Every citizen to have personal webpage

Everyone in the country is to be given a personalised webpage for accessing Government services within a year as part of a plan to save billions of pounds by putting all public services online, Gordon Brown is to announce.

The Prime Minister has previously hailed the potential for the internet to slash the costs of delivering services by reducing paper forms, face-to-face contact with officials, postage, phone calls and building costs.

He is now set to use a speech on Monday to unveil plans to give every voter a unique identifier allowing them to apply for school places, book GP appointments, claim benefits, get a new passport, pay council tax or register a car.

Within another three years, the Times reported, the secure site would include a Facebook-style interactive service allowing people to ask medical advice of their doctor or consult their children's teachers.

The move could see the closure of job centres and physical offices dealing with tax, vehicle licensing, passports and housing benefit within 10 years as services were offered through a single digital ''gateway'', Downing Street sources told the newspaper.

Private firms such as Amazon could be involved in a bid to make the processes as simple as possible, it said.

But the proposals came under fire from union leaders who complained that thousands of public sector workers would be made jobless and pointed to the Government's poor record of handling personal data.

Questions have also been raised about the impact on some older people unable to use the internet.

Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said: ''Cutting public services is not only bad for the public who use services but also the economy as we are pushing people who provide valuable services on the dole.''

Among the Prime Minister's advisers on the drive to put services online is world wide web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

''I don't want to go to a government office to do a government thing. It should all be online. That saves time for people and it saves money for the Government - the processing of a piece of paper and mailing it back costs many times more than it costs to process something electronically,'' he told the newspaper.

''There will come a point where you don't need all the physical offices anymore.''

The Tories are also exploring ways to switch services to the web.

 

Microsoft OneNote 2010 Release Date

I have been using OneNote 2010 now for coming 6 months. As a tablet notebook user, I rely heavily on the OneNote Suite and its integration with Outlook to manage all my meeting notes and client interactions.
I have recently started to introduce the platform to the medical profession and have found a very welcoming response. Aside from carrying loads of note journals, Doctors, Interns and students find managing client notes, records, journal entries and the like a complete pain. With OneNote and now OneNote Mobile, the medical profession can carry a single electronic device such as an ultra-portable tablet, PDA and Smartphone and manage all their notes from a single platform. The integration with Outlook extends the productivity element out to an extensive user base.
Non OneNote users can benefit from reading OneNote in HTML format. Alough they can read the output, they cannot add or edit any of the content. File recording and embedded video make the OneNote Platform a must have for every person who takes and shares notes.

‘Why enter notes twice and share, when you can utilise OneNote, enter once, e mail, share with SharePoint, edit, embed video and voice and index for Enterprise Search from a single platform’
“Why word hard when you can work Smarter with Microsoft OneNote”

Lost Council USB Key

A USB stick that contained social services' confidential information about children in care has been found on a pavement in Stoke-on-Trent.

The Staffordshire newspaper The Sentinel reported that dozens of sensitive Stoke-on-Trent City Council documents were discovered on the memory stick, and includes records of foster cares, family court proceedings, parenting assessments, child custody arrangements and the psychological history of youngsters.

It reported that the information on the memory stick was not encrypted, which is against the council's own policy. Council officials have launched an urgent investigation into how the security breach happened.

A council spokesman said: "The safety of children in our care is our priority. We have procedures for ensuring that confidential and sensitive data is kept as secure as possible. We will conduct a thorough investigation to determine the circumstances in which the data was lost.”

A spokesman at the Information Commissioner's Office said: “We may serve an enforcement notice if an organisation has failed to comply with any of the data protection principles. We have statutory power to impose a financial penalty if there has been a serious breach of data protection.”

Nick Lowe, head of Western Europe sales at Check Point, said: “The data was not encrypted, which is against the council's own data protection policies. This highlights the fact that policies alone are not enough to protect sensitive data: the encryption has to be automated and 'always on' to stop these breaches happening and avoid penalties from the ICO.”

Dave Jevans, CEO of Ironkey, said: “This is a clear breach of UK data privacy regulations. It seems that local councils and government offices need much better training and enforcement in the areas of data protection and encryption. The use of self-encrypting secure storage devices, such as encrypted USB memory sticks, should be required and enforced.”

Thanks to the close relationship between BSS and Ironkey, several Northern Ireland Councils and all of the Central Departments have implemented the Ironkey Enterprise Solution. Developed with Military Grade Encryption, The Enterprise Ironkey delivers not only a robust, secure, efficient storage platform but also a low cost, efficient ‘Secure Remote Access Platform’ for Government, Health and Education establishments alike.

‘Watch this space’

Microsoft adds Facebook to Outlook 2010

Social networking services will all be integrated into Outlook through its Connector system

Outlook 2010 will be able to pull in feeds and contacts from Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace using its Social Connector.

The Outlook Social Connector (OSC), announced at the end of last year, brings in content such as contacts and social networking into Microsoft's e-mail client.

Microsoft said the LinkedIn beta was now available, and announced new deals that would see Facebook and MySpace follow suit. Microsoft's own Windows Live will also integrate with Outlook.

LinkedIn for Outlook lets users view details and photos of contacts from the site right in the e-mail system, as well as pull in updates from the social networking site to keep contacts up to date.

The Facebook and MySpace systems will pull status updates and photos into Outlook, and let users add friends without leaving their e-mail.

Microsoft said those connectors will be available "later this year" before the expected June arrival of Office 2010.

"The goal of the OSC is not to create another social network or set of privacy settings for you to manage, but rather to bring the networks you already value and use to the Outlook experience," Microsoft said in a blog post.

Privacy
With privacy a concern for many social networking users, Microsoft was quick to address the issue.

The post on the Outlook blog said that "privacy and permissions settings on each of the networks you use are represented and respected within this experience".

That means that your profile photo from Facebook will accompany your e-mail to other OSC users who also use that site - something to keep in mind before posting a goofy picture of yourself.

"Similarly, if you choose to restrict profile access on a given network, the OSC will respect that privacy," it added.

The LinkedIn for Outlook system only works with 32-bit editions of the e-mail client, and Microsoft advised Outlook beta users to uninstall previous versions of OSC before installing the new one

Windows 8 - We have just got the hold of 7

Well on the same day as PDC 2009, since we won't hear anything about Windows 8, I took it upon myself to see what I could find. It look like there is a few more announcements to partners where Windows 8 Server is concerned. In the context of the roadmap anyhow. The information crew are all saying the same thing. Windows 8 is being releasid around the 2012. Funny enough that's the same same time as all this end of the world nonence.

Mc Millian Coffee Morning @ BSS Belfast

BSS Belfast Raise £420.00 for the McMillian Cancer Coffee Morning.

Thanks to the efforts of all the BSS Staff for supporting a very worth while cause we raised a total of £210.00 which was kindly doubled to £420.00 by our managing director Willie McKee.

In frame are Willie, Anne Moss and the famous Rosi 'Lancette Kirker. During the course of 2009, Rosi was diagnosed with a form of bowl cancer. Not the type of lady to let a little thing like that slow her down, Rosi rallied the troops in the office to support the UK largest coffee morning. Well if anyone knows Rosi, this was not going to be just any coffee morning; this had to be a blow out of biblical proportions.

Conrad Traynor (Coffee Buff) not only ground and supplied his own coffee but supplied a very shinny looking coffee machine that made the most divine roast coffee I have ever had the pleasure of drinking. Con buys and blends his own beans so anything else would just be wrong.

Paul (Walk about Watson) commissioned his mother, a semi pro baker to the local church to make and supply two of the largest pavalova I have ever seen or tasted. Mrs Watson can bake them all day long and we would find a home for them.

My daughter (Princess Megan) made a beautiful sponge cake and decorated it in the McMillian logo. Not only did it go down well but it received the most ahhhhhhhhh of the day.

As usual ‘Mrs Moss’ or mother to the BSS crew took charge of the proceedings and delivered one of the best break times I have ever attended. I say break time, cuz it lasted from than a coffee or tea break. The rest of the team, Linda, Jenny, Sandra and some of the engineers all chipped in to supply tray bakes and buns.

Oh, one can’t forget the cake Rosi made. Noted as a Jami Oliver special and filled with fresh cream and nuts, there was no one getting seconds.

Dean had the best seat in the house as all the kit was served from his table.

As a follow up to this and to raise more funds for Rosi’s chosen charity, Chris Birt (Dancing Boy) is organising a cycle from the University of Ulster to the Bar in Cutters Warf. Now there’s a surprise.

Phishing attack targets Hotmail

Should have used Ironkey & Cryptocard for 2FA and secure connectivity

Thousands of accounts on web-based e-mail system Hotmail have been compromised in a phishing attack, software giant Microsoft has confirmed.

BBC News has seen a list of more than 10,000 e-mail accounts, predominantly originating from Europe, and passwords which were posted online.

Microsoft said it had launched an investigation.

Phishing involves using fake websites to lure people into revealing details such as bank accounts or login names.

"We are aware that some Windows Live Hotmail customers' credentials were acquired illegally and exposed on a website," said a Microsoft spokesperson.

"Upon learning of the issue, we immediately requested that the credentials be removed and launched an investigation to determine the impact to customers."

Quick change

Graham Cluley, consultant at security firm Sophos, told BBC News the published list may just be a subset of a longer list of compromised accounts.

"We still don't know the scale of the problem," he told BBC News.

Technology blog neowin.net was the first to publish details of the attack. It said the accounts were posted on 1 October to pastebin.com, a website commonly used by developers to share code.

Although the details have since been removed, BBC News and Neowin has seen a list of 10,028 names beginning with the letters A and B.

BBC News has confirmed that the accounts are genuine and predominantly originate in Europe.

The list included details of Microsoft's Windows Live Hotmail accounts with email addresses ending hotmail.com, msn.com and live.com.

Mr Cluley advised Hotmail users to change their password as soon as possible.

"I'd also recommend that people change the password on any other site where they use it," he said.

Around 40% of people use the same password for every website they use, he added. With Ironkey's Password Manager, you need not worry about managing multiple log on details as the platform does it all for you.

Well worth the investment - www.ironkey.com