Warren Smith confirmed as head of Digital Marketplace
The interim head of the Government Digital Marketplace Programme is now taking on the role permanently.
Warren Smith’s appointment, which follows a five month stint in the interim position, has been confirmed by the Govermment chief technology officer Andy Beale. A large part of his work will be focused on the Common Technology Services programme, aimed at delivering solutions that can be shared across the public sector.
Beale said that Smith (pictured) is “ideally placed to continue the development of the Digital Marketplace, creating the right environment and circumstances for his team to get on and do the things they need to do”.
Bristol Uni joins Jisc data centre
The University of Bristol has become the latest education and research establishment to join the shared data centre at Virtus London4, which is offered by the UK’s higher and further education digital services organisation Jisc.
Bristol will use the data centre, along with the BlueCrystal high performance computing facility, to host systems for business, teaching and research. This should open the door for collaboration and research projects with the 16 other organisations using the facility.
London4 is directly connected to the core of Jisc’s Janet network for education and research.
Kelly Scott, account director for education at Virtus Data Centres, said: “The more institutions that use the facility, the lower the cost for everyone else already there.”
Oyez aims portal at Companies House
Oyez Professional Services has launched a Companies House Charges Module as the first portal to be developed within its Oyez Gateway for digital submissions.
The portal has been developed with a number of partners of the company, including two major law firms, to enable legal practitioners to incorporate digital submissions into their workflows. Among the features are an option that allows a pre-elected authoriser to check and approve all submissions before they are sent to the receiving authority. Also, submissions are displayed in a consistent manner.
The company said it aims to develop similar platforms for Land Registry, HMRC stamp duty, lasting power of attorney and inheritance tax submissions.
Skyscape becomes UKCloud
Public sector cloud provider Skyscape has changed its name to UKCloud following a trademark dispute with Sky.
A spokesperson said it will continue to focus purely on the public sector, and emphasised that it is a UK sovereign provider paying national taxes and only using domestic data centres. All of its services have been approved for G-Cloud 8.
“We’ll continue to meet the specific assurance and security requirements of our customers,” he said.
Image from GOV.UK, Open Government Licence v3.0
