Current hot topics, such as partnership working, collaboration, localism, transparency and the ‘Big Society’ (however ill-defined), all imply information sharing. Little wonder that CIOs are thinking about data interchange standards, security and authentication, and secure channels such as the public service network. However, some things are much
more important than the technology.

The coalition government believes transparency will reduce public sector expenditure and expose waste. Publishing public data is not new. The EU envisaged a digital economy built by re-using public sector data, and the previous government’s Power of Information report championed open data. Through access to data on the web, citizens are seizing control. How should managers respond?

The Council of the Isles of Scilly engaged Socitm Consulting to help them through the Code of Connection approvals to enable access to the UK governments’ many agencies.

In an effort to make “Learning” more focused on the specific needs of our membership, we have reviewed our course offerings and launched a completely new programme for the next 12 months. The new programme offers a wider range of course, at more locations, and with more detail provided on each, to help you judge better who to nominate for the course, and the likely benefits to be achieved from it.

Making the right information available in the right format at the right time to the right people inside and outside the organisation is vital to efficiency. Information Management combines many difficult challenges, but getting it right brings huge benefits.

Strategically, information management needs to be closely bound with your business and ICT strategy. Neither can work effectively without the other. It is also vitally concerned with information quality, information security and business continuity – both for the organisation and for its customers and partners. Historically, organisations have struggled to meet the need for accurate and well-structured information.

Shared services are much in vogue yet there are relatively few examples of successful implementations. It's not hard to see why - for anything other than a simple service shared between two organisations, the complexity of the approach quickly multiplies as the service becomes more complex, and the number of partners increases.

"For working with partners, information sharing protocols must be agreed, and systems established to enable secure access as required"