News Stories

It was gratifying to see a mention of the successful delivery of NPWD by the minister in charge of the packaging regulations, Ben Bradshaw. The full quote is below and comes from page 5 of the committee meeting minutes where Parliament approved the changes in regulations needed for the system.

“The hon. Member for Cheltenham mentioned IT costs. The cost that has been quoted is just for maintenance and some development. The database cost £400,000, of which £350,000 was put forward by the industry. He may welcome the fact that it is an unusual piece of Government IT in that has been successfully delivered on time and to cost.”

The reason it was delivered on time and to cost?  A combination of Kubernetes project facilitation, Solution 7’s development expertise and the right people from all the stakeholder groups on the project team.

The full National Packaging Waste Database went live this morning.

The NPWD project has now delivered an on-line system to manage the Packaging Waste regulatory regime. Jeremy Renwick from Kubernetes faciliated the 12 stakeholder groups involved in the regime (from both the public sector and industry) to capture and agree the requirements for the system. Jeremy also managed the process of implementation working closely with senior management in the Environment Agency and the developers of the system Solution 7 Ltd

The system has been delivered on-time and to budget, a significant result, given that the project deals with a complex area of government regulation and involves a very diverse user community.

Kubernetes is delighted to announce that it has joined the UK Information Technology Association (UKITA).

A bit of background is worth noting. UKITA has come about as a direct result of the government’s “clustering” initiatives that started in 2002. At that time, the regional development agencies (RDA) were given funds to get SMEs to collaborate with academia, government and each other to build their businesses. The original vision was to try and engineer something akin to Silicon Valley in California which has a potent mix of capital, ideas and enterprise in several technology sectors.

This funding levels varied depending on the economic circumstances of the region and it was used in different ways by each RDA. In the South East the money was spread thinly and tactically; in the West Midlands it was used more strategically with the West Midlands IT Association being set up and given 3 years funding to cover the whole region. This was successfully built to over 300 paying members.

In the South East, OxIT Cluster, with Jeremy as a part-time facilitator, was one of the few organisations to be successful in developing collaboration, however the funding levels were much lower and for only 18 months. It also became clear that to solve many of the issues faced by IT SMEs a national voice was needed. While there was, and is, a national voice for IT in Intellect, it is dominated by the multinationals, most of which are not British. From the solid base that was WMITA, UKITA has been launched with one of its aims to provide that national voice for the ICT SME community.

OxIT decided to join at the AGM at the end of September and will become one of the first full branches outside the Midlands.

Please see also the white paper Developing the UK ICT Industry