Home Office’s IT Director McDonagh to take over Chant role at G-Cloud

Posted on 16/04/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

Denise McDonagh, currently director of IT at the Home Office, is to take over responsibility for G-Cloud from Chris Chant who leaves at the end of the month.

In this announcement, as well as discussing McDonagh’s role as Chant’s replacement on G-Cloud, the government said that it is on track to launch the next iteration of the G-Cloud framework in late or early May.  It will incorporate a new approach that incorporates the ability to add new suppliers and services on a quarterly (or possibly more frequent) basis.  It suggests that this will be a procurement first in the UK, and possibly even in the world.  Existing G-Cloud suppliers should be able to move to the new framework with just a small amount of effort, it says. A series of new deals on the framework is also set  to be to announced.

Prior to the announcement of his departure, Chant had written a blog post that argued that unnacceptable IT is pervasive.

He suggested that:

“Real progress has been blocked by many things including an absence of capability in both departments and their suppliers, by a strong resistance to change, by the perverse incentives of contracts that mean its cheaper to pay service credits than to fix the problem and by an unwillingness to embrace the potential of newer and smaller players to offer status quo-busting ideas.

“CIOs across government, including me in various roles at the centre of government, have been guilty for too long of taking the easy path.  We have done the unacceptable and thought we were doing a great job.  We have:

  • Signed contracts with single suppliers that have led to both poor service and high costs, because that is the way government did things
  • Failed to let in innovative suppliers because of the constraints of those large contracts, because new suppliers, we figured, brought risk and uncertainty
  • Designed and delivered solutions that look, in today’s world, ridiculously expensive and over-engineered because we thought that was the right thing to do
  • Allowed our users to suffer with IT that is a decade – or more – behind what they are using at home because the security considerations for government are different and stricter from those for everyone else”

But, over the last 18 months, working on G-Cloud as well as the immediate forerunner of the Government Digital Service, Chant said he had seen the real signs of change, with some in the public sector no longer willing to put up with the poor service and delivery that they have experienced and they are actively looking for new ways of working. Notably, he suggested, big departments openly talk about wanting to get away from the traditional model of big, cumbersome IT and are serious.

Now, he went on, things get harder, notably:

Managing Multiple Suppliers

  • Departments are no longer going to have an easy ride as they seek to extend an existing contract or renew what they have now (a large single supplier monopoly over their IT).   They’re going to be pushed to break up contracts into smaller pieces, contract with or involve more SMEs and reuse what is already in place elsewhere.    There is no better place to start than by getting something you already have, or something that you need to have, from the G-Cloud framework. CIOs will need to increase the capability of their teams – and their own capability too – otherwise they will find that they are no longer playing a part in this new approach.  Some CIOs and some teams will not be able to make that transition.

Apples With Apples

  • For years, obtaining data about what government pays for IT and, worse, what it gets for that money has been mission impossible.  With transparency, increasing use of frameworks and smaller contracts, it will be easier than it has ever been to compare like for like costs across departments. CIOs will want to get ahead of that curve now and find out what their IT is truly costing them so that they can compare what new market offers really provide and whether it is worth making an early switch – and the pressure to make that switch before the end of the contract is only likely to increase as the true size of cost reductions becomes evident.

Digital By Default

  • The need to design services around the customer will become pervasive -whether that customer is a citizen in front of a web browser at home or one of our own staff working in an office.  The shift to “digital by default” (rather than “digital as well”) is fundamental and will cause a wholesale upheaval in organisations across government.   People who thought they were in charge of delivering transactions probably won’t be. People who are on the inside of government might find themselves moved to the outside and entirely new product offers will come about as a result.

IT in government has certainly come a long way, he insisted, but added that “..it just hasn’t come far enough.  It remains unacceptable.  The trends of the last couple of years – transparency, open data, open services, SMEs – aren’t going away; if anything, they will go stronger and bed in deeper.”

What needs to happen next, Chant said, is that:

  • CIOs across government need to recognise what has changed and stop hiding behind the comfort blanket of what has always been done before. That blanket is on fire.
  • Big suppliers should see the smoke from that comfort blanket and recognise that the world of government IT has changed.  They can no longer rely on delivering poor service for big money and get away with it.  The customer approach is changing and they will need to change too, or be consumed by the flames.
  • SMEs should embrace the opportunity they now have and bring their capabilities – speed, flexibility and low prices – to the government market.  For the first time, government is ready.

(My Campaign4Change colleague Tony Collins is currently away, but will be back shortly)

G-Cloud chief Chris Chant to retire

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Posted in Campaign4Change, CIO, Cloud, G-Cloud, Government IT, SME

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Standish Group: the 21 perils of using consultants

Posted on 16/04/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

We always have a lot of time for the work of the Standish Group in the US on how and why IT projects fail.

The group’s recent Chaos newsletter makes some strong points about the perils of using consultants. (In fact, in all, it identified 21 perils!)

Standish argues that the number one consultancy misdeed is what is describes as “the X-Factor”. The X-Factor is the difference between what the consultant initially bids to win the contract, and what is ultimately delivered to the client. It is sometimes referred to as “low ball pricing.” These terms accurately reflect the standard practice of bidding on the project as defined. However, “there is conscious intent to solicit, promote, and champion requirements changes.” 

Standish Group continues: “The X-Factor will alter the ultimate deliverable from the project as initially defined and increase the cost. The X-Factor cost increase can occur through requirements analysis and validation. At the end of the process, the unselfish consultant provides recommendations for changes and/or additional requirements based upon user input and their own analysis, demonstrating that the project as originally defined and presented will not meet the business needs, which is something they knew all along. 

“The X-Factor final deliverable is not necessarily better. It might be worse. It is guaranteed to be different. Since requirements changes represent more money, the consultant will encourage changes at every opportunity. The end result of it being more billable hours for the consultant. The X-Factor and the other twenty factors message here is caveat emptor or let the buyer beware.

“On the surface, the X-Factor and the other twenty factors could be casually dismissed as justifiable and acceptable risks of doing business. In reality, they are carefully devised and skillfully practiced techniques designed to serve the primary objective of the consultant to maximize their profit.

“The addition of complexity and confusion is the common denominator. This gets manipulated into project expansion, schedule delays, requirements changes and additions, new hardware, new applications, system integration projects, and a “till death do we part” relationship. The consultant’s hooks are in so deep that the cost of terminating the relationship is unaffordable. The consultant will pretend to be a trusted and friendly advisor until the profit well runs dry.

“When a conflict occurs between the client’s interest and the consultant’s profit, the consultant will protect his profit. “Show Me the Money” was the mantra of the consulting world long before it became a signature line in a Hollywood movie. This mercenary depiction of consultants is not an individual or personal indictment. It reflects the nature of the industry. The behaviour pattern and mode of operation is a reaction to the “survival of the fittest” environment.

“Consultants are under enormous pressure to develop the business; and they face intense competition. This breeds their overly aggressive, relentless pursuit of the bottom line. The consultant is neither friend nor enemy; he’s an entrepreneur in business to make a profit.”

Admittedly, this X-Factor scenario will already be familiar to many companies in their dealings with consultants. Over the coming months, Standish says it plans to take a closer look at some of the other key factors to be aware of around using consultants.

Chaos Activity Newsletter

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Posted in Campaign4Change, consultants, Government IT, IT projects, IT-related failures, project management

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Summary Care Record plods on

Posted on 11/04/2012 | Leave a comment

By Tony Collins

Pulse reports that the Summary Care Record database had 13.1 million records by 22 March 2012, which is around the number the DH had expected for April last year.

It reports that the figures have prompted David Flory, deputy NHS chief executive, to call for ‘rapid further progress’ on the rollout.

In his latest quarterly report on NHS performance, Flory highlighted the SCR as an area for improvement. “Implementation does not meet expectations and rapid further progress is needed,” said Flory. “While performance has improved, the rate of this improvement is beneath the expected trajectory.”

The number of patients with an SCR has almost doubled from around seven million a year ago. Sixteen PCTs have more than 60% of patients with an SCR.

Critical Mass

In February, Kilburn GP and SCR director Gillian Braunold was reported in Pulse to have said the rollout has reached a ‘critical mass’ in some areas. Out-of-hours providers, and those in urgent care and hospitals are viewing about 1,600 records a week.

Braunold said information within the SCR was changing some therapeutic decisions. She also said there was also evidence from areas where end-of-life care plans had been uploaded to care records that more patients were dying in their preferred place.

Nurses at NHS Direct are to have access to care records and the DH is working on plans to replace HealthSpace and enable patients to access their full patient record.

Comment – The devil’s in the detail

It is difficult to put Dr Braunold’s comments into context without published independent evidence of which there is little or nothing that’s recent.

In public, NHS Connecting for Health has never wavered in proclaiming the success of the SCR but it has sought to control authoritative information on the SCR programme.

CfH commissioned an independent UCL report on the NPfIT SCR  “The devil’s in the detail”, but asked researchers to, for example, delete the cost of the SCR programme. CfH also removed passages from official SCR documents it gave the UCL researchers.

The final UCL report , which said in a footnote ” financial data deleted at the request of CFH”,   found that there were inaccuracies in the SCR database. UCL researchers also learned that the SCR database could not be relied on as a single source of truth.

Some CFH staff found the notion of possible ‘disbenefits’ of the SCR difficult to conceptualise, said the UCL report.

There is no doubt that an accurate and well-populated SCR would be useful, especially for out-of-hours doctors. They need to know – at least – what drugs patients are taking and what if any adverse drug reactions they have had.

As the DH tells patients: “Giving healthcare staff access to this (SCR) information can prevent mistakes being made when caring for you in an emergency or when your GP practice is closed.”

But a national database is not the way forward. It is unlikely to be trusted as accurate or up-to-date. It would be better to give patients and clinicians access to locally-held NHS-sourced information. We’ll report more on this separately.

Meanwhile the SCR plods on at a high cost – more than £220m so far. BT, the SCR’s main supplier, will be pleased the programme is continuing, as will those civil servants and consultants who have been involved with the programme for several years. But whether the database is of real value to doctors and patients we don’t know for certain. The DH tends not to publish its independent advice.

Summary Care Record a year behind schedule, DH warns – Pulse

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Posted in Government IT, health, health records, IT projects, IT-related failures, managing change, managing outsourced services, NHS, npfit, openness and transparency, operational issues, Politics

Why ignoring the human factor can lead to failed IT projects

Posted on 11/04/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

In a column for the Wall St Journal, Frank Wander, a former CIO of the Guardian Life Insurance Company, has warned that ignoring the human factor is a sure route to the failure of IT projects.

He points out that, “Sixty years into the information economy, information technology projects, especially large ones, still fail, or under-perform, at disheartening rates. Trillions of dollars of collective project experience, and, what long ago, should have become a predictable undertaking, remains an area of dissatisfaction. Yet, the performance of our technology infrastructure (devices, networks, storage) has made quantum leaps forward over that same time period.”

He argues that workers are the most expensive, but least understood tool. In the insurance industry, for example, talent represents 63% of IT cost, according to a 2011 Gartner report.

He concludes: “As an industry, we must remove this blind spot, recruit the best talent, nurture it and unlock the full productivity potential by designing social environments where the chemistry enables IT to flourish. Companies that understand this, and embrace it, will win; the rest will compete in a race to the bottom.”

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change management, CIO, Government IT, IT and the Business, IT projects, project management

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The campaigners’ view of the Gloucestershire case on social enterprise and the NHS

Posted on 10/04/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

Left Foot Forward recently carried a piece discussing the impact of the recent case in Gloucestershire where campaigners had “argued that the local PCT had acted unlawfully in planning to hand over management of nine county hospitals and 3,000 community health staff in what would have been the biggest planned transfer (so far) to a social enterprise in the country.”

It is written from the perspective of the campaigners who question, now that the Health Bill is passed, how far are current NHS providers obliged to put existing services out to competitive tender?

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Posted in mutualisation, mutuals, public services, social economy, social enterprise

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Fast-growing BRICS countries face IT challenges, says economic think tank

Posted on 06/04/2012 | Leave a comment

Much has been written about the economic potential offered by the BRICS countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

And yet, despite improvements in many drivers of competitiveness, the BRICS still face important challenges to more fully adopt and leverage IT, according to the latest  Global Information Technology Report 2012: Living in a Hyperconnected World, published by the World Economic Forum.

Despite efforts over the past decade to develop information and communications technologies (ICT) infrastructure in developing economies, a new digital divide in terms of ICT impacts persists,  the Forum says.

Even for the fast-growing BRICS, an insufficient skills base and institutional weaknesses, especially in the business environment, present a number of shortcomings that stifle entrepreneurship and innovation.

It’s not unreasonable to argue that they may have something to learn about delivering successful IT projects too, as developed countries have had to do. Alternatively, they may have some insight to pass on.

When it comes to leadership in IT adoption and usage, it is the usual suspects, Sweden (1st) and Singapore (2nd) that top the rankings in leveraging information and communications technologies to boost country competitiveness.

Switzerland (5th), the Netherlands (6th), the United States (8th), Canada (9th) and the UK (10th) also show strong performances in the top 10.

It is equally perhaps no great surprise to find that ICT readiness in sub-Saharan Africa is low, with many countries showing significant lags in connectivity due to insufficient development of ICT infrastructure, which remains too costly.

Even in those countries where ICT infrastructure has been improved, the Forum suggests, ICT-driven impacts on competitiveness and well-being trail behind, resulting in a new digital divide.

China

At 51st place in the rankings, China leads the BRICS countries. Yet, the report says, “this should offer little consolation in light of the important challenges ahead that must be met to more fully adopt and leverage ICT.

“China’s institutional framework (46th) and especially its business environment (105th) present a number of shortcomings that stifle entrepreneurship and innovation, including excessive red tape and long administrative procedures, lofty taxation amounting to 64 percent of profits (124th), uncertain intellectual property protection—it is estimated that almost 80 percent of installed software in China is pirated—and limited or delayed availability of new technologies (100th).”

In terms of readiness, the country ranks only 87th in terms of its infrastructure and digital content, mainly because of its underdeveloped Internet infrastructure.

In terms of actual ICT usage, although the figures remain low in absolute terms, they should perhaps be considered in light of the sheer size of the country.

ICT usage by businesses is significant (37th). China is becoming more and more innovative and this in turn encourages further and quicker adoption of technologies. The Chinese government is already placing significant hopes in IT as a catalyst for future growth, because more traditional sources of growth are likely to dry up.

The efforts of the government in promoting and using IT are reflected in China’s strong showing in terms of government usage (33rd). For the time being, though, the overall impact of IT on the economy remains limited (79th).

India

However, contrast China’s position with India and you find that India, ranks nearly 20 places behind in 69th position.  India delivers a very mixed picture, with encouraging results in some areas and a lot of room for improvement elsewhere, notably in the political and regulatory (71st) and business and innovation environments (91st).

Extensive red tape that stands in the way of businesses and corporate tax is among the highest of all the countries analysed by the Forum. For instance, it typically takes four years and 46 procedures to enforce a contract in India. Starting a business is longer and requires more paperwork than in most countries. Other variables fare better, such as the availability of new technologies (47th), the availability of venture capital (27th), the intensity of local competition (31st), and the quality of its management schools (30th).

One of the weakest aspects of India’s performance lies in its low penetration of ICT. The country ranks 117th in terms of individual usage, with 61 mobile subscriptions for every 100 population, a relatively low figure. Only 7.5 percent of the population uses the Internet; just 6 percent of households own a PC and broadband Internet remains the privilege of a few, with less than one subscription per 100 population.

“The big story is how India is falling behind in relative terms as far as its overall measure of technology and competitiveness is concerned,” says Soumitra Dutta, Roland Berger Professor of Business and Technology at INSEAD, a co-editor of the report. “A few years ago, India was ahead of China.”

Brazil

Another member of the BRICS, Brazil, positioned in 65th place, benefits from  strong levels of business ICT usage (33rd). These, combined  fairly advanced levels of technological capacity (31st) in particular segments of its industry, allows the country to achieve one of the strongest performances of ICT-enabled innovations in the Latin American region, both in terms of new products and services (29th) and more efficient processes (34th).

However, despite these strengths, its overall business environment with burdensome procedures to create new businesses (138th) and high tax rates (130th), in addition to its high mobile phone tariffs (133rd) and poor skills availability (86th), hinder the potential of the Brazilian economy to fully benefit from IT and shift toward more knowledge-based activities (76th) at a faster pace.

That said, Brazil is now the seventh largest ICT market in the world, with £106bn spent in 2010.

World Economic Forum Global IT Report

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Posted in Brazil, BRICS, Campaign4Change, China, India, innovation, IT projects, IT-related failures

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Desktop virtualisation may solve corporate data challenge but success relies on project clarity

Posted on 05/04/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

I recently read a blog by Clarence Villanueva which made the worthy point that although many organisations now have smartphones and iPads, they still need to get corporate data on them.

Recent surveys  have suggested that 27% of companies support the iPad today, while another 31% plan to support it in the future. As Villanueva points out, as organisations begin to support connected devices such as iPads and smartphones, they will want to connect them to their enterprise data and applications. One solution for achieving that is desktop virtualisation.

According to Villanueva’s blog,  desktop virtualisation is an option because:

  • It facilitates employee access to enterprise data and applications from any platform-neutral device.
  • Certain solutions allow you to convert your existing laptops/desktops into thin clients, enabling you to lengthen the life cycles of the equipment, and
  • Patch management and updates are controlled more effectively, potentially lowering internal management costs.

The problem, as the blog points out, is that many organisations don’t know where to start on desktop virtualisation. And that hints  at some IT project problems further down the line, because solicitation of information from suppliers is messy.

As the blog says, “As companies reach out to these vendors, Forrester sees that incomplete information is shared and/or project goals are unclear, which results in confusion to the vendor and multiple rounds of questions and answers.

“One of the ways to overcome this challenge is to focus on internal collaboration and organise yourself before going out to market. The transformation of the desktop from the traditional status quo to a virtualised environment is complicated — it requires the collaboration of a variety of people. Desktop virtualisation  projects affect a multitude of business and IT areas….successful projects enlist the help of companies’ internal desktop management, networking, storage, security, and software licensing professionals for a unified solution.”

One organisation that seems to be making some headway on desktop virtualisation by knowing where it is headed is National Air Traffic Services (NATS).

The company recently gave a presentation on its move to a virtualised desktop environment as part of a business growth strategy that will see it target new international regions, new services and partners, and involve it in possible merger and acquisition activity.

NATS believes adopting desktop virtualisation will give it the ability to, according to Gavin Walker, its head of information solutions, “..scale at a fast pace….a key requirement.” 

NATS has 6000 employees, including operational. technical and general office workers who all have different user profiles in their use of IT. Many of them work across multiple sites, which is why NATS wants to have remote access to the corporate network from anywhere at any time.

It also wants to use the Cloud to enable it to scale as and when required and to adopt role-based computing with integrated identity management to help it deploy services and applications based on user profiling to improve the users’ experiences.

NATS says it has now completed the planning and discovery of the desktop virtualisation project, and by working with a virtualisation company, Point to Point,  now has a scaled down version of the desktop virtualisation system with Office 2010. The version, dubbed ‘Springboard’ has been rolled out to 100 people across the organisation, including NATS’ chief executive Richard Deakin and his executive team.

“Getting stakeholder investment can be a challenge as IT is seen to be taking money away from tbe bottom line,” says Walker. “Springboard helped us to demonstrate immediate results and provided an indication of what the system would be able to do once in place. This really is a change management programme supported by technology.”

Other Links

Computer Weekly: NATS delivers Office 2010, Visio and MS Project on virtual desktops

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Posted in Campaign4Change, change, change management, IT projects, project management, virtualisation

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Local government committee considers mutuals’ role in ‘the co-operative council’

Posted on 05/04/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

Just spotted a tweet from Allison Roche from Unison on Twitter about the Communities and Local Government Committee’s inquiry into ‘the co-operative council’, including the services role played by mutuals.

You can read more about the inquiry here

The Committee is seeking answers to the following questions:

  • What is the difference between a co-operative council where services are supplied via not-for-profit businesses and other local authorities?
  • What arrangements need to be put in place to deliver services by not-for-profit businesses such as employee-owned mutuals? More specifically, what are the barriers to establishing not-for-profit businesses to supply services; what role does the local authority have in promoting and incubating a not-for-profit business; and where does accountability lie?
  • What are the advantages of and drawbacks to providing services via not-for-profit businesses?
  • Where services are delivered by a not-for-profit businesses what difference will the local resident and local taxpayer see?

The closing date for submissions is 11th May.

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Posted in Campaign4Change, employee ownership, local government, mutualisation, mutuals, procurement, public services

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Shining a light into the darkest corners of wasteful IT projects

Posted on 05/04/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

US federal chief information officer (CIO) Steven VanRoekel is adopting a novel approach to Government IT: innovate with less.

In a piece written for the The White House’s Office of Management and Budget, VanRoekel says he has learned lessons from the private sector on helping government learn private sector best practices, and in particular, how to buy IT.

“These agency successes are a good start, but we need to do more. We still face an unacceptable amount of duplicative and low-value IT.  That is why (we are)…. launching a new tool for agencies to use to assess the current maturity of their IT portfolio management process and make decisions on eliminating duplication across their organisations.

“This tool – which we’re calling “PortfolioStat” – gives agencies tools to look into the darkest corners of the organisation to find wasteful and duplicative IT investments.”

VanRoekel says the efforts are paying off.

“Over the past three years, the Federal Government has done much in adopting private sector practices to triage broken IT investments, reduce the IT infrastructure footprint, and innovate with less.

“For example, at today’s President’s Management Advisory Board meeting, the Department of the Interior showed that by modernising IT infrastructure and aligning resources to improve customer service, they will realise $100 million in savings from 2016 to 2020, for a cumulative total of $500 million. To date, there have been $11 million in cost avoidance by updating the scope of projects and $2.2 million in redirection of funds due to IT Spending Reviews.”

Over the next year, says VanRoekel, agency Deputy Secretaries or Chief Operating Officers (COO), must lead agency-wide IT portfolio reviews within their respective organisations, working in coordination with Chief Information Officers, Chief Financial Officers, and Chief Acquisition Officers.

The level of executive sponsorship, VanRoekel says, “is a direct reflection of our belief that IT is a strategic asset that can dramatically improve productivity and the way agencies execute their mission. By June 15, agencies will complete a high-level survey of agency IT portfolio status and a bureau level information request for specific types of commodity IT investments that will used to baseline the maturity of agency portfolios.

“Then, using the portfolio data gathered combined with other data available at the bureau and agency level, COOs will establish targets for commodity IT spending reductions and deadlines for meeting those targets; illustrate how investments within the IT portfolio align with the agency’s mission and business functions; establish criteria for identifying wasteful, “low-value,” or duplicative investments; and improve governance and program management utilising best practices and, where possible, benchmarks.

“Though this process is new for Federal IT, leading private sector companies have been leveraging improved IT portfolio management tools for some time. Private sector organisations that waste millions on duplicative and low value IT are destined to disappear. Competitive pressure has forced change and efficiency.

“Though there are differences between public and private sector work, my time in both makes me extremely confident that the best practices from a well-run company can be applied effectively to the Federal Government.”

According to Nextgov.com, which reported VanRoekel’s attendance at the  FOSE  2012 conference on government technology,  US federal IT spending grew about 7 percent every year during the decade prior to 2009.

Since President Obama took office amid the 2008 financial crisis, federal IT spending has leveled off at about $80 billion annually.

“I’m proud to say that in the last three years on that flat or declining budget we’ve actually innovated a lot,” VanRoekel said.

Homeland Security Department CIO Richard Spires imposed a 10 percent cut in operations and maintenance spending across the department in the administration’s fiscal 2013 budget request to free up money for new initiatives.

VanRoekel said initiatives to consolidate federal data centres, shift more of the IT budget to cloud computing and a “maniacal focus on rooting out duplication” were allowing agencies to invest in new technologies.

The US Defence Department’s 2013 IT budget request, for instance, is down more than $1 billion, largely because the department cut costs associated with maintaining data centres.

PortfolioStat is an opportunity for CIOs and chief operating officers to look horizontally across an agency and identify places where services can more easily be shared,VanRoekel said.

According to Nextgov’s report, the U.S. Agriculture Department has moved from more than 20 separate email systems to only one cloud-based system during the past year and recently consolidated more than 700 mobile phone contracts into three blanket purchase agreements.

US Chief Information Officers Council

Nextgov.com

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Posted in Campaign4Change, CIO, Cloud Computing, Government IT, US Government

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FT: ‘Lessons from the house that John Lewis built’

Posted on 04/04/2012 | Leave a comment

By David Bicknell

John Kay’s column in the FT yesterday on the need for pluralism in business structures (that include mutuals) was a good read.

In “Lessons from the house that Lewis built”, he argues that we need to find more robust capital and governance structures that permit wider forms of commercial activity. Worth a read (you may need to register or find “Lessons from the house that Lewis built” via Google)

The column refers to a recent report by the Ownership Commission chaired by Will Hutton. You can read the report here

David Cameron launches £600m Big Society Fund

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Posted in employee ownership, mutualisation, mutuals, social economy, social enterprise

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