Written by Rosemary Banyard, Fund Manager, Downing LLP

The single largest sector exposure of our fund is in information technology and at the end of July, technology accounted for 25 per cent by value of net assets. Most of this exposure consists of software companies, which typically dominate a particular industry niche.

The attraction of these businesses is that once the software is installed, it becomes integral to the customer’s operations and switching to a different provider is costly.

An example to illustrate the point would be Tracsis, which amongst other products, supplies Network Rail and the train operating companies…

Written by Yatin Mahandru, Head UK Public Sector & NHS, Cognizant

The world of international motorsport has a surprising amount of parallels to the public sector in using digital transformation to drive performance.

When Britain’s legendary Silverstone race track offered its services as a COVID-19 vaccination center in January this year, the worlds of elite motorsport and government pandemic response momentarily collided.

As it turned out, Silverstone was surplus to requirements for the vaccine program. But it wasn’t the last time this year that the UK public sector met the glamour of the Grand Prix.

I recently had the pleasure…

Written by Glen Ocsko, Head of Local Government, Made Tech

For local government organisations looking to level up and digitally evolve, it can often feel like there are two opposing forces at play: the ever-changing needs of service users, and the lack of financial resources to make decisive, impactful change.

As we saw in my first article in this series, this inherent contradiction is not only endemic and upheld by services built on a foundation of legacy technology, but it also translates into a direct impact on the users, who need these services the most.

But there is a way…

Written by Gemma Elsworth, Head of Digital Performance Analytics, DWP

Head of Digital Performance Analytics Gemma Elsworth from DWP Digital shares why it’s important to build a culture of performance measurement.

Throughout my career, one saying that has always rung true is this: “Data and measurement is not important, until it is.”

What this has meant for me as an analyst is that no matter how many conversations I have about data collection, KPIs and success metrics, rarely is anyone interested until they want to know if the thing they built worked.

During the building of products, pressure is on…

Written by Liz O’Driscoll, Head of Innovation, Civica

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed everyone’s reality. This crisis has catalyzed the need to digitize across sectors and has shown the positive impact technology can have when it comes to working from home at least. But as we look forward, many public service organizations are looking for innovative ways and technologies to enhance services for everyone. One such area is immersive technologies.

From Augmented Reality (AR) to the fully immersive Virtual Reality (VR), immersive technologies vary in terms of complexity, immersion and usually cost. For some, VR and AR are just the…

Written by Lucy Turner Programme Manager, A Fairer Start mission, & Isabel Newman, Senior Programme Manager, A Fairer Start mission

Tuition is a vital part of supporting children whose education has been disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, access to tutoring is often limited to the schools and parents that can most afford it. It’s estimated that around 80 per cent of disadvantaged pupils don’t have access to quality tuition.

Nesta is proud to have been part of the National Tutoring Programme, which supports schools in addressing this by giving them access to high-quality subsidised tutoring for as many disadvantaged…

Written by John McMahon, Product Director, IEG4

When you think of the main demographic of residents who use council services you tend to picture home-owners looking for council tax details, parents engaging with school services, or business owners looking for a licence. You think of this person perhaps being proficient in email, happy to jump on the phone to make a query, log in to a website for more information or make a payment, or even pop into their local council office to chase something up.

In reality, council services are used by a wider age range and the latest…

Written by Adrian Leer, Managing Director at Triad Group Plc

At the recent Digital Leaders Week conference, I was privileged to share a platform with Ben Towers and Eva Applebaum for our discussion around diversity and mental wellbeing within the workplace. The discussion itself was very rich and rewarding, but today I wanted to share some of my reflections as I was preparing for that discussion.

There has been, I believe, is a tendency to attribute all manner of things to Covid and its associated effect on society, particular lockdown and working from home. …