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Can Winston Churchill’s grandson save Serco? And is it worth saving? Serco used to be the biggest company you had never heard of.

Can Winston Churchill’s grandson save Serco? And is it worth saving?

For three decades it grew in the borderlands between the state and society, the government and us. Its name stands for “service company” and Serco, which combined great ambition with a desire to be unseen, wanted to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It was as much a formula as a company: a way to implement outsourced public services on behalf of governments, but with the elan of a restless entrepreneur. It didn’t matter what the service was, where it had to happen, or to whom it was delivered. Serco started out operating radars in Yorkshire and traffic lights in London, but it came to work with schoolchildren and doctors, commuters and prisoners, pilots and refugees. The trouble started in the spring. The paperwork that embodies government outsourcing, the physical contracts themselves, tells you a lot about how vexatious the whole business is. The revelations hit Serco particularly hard. Internally, Serco reeled.

Hacked federal files couldn't be encrypted because government computers are too old. Millions of government employee records apparently stolen by Chinese hackers were not encrypted, and software designed to block known computer breaches has not been installed to protect most of the files, officials said Tuesday.

Hacked federal files couldn't be encrypted because government computers are too old

LGBTI survey - Australian Army. Establishment of a Digital Transformation Office. The Commonwealth Government will establish a Digital Transformation Office (DTO) within the Department of Communications so that government services can be delivered digitally from start to finish and better serve the needs of citizens and businesses.

Establishment of a Digital Transformation Office

The DTO will comprise a small team of developers, designers, researchers and content specialists working across government to develop and coordinate the delivery of digital services. The DTO will operate more like a start-up than a traditional government agency, focussing on end-user needs in developing digital services. The DTO will use technology to make services simpler, clearer and faster for Australian families and businesses. People need to be able to transact services and access information anytime, anywhere. Like any other service industry, government should design its services in the most user friendly way.

Noel Pearson's proposal could deliver real authority for Indigenous Australia. On Monday Noel Pearson backed proposals for a declaration of recognition for Indigenous Australians.

Noel Pearson's proposal could deliver real authority for Indigenous Australia

He referenced the US Declaration of Independence and conjured up an image of Australian children reciting the declaration at school assemblies and civic leaders intoning it at the opening of parliament. It would be symbolic – not legally binding – but Pearson’s proposal is not just constitutional poetry. In November 2014, Tony Abbott told Australians for Constitutional Monarchy that “the challenge is to find a way to acknowledge Aboriginal people in the constitution without otherwise changing it”. Malcolm Fraser: Former Australian PM dies aged 84. 20 March 2015Last updated at 00:12 ET Malcolm Fraser died following a brief illness, his office said Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser has died aged 84.

Malcolm Fraser: Former Australian PM dies aged 84

"Billions": Hockey greenlights Centrelink core replacement. News Treasurer Joe Hockey has strongly hinted that the upcoming Federal Budget will include “billions” of dollars worth of funding for a core systems replacement at the Centrelink division of the Department of Human Services (DHS), in a move that represents one of the Federal Government’s most long-awaited and largest IT project approvals.

"Billions": Hockey greenlights Centrelink core replacement

For the past several decades, the core system underpinning Centrelink’s transaction processing platform has been the Model 204 software developed by Computer Corporation of America and running on ageing mainframes technology. The platform supports Centrelink’s Income Support Integrated System (ISIS), which makes assessments and delivers transactions to more than seven million Australians. Cookies must be enabled. Wikipedia abc census australia. Politics of Australia. The politics of Australia takes place within the framework of a federal constitutional parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy.

Politics of Australia

Australians elect parliamentarians to the federal Parliament of Australia, a bicameral body which incorporates elements of the fused executive inherited from the Westminster system, and a strong federalist senate, adopted from the United States Congress. Australia largely operates as a two-party system in which voting is compulsory. Legislative[edit] Digital shopfront to make government access easy as internet banking. Australians may soon be able to pay bills to every level of government and get information about all government services through a single website with one login, as easily as they can do internet banking or order a taxi through an app.

Digital shopfront to make government access easy as internet banking

Tony Abbott has given communications minister Malcolm Turnbull sole responsibility for a “digital transformation office” to build on the existing myGov service, including the possibility of extending it to state and local government transactions. The move clarifies who is responsible for a service now part-run by the Department of Finance. One of the office’s first jobs would be to allow people to create a single “digital identity” and login for all government services. “Almost all transactions with the federal government can be completed entirely digitally,” Turnbull told Guardian Australia. Hawke cabinet secretly approved extending Asio remit to foreign spying. The Hawke cabinet approved guidelines for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation to spy on Australians to gather foreign intelligence, newly released cabinet documents have revealed.

Hawke cabinet secretly approved extending Asio remit to foreign spying

The cabinet agreed not to table the new powers in parliament or to allow them to be scrutinised by the newly established parliamentary joint committee on Asio. The 1988-89 cabinet documents, released on Thursday by the National Archives, show Bob Hawke’s Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet was deeply suspicious of the attorney general’s guidelines to extend Asio’s powers to cover Australian citizens but the cabinet’s security committee approved the decision. Carrier-neutral Internet data service 21Vianet raises $296M from Kingsoft, Xiaomi, and Temasek.

Lei Jun (Board Chairman of Kingsoft and Xiaomi), Chen Sheng (Board Chairman & CEO of 21Vianet), Zhang Hongjiang (CEO of Kingsoft and Kingsoft Cloud) 21Vianet Group (Nasdaq:VNET), a leading carrier-neutral internet data services provider in China, has announced that it has entered into share purchase agreements with Kingsoft, Xiaomi and Temasek.

Carrier-neutral Internet data service 21Vianet raises $296M from Kingsoft, Xiaomi, and Temasek

The three investors will inject a total of US$296 million of funding into 21Vianet. Trial for paperless court. Trial for paperless court. New Zealand to hold flag referendum in 2016. 28 October 2014Last updated at 23:20 ET New Zealand's flag incorporates the Union Flag of the UK New Zealand is to hold a binding referendum in 2016 on whether to change the national flag. The announcement by Prime Minister John Key of the referendum came after his government last month won a third term in a general election. Met Office £97 Million Supercomputer Can Do 16,000 Trillion Sums A Second. Weather forecast blunders will become a thing of the past when a new £97 million "supercomputer" is up and running next year, the Met Office has said.

The Cray XC40 will be 13 times more powerful than the one currently used by meteorologists and will be able to perform more than 16,000 trillion calculations per second. Met Office chief executive Rob Varley said: "We are very excited about this new investment in UK science. Job centres to get digital makeover. Head of civil service: technology now central to government services.

The head of the UK civil service, cabinet secretary Jeremy Heywood, has admitted that the service’s use of technology has lagged behind the business world for too long, and stated its commitment to the work of the Government Digital Service. Heywood pushed the idea of “government as a platform” – a central service that links all aspects of customer-facing government instead of running a series of disjointed silos as it has done in the past.

“Things are changing in the Civil Service. Government is adopting new ideas and new ways of working to make everything we do better for users, and more efficient,” said Heywood in a blog post. Politics of Germany. The constitution emphasizes the protection of individual liberty in an extensive catalogue of human and civil rights and divides powers both between the federal and state levels and between the legislative, executive and judicial branches. It can "be understood as the downright opposite to Nazi totalitarism and was designed up to its details to learn from historical experience and to eliminate any possibility of such a wrong once and for all. "[1] Tech firms want 'digital ministers' and easier migration.

15 September 2014Last updated at 19:00 ET By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News Efforts in east London have helped but more needs to be done across the UK, TechUK said An influential group of major technology firms is calling on the UK to appoint "digital ministers" in every government department. TechUK - which represents more than 850 companies - also demanded rules to allow more skilled technology workers into the country.

"You've got to make sure the UK becomes a hub for digital skills," said TechUK chief executive Julian David. The proposals will be presented to ministers on Tuesday. Mr David said current options for migrating digital works - such as a special Entrepreneurs' Visa to help start-ups - was not going far enough. "My members tell me it helps, but start-ups find it difficult to plot their way through the bureaucracy and the cost. " Bigger companies, he said, complained the process took too long. America’s Tech Guru Steps Down—But He’s Not Done Rebooting the Government. Category:Australia government stubs. Cost of elections Australia. Mick Gooda pushes referendum on Indigenous recognition for 2015.

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