of the information economy will require new business models to enable
the growth opportunities within the ‘sectors’ to be exploited, while ensuring that the revenue
generated aids the UK economy.
When examining opportunities for growth it is worth considering the types of growth they drive:
• Smart Cities, E-Commerce and Internet of Things (Mobility and Social Media) provide
key opportunities for UK internal growth and the regional distribution of wealth. Investments in
these ‘sectors’ must be accompanied by innovative new business models and an enlightened
fiscal regime to stimulate entrepreneurial success;
• Cloud Computing and E-Commerce (and Cyber Security) can be employed to target cost
reductions, improve efficiency and deliver a more effective and secure business environment
for the UK; improving competitiveness and adding to overall GDP. UK based companies
should be encouraged to engage British based cloud enterprises to secure investment and
jobs in the UK;
• Big Data may well prove to be the greatest opportunity to stimulate the UK Economy. Many
UK companies are well placed to achieve low cost entry by exploiting the skill, intellect and
data already available to their organisations to focus on new-markets and develop more
innovative business models. Greater access to larger and more comprehensive data sets will
enable the development of more sophisticated and customer focused applications and
services.

The Institute believes the main drivers of change that will create opportunities for the sector include:
• Smart cities
o Urban population growth and increasing trend for super cities;
o Reducing cost of the underpinning technologies;
o Smarter cyber security;
o Exploitation of skills pool in key technologies.
• Cloud
o Need to reduce costs and improve efficiency;
o Growth in service oriented digital business and transformation in response to
emerging consumer behaviours.
• Internet of Things
o Proliferation of cheap and ubiquitous computing capability;
o New products and services enabling new channels to market.
• Big Data
o Emergent consumer behaviours;
o Exploitation of unconscious info-content creation, usage, storage;
o Emergent business models in value added services.
• E-commerce
o Socio-cultural evolution;
o Increased public access to technology and ease of use;
o Increased technological awareness stimulated by perpetual education;
o Need for companies to become more competitive and differentiate their services.

The Institute believes that SMEs are particularly well placed to exploit early stage technologies in
creating new opportunities and innovations. For example, the use of open data, social media and big
data to engage and co-create new services, opportunities with their customers will become more
common place. Furthermore, the entrepreneurial spark needed to restart the economy exists within
the SME segment, but it still needs further government support, via incentives and investment.
The Institute would urge the government to:
• Actively promote the benefits and value of these areas within the economy;
• Agree a framework where data can be effectively valued and monetised for more business;
many business do not look at their data as an asset;
• Stimulate regimes to drive down their operating costs;
• Help develop financial hedges/risk management tools for SME procurement practices;
• Establish a model/review groups that help drive advances in technologies and services. For
example, create a review group that looks at proposed ideas to reduce the cost base of
government at a £1 capital cost to reduce £1 operating cost. This would have the ability to
drive economy and target other government agendas;
• Review the UK Government IP and exploitation in these areas and share with UK based
companies to grow the economy;
• Encourage structured learning through entrepreneurial internships, linked to a dynamic digital
entrepreneurship curriculum;
• Use the technology and capability to provide ‘higher level’ infrastructure services to ‘third
world economies’;
• Widely consult on skills gap and industry investment.
The Institute considers changes to the teaching of computer sciences in schools to be an
improvement but difficult to implement due to a shortage of skills among teachers. Benefits will take a
significant amount of time to feed through to the workforce.
Education and recruitment into computer sciences can be hampered by negative messages about
off-shoring. In light of offshoring, we would urge the government to strive toward a labour market that
creates opportunities for the UK population to work in the IT sector and enhance confidence in the
profession.

The Institute believes that this may require wholesale change in government policies in order to
attract and retain early stage / high growth businesses, as well as creating the right environment for
world class technologies and organisations to remain on domestic shores instead of selling out to
major players in other countries.
The Institute perceives the main benefits and barriers to be:
• Benefits
o Acknowledged leadership in exploiting the knowledge economy;
o Developing right skills and capabilities needed by business;
o Sustainable business models.
• Barriers
o Understanding what data is available within organisation;
o Understanding what information is available to enrich information from other organisations;
o Layers of bureaucracy and red tape. A confusion of controls and regulation can hinder
progress and create uncertainty highlighting the need for clearer guidance;
o Entrepreneurs may be ill equipped or lack an appropriate understanding of various
standards, especially where they are liable to change;
o Ability to share information openly between different organisations;
o Talent and skills;
o Lack of seed funding;
o Lethargy to drive business transformation;
o Reduce the level to entry via motivations:

The Institute believes that in order that the information economy is in translated into commercial
success, it is important that there are:
• Incentives for companies to work more closely with UK academia, over an extended period of
time, for example, a committed programme of five years investment of money with tax breaks
returned in year one for company investment. This would look like a normal Venture Capital
Trust (VCT) arrangement, promoting specific R&D activities;
• Incentives for companies to take on-board a UK researcher and lower level via apprentices;
• Channel awards and recognition via institutes that are aligned to these sectors;
• Professional groups and charter organisations who provide a regular update on the progress
within these areas, for instance, leadership position versus ‘a player’;
• Having organisations value data and see data as a corporate asset, such as a line item on
their profit and loss statement;
• Schooling on value of information;
• Role models about the way on innovation and business transformation.

The Institute considers outsourcing to have had a negative effect on the UK skills and capabilities.
Key skills such as data analysis, business analysis and programming development have become
less evident in the UK and are now highly sought. In order for the UK to maintain a strong information
economy, we believe IT professionals should develop a combined skill set. We believe that for
innovation to flourish people need to have an understanding of technical issues as well as business
practices.
Big Data requires specific skills to be developed from data scientist and data librarian skill sets.
These skills are presently in great demand and necessary to compete in these new business
environments. There is a strong need for visualisation of information and an understanding of how
people interpret data. Protection and security is also important, for which the UK has a high
capability, although there is a need to assess the overall capacity required.
The Institute considers the role of Government is to:
• Create opportunities by setting Government procurement contracts to mandate certain
features and capabilities as part of the contracts;
• Build stronger relationships between Server Message Block (SMB) and academia in these
areas to drive UK Growth and GDP;
• Focus on business value as well as just cost when looking at the role of technology in
business transformation;
• Elevate IT to the boardroom within Government departments;
• Foster academia programmes to help develop the skills;
Consultation response to UK Government Information Economy Strategy
Page 9 of 16
• Consider work placement initiatives to develop practical skills and talent;
• Incentivise SMEs to develop the right skills for doing business in a digital age by providing
training credits for acquiring skills in key digital technologies, applications and behaviours

The Institute believes that business performance could be improved by:
• Delivering back office services via the internet;
• Centralising analytic technology and people skills and providing these as a service to other
departments;
• Use of metrics and measurement across field force and delivery consultants;
• Delivering products and services delivered by web portal and on tablet devices;
• By hosting customer relationship management in the cloud;
• Customer surveying;
• Cyber assessing for example, sentiment indexes;
• Web Marketing;
• Self service of many internal processes.

• Re-assessing employee demands and best methods to deliver;
• Re-assessing customer demands and thoughts about the company and services it provides
and the best methods to deliver;
• Surveying technology trends and directions;
• Surveying business trends and customer directions impacting business;
• Surveying/analysing its competitor positioning.
To help ensure the right staff with the right IT skills, companies should ensure that they have a staff
recruitment and development programme in place which;
• Conforms to the BCS SFIA and SFIAplus framework for talent acquisition, development and
retention;
• Enables access to web based training;
• Enables access to support documentation via web for remote;
• Creates a clear and transparent career path;
• Encourages the development of skills and expertise;
• Provides 360 degree personal development looking at inter-personnel, technical and business
contextual skills.

The Institute considers that the key uses and benefits for business when using cloud computing
services are:
• Ease of scaling up and scaling down the service;
• Ease of entry and testing business hypothesis.
We consider that the following key issues or difficulties have arisen when using cloud computing
services:
• Cost of the service;
• Lack of reliability of the infrastructure i.e. not at the same level of provision as electricity;
• Lack of reliable connectivity.

The Institute is of the opinion that the following are the potential barriers to the use of cloud services:
• Transformation from existing processes/systems;
• Fear of user adoption;
• Fear of security;
• Fear of standing of hosting providers, for example, are they commercially viable?
• Cost of some services more expensive than internal hosted services;
• Lack of skilled resources to take on new technologies.

The Institute believes that due diligence is vital before buying cloud services and should be an
activity overseen by the board of any prospective cloud user organisation. The driving issue for the
board is clarity on governance; the alignment of responsibility, authority and management of issues
crossing the boundaries between users, user organisations, IT departments and cloud service
providers. We believe that Government should play an active role in defining these boundaries of
responsibility.
There are complications and risks related to sharing a platform with unknown parties, off-shoring of
data, system consolidation and legal jurisdiction. It is vital that CIOs and their organisations
understand how critical it is to address the issues of data protection and information security with
properly skilled staff.
The UK’s provision of cloud services could further be strengthened by:
• Establishing credibility and confidence in the technology;
• Validating the security of the technology;
Consultation response to UK Government Information Economy Strategy
Page 11 of 16
• Taking advantage of cost efficiencies for a shared services cloud platform that can service
Government departments through to local authorities.

We feel that in order to exploit and expand the use of Big Data a business must first capture and
retain the data in a secure, managed environment, upon which Big Data analytic applications can be
run to extract deeper insight on the type, usage and value of information that exists within the
enterprise.
The Institute would advise business, in order to exploit and expand the use of Big Data, to:
• Know what data you have;
• Know what data is available;
• Have capabilities to assess and integrate data;
• Have capabilities to operationalise data and feedback into existing business services;
• Be able to use different qualities of data;
• Be able to use different accuracies of data;
• Understand the value of data;
• Acquire a way to understand what the value of that data is to them and to others;
• Acquire skills to use Big Data;
• Look at the cultural changes to effectively use Big Data;
• Establish a role model at executive level that identifies the need for facts behind data and the
analysis of that data, as well as accuracy of data. Thus driving use of data to being habitual.
• Create an environment where Executives use data that has been actually ‘captured’ rather
than aggregated, summarised, translated and standardised and then interpreted.

The legal, cultural and governance framework around releasing data and meta data to foster
collaboration is poor. This applies to corporations, including banks, just as much as to Government.
The Institute believes that Government can best help promote the success of Big Data analytics by:
• Creating flexible, supportive policies that encourage the opening up of private company data,
and protection of their rights over such information, as well as individual rights over personally
identifiable data;
• Continuing to use data as informed information within Policy, decisions and
recommendations;
• Providing data in same open data standards allowing standard access ways to open data;
• Demonstrating key changes in government driven by Big Data and Big Data analytics. For
example, assessing the most common practice used for treating a particular patient ailment
and the most cost effective treatment for that ailment;
• Having the ability to place data that is being shared over a number of agencies/companies
into an area that is ‘escrow’ like managed.

The Institute believes that university curriculum should include courses on Big Data analytics.
Universities and higher education institutions should be encouraged to promote and expand
academic innovations.

• Data analysis skills – these are spread across schools subject area, but not developed out to a
more structured approach;
• Maths, Statistics and Decision sciences. The current demand and depth of understanding these
areas is far beyond the current curriculum at school, at undergraduate, and beyond;
• Core data science skills and whether enough are being added to the workforce with the following
specialist education:
o Statistics;
o Operational research;
o Financial Mathematics;
o Economics.

The Institute believes that the Government needs to:
• Drive all government interactions through online interaction with key services still providing face
to face representation;
• Improve the resilience and reliability of the internet and ecommerce platforms;
• Ensure support for open source technologies that enable many of these key technologies;
• Review the need for physical signatures on many types of documents, altering legislation as
necessary;
• Review marketing and business to customer communications to ensure new channels of
communication have appropriate principles applied for example, targeting spam;
• Assure appropriate usage of data and privacy of information with commensurate penalties;
• Focus on making it easier for online businesses to export as well as providing a quick and easy
application process for funding where businesses wish to expand into e-commerce;
• Encourage the development of essential key skills:
o Analytical skills to understand the right questions / answers;
o Big Data creation and query tools;
o Structured and unstructured information handling and management.

We consider the following to be barriers to using the internet as medium to buy and sell:
• Reliability of the internet infrastructure;
• Concerns over cross country security;
• Having a simpler set of rules for data transfer and operating a business.

Based on a poll of our members the Institute believes that our commercial membership access
advice on trading online via:
• Own experiences and partners;
• Gartner and other analyst services;
• Professional and Commercial Institutions;
• Government agencies;
• Industry promotional materials.

The Institute believes that M2M communications help:
• Align the movement of goods with the associated information, allowing optimisation of supply
chains and driving up efficiencies and economies;
• Provide additional revenue opportunities for business;
• Reduce fraud levels through positive identification of goods;
• Reduce grey market trading due to positive monitoring of goods from manufacture through to
consumer purchase;
• Simplify processes, clarify policy and business principles;
• Provide consistent and standardised approaches to similar situations.

We feel that in order to ensure a true Internet of Things it is important to:
• Establish some sort of National Grid like entity that allows the free movement of information
and to support transportation of information across intra-national and international boundaries
driving quality and standardisation of data distribution;
• Initially develop standards that can be used to drive down costs faster and handle the
variations that would arise to bring under a single framework;
• Develop capability to send data across national boundaries that may include personal and or
‘protected’ data;
• Catalogue services provided with associated trust and reliability ratings so decisions can be
made;
• Develop technology and technical standards for capture of appropriate information, handling
variations in data and rendering information;
• Committed Government research into risks social impact of developments like IoT and its
derivatives (Nearfield Communication).

Obstacles that we have identified include:
• Fears over data protection and privacy implications;
• Cyber threats and the trust that data is safe;
• Quality/resilience and availability of internet/network;
• Quality and completeness of data that will be provided. Completeness restricts higher level
business value;
• Capacity of the internet;
• Coverage of the internet across the UK;
• Technology and standards for integration between world objects and the internet.
As a result of these obstacles, there is now a BCS Internet of Things Working Group, which aims to
produce position paper as well as a working document to distribute to the UN IGF Dynamic Coalition
for tabling at Aalborg on 10 May 2013.

The Institute believes that there are isolated areas of success, which provide credible examples of
the Smart Cities concept. The integration of these sectors to provide higher level value remains a
challenge which requires greater capital investment for unknown benefits. Examples include:
• Isolated centres of excellence exist in London, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds,
Cardiff, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow;
• ‘Telecare’ in Livingstone Scotland;
• Newham PCT in particular the maternity nurses system;
• Citizenship and internet services in Bristol;
• Diabetes care in Liverpool;
• Driver detection and safe road trials run in Swansea, Bristol and Cardiff;
• Improved perception of travel in Reading covering buses and trains.

The Institute believes that the barriers to the adoption of Smart Cities include:
• Cultural and regulatory barriers over sharing information across departments;
• Siloed budgets;
• A lack of a strategic vision and corporate leadership at local and national level;
• Fears of failure;
• A lack of public understanding on how the technology works;
• Concerns over health from these different technologies;
• A lack of understanding about what value smart cities will bring;
• Not all citizens are able to use information technology effectively as not everyone is digitallyliterate;
• A lack of vision, Government will or investment in infrastructure;
• Limited or ineffective mechanisms for connecting the best corporate suitors;
• A lack of an entrepreneurial culture and enterprise skills development mechanisms to exploit
commercial opportunities;
• A lack of risk finance and business investment capability to make the most of technological IT
advances;
• A lack of information, commitment or resources needed to support, develop, lead, maintain
and sustain global best practice and smart city concepts.
We feel that The Government should:
• Build relationships and solutions with complementary institutions;
• Define and address the Digital Skills Agenda;
• Build cluster of skills-innovators;
• Build R&D pool to support the future development and innovation;
• Create platforms for corporate, institutional, small business and open innovation to maximise;
cross collaboration and commercial/supply chain opportunities;
• Promote professionalism to add international credibility and recognition to the Smart Cities,
enterprises and their products/services outcomes;
• Advance the skills base and opportunities for the young to gain world class qualifications;
• Provide a funding infrastructure that attracts investment, delivers skills and growth.

The top 20 opportunity cities are New York, London, Toronto, Paris, Stockholm, San Francisco,
Singapore, Hong Kong, Chicago, Tokyo, Sydney, Berlin, Los Angeles, Seoul, Madrid, Milan, Beijing,
Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai and Moscow.
We consider that more detailed examples include:
• Seattle; where the Wimax capabilities provide blanket wireless and internet access to the
municipality at low cost. It uses these capabilities to then leverage parking meters, accident
reporting and some exploratory telecare;
• Japan; where street devices like bus shelters can be used to order supermarket products for
delivery to the customer;
• Japan for the sensing of customers when they enter a store and aligning personal
desires against the current store assets and services;
• A Californian container yard for the sensing of containers, tracking monitoring and
management of the containers and their contents throughout the container depot, and sharing
data with some other receiving ports;
• Indonesia where the internet was extended into the rural communities allowing farmers to
provide details of crops and quantities as they were leaving the farm expediting the transfer
from farmer to supplier to consumer.

Information and Communication

On behalf of an organisation

We would also suggest that attention be paid to the potential of open networks - Ofcom's ongoing work on white space is a good example of this approach.

The Internet offers an opportunity for an economy in which more people can play an active part. New technology potentially lowers barrier to entry, makes it easier to get market, and consequently facilitates more competition and innovation. This is why it should be a key driver of growth. But we would like to note that there are 'network' requirements for an information economy with these characteristics. These include: a. Net neutrality provisions: ensuring that established interests are not given preferential treatment. If new entrants find it harder to reach the market, competition is effectively stifled. We suggest it would be helpful to learn from the law passed last year in the Netherlands based in this principle https://www.bof.nl/2012/05/08/netherlands-first-country-in-europe-with-net-neutrality/. b. The rule of law and due process: Regulation of the Internet that operates through what might be called 'self regulation' can undermine competition. This is a serious risk when services are encouraged to proactively monitor, delete, report or block content, for example, sometimes based on informal arrangements or codes of conduct. One example of a particularly problematic approach in this regard is the work led by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on copyright infringement. These discussions involve encouraging cooperation between advertising networks, payment services, the police and trade associations from the creative industries to tackle copyright infringement. But there is little or no account of the due process involved. For example, the minutes of the meeting from November 2012 involve discussion of furthering a role within the City of London Police funded by the trade association the BPI: "Commissioner Leppard outlined the work of the City Of London Police in this area to target the top 50 infringing websites, assisted by a BPI-funded post analysing data, writing to website hosts, advertisers and credit card companies to draw their attention to the infringement and their own liability. EV welcomed this, and encouraged the Commissioner to have the Police as signatory to the letters in as many cases as possible, to improve their effect." [http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121204113822/http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/2012_11_14_roundtable_minutes.pdf] There was seemingly no discussion of whether any due process was involved, for example how allegations of infringement or liability could be challenged or mistakes resolved. Giving no account of due process or mechanisms for redress creates the risk that unsubstantiated allegations of wrong doing will lead to, for example, the withdrawal of payment services or advertising despite no court judgement, or any form of independent checks. Due process and the rule of law is crucial in ensuring that this sort of power is not given away to easily - doing so undermines the Internet as a platform for competition. c. Blocking and filtering: Measures to block or filter content online pose problems for competition where the give preferential treatment to established providers, or For example, where established social media platforms might be exempt from the filtering on mobile phone networks' internet filtering, but newer . Further, smaller online retail services may accidentally get caught behind filters or blocks and find it difficult to have their site unblocked. We have recently found examples of this happening to an online jewellery site whose site was blocked over Christmas on some UK mobile networks. http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/online-gift-shop-blocked-by-mobile-networks d. Data subject rights: Currently privacy online is often seen as a burden, or something in tension with online commerce. But this is simply a consequence of the web 2.0 business model. A post web 2.0 information economy would put people in control of their data, facilitating new business models based on trust and consent. This is why we support the proposals in the European Commission's Data Protection Regulation. We return to this point again in questions 16-18.

Software as a service involves large amounts of business data being entrusted with third parties. This is often a key part of how a business works. First of all, we suggest that business would welcome more assistance in assessing services - understanding the privacy, competition and operational issues to look for. Second, data rights in the cloud are key to ensuring that . This is about control over the data and jurisdiction under which the data falls. Data rights are not just for 'citizens' but are a business issue too. Trust in the 'confidentiality' and security of data is critical - both in terms of the cloud services' use of the data entrusted to them, but also with regard to access requirements of any States' jurisdiction those services fall under. Furthermore, we suggest that being able to 'get data back' in a structured format will be increasingly important, for example to avoid 'lock in' and to facilitate the use of data for unforeseen, ongoign business purposes. Interoperability is key to facilitating better competition amongst providers, discouraging the further entrenchment of 'data monopolies', and for collaboration amongst non-competing, complementary services. Suggested actions for the Government: a. Encouraging common APIs - work with industry b. A study of the relationship between interoperability and innovation

We would like to stress that personal data is not open data, which in turn (as noted in the consultation document) is not big data. We would also like to echo the conclusions of Peter Hustinx - that personal data available online through services such as Facebook are still subject to Data Protection and can not be considered 'open data'. We are concerned about retrofitting personal data with requirements or expectations of open or big data - without consent considerations. As an example, we would point to our submission to the consultation on possible changes to the use of data in the National Pupil Database. http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ourwork/reports/response-to-the-dfe-national-pupil-database-consultation Data subject rights are key to ensuring that big data does not involve the exploitation of people's personal information, which would further undermine the public's trust in services that collect and use their data. The strengthened rights promised by a strong Data Protection Regulation should be supported. We are very concerned at efforts to weaken the Regulation. With particular relevance to this issue of big data, we strongly believe that the Regulation should avoid creating a general exemption for 'pseudonymous' data.

Consumer trust in online commerce is extremely low. A sizeable majority of people do not trust organisations that collect and use their data. A Eurobarometer survey4 found that 70% of Europeans are concerned about companies using information for a purpose different to the one it was collected for. The UK was highest at 80%. 74% said their specific consent should be required for personal information to be collected. [http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_359_en.pdf ] An Ovum study found that only 14 percent of respondents believe that Internet companies are honest about their use of consumers’ personal data. [http://ovum.com/press_releases/ovum-predicts-turbulence-for-the-internet-economy-as-more-than-two-thirds-of-consumers-say-no-to-internet-tracking/] We support a move away from a model that sees privacy as a burden, and thus sets up a "privacy versus online business" dynamic. We hope to see a move towards a model in which privacy is an enabler of competition and business models that are based on people being in control of their data. Personal data stores as example. That would boost trust and facilitate more, not less, e-commerce. This would also be an environment that respected people's privacy - something the current environment of weak protection does not encourage. Addressing the trust deficit will require an improved data protection framework through a strong Data Protection Regulation, which gives people meaningful and actionable data subject rights including better consent, data portability and rights to erasure and which holds organisations collecting and using data to account more effectively. "Data portability" will also improve competition in e-commerce by challenging data monopolies, and would also encourage 'switching'. The Midata Impact Assessment recognises this consumer benefit, placing a high figure on the benefits to consumers.

Addressing the trust deficit in e-commerce will improve demand. A market study for the Executive Agency for Health and Consumers in 2011 found that 29% of people say concerns about the misuse of personal data or payment details is a key factor in them not shopping online 8. 21% say payment card details may be stolen. 19% say they don't know what rights are like in other states. 19% say they are worried data will be misused9. The authors conclude that “ensuring the same consumer rights across the EU and the protection of personal data and measures against fraudulent online sellers join the list of the top confidence-boosting measures.” [Consumer market study on the functioning of e-commerce and Internet marketing and selling techniques in the retail of goods, Executive Agency for Health and Consumers, 2011 http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/consumer_research/market_studies/docs/study_ecommerce_goods_en.pdf ]

On behalf of an organisation

We welcome this call for evidence and in particular a long-term focus which identifies the commitment needed from Government and business to maintain and develop long-term industrial capabilities in the UK economy.
In particular we would like to see:
• Recognition that the information economy enables significant growth in other sectors. The use of digital technology and information to drive improvements is a key element of the economy, which will benefit not only the ICT industry but the economy as a whole.
• A clearer picture of what the UK information economy looks like, particularly a robust analysis of its future direction and its predicted impact on other sectors shared with policy makers at the sub-national level.
• A ‘whole of Government’ approach: looking across the whole of Government to remove the barriers and identify levers that will have the biggest impact and align these to deliver growth.
• Engagement with the totality of the industry: identifying actions which benefit businesses across the whole supply chain, breadth of sectors and size.
• Increasing Government focus on the information economy is a positive step, but this shift needs to be communicated to cities and localities to ensure they can articulate and deliver their contribution to the UK’s growth strategy.
• Recognition that the traditional boundaries of manufacturing and service sectors are changing which is providing new growth opportunities for businesses in the UK. Focus is increasingly on markets which enables companies from a range of sectors to compete for business in markets that aren’t seen as traditional to their sector. An example of this is Ageing which is a key priority for Newcastle.
• Recognition that there is an information and IT dimension to all sectors, and this is changing and growing. How this is changing and the relevance to individual businesses and sectors is not widely understood. This is particularly relevant to the ageing and health market of which Newcastle is a leading location for research and development, it’s application and business development. Partners in Newcastle are working with business to demonstrate the opportunities in the ageing and health market, many of which are underpinned by the information economy.
The growth in the sector and the five sub-sectors defined by this review provide a growth market for the education sector. It is widely accepted that there are research and skills needs and that this is a growth market for the further and higher education sector.

Global competition. Competition is increasingly global as competitors embrace new technology and reach new markets. Global cities are becoming smarter in their use of data and technology. Businesses and sectors world wide are embracing technology to grow existing and access new markets – geographically and sectorally. Both the public and private sector are finding ways to innovate using data and technology to deliver efficiencies, economies of scale and market edge. This change means that the UK must at a minimum keep pace.
Digital divide and UK competition. The information economy is fundamental to wider economy and government must ensure that economic, social and geographical divides are not exacerbated by its growth. The role of the information economy in rebalancing the economy should be considered.
Investments in broadband infrastructure. Investments in improving the broadband infrastructure by government and the private sector.
Continuous improvements in technology. Improvements in technology that make it increasingly possible for companies to develop new products and processes and enter new markets; and the technology itself being the new product. There is also an increasing trend towards open source and innovation which is driving change in the way companies do business and potentially opening up markets to more SMEs.
Changes in consumer expectations. There are a number of broad issues:
• technology is changing at such a fast pace, often too fast for individuals and businesses to keep up with
• increasing expectations that often exceed what existing services and products can provide
• increasing demand for real time information
• increasing demand for personalised products and services
Digital by Default. Government policy requires public bodies and local authorities like ourselves to be digital by default requiring significant changes to existing service delivery. Implementing this requires significant capacity to develop and implement proposals, capacity that often does not already exist and the capacity that does exist will likely not have the required skills. This requires significant service redesign and not just a lift and drop approach, necessitating large lead in times as the data, systems and services are complex.
Investment in skills. The concepts in this consultation are unknown territory for many businesses and public bodies and so the capacity to understand and apply the opportunities needs developing. These investments are often seen as non essential or a bonus and so Government programmes that stimulate demand are essential. Those who invest in skills will have the competitive edge.
Public service delivery. The strive for greater innovation, efficiency and personalisation of service provides new markets for the sector. Public bodies are increasingly looking to work together to deliver common goals and services. This change in service delivery and collaboration drives the need for open data that can be shared and used to shape service delivery.
There are many examples of this; of particular note is Newcastle’s priority to work with business and key stakeholders to develop an assistive technology programme. This programme is at the heart of our approach to prevention and the integration of health and care services. Newcastle City Council, NHS Trust, Newcastle University, Newcastle Science City and Northumbria University are just some of the partners collaborating on this programme.
Governance, regulation and risk management. The legislative framework particularly for open and big data leads to a very risk averse culture in the public sector to opening up and sharing data. There are a number of barriers that to the success of this sector and the capacity for the public sector to innovate. This is particularly relevant for the ageing example highlighted above.
Public private partnerships. It is worth noting that the private sector is actively seeking to work with the public sector and cities and develop new types of partnership, particularly around the information economy. They are looking to enable the public sector to innovate whilst developing and rolling out their own products and services.
European policy and regulation. We would like to see a government take a proactive and challenging approach Europe in areas there may be barriers to delivering economic growth in cities in the UK.

The information economy supports and is driven by the wider economy and is therefore affected by every government department. We welcome this call for evidence and the leadership shown by BIS and would like to see an integrated approach across government to developing this sector.
As an example, DCMS has been investing in broadband infrastructure but does not have responsibility for skills, technology and business support policy and programmes, which critical areas that drive demand for this infrastructure. If Government is to exploit the benefits of individual government department investments and policies, particularly around infrastructure, then there needs to be cross government approach, as is successfully demonstrated by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles.
This integrated approach should also recognise the differences in sub-national economies and their contribution to UK growth. Newcastle and the North East has significant capability in our businesses and universities around the information economy and this could be further exploited to stimulate local and UK growth.
In the development of the Information Economy Strategy government should work with the public sector at the regional and local level to understand the different challenges, incentivise change and build capacity. We would welcome the exploration of a smart city programme that supports UK cities to make the transition. The UK has a large number of businesses delivering smart and innovative solutions to businesses and other cities outside of the UK. The government and sector need to work together with cities and regions to stimulate demand for these investments in the UK.
Skills development is also critical and will underpin the growth of this sector in its own right and as being an enabler of others. The other sectoral priorities of the BIS industrial strategy have a demand for high level and technical skills from the information economy sector and these need to be better understood and supported.

There is a perceived lack of clarity by business and potential investors on the UK Government position on industry and the future of the UK economy. In particular how government will stimulate the market and give confidence to investors that the UK is the best place to invest. Our competitor cities and countries outside of the UK are much better at articulating ambition and assets. There is a need to clarify the UK offer and therefore this review is very welcome.
One of the main benefits we hear from businesses is the strength of the research base. In Newcastle and the North East this is increasingly about multidisciplinary capabilities and projects. This is also being seen in the more knowledge, information and technology intensive areas of employment.
We are increasingly hearing from business in the information and knowledge sector that the city’s business environment is competitive with economies such as Manchester and London.

Universities are anchor institutions in their cities and play an important role in all aspects of the economy. Government should consider programmes of support to universities that increase their impact in their city and the growth of the information economy. These could be focused on smart city and information economy challenges, building on the research strengths of the universities, the challenges the city faces, economic growth opportunities, and the FE and HE skills provision.
The Technology Strategy Board is an important body in stimulating change and driving technological enhancements in the UK that stimulate demand for the information economy. We would encourage their technology programmes to enable UK economic growth by capacity building in places, building on existing assets and sustaining support for new capabilities as they emerge. This type of strategic approach to investment and industrial support will enable leverage of funding from other sources, speed up growth and build capability and skills to deliver capability at scale.
The strategic alignment of investment is critical. Growth happens in places and those places have unique assets, concentrating resources to exploit these assets can enable significant growth. A significant volume of public money available is on a competitive basis, this makes it difficult to sustain investment and accelerate growth as the resource needed for a programme will come from different competitive funding pots. Consideration should be given to aligning mechanisms that enable the delivery of local economic growth through the information economy.
Newcastle Science City is the primary mechanism in the city for the translation of research into new businesses and innovative products in three core themes: ageing and health, sustainability and medicine. These themes are based on academic and industrial strength, often global as is specifically the case for ageing, and are supported by the information economy. The programmes Science City delivers for business are critical in bridging the gap between research and business, and science and innovation. With appropriate alignment to and support of national programmes there are opportunities to deliver at scale.

The information economy enables business process redesign to either deliver a service or to develop a product. Both outcomes require skills sets that need developing in the workforce. The service delivery is particularly relevant to local authorities as they need to design end-to-end digital services, requiring new skills sets to do so.
There are also requirements around information architecture. Specifically this means information stores, flows, exchanges, security and governance.
The ICT workforce needs access to continuous professional development to keep pace with major technological advances such as cloud computing, and platform convergence. ICT architecture design, system integration, data management and data analytics are core competencies.
There is an existing divide between those with and without the skills to use ICT and get online. Unemployed, older, and disabled people of working age are at heightened risk of exclusion and therefore need support to develop the skills to be employable in the digital economy, access online public services and consume goods and services.
Investment in high level and technical skills is also an essential part of the information economy and critical to the growth of our industries in new markets, for example ageing and health.
Skills sets for developing applications and services for the cloud are also critical. Newcastle University has significant expertise in this area and has ambitious plans to grow their capability.

The Digital by Default programme is the Government’s shift to online services and is a key driver for change in the Council. There are a number of strands to this work including using the Internet and social media and online transactions via the website. We are working with partners including Newcastle University to explore the opportunities from cloud computing.
Of particular importance has been the delivery of services close to the customer in the care service. Key components of this have been mobile working, new documentation management and automation. This has increased service quality.

This is particularly challenging for the public sector in the current economic climate. Having said that in our IT department we are undertaking a skills analysis. We also recognise the variable skill levels across the organisation and are looking at how improved skills could correlate to increased productivity.

It is our understanding that the cloud is not well understood by many businesses, other organisations, and individuals. It is not easy for a business to understand the applicability of cloud to their business, the service provided and who those providers are. We also understand that many businesses are not aware of the opportunities that cloud computing presents regarding the development of new products or services.
The full potential of cloud computing for extracting knowledge from data has not been realized outside a few large organisations; many organisations don’t realise the potential to be transformed through extracting more value from the data available to them.
The same applies for the public sector. The opportunities are not well understood, and the move to new service delivery models requires more than just a shift in technology. Some more specific barriers include:
• Needing to understand the current and future cost of ownership
• Risk
• Resilience and concerns over security
• Behavioural and cultural change
We are currently working with Newcastle University on a project funded by the Technology Strategy Board on a project that explores some of these issues.

Consideration should be given to working with the public sector and local authorities on this agenda. Local authorities have a leading role in the smart cities agenda as well as delivering their own services where there will be cloud service requirements.
Given that all local authorities will be looking at cloud service requirements there are opportunities for support to enable a shared understanding of the opportunities and good practice.
Government should invest further in the research base and education institutions. Newcastle is a good example of how this could be achieved, see question 14. We would welcome a discussion on what we are doing in the city with partners to exploit the potential of cloud, and how to best exploit it for UK advantage.
As with previous questions, programmes to stimulate demand and investment in the skills base will all strengthen and develop the UK’s position and economic and service offering.
Continued support for and investment by the Technology Strategy Board in programmes that support the economy and test new ways of working.

It is important to consider this from two primary angles, what businesses do to exploit and expand the use of their own data, and we include the public sector in this; and what businesses do to exploit and expand the use of others’ data.
Key issues:
• Capacity to understand the opportunity and then to address it
• Skills to gather, assess, use and apply data
• Culture shift to change operations and adopt change. It should not be underestimated what a big cultural shift this is
• Concerns over security of data
• Costs associated with making data available in a useable form and setting up new asset management systems
• Concerns over the quality of data
As a council, we recognise the value of the significant amounts of data we hold, and the potential benefits which could arise from extracting and combining data and transforming it into evidence and intelligence. We have established the Newcastle Future Needs Assessment to provide an integrated, coherent and evidence-based means of partners working together to determine priorities for the city.
Information-rich organisations are better able to plan, design and target the delivery of services to customers. In the public sector, we consider this especially relevant in relation to the prevention and early intervention agenda. Ownership of data is an important consideration.
In Newcastle, we recognise the relevance of Big Data to the universities in terms of their advanced research (e.g. in relation to genetics and epigenetics). We would anticipate that investment in the Big Data agenda – in terms of knowledge, infrastructure, governance and standards – will help to spread this advanced approach across the city to other businesses.
Data stores have often evolved over time so there are significant challenges in data cleansing, structuring the data so it can be analysed, and extracting useful reports.
The links between Open Data and Big Data need to be clearly understood and communicated. We need to understand how we can analyse “closed data” – i.e. confidential information which cannot be shared – to gain benefits. There are clear links to information governance.

We would encourage government to explore the potential for doing more than just promoting success, we would like to see how success is achieved and a demonstration of what is possible and application potential to other businesses or systems. As with other concepts in this sector they are often not known outside of the sector and Big Data analytics is another such term.
We look to Government to:
• Reach out to cities and regions to promote the success, and not assume one size fits all.
• Work jointly with local authorities, for example on welfare reform, to ensure a consistent approach between national and local levels in the designing of services and sharing of data.
• Provide a jargon free level of awareness of big and open data and the opportunities it presents.
• Support public sector to identify opportunities and manage risks.
• Provide people with the skills to exploit open and big data opportunities. This is particularly important for the public sector where national support would prevent large scale duplication of effort and resource at the sub-national level.
Public bodies by their nature are risk averse as they are responsible for spending public money and are accountable to the public. The data they hold can be useful for public and private sector to deliver new or better products, processes and services. Depending on the types of data opened up there could be a growth in local business as they provide new solutions and applications.
It has been said that the best thing to do with your data will be thought of by someone else. It is important to identify how to move towards an innovation culture where new ideas can thrive but the risks appropriately assessed and managed.

There are a number of roles for universities and HEIs:
• Producers of big data sets
• Providers of big data management solutions
• Commercialisation
Producers and consumers of big data sets. This is most evident, but not exclusive to, the Medical Sciences where advances in genomics studies call for a quantum leap increase in data storage and processing capacity in order to stay globally competitive. We know from public cloud providers that they are especially keen to see data from a whole range of sources including but not withstanding: big data/analytics and business intelligence; financial services; life sciences; gaming and health medical imaging. It is understood that much of the initial demand will be seen from research and particularly the universities.
Providers of big data management solutions. Computing Science departments are critical, both in terms of research (how to efficiently store, query, manage very large volumes of data) and consulting to other areas within the University system (recommending state of the art solutions to big data producers and consumers, see previous point). Significant work is underway in Newcastle and at Newcastle University in particular where "cloud middleware" activity is designed to address big data analytics, a resource for the public and private sector.
Commercialisation. There is need to ensure that partnerships are developed with the appropriate big data solution providers to ensure that research solutions find an appropriate exploitation path. Consideration should also be given to open source and community driven solutions.
Exploiting the benefits of big data. It is important that research leads to impactful outcomes – e.g. the Faculty of Medical Science at Newcastle University is at the forefront of generating big data: it is key to staying globally competitive in the life sciences, from biology research all the way to the clinicians.

Data warehousing and data mining require specific skills and expertise which are lacking in many organisations, especially in the current financial climate when ICT resource in public sector organisations is focused on essential service delivery rather than development. Investment in understanding and developing the required skills is essential. Also see previous answers to the questions on skills as they equally apply.

There has been much emphasis on investments in infrastructure. Whilst this is welcomed and very important, these investments expose gaps in knowledge and supply chains that cannot be filled by the market alone and this is particularly true in relation to the information economy.
One of the key reasons being that technology is changing and developing so quickly is that businesses are unable to keep up and apply the changes to their business as the opportunities and risks are difficult to quantify without the right knowledge or advice.
Government should consider the development of revenue programmes that equip businesses with the skills, knowledge and experience to make informed choices about investments in technology.

The key barriers we hear are around regulation and charges.

There are many benefits when looking at this from a city perspective which warrant a detailed discussion. The key areas include:
• Delivery of smart city objectives. There are many examples that could be drawn on here from real time traffic management, to home energy management systems talking to transport information services.
• Tailored services. Real time information to the service provider to tailor service provision and to the customer to receive the service enables informed choices, efficiency in service delivery and cost.
• Increased volume and impact of applied research as data becomes more available and new data is generated.
• Provision of data that could be opened up to businesses to provide solutions and test new ideas.
• Improved customer service potentially leading to increased convenience and choice.
• Potential cost savings in both delivery of the service and the consumer.

It is extremely challenging to embrace the whole smart cities agenda at once. Establishing the principle that cities and other appropriate geographies should adopt a holistic approach is paramount whilst acknowledging interventions will need to be prioritised.
Government could help cities by identifying smart technologies that will be an integral feature of all urban areas such as smart energy grids or intelligent transport networks and others that are discretionary such as assistive living where some cities are better placed to lead than others i.e. Newcastle in assisted living and intelligent transport.
Many cities will need outside expertise to inform their strategic thinking, planning methodology and project delivery. Knowledge transfer from industry to public and private sector organisations is essential. Cities want the public sector to reduce complexity, champion interoperability and improve reliability but this must not be at the expense of day to day service continuity.

Language is a major barrier. The Internet of Things is a concept not known or understood beyond those in the sector. The language is exclusive and open to interpretation. If it is to be pervasive and play a fundamental role in the way that all businesses operate (including the public sector) then clear communication of the opportunity is needed.
The issues and opportunities are boundless. Pilot projects should be undertaken with a view to scale up potential across the UK so effort is concentrated and benefits exploited to maximum effect. These should be aligned to city priorities and build local economic growth by working with the local research base, and enabling business growth.

This concept is well developed in many cities but not fully exploited.
As a concept it has been well developed in our city’s universities and is ready for exploitation. Both Newcastle and Northumbria Universities have expertise in relevant applied research, and many of the businesses in the city and wider region have significant under exploited expertise.
Newcastle is the host city of SURE, the centre for Sustainable Urban Research and Engagement, bringing together the very best research in urban sustainability, transport, energy and computing. It works with and for cities, integrating all 3 of Newcastle University’s societal challenge themes in order to create the right social, political and economic environment to both maximise and demonstrate impact from innovation. This unique centre will deliver healthy, efficient and resilient cities. The centre is due to locate on Science Central, the sustainable heart of Newcastle.

This concept is well developed but not exploited. Exploitation takes more than just the development of technology and its application. Designing smart cities necessitate bringing together a range of disciplines in addition to technology including skills, finance, governance and behavioural change. Other barriers include:
• Capacity to work across public and private sector
• Can’t do everything at once
• Cost to deliver
• Public sector capacity to understand and implement the agenda
• Public sector capacity to work with other bodies
• Behaviours and needs of potential users – cultural shift
• Public procurement
• Responsibility of a range of public and private partners, requires capacity to collaborate
• Skills to understand and apply the concepts

We would like the Government to engage in ongoing dialogue with cities to consider how it can support capacity building in local authorities around this important agenda and enable a better understanding of what works in other cities and how to apply it.
We would also like Government to consider how cities across the UK collaborate to take forward and implement this agenda in a way that fosters collaboration and not competition.

We are supportive of the work of the Technology Strategy Board Future Cities work but would like to see greater investment in supporting cities and enabling scale up of solutions between cities.

Cities are very different from each other so what works in one may not work in another; but there will be some transferable and scaleable applications. One main areas of feedback we have had is the speed at which other cities and countries appear to develop and deliver smart city programmes, and the willingness of the public sector to invest and pump prime activity.

Advertising plays an important role across the entire economy. With the right support and regulatory structure, advertising can support further growth and jobs throughout digital media industries, online businesses and the knowledge economy. To achieve this, government should:

• Put advertising at the heart of its strategy for growth, highlighting its importance as a driver of competition, innovation and demand for products and services;
• Promote advertising’s crucial role as a funder of content online and in all digital media;
• Acknowledge the creative skills and jobs created as a result of advertising in the UK;
• Protect and defend our interests in EU negotiations on the Data Protection Regulation;
• Champion advertising self-regulation through the ASA as the best model to protect consumer interests and the most adaptable to changing market needs.

[See full response for further details]
Our answer is ‘Yes, there are other opportunities that Government and industry
should consider’. They are:
• Information Logistics Platforms, which help people and organisations get
exactly the right information to and from the right person in the right format
at the right time, in a way which they can trust.
• Personal data management services, which help people and organisations
gather, store, analyse, share and use personal data in ways which add value
while ensuring privacy and data protection.

Are the following five sectors the most important – smart cities; cloud computing; internet of things; big data; and e-commerce – and do they present the biggest opportunities for growth in the sector? Are there other growth opportunities in the information economy that Government and industry should consider? The five sectors identified in this call for evidence succinctly capture some of the major opportunities arising from recent advances in ICT. As technology has become faster, more powerful, more mobile and more networked, we have seen new opportunities to help cities function more intelligently, for information to be stored and accessed remotely from the cloud, for devices to interact intelligently with each other, and for new products and services to bought and sold online. Together, these five ‘sectors’ present a tantalising vision of the future and an opportunity for the UK to leverage its skills for growth in the information economy.
There is an important role for governments to identify such technologies and support their development because of the benefits that will follow for the economy, public service delivery and consumer enjoyment. Through regulation, procurement and the collection of public sector data, governments are also in a strong position to shape these new markets. However, beyond identifying specific ‘vertical’ issues in the information economy (smarter cities, increased e-commerce, for example), public policy should also focus on the ‘horizontal’ underpinning factors that enable businesses to invest with confidence and deliver innovations to customers. An effective strategy for growth in the information economy therefore needs to address cross-cutting themes such as skills, R&D incentives, infrastructure, privacy, security and intellectual property rights, among others.
The critical enabler for the information economy is the communications infrastructure that connects people and devices – particularly the spectrum for wireless networks. We address the implications of the shift to mobile computing in more detail below.
By its nature, the information economy is also global. Policy must take account of this international dimension by aiming for a harmonized approach between national governments minimizing unnecessary regulatory burdens. This will create efficiencies in product innovation while enabling the UK to compete globally. BlackBerry welcomes the formation of a government-industry information economy council to inform policy and ensure a coordinated approach across Government. We would be pleased to provide a representative for such a body.

[See full response to answers to other questions]

Massively networked smart cities will create a basis for operational cost optimisation of local government, availability of data to better inform and enable decisions by the authorities, their providers and most importantly, their citizens. The opportunities extend beyond economic benefits and jobs into the quality of life and critical infrastructure management for such as extreme weather events. The agenda for consumer data use has been influenced to date by concerns over privacy, ‘big brother’ and security due to a lack of trust. However these concerns can be properly addressed by the authorisation, security frameworks and benefits model of enabling communication networks which facilitates a focus on the use of data for citizen empowerment consistent with the midata model being pioneered by BIS. Once citizen trust is achieved government use this mandate to store and persist data, making it available to approved users on the basis of consumer consent so that innovation and benefits creation becomes the primary economic focus for UK PLC. Silver Spring Networks has submitted just such a proposal to the EC in the context of the Connecting Europe Facility. We have focused on the DGCONNECT “digital services” thread, which is funded for more than €1B. Silver Spring would welcome a discussion regarding the applicability to the UK

Information and Communication

On behalf of an organisation

Large business (over 250 staff)

We believe that the UK’s information economy could be significantly boosted in the healthcare sector through Government interventions to better marry the industrial strategy for life sciences, and that for health information and technology. As centres for clinical research, NHS organisations have a significant role as the bridge between the life sciences and IT sectors, which are connected through the need for rapid, high quality health data to drive clinical research. This connection should be exploited and supported in order to maximise the benefits for the respective sectors and the NHS, and therefore the UK economy as a whole. In order to achieve this, we believe the Government needs to promote a greater economic partnership between the health information industry, including NHS bodies, and clinical research, most notably that funded by the life sciences industry. Several areas of focus could support this agenda: • Drive the integration of research informatics, e.g. pharmaceuticals, with health informatics included in electronic health records (EHRs). This could be facilitated by promoting the adoption of the outputs of the IHI’s EHR4CR initiative (www.ehr4cr.eu) which covers areas including clinical protocol feasibility, patient identification and recruitment, clinical trial execution, and adverse event reporting. IT vendors such as Cerner already provide research-centric tools, which can be integrated with the EHR • Create a ‘feedback loop’ for research monies to subsidise the information systems and research tools required by healthcare providers to undertake world class research activities. At a national level, financial flows created through the sale of data extracted from the care.data platform could be used for centrally-granted subsidies for NHS organisations • Promote, at a local level, this ‘feedback loop’ by supporting individual trusts in their commercial engagement with funders of medical research, such as pharmaceutical companies, to maximise their revenue from undertaking research activities and enter into risk-sharing agreements where appropriate • Support Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) and Academic Health Science Centres (AHSCs) to exploit the size and diversity of their networks to compete on an international basis for more specialized, or larger scale, medical research, such as phase III and IV clinical trials.

Secondly, a key area for exploiting the information economy is improving the commercialisation of intellectual property rights (IPR) within the NHS on a global scale. This would be achieved by supporting NHS organisations to optimise the commercialisation of the IPR generated, and usually owned, by them. Such an approach would require exploring the reasons NHS organisations wish to retain their IPR, be it perceived control or perceived market opportunity, and supporting these organisations to pursue commercial strategies that extract the most value from the IPR, both in terms of revenue for the organisation, and in spreading innovation. As such, we believe that NHS organisations should to be supported to develop mature commercial relationships with industry where this can maximise the value of the IPR. Commercial partners can assist in this in a number of ways, including by providing reach in a global marketplace, contributing greater commercial expertise, and combining IPR to generate more valuable offerings to the market.

Duplicate Response to 52 (Powa)

Public Sector Business Support

On behalf of an organisation

Business representative organisation/trade body

The sectors are important, but no mention of Open Data, which as a government driven information strategy, would expect to be included. Also, as the five sectors cover a very broad spectrum of subjects, it risks trying to be 'everything to everyone' and ultimately resulting in broad and shallow results rather than being more focused, narrow and deep. Data Analytics and Business Intelligence are also excluded from the strategy, which also present big opportunities for growth.

Better education at a younger age will result in more appropriately skilled professionals being able to support the growth in these sectors. Also, improving access to finance and lending, traditional and non traditional will increase the number of businesses starting-up and prospering in these sectors.

Greater support for businesses, incentives for lenders to provide the finance to stabilize the sectors and increased awareness through curriculum of the skills required to support the information economy.

Currently very London-centric, despite substantial progress being made in other areas of the country. This is a barrier to growth owing to the concentration of skills, support and government backing in an area of high business running costs and a saturated market. Greater support and acknowledgement of other areas where progress is being made and the sector is flourishing is needed to encourage more businesses to set-up out side of London, reduce that concentration and prevent an over saturation in one place.

Better supported, easier routes to starting up and growing a business, including affordable infrastructure, access to finance, greater participation with academia etc.

There is definitely a skills deficit and this will become more prevalent as the sectors grow. Coding and the languages of software development need to be taught at an earlier age and curriculums need to be reviewed to ensure they are meeting the needs of business.

Cloud computing, data exploration, improving processes and customer services.

establishing a social enterprise which will raise awareness of the different careers in software and technology and teach coding skills to students and the unemployed who had not previously considered an education in software. This aims to readdress the skills shortage and provide routes to employment for NEETs and the unemployed.

Aim to improve the UK’s portion of the sector, including Cloud computing

Improve regional council’s involvement and the uptake of private businesses in using Open Data

by reviewing curriculums reguarly to ensure they reflect the skills needed by businesses

Provide more free to access, universal advice and training to help companies expand their online presence.

We dont sell physical products

Individual councils making their own interpretations based on what thinks best for their authorities, this results in no major changes. Guidance and review from Government of an independent body should be provided

Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities

On behalf of an organisation

Large business (over 250 staff)

The majority of these topics (smart cities, cloud computing, internet of things & big data) are newly emerging areas with high growth/high potential growth. In all these areas standards bodies are bringing together stakeholders to provide a common understanding of the topic and facilitate commerce and innovation. The Government and BSI should work together to ensure the right government and private sector stakeholders are represented in the shaping of these standards. By way of a background to BSI, BSI is the UK’s National Standards Body, incorporated by Royal Charter and responsible independently for preparing British Standards and related publications. BSI has 111 years of experience in serving the interest of a wide range of stakeholders including government, business and society. BSI presents the UK view on standards in Europe (to CEN and CENELEC) and internationally (to ISO and IEC). BSI has a globally recognized reputation for independence, integrity and innovation ensuring standards are useful, relevant and authoritative. A BSI (as well as CEN/CENELEC, ISO/IEC) standard is a document defining best practice, established by consensus. Each standard is kept current through a process of maintenance and reviewed whereby it is updated, revised or withdrawn as necessary. Standards are designed to set out clear and unambiguous provisions and objectives. Although standards are voluntary and separate from legal and regulatory systems, they can be used to support or complement legislation. Standards are developed when there is a defined market need through consultation with stakeholders and a rigorous development process. National committee members represent their communities in order to develop standards and related documents. They include representatives from a range of bodies, including government, business, consumers, academic institutions, social interests, regulators and trade unions.

Standards provide knowledge for business and industry, specifications to underpin trade and supply chains, good practices to improve business processes (quality, environment) and guidance on values and principles (e.g. for risk management, governance or asset management). As the UK’s National Standards Body, BSI develops British Standards through a consensus process involving all interested parties (industry, users, consumers and regulators), who agree ‘what good looks like’ in relation to a given product, process or service. A standard may take many forms, including a code of conduct, a set of principles, a management process or a detailed technical specification. Standards are enablers for business and industry, providing an independent, open and fair way of documenting an agreed way forward. BSI is also the gateway for UK business to European and international standardization as the national member of CEN, CENELEC, ISO and IEC.

Standards are a tool that can support the commercialization of innovations. This can be achieved for example by promoting common understanding through terminology, ensuring interoperability with existing products or sharing knowledge about products or processes to enable innovators to develop new applications. The importance of standards for technological development and innovation has been recognized by Lord Heseltine in his report ‘No Stone Unturned’. The Government’s industrial strategy encourages the development of strategic partnerships with industry and bringing emerging technologies to market. BSI believes that standards have a major role to play in this regard and we are working with Government and our innovation infrastructure partners to ensure this is the case.

Recent standards work has indicated the main areas of difficulty around Cloud computing that warrant potential standardisation are: i) Data Security and Privacy, ii) Interoperability standards, iii) Service Level Agreements, iv) Data Portability, v) Reversibility.

The nature of Cloud computing means that it is primarily a global issue requiring a global response (with the exception of privacy/data protection which is affected by national/regional legal frameworks). The sector and government should work with BSI to ensure that the UK leads the development of international standards in Cloud Computing. In the field of Cloud Computing, there is already under way work including: • Overview and Vocabulary (ISO/IEC CD 17788) • Reference Architecture (ISO/IEC WD 17789) • Reference Architecture for Service Oriented Architecture (ISO/IEC AWI 18384-1, ISO/IEC AWI 18384-2 and ISO/IEC AWI 18384-3) • Data protection. Specification for a personal information management system (BS 10012:2009) – this will be revised on line with the forthcoming Data Protection directive

Whilst there is a lot of work ongoing around the technical side of Big Data one area where there is a potential lack of insight is around the process and framework of undertaking and maintaining Big Data initiatives.

A successful information economy is reliant on the management of knowledge that is created from contextualising Big Data. With this in mind, the Generational Knowledge Framework (GKF) seen in chapter 6 of BSI’s white paper ‘Higher Education and Standardization – Knowledge Management between Generations’, can show how supporting the work of higher education institutions can improve the success of an information economy from the perspective of creating and disseminating knowledge. The dissemination of research carried out by the sector through teaching at higher education institutions can strengthen the foundation any information economy would be built on. As the GKF shows, research that has been taught to students in higher education institutions can be applied to the workplace once those students enter. If proven successful this knowledge can then be adapted, transferred and disseminated to the wider economy through the standardization process. Furthermore, a framework like the GKF could prevent knowledge leakage and improve the efficiency of an economy using and commercialising knowledge, as generations transition in and out of the workforce. There are additional links between the higher education sector and standardization bodies which can be nurtured by a strong information economy strategy and improve the commercialisation of Big Data and its resulting research. Blind & Gauche use the Publicly Available Specification (PAS) model as an example of how research from higher education institutions can be directly applied and accessed by industries through standardization. If encouraged, the PAS system could become a new route for higher education research to the economy with the benefits of accurate impact measurement through publication, certification and accreditation results. One potential, simple method to improve the use of the PAS system by higher education researchers could be to include the model within the Research Excellent Framework as an impact measure. Research from universities can be channeled into National Standard Body activities to strengthen the quality of standards produced at national, European and international levels. This research may also become a catalyst for the creation of new national standards in fast moving areas, like emerging technologies. Closer links between the higher education sector and standardisation bodies like BSI can improve the commercialisation of research through greater effectiveness through wider exposure and significantly reduced time to market.

The UK has a demonstrable competence in e-commerce, and has the potential to build on this and create a UK-based hub of consumer commerce. The UK is already the largest consumer e-commerce market in Europe, and the level of growth that is achievable from the UK pre-eminence in e-commerce will depend on factors that include the speed with which e-commerce is adopted outside the UK, the ability of UK businesses to partner with e-commerce providers and the trust potential customers place in cross-border transactions. As with the development of the single market for products, one factor that will help to promote cross-border trade is the existence of common standards that can be used to demonstrate good practice. To sustain the UK's pre-eminent position, UK organizations in e-commerce should be actively involved in setting the standards for good practice in service design, delivery and the consumer experience. BSI, as the UK's national standards body, is currently engaged in discussions with other European standards bodies on the role of standards for service in the single market in response to a European Commission mandate. The project will look at the generic aspects of service provision that are important in a transaction, with the aim of establishing common European Standards. To inform the UK view on this, we have scoped out a research project that will identify the areas where establishing standards will remove barriers to trade and promote confidence in purchasing. The project will be looking at this in the context of e- services, as well as conventionally delivered services to identify where standards will have most impact. It is expected that this research will be funded by BIS through their Funding for Priority Areas of Standardization. The project will also look at how creation of common standards can set expectations at the different interfaces in the value chain, providing clear specifications of the outcomes to be achieved by different parties. This will be of relevance to smaller organizations such as UK SMEs seeking to broaden their access to new markets through distribution and accessing local intermediaries. Following the research, it is anticipated that the most promising areas for UK business can be taken forward for standardization. This could initially take the form of developing some initial UK good practice to raise awareness and promote collaboration among UK businesses. This could then be taken forward with the ultimate aim of creating common European Standards in areas of UK strength.

As the Internet of Things has diverse applications and encompasses many technical and non-technical disciplines, including, but not limited to, physical connectivity, data manipulation, application interfaces, regulatory issues, and cyber security, there is a need to develop a common understanding of what is meant by Internet of Things, develop a Standards Roadmap for Internet of Things and carry out a gaps analysis to identify market requirements in this area. We would propose that this is achieved by active UK participation in the on-going activities in ISO and ITU.

As mentioned in the question above, standardisation work is being undertaken to define the area of the Internet of Things. When a common understanding of the topic exists it will help the successful development of this area.

Information and Communication

On behalf of an organisation

Large business (over 250 staff)

The areas identified are very broad and mean different things to different people. Also the areas are NOT standalone. E.g. the delivery of Smart Cities cannot go unaided from the handling and management of data (Big Data). The information economy requires a more holistic view. It is noted that Cyber security is both a growth area, also an underpinning capability that allows the others. It is not alone within the Information Economy Sector. While all of these offer opportunities for growth it is worth considering the types of growth they drive: • Smart Cities, E-Commerce and Internet of Things provide key opportunities for UK internal growth, distribution of monies. As vendors provide the technologies and software this may add to a new outflow, or money from the UK economy. • Cloud Computing and E-Commerce would also target cost efficiencies and cost reductions within the UK Economy. This would make UK more competitive and may add to overall GDP. As vendors provide the technologies and software may add to a new outflow or money from the UK economy. UK PLC need to engage British based cloud enterprises ideally by British based companies to secure jobs long term for the UK. • Big Data of all of these would provide the greatest opportunity to drive UK Economy GDP. Through data organisations can focus on new-markets; retaining customers, creating more specific products and services. This would drive UK economy and UK inflow for products and services. Big Data uses UK skill, intellect and information already available within organisations (although it may not be connected), thus has lower entry for most companies (use own people+ consultancy+academia). It also seems the hardest as it does require some brainpower and focus.

Drivers of change are: • Reducing economies of the technology underpinning these • Need for companies to become more competitive and differentiate their services • Demonstration that companies can make money e.g. new products and services, new channels and insight (Smart cities) • Skilled personnel familiar with technologies, o enabling programme for some skills e.g. networking o skills pool development ? have to have core methods and process skills (get basics right) ? Direction of academia/education needed to develop right skill sets for industry • Companies able to take risk o make investment, o access to capital. • Broader range of skills e.g. internet of things would require greater than IT skills including creative design, intelligent sensing, relationships, psychology.

• Explain the benefits and value of these areas within the economy • Use the technology and capability to provide “higher level” infrastructure services to “third world economies” • Agree a framework where Data can be monetised for more business (many business do not look at their data as an asset.) • Government drive down their operating costs through employing many of the ides e.g. Tim Kelsey’s views in Healthcare • Government role model the drive in these technologies and services. E.g. create a review group that looks at proposed ideas to reduce the cost base of government at a £1 capital cost to reduce £1 operating cost. This would have the capability to drive economy and target other government agendas. • Review the UK Government IP in these areas and exploitation of these areas and share with UK based companies to grow the economy. • Greater consultation on skills gap and industry investment

• Benefits o Acknowledged leadership in exploiting the knowledge economy o Developing right skills and capabilities needed by business o Sustainable business • Barriers o Understanding what data is available within organisation o Understanding what information is available to enrich information from other organisations o Ability to share information openly between different organisations. o Talent and skills o Lethargy to drive business transformation o Reduce the level to entry via motivations: ? Industry/academia investments/foundations ? Change company tax for R&D investments

• Incentives for companies to work more closely with UK academia, over an extended period of time e.g. a committed programme of, say, 5 years investment of money with tax breaks returned in year one for company investment. This would look like a normal VCT arrangement, promoting specific R&D activities. • Incentives for companies to take on-board a UK researcher and lower level via apprentices. Challenge is that a longer term period of time is required 2 to 3 year commitment. • Channel awards and recognition via Institutes that are aligned to these sectors • Use professional groups and charter organisations to provide a regular update on the progress within these areas i.e. leadership position versus “ a player”. • Having organisations value data and see data as a corporate asset i.e. a line item on their P&L • Schooling on value of information • Government to role model the way on innovation and business transformation

• Outsourcing has had a dramatic negative effect on the UK skills and capabilities. Key skills such as data analyst, business analyst and programming development manager have become less in the UK and are now highly sought. For those key initiatives these analysis design and implementation skills have to be developed or enticed home! These skills are key for all sectors as they take vision of organisations and turn this into implementable solutions. • Infrastructure skills we seem to have plenty of and a sustainable programme of adding more personnel to the workforce. E.g. Cisco academic programme. • Big Data requires specific skills to be developed from Data scientist skills, data librarian,.. These skills are in demand and many organisations cannot obtain these skills. o Address by fostering academia programmes to help develop the skills o Consider work placement initiatives to develop practical skills and talent o • Visualisation of information and understanding how people interpret data • Protection and security – This is key to all of the areas; great capability in the UK, although need to assess the overall capacity required. Role of Government 1. Create opportunities by setting Government procurement contracts to mandate certain features and capabilities as part of the contracts 2. Build stronger relationships between SMB and academia in these areas to drive UK Growth and GDP. 3. Focus on business value as well as just cost when looking at role of technology in business transformation 4. Elevate IT to the boardroom within government departments

Improve business performance: • Delivery of Back office services via the internet; • Centralising analytic technology and people skills and providing these as a service to other departments • Metrics and measurement across field force and delivery consultants • Demonstration of products and services delivered by web portal and on ipads. • Customer Relationship Management hosted in cloud • Customer surveying • Cyber assessing e.g. Sentiment indexes • Web Marketing • Self service of many internal processes.

• Regular re-assessment of employee demands and best methods to deliver • Regular re-assessment of customer demands and thoughts about the company and services it provides and the best methods to deliver • Surveys of technology trends and directions • Survey of business trends and customer directions impacting business • Survey/analysis of competitor positioning • For Staff development o BCS SFIA framework for talent acquisition, development and retention o Access to web based training o Access to support documentation via web for remote o Clear transparent career path o Encouragement to develop expertise o 360 degree personal development looking at inter-personnel, technical and business contextual skills.

• Uses o Back office systems that add no competitive advantage to the business at a reduced cost. o Ease of scaling up and scaling down the service. o Ease of entry and testing business hypothesis. • Issues o Cost of the service o Lack of reliability of the infrastructure i.e. not at the same level of provision as electricity o Lack of reliable connectivity

• Transformation from existing processes/systems. • Fear of user adoption • Fear of security • Fear of standing of hosting providers e.g. are they commercially viable? • Cost of some services more expensive than internal hosted services. • Lack of skilled resources to take on new technologies

• Establish credibility and confidence in the Technology • Validate the security of the Technology • Take advantage of a cost efficiencies for a shared services cloud platform that can service government departments through to local authorities. • Consider how the cloud service offerings have failed and consider cloud is important to UK GDP as other infrastructure services such as Gas and Electric and regulate as required.

• Knowing what data you have • Knowing what data is available • Having capabilities to assess and integrate data • Having capabilities to operationalize data and feedback into existing business services. • Being able to use different qualities of data • Being able to use different accuracies of data • Understanding value of data • Acquire a way to understand what the value of that data is to them and to others • Acquire skills to use Big Data • Look at the cultural changes to effectively use big data • Role model at exec level the need for the facts behind data and the analysis of that data and is the data accurate. Thus driving use of data to being habitual. • Create an environment where Execs use data that has been actually “captured” rather than aggregated, summarised, translated and standardised and then interpretated.

• Continue using Data as informed information within Policy, decisions and recommendations. Where policy may deviate state the rationale. • Provide Data in same open data standards allowing standard access ways to open data • Demonstrate key changes in government driven by Big Data and Big Data analytics. E.g. Assessment of most common practice used for treating a particular patient ailment and the most cost effective treatment for that ailment. • Require ability to place data that is being shared over a number of agencies/companies into an area that is “escrow” like managed.

• Promotion and expansion of Academia innovations like those at Lancaster University where they provide to Retailers a one-off assessment of Demand Forecasting using retailer data, economics, demographics, risk assessment of recent events, to name a few data islands that augment the retailer data.

• A clearer focus on Data analysis skills – these are spread across schools subject area, but not developed out to a more structured approach. • Maths , Statistics and Decision sciences. The current demand and the current level depth of understanding these areas is far beyond the current curriculum at school, at undergraduate, and beyond. • Look at core data science skills and whether enough are being added to the workforce with the following specialist education o Statistics o Operational research o Financial Mathematics o Economics

• Drive all government interactions through online interaction with key services still providing face to face representation • Improve the resilience and reliability of the internet and ecommerce platforms • Review the need for physical signatures on many types of documents, altering legislation as necessary • Review marketing and business to customer communications to ensure new channels of communication have appropriate principles applied e.g. targeting on Spam • Assure appropriate usage of data and privacy of information with commensurate penalties.

• Barriers are internal to organisation around limitations of franchise zone. • Reliability of the internet infrastructure • Concerns over cross country security – and having a simpler set of rules for data transfer and operating a business!

• Own experiences Gartner and other analyst services and our partners. • Government agencies • Industry materials

• Align the movement of goods with the associated information, allowing optimisation of supply chains and driving up efficiencies and economies. • Additional revenue opportunities for our business • Reduction in Fraud through positive identification of goods • Reduction in grey market trading as positive monitoring of goods throughout manufacture through to consumer purchase. • Simplifies processes and clarifies policy and business principles. • Ability to provide consistent and standardised approaches to similar situations.

• Some sort of National Grid like entity to allow the free movement of information and to support transportation of information across intra-national and international boundaries driving quality and standardisation of data distribution. • Initially standards developed that can be used to drive down costs faster and handle the variations that would arise to bring under a single framework • Capability to send data across national boundaries that may include personal and or “protected” data. • Regulation/arbitration for when this may be abused. • Cataloging services provided with associated trust and reliability ratings so decisions can be made. • Technology and technical standards for capture of appropriate information, handling variations in data and rendering information.

• Fears over data protection • Cyber threats and the trust that data is safe • Quality/resilience and availability of internet/network • Quality and completeness of data that will be provided. Completeness restricts higher level business value. • Capacity of the internet • Coverage of the internet across the UK • Technology and standards for integration between world objects and the internet.

There are isolated areas sectors which provide some wonderful examples. The integration of these sectors to provide higher level value appears to be a challenge as it requires greater capital investment for unknown benefits • Telecare in Livingstone Scotland • Newham PCT in particular the maternity nurses system • Citizenship and internet services in Bristol • Diabetes care in Liverpool • Driver detection and safe road trials run in Swansea, Bristol and Cardiff • Improved perception of travel in Reading covering bus and trains As a concept Hull, Bristol and Birmingham has some good ideas. Westminster seems to be the most active in applying the ideas.

• Information sharing across departments – both cultural and regulatory barriers • Siloed budgets • Lack of corporate leadership at local level • Fear of failure • Concerns over the use that information would be put too • Public lack of understanding on how the technology works • Concern over health from these different technologies • What value this will bring

• Seattle where the Wimax capabilities provided blanket wireless and internet access to the municipality at low cost. It uses these capabilities to then leaverage parking meters, accident reporting, some exploratory telecare. • Japan where street devices like bus shelters can be used to order supermarket products for delivery to the customer • Japan for the sensing of customers when they enter a store and aligning personal desires against the current store assets and services. • A Californian container yard for the sensing of containers, tracking monitoring and management of the containers and their contents throughout the container depot, and sharing data with some other receiving ports. • Indonesia where the internet was extended into the rural communities allowing farmers to provide details of crops and quantities as they were leaving the farm expediating the transfer from farmer to supplier to consumer.

Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities

On behalf of an organisation

Micro business (up to 9 staff)

Additional areas: Connectivity - the UK is way behind in this area. More and better bandwidth equals more services that can be provisioned at an ultimately lower cost (cloud) Green computing - businesses need to be aware of the total cost of ownership of their IT systems and what options are available to them to adopt greener technologies

Cost redution Efficiency Resiliency Security

Co-develop initiatives to better understand what SME's require from IT to not just operate a business but to grow one, then engage a plan to deliver.

Benefits are highly sustainable revenue in an ever growing industry. Barriers are poor UK network infrastructure and lack of apprpriate lending to entrepreneurs looking to enter this space

Train and empower business leaders and entrepreneurs effectively. Develop awareness programs.

Infrastructure architects and software development are key here. There is a significant skills shortage in these areas and this needs to change again by funding and general empowerment.

Having first class ICT is our business as it is what we deliver to our clients. We only use cloud computing services due to them being low cost opex items and they save time and money as we don't have to rely on an on premise infrastructure or support from service providers.

We are independent IT consultants and this happens to be the focus of our business. Other businesses should employ the services of an outsourced IT director or a completely independent, impartial IT consultancy to ensure they adopt the right solutions at the right price. They can also assist with sourcing appropriate staff.

Online storage Immediately available information No need for expensive on premise equipment Email Intranet Accounts CRM The only drawback to cloud is bad connectivity - get that right and there should be no difficulties

Provide better connectivity to SME's and be as proactive as possible in this area - better connectivity changes the face of the world - FACT.

Firstly understand what it is and what the benefits are of adopting it

Help fund high speed internet access in highly populated business districts where there is known poor internet connectivity - such as Pride Park in Derby for example

None except we are a UK service only company