The Raven's Blog

Re-energising citizen engagement

10.12.18: Could smart cities and social media be the perfect match? Simon Dennis, director of artificial intelligence and analytics innovation at SAS UK, reports.  Politics is a divisive issue and not simply from a philosophical standpoint....

New framework addresses the importance of digital transformation for the public sector

04.12.18: Ryan Reed, head of public sector sales at Swiss Post Solution (SPS), reveals the new ESPO 390 framework, which can help address the need for digital transformation across the public sector.  The administrative and financial b...

Blog: 5 minutes with Anna-Jane Hunter, Director for the North of England Rail at Network Rail

28.11.18: Ahead of next year’s EvoNorth, taking place on 27-28 February 2019, we caught up with Anna-Jane Hunter, Director of North of England Rail at Network Rail. She will be joining us on our exclusive Transport and Connectivity panel discussion...

Storytelling is important when it comes to busting fraud

26.11.18: Marc McAuley, CIPFA’s counter-fraud manager, invites everyone to get involved in next year’s Government Counter Fraud Awards before nominations close this Friday. Fraud is not a new offence in the UK, having been written into th...

PFI is gone, but the need for private money will not disappear

19.11.18: Alan Bermingham, policy manager at CIPFA, analyses the government’s decision to abolish future use of PFI/PF2 funding arrangements. Many people were caught by surprise when the chancellor announced PFI/PF2 contacts will not be used f...

Social value in public procurement

12.11.18: Rose Lasko-Skinner, researcher at Reform, is currently working on a paper looking at choice and competition in the public sector and has written on how failure to understand risk makes for poor procurement practices. Here, she discusses the impo...

Spending Review: Chances are you’ll have to get smarter with budget, but how?

05.11.18: PSE take a look at smarter, data-driven ways of working to improve value-based spending ahead of next year's Spending Review.  It’s been almost 10 years since austerity measures first scythed through the public sector. In that ti...

Intelligent Connectivity is transforming central government

24.10.18: Tim Skinner, head of central government at BT, discusses Intelligent Connectivity, and how it’s transformating central government. It’s no secret that central government agencies and departments face new challenges like deliveri...

What’s so great about public sector frameworks?

24.10.18: Danny Longbottom, director of local government and health at BT, takes a look at public sector frameworks, and explains what his organisation can do to help. Everyone in the public sector is feeling the squeeze. The pressure to reduce costs...

The council of the future

22.10.18: Georgina Maratheftis, programme manager for local government at techUK, paints a picture of what the council of the future could look like – and just how we might get there. It’s a universally acknowledged truth that local gover...

What cities should become

15.10.18: Tom Leaver, project manager at Future Cities Catapult, examines the rationale behind the creation of the City Data Sharing Toolkit, and explores how this is driving a seismic shift in how cities evolve into our data-rich future. We’re...

Artificial intelligence: Is it really worth it?

08.10.18: Hugo D’Ulisse, technical director, public sector at SAS UK & Ireland, outlines the top issues you’ll need to consider for making artificial intelligence (AI) a success. When it comes to AI, it feels like the UK has ente...

Social value: what is it and why?

14.09.18: Ben Carpenter, chief executive of Social Value UK, discusses the worth of social value, and argues that, before we start measuring social value, we should ask clearly: what is it, and why? Social value is so much more than a value for mone...

Social value in Greater Manchester: lessons learned

12.09.18: Peter Schofield, Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) collaborative procurement programme manager, looks back at the region’s history of adopting social value policy and outlines what lessons his team has learned as a result. ...

Pioneering the future of housing

10.09.18: In an ideal world, housing should follow infrastructure rather than the other way around, says County Councils Network (CCN) Conservative vice-chairman and leader of Staffordshire County Council, Philip Atkins. In June, CCN held its first-e...