Hope you’re keeping well. I’ve been away for the week. Took some time out- had the out of office on… and enjoyed a few sunny days by the south coast. I think it’s important for us all to recharge now and again. For me, I spent time reading a book, thinking about my purpose and enjoying some good food!
Ok, here’s my Top Two Tech Stories of the week…
- Up first, Whatsapp!
WhatsApp has introduced a new feature for its mobile app that aims to mimic the likes of Snapchat. While Disappearing Messages on the platform stretches to a minimum of seven days, WhatsApp has added a new View Once feature for photos and videos. The new feature is now available on iPhone as well as Android.
While the feature is great to have, there is still a risk if the receiver takes a screenshot of it. Henceforth, the platform can just update the feature with a notification alert – but we’ll have to wait for this.
This all sounds a lot like Snapchat and other platforms, where you can quickly (and for a short time) view a photo or video before it disappears. We can see our favourite and most used platforms adopting these features – maybe in a move to make us have less apps.
2. Up next… legacy systems!
Half of all government spending on computers is dedicated to keeping old systems going, a report has found.
The UK government spends £4.7bn a year on IT across all departments, and £2.3bn goes on patching up systems, some of which date back 30 years or more.
Labour said the situation showed Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove’s “incompetence and failure to deliver”.
The Cabinet Office said it was taking action to reduce the government’s reliance on outdated technology.
The Cabinet Office report, called Organising for Digital Delivery, warns that government could end up spending between £13bn and £22bn over the next five years on obsolete systems.
Some government digital services “fail to meet even the minimum cyber-security standards,” it adds, and data can not be properly extracted from them, making them “one of the greatest barriers” to civil service innovation.
The government has made a big push to use data to improve public services, but despite “significant sums” being spent on data storage departments are “making little use of this data to influence action or decision-making”.
The report also says the government is not carrying out any kind of monitoring of performance of computer systems, as is common in leading private and public sector organisations.
A performance management system was put in place in 2012, but has since fallen into disuse – and even the technology that monitors its performance is now obsolete and vulnerable to a cyber attack.
The report also highlights digital success stories, such as the rapid launch of the NHS coronavirus testing service and the furlough scheme.
The Home Office’s EU Settlement Scheme is also cited as example of rapid rollout.
The report says government departments that need a new digital service should launch a “minimum loveable product”.
This means, for example, not worrying about making the website look nice and having lots of features, but to focus on the absolute bare essentials required for launching a service to the public.
There you go… from Whatsapp letting you share photos and videos for a short duration and then they disappear to systems being used by the Government that should’ve disappeared a long time ago!