August 15, 2013
CBI survey gives suppliers chance to have say on UK public sector procurement
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) is offering private sector firms the chance to take part in a survey detailing their experience of working with UK public sector. It follows a largely damning 2012 report from the same organisation which found that only 7 per cent of firms believed the public sector procurement function was effective. However the same report did find that around 80 percent of respondents were in favour of the UK Government reform programme and so the latest survey is a chance to see whether recent initiatives such as the recent Public Administration Committee report into procurement failings and the setting up of the Crown Commercial Service have had any impact on private sector confidence in the way the UK public sector goes about its business.
July 18, 2013
Baltimore residents offered a “guns for laptops” exchange
by Sara Bean • Comment, News, Technology
Growing concerns regarding the incursion of connectivity devices into our everyday lives ignores the fact that many people have little or no access to these tools. Access to the Internet may have been ruled as a UN human right, but that doesn’t really help those who can’t afford devices that connect them to the web in the first place. So, while for most Europeans the recent story in the Baltimore Brew that locals could turn in their guns in exchange for a refurbished Dell laptop is pretty jaw-dropping, it’s a good example of the difficulty residents in a deprived area have in, as the organisers describe it, “bridging the digital divide.”
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