Manchester schools win smart transport backing
Two Manchester schools have won the support of the CityVerve programme to develop smart transport projects for the city.
Manchester Grammar School has won the first CityVerve Next Generation: Schools’ Innovation Challenge for a smart card project titled Vision that encourages drivers to swap cars for public transport in exchange for redeemable rewards, named Visbits, in local shops.
A team from Manchester Communications Academy also won support from the competition judges for a proposal to develop a mobile app to help people find parking spaces. This could be integrated into the development of autonomous vehicles in the future.
CityVerve – a city council led programme involving 21 public and private sector organisations to develop internet of things (IoT) technology for the city – will give the teams from the schools a chance to work with its project developers on the ideas.
Salford migrates to public cloud
Salford City Council has been moving its digital systems to a Microsoft public cloud solution supported by managed services provider ANS Group. The new infrastructure includes security and disaster recovery features, along with business intelligence capabilities and the ability to incorporate machine learning and artificial intelligence.
ANS said the move will enable the council to provide new digital services to third party organisations. Its customers include the tech hub at The Landing at MediaCityUK.
Scottish Government posts FoI responses online
All information released by the Scottish Government in response to FOI requests will be published online from 3 July, in line with a commitment to open and transparent government. It will be made available on beta.gov.scot as requests are answered, allowing anyone to search and access this information.
Parliamentary Business Minister Joe FitzPatrick said: “We are always looking for opportunities to release more information proactively. We have listened to some of the comments in response to our recent FOI performance and, as part of improving this, we will ensure that information released under FOI legislation is published online so it is publicly available.”
Image: Oxford Road, Manchester, by Pete Birkinshaw CC BY 2.0 through flickr
