Environment Agency makes water data open
The Environment Agency has released its water quality archive as open data, providing data on the quality of rivers, lakes and estuaries.
It said it includes 58 million measures and 4 million samples from 58,000 sampling points between 2000-15.
It is the latest step in the programme of the agency's parent Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to make large swathes of its data open for reuse, and takes the Environment Agency towards its target of releasing 1,500 datasets.
Defra is aiming to release 8,000 datasets - a target set by Environment Secretary Liz Truss last year.
Hillingdon Hospitals deploy patient record app
Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has launched a mobile app platform to provide staff with access to its Hillingdon Care Record, a central record of each patient. It includes encounter history from the trust's patient administration system, clinical documents and letters from a number of systems. Authorised users also have access to diagnostic results for pathology and radiology.
It built the app with its mobile technology partner CommonTime, using its mDesign platform.
Matthew Kybert, systems development and integration manager at the trust, said: “Throughout the process of building the mobile HCR app, Hillingdon developers have continued to gain new mobile skills and can now confidently make future developments in-house through the platform. This has placed the trust in a strong position moving forward to swiftly respond to changing clinical priorities.”
Government falls short on website readability
Government organisations are not doing a good job in making their websites easy to read, according to a survey by online content specialist VisibleThread. It said that 24 of 26 central government and eight of 12 local government sites it examined do not comply with the guidelines provide by the Government Digital Service.
Among the common failings was too much passive language and complexity in sentences, and too many long sentences.
It said some are performing well, pointing to National Savings & Investments, National Archives and the British Library as the top three central organisations. Hampshire, Manchester and Bristol were the top three councils in its tests.
Civica acquires Norwel
Software company Civica has acquired legal IT solutions provider Norwel Computer Services. The latter provides software-as-a-service solutions for legal processes and has been supplying more than 60 customers in public and private sectors, including local authorities.
Simon Downing, chief executive of Civica said: “Norwel brings specialist expertise to extend our position in the sector, and the combined business is very well placed to respond to the needs of customers to do more, do better and spend less.”
