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How aql has been using AI to augment events

Louise Westcott — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 11:47:39 +0000

In simple terms, artificial intelligence (AI) is machine-simulated human intelligence. AI technology allows machines to learn, adapt, and perform tasks that previously required humans to do. It has an incredibly broad range of uses, including machine learning, robotics, neural networks, and language processing. Thanks to AI’s ability to learn, it improves continuously. For many, it has already become a part of daily working life, a trend that is set to grow and expand in the coming years.

AI is poised to revolutionise industries, particularly the telecommunications marketplace, by driving efficiency, innovation, and enhanced user experiences. At aql, we see AI as a key enabler to improve our and our customer’s business outcomes. This is why we’ve been designing large language models capable of supporting all elements of aql’s business services and pipelines. Currently, we are leveraging advanced AI technology, specifically generative pre-trained transformers (GPT), to create AI models that can be used for specific purposes.

We have recently incorporated AI into several hackathons that we have held. In order to do this, we created an array of GPT AI assistants that were equipped with all required knowledge for the hackathons’ challenges as well as in-depth knowledge of the aql Core IoT platform. The hackathons featured tasks that ranged from enabling live LoRaWAN and NB-IoT sensors, to developing decoders and visualisations through our Core platform, to creating virtual sensors using HTML and integrating InfluxDB and Grafana. Despite having to cater to attendees with a wide variety of technical competencies, the AI assistants’ thorough knowledge of the challenges and the Core IoT platform meant they were able to provide detailed guidance, automate routine tasks such as writing simple code, and enable attendees to get the most out of the event.

aql’s Hackathon AI interface in Use

It was inspiring to see how different teams adopted the AI assistants to maximise their learning and technical experiences. After each of the events, we were able to analyse the kinds of questions attendees asked the AI, making use of the AI’s inherent ability for exponential learning to improve it for future events, as well as helping us to suggest different prompt questions to attendees to help them get the most out of this technology. Interestingly, post-event analysis also revealed that teams who fully utilised the AI assistants at the events tended to perform best on the day.

Having successfully hosted three AI-assisted hackathons, we feel that the successful implementation of our AI demonstrates our commitment to driving a smarter, more connected future in the telecommunications industry, and strengthens our belief that by integrating AI into our workflow, we will be better positioned to manage our infrastructure, reduce operational costs, and deliver superior service, ultimately helping shape the future of the telecommunications industry. Looking ahead, the integration of AI will be fundamental in maintaining our position as a leader in technology innovation to empower a smarter connected society.

Originally posted here

10 ways that governments incentivise cloud use to accelerate digital transformation

Louise Westcott — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 10:44:08 +0000

Governments encourage public sector organisations, businesses, and citizens to embrace digital technologies and practices through a range of incentives. These incentives standardise processes and motivate behaviours that achieve the objectives of these initiatives in a way that can be sustained over time. They create an enabling culture for innovation and promote transparency and trust in digitised services.

As an Amazon Web Services (AWS) government transformation advisor, I’ve observed best practices that deliver success, and in this post, I summarise them. Here are 10 ways that governments use incentives to accelerate successful digital transformation.

1. Government grants and other financial support

Governments may offer agencies a share of savings achieved through change, as well as grants, subsidies, tax incentives, or low-interest loans. These support vehicles help offset the initial cost of transformation and encourage investment in technology upgrades.

For example, the Australia Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) invests in digital infrastructure that drives the digital economy. There are tax and other financial incentives targeted at building skills and using the DTA’s digital skills passport, MyPass.

2. Capacity building and training

Governments provide training programs, educational resources, hackathons, labs, incubators, and test beds to build digital literacy and technical skills among public sector employees, businesses, and citizens.

The Canadian government’s Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) program Beyond the Cloud trains people and upskill employees for essential roles such as cloud architects, engineers, and administrators. Beyond the Cloud is designed to give people skills to enter the modern workplace and to give businesses and the government the capability to transform.

3. Regulatory reforms

Governments update regulations and policies to remove barriers to digital innovation and entrepreneurship. This includes simplifying licensing processes, promoting interoperability standards, and creating regulatory sandboxes to allow for experimentation with new technologies in a controlled environment. Built-in guardrails and checkpoints increase awareness of reforms, compliance, and successful use.

Cloud-first policies are an example of a regulatory reform to incentivise digital transformation by removing blockers to commercial cloud adoption and use. In the Philippines, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) published the country’s Cloud First Policy to drive cloud adoption and “foster flexibility, security, and cost-efficiency.”

4. Public-private partnerships (PPPs)

Governments collaborate with private sector companies, industry associations, and academic institutions to develop joint initiatives and projects to advance digital transformation.

PPPs are one way to invest in the digital public infrastructure (DPI) that is an essential foundation for digital services. Ukraine’s open government procurement site Prozorro (which means transparency in Ukrainian) is an example of a successful PPP investment in DPI. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) invested in the development of Prozorro, which is estimated to have saved Ukraine’s government $6 billion since 2017.

Examples of successful government partnerships for transformation also include the development of cloud procurement agreements, cloud-first policies, and digital marketplaces.

5. Open data initiatives

Governments release public datasets and APIs to promote transparency, innovation, and economic development. Open data initiatives provide resources for businesses, researchers, and developers to use government data to create products and services.

Spain launched the Aporta Initiative in 2009 to open public information and promote data-based development of modern services. Aporta, backed by the provides insights on how to manage open data.

6. Digital service delivery

Governments digitise public services to improve accessibility, convenience, and efficiency for people and businesses. They develop online portals, mobile apps, and digital platforms to access government services and information. Simpler access drives service use and increases customer demand and adoption.

The United Kingdom Government Digital Service (GDS) incentivises public sector transformation with tools it creates that remove barriers to change and improve services. These are available for reuse. An example is the GDS design system, which streamlines websites and digital content with standardized styles, components, and patterns and offers a guide on how to use them. Another example is the General Services Administration’s (GSA) 18F in the US.

7. Recognition and awards

Governments recognise and reward organisations and individuals that demonstrate excellence in digital transformation and innovation. These awards raise awareness, incentivise best practices, and inspire others to embark on their digital transformation journey.

In 2023, the European Union had more than 330 applicants for the European Digital Skills Awards across five categories. Digital government awards build culture and community and motivate people to try new things.

8. National strategies and roadmaps

Governments develop national strategies for digital transformation to coordinate objectives and resource allocation across sectors and stakeholders. Digital strategies linked to government priorities tend to succeed. For example, the Korean Digital New Deal launched by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) has 12 goals across four sectors. Though the scope is broad, the individual goals are focused on specific government objectives and have led to South Korea being a recognised digital leader.

9. Monitor and evaluate against objectives

Governments set clear objectives and create mechanisms for continual introspection, improvement, and accountability. This helps leaders to make adjustments to keep activity on track.

For example, Saudi Arabia’s Digital Government Authority (DGA) established indicators and a public website to provide open and transparent measurement towards its goal to move 80% of its workloads to the cloud. The DGA goal and measurement support the Saudi 2030 Vision.

10. Financial operations and spending controls

FinOps is the practice of managing spend on cloud technology. Governments establish FinOps teams, produce guidance, and provide tools to help plan, monitor, and control spending. These resources help users manage the transition from upfront investment in capital infrastructure used for traditional IT to the pay-as-you-go model used to buy cloud technology.

The UK Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) provides guidance on cloud spending controls for all of the government. It owns and standardises controls, which reduces effort, removes guess work, and creates organization-wide best practices.

Conclusion

By implementing these incentives and strategies, governments create an enabling culture of innovation for digital transformation that supports increased user adoption, more transparency and trust, and better impacts. Incentives are a powerful mechanism for transformation. In building and executing on a digital strategy, consider how these and other incentives can be used to navigate different types of blockers to realize transformation objectives.

How using cloud technology can help your organisation meet sustainability goals

Louise Westcott — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 09:39:48 +0000

The right cloud technology leads to more sustainable IT and business operations. As a foundation for innovation, the cloud supports the delivery of sustainable products, services, and business models, and gives organizations the opportunity to transform themselves with sustainability at the core of their operation.

Technology and sustainability were among the top 10 priorities of CEOs in 2023, according to Gartner. Business leaders say they view both as important drivers of growth and innovation, and increasingly they’re using technology to achieve their sustainability goals.

Cloud technology has an important role to play here, and has the potential to address, mitigate, and help solve some of the biggest sustainability challenges. The scope of the cloud’s role in sustainability is highlighted in a recent series of AWS Institute masterclasses.

If companies start out on the right trajectory with their cloud deployment plan, they can accelerate their sustainability improvements and progressively achieve four gains:

More sustainable IT delivery
More sustainable business operations
Creation and delivery of more sustainable business models, services, and products
Thorough organizational transformation, with sustainability at the core of their operation

More energy-efficient IT delivery

AWS data centers are 3.6 times more energy efficient than a typical US enterprise data center and up to five times more energy efficient than the average in Europe.

So, when customers deploy technology using AWS Cloud infrastructure, they not only harness benefits but also pass them on to their customers in the form of measurable supply-chain sustainability improvements.

Amazon overall has committed to reaching net-zero carbon by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris climate agreement. Net-zero carbon is when you take the same amount of CO₂from the atmosphere as you put in.

We lead this drive with the following aims:

Match all of our electricity used in our operations with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of our original 2030 target.
Enable more than 400 renewable energy projects to generate enough renewable electricity to power the equivalent of 20.8 million European homes.
AWS will become water positive by 2030, returning more water to communities than we use in our direct operations.

And Amazon has been able to decouple business growth from CO₂ emissions, as I explain in IT operations and efficiencies, the second part of the AWS Institute Sustainability Masterclass series. In 2022, for the first time, Amazon reduced CO2 emissions by 0.4 percent even though growth was 9 percent year-over-year.

Digital asset monitoring helps cut carbon footprint

Most companies’ carbon footprints are not generated predominantly by IT operations but through their wider use of resources. The cloud can help target improvements here, too—for example, by creating efficiencies through digital asset monitoring.

When a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Turkey created a digital twin (virtual representation) of the facility, it could model its entire bottle-washing process and then simulate and compare different settings. Once it implemented optimal settings at the physical plant, the company saw a 20 percent annual energy savings and a 9 percent reduction in water consumption. It’s also saved an estimated 34 days in processing time annually.

The cloud can help companies pinpoint and drive all kinds of new sustainability-related efficiencies through the capture and analysis of data from digital sensors, the use of machine learning (ML), and the implementation of efficient building management, to name a few.

The AWS Sustainability Insights Framework further allows companies to analyze data from across their various resource-management systems, utility data, and more, so they can devise new targets and include findings in corporate sustainability reports.

Innovation

Achieving sustainability offers an economic opportunity worth $12 trillion by 2030, according to McKinsey. The potential starts with imagining the future—because much of the innovations that the world needs to transition to a net-zero economy from 2030 to 2050 do not yet exist. We must then work to overcome the constraints that businesses face today.

These constraints are a powerful focus for innovation. There are significant opportunities to drive innovation through the reuse of existing resources in a circular economy.

Several companies are working on recycling programs for batteries. Other innovative projects use geospatial data from satellites to optimize vegetation, water flow, biodiversity, and soil health across regions.

Transformation

Beyond targeted innovation, modern cloud technology presents opportunities for organizations to reinvent themselves with sustainability at the core of their operation. Arup, an engineering group, promotes environmental regeneration, biodiversity, and conservation of resources in its projects to achieve “more sustainable development in the built environment.”

Research suggests that $44 trillion of annual economic output depends on the natural environment, such as clean air and water, pollination, and forest cover. And while companies typically do not directly pay for them, they cannot be taken for granted, so organizations need to consider the materiality of biodiversity in their operations.

Islands make good laboratories for innovation, and the Naxos Smart Island project in Greece targets not just a more sustainable environment but also smart solutions linked to mobility, primary healthcare, and the transport of goods. The project—backed by the Greek government, local authorities, and the U.S. Embassy—will upgrade existing infrastructure, such as the local marina, energy grid, and water management systems to support smart infrastructure management.

Progress toward greater sustainability, aided by the cloud, begins with understanding an organization’s starting point and its scope for improvement. The potential for transformation is extensive once companies have set their course and are able to measure and interpret existing sustainability data, identify ways to optimize everyday operations, and introduce new innovation, business models, and mission statements.

Data to see the future

Louise Westcott — Thu, 09 May 2024 10:26:41 +0000

For many companies, data wins start simple… albeit powerfully. Businesses invest in standing up baseline data foundations (e.g. data collection and storage, quality, literacy training, tools adoption etc.) so that they can start knocking out wins such as….

Establishing trackable KPIs/OKRs at departmental levels

Using dashboards and visualizations to convey data more powerfully

Increasing data literacy org-wide

Leveraging data to set direction and see what is and isn’t working

Creating a culture of accountability via monthly/weekly report outs

Huge and important wins!

But as companies advance along their maturity journey, how they want to win with data often starts to change. They begin eying things like AI/ML adoption and acceleration, progressive KPI-ing (more on that here), eliminated data siloes, data science, automated analysis delivery and… for many…

Predictive analytics. Or using data to shift from asking “what happened?” to “what might happen?”

At the simplest of levels, predictive analytics is about leveraging advanced analytics and modeling techniques to make predictions about the future… future outcomes, trends, customer behavior, macro events, organization performance, etc.

Companies can leverage predictive analytics across so many different domains and focus areas from answering questions about buying behavior to supply chain management to product development to risk management and so on. In fact, it’s become such a pervasive focus and investment of leaders across all domains that the predictive analytics market alone is expected to grow from $12 million in 2022 to $38 million by 2028.

So, what steps can you take today regardless of the functional area you support? Here are a few quick tips:

Data as Treasure: What role do you want data to play in your day-to-day? Do you want it to be a core team member whose main focus is to “report the news,” or share what happened? Or do you want it to be a treasure? Trustworthy, full of insight, and rife with untapped opportunity worthy of steering your future. The role you want data to play is in fact a choice. Because no mater the functional area you lead, once you decide the significance of data in shaping both your day-to-day and future objectives, you can turn attention to making sure data foundations are in place — storage, quality, governance, literacy, etc. — so that you can then leverage advanced analytics and AI/ML techniques to turn your trusted data into a treasure of possibility. Lean into your partnership with your data/tech peers (or a third-party provider) to ensure you are fortifying the core pillars of your data ecosystem so that you can pave the wayfor data to be a business treasure.
Think Like a Futurist: According to research from the Institute for the Future, as a human population, most of us naturally struggle to think about the “far future.” In fact, 27% of Americans rarely or never think about their lives five years from now, as compared to 60% who think about the near future — one month from the present — every day. As you reflect on your relationship with the future, consider how this might help or hinder how often you spend time pulling your team, department, or organization to the future. For example, do you spend more time reviewing historical or current data? Predicting no more than a few weeks out? Forecasting months and years out? As you shift towards prioritizing predictive analytics, see if you can also strengthen your personal focus on the future, channeling the mindset and behaviors of Futurists.
Identify and Aim: Instead of starting big — going from descriptive to predictive team or organization-wide — consider picking a specific use case against which having predictive analytics would greatly help. For example, do you most need insight into customer buying patterns? Pricing models? Risk mitigation? Cash flow? Product stickiness? Once you have your top use case identified, work with your data/tech teams on building specific models and analyses with the data you already have (or pinpoint the data you need to begin tracking) and start deriving insights for that specific opportunity at hand. Leverage this mini use case to establish the proof of concept and generate the momentum needed to then drive greater predictive analytics impact.

Your journey from descriptive to predictive can begin at any time. And it often just starts by asking one simple but powerful question… what might happen in the future with our business?

Originally posted here

White Rose Park Hackathon, aql Hackathon

Louise Westcott — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 16:18:57 +0000

Hosted by aql, Ingenuity Leeds, Fyma and Nexus, the White Rose Park Hackathon showcased aql’s Core IoT platform and its capabilities, as well as providing the next generation with a chance to learn about how our technology enables businesses.

As one of the UK’s most innovative telecoms operators and a ‘hidden enabler’ of smart cities, banking, healthcare, finance, logistics, education, and innovation, the past few years have seen us launch several 5G and IoT testbeds including the Eden Project, Connected Cowes, Factory of the Future, and Mobile Access North Yorkshire.

Our partners joined the event to provide industry insights, sensor data, and IoT hardware, as well as delivering insightful talks on the practical application of IoT and real-world insights of its adoption across a mix of industries. All are powered by our global mobile network and complete Core IoT platform.

The goal of the hackathon was to allow our amazing partners to discuss real-world emerging IoT and 5G connectivity innovation across a wealth of amazing regional and national initiatives, as well as providing local partners, businesses, and students with a series of hackathon challenges leveraging our Core IoT platform.

“The Ingenuity team is proud to have partnered with aql, Fyma and Nexus on this dynamic one-day hackathon that delved into the realms of IoT and 5G. Witnessing the enthusiasm of the college students diving into challenges, collaborating, and ingeniously solving problems exemplifies the boundless potential of the next generation.

The synergy between the team members from the business world and the students underscored the importance of nurturing talent, and fostering an environment where diverse minds converge to tackle real-world problems.

The success of this event reinforces our commitment to cultivating the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs, who, armed with creativity and knowledge, are poised to shape the future of the world we live in.”
Mark Midlren, Co-founder, Ingenuity Leeds

We have been implementing AllIoT’s LoRaWAN sensors across all our 5G and IoT Testbeds, so it was our pleasure as our new IoT Hardware Partner for Rob to present his vision for IoT hardware and provide insights to the students regarding the use of LoRaWAN sensors and there deployment across differing industry segments.

“We were thrilled to be invited to be a part of the aql hackathon. IoT for many people is still a new concept; events like this play a key role in driving the technology forward and educating others about what is actually possible with the Internet of Things and LoRaWAN. Thank you to the aql team for putting on such a thought provoking, interactive event.”
Rob Ferriday, Business Development Manager, AllIoT

With their enormous wealth of data, Dales Land Net explained how their soil moisture monitoring technology informs decisions that protect and help agriculture, livestock, and residents in the Yorkshire Dales. Dalesland Net provided a wealth of sensor readings for the students from across all their rural test locations.

Visualisation of Dales Land Net soil sensors, these visualisations were built using api.core.al.com

All the visualisations are available to download from https://github.com/aql-com/iot_event

“A really interesting event hosted by aql. Lots of networking opportunities and good discussions all around. Above all it’s great to see students getting to grips with aql’s technology and working on real world data. Good luck to them all.”
Neale Hall, Founder, Dales Land Net

Leeds City Council walked the partners and students through how the council are deploying LoRaWAN sensors and technology across the city to aid the utilisation and reporting of Street Lighting, flood alerts and air quality. Leeds City Council provided a selection of indoor and outdoor sensor readings to the students to learn about their local environment and what factors can influence air quality.

“The Hackathon was a great opportunity to share the work that Leeds City Council is doing, and to meet new and existing contacts from the local area.

It’s refreshing to get together in person and share ideas as so much work is done remotely these days.

We were very impressed with the enthusiasm and skills of the young people that attended, and hope that they’re inspired to pursue a career in technology.”
James Glenton, IT Service Transition, Leeds City Council

Visualisation within core.aql.com of one of the Leeds City Council sensors illustrating air quality and temperature

Fyma is a strategic partner of Ingenuity and provides White Rose Park with AI-powered cameras which empower businesses to understand human activity in the physical world, providing occupancy, placemaking space utilisation data, and insights. Fyma provided a month’s set of AI camera readings from across the White Rose Park to aid students and partners in understanding occupancy, as well as people and vehicle flow across that period.

“It was a pleasure to be a partner for the hackathon event. I really loved the participants’ enthusiasm and insight working with the data provided to them. Alongside us, a range of companies delivered insightful talks on their experiences with IoT technology and data visualisation, providing attendees with a deeper understanding of how this technology can be used.”
Karen Burns, CEO, Fyma

Digital Leaders, a trusted partner of ours for many years, were at the event as attendees to learn about aql’s Core IoT technology and how it was used to enable businesses.

“The hackathon at White Rose Park was a fantastic event. Companies using IoT for a whole spectrum of use cases presented on their experiences with aql’s Core IoT technology, giving me a great insight into the potential of the platform.” Louise Westcott, Head of Online at Digital Leaders

Following our partner talks, the hackathon half of the event got underway. For this section of the event, over 20 bright and enthusiastic students and their tutors were sent from Leeds City College to take part. The students were split into teams, paired up with our business partners, and given the chance to understand and interact with our mobile network and IoT technology through a wealth of IoT sensor readings from across all our 5G/IoT testbeds. They took part in a variety of challenges from reprogramming our IoT Edge gateways, adding sensors to our LoRaWAN network, and programming widgets to creating custom web parts.

The work the students completed was an inspiration. We were so pleased to be a part of the exploration of IoT that was undertaken by the students and gave the winning students access to our Core IoT platform and IoT data SIMs allowing access to our mobile network, hopefully inspiring and empowering their further exploration of IoT.

“The presentations gave the students background information on the different sensors. The group activities were well throughout and all students seemed to get involved not only with the task at hand but also with the developers, asking questions throughout the day. The event was very hands on and this is what the students seemed to enjoy the most. It was wonderful to see how all the students engaged as not all students had much knowledge of software development or any programming languages but yet still tried to have a go.”
Cheryl Macfarlane, Deputy of Apprenticeships and Commercial, Leeds City College

Originally posted here

Without intervention, AI could widen the digital divide for students

Louise Westcott — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 15:31:04 +0000

Access to education is a basic human right for all. The United Nations describes education as “the building block for every society” – but for those experiencing digital inequity, there is a very real risk of falling behind as more learning moves online.

One issue that has not been properly addressed is how poor access to artificial intelligence (AI) in education could widen the attainment gap. With its potential to enhance the student experience, barriers to accessing AI tools could increase the digital divide for those living with disadvantage.

As one of the founding members of the data poverty APPG, a cross-party parliamentary group with a mission to eradicate data poverty across the UK, Jisc is committed to levelling the playing field, and is taking steps to help support this.

Since the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022, the use of generative AI has grown exponentially, and there has been much discussion around the implications for education. AI has the potential to help educators better understand and meet the needs of their learners and can provide students with a new set of skills, but this comes at a cost.

During recent discussion forums with tertiary students about their use of AI, one of their main concerns was fair access and usage, particularly after charges started to be added to tools such as ChatGPT4.

Initial estimates by the experts at Jisc’s national centre for AI (NCAI) found that if a student were to subscribe to a full suite of popular generative AI tools and education plug-ins, it could cost them around £1,000 a year, pushing generative AI out of reach for many.

Some AI tools are currently free to use but, without adequate connectivity, some students may still struggle to keep up with their peers and access the education they deserve.

In Jisc’s 2022/23 digital experience insights survey for students, a third of respondents across higher education (HE) and a quarter from further education (FE) said that issues with poor wifi and mobile data were barriers to education.

As part of the data poverty APPG state of the nation report, Jisc recommends that free internet connectivity in public spaces be increased for students, and that websites for essential services, including access to educational services, should be zero-rated.

Jisc continues to work with education providers to widen access to the internet, and we are currently running trials of affordable AI tools for educators in colleges to create a variety of essential and engaging materials for their students.

More assessment is needed before AI becomes part of everyday use in education but, at the very least, all learners must be given access to suitable tools to ensure that disadvantaged individuals and communities are not excluded from education

Originally posted here

How one council used machine learning to cut translation costs by 99.6%

Louise Westcott — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 08:30:01 +0000

The United Kingdom (UK) has a strong track record of impactful innovation. Our public services need to find creative ways to deliver services differently and more efficiently so we meet our communities’ changing needs, while always protecting the people who rely on these services.

Swindon Borough Council serves a multicultural community of 230,000 citizens in the south of England. We continuously review emerging and evolving technologies, seeking to leverage them to reimagine and improve services, lower costs, and enhance efficiency. The success of a recent translation project that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services is a prime example of this. My colleagues and I share our experience in this AWS Institute video.

Watch now: How Swindon Council used machine learning to cut translation costs by 99.6%

Swindon Council caters to a large number of languages spoken across the borough of Swindon. But this posed a particular challenge for the budget of our paediatric therapy team, where we were consistently overspending on translating important healthcare documents for families with young children, yet only covering the legal minimum that we were required to translate.

All that has changed dramatically since building Translate, a machine translation application. Our emerging technology team used Amazon Web Services (AWS) to create a solution that translates content more quickly, cheaply, and simply than the human translation services we had been using up until then, while keeping children’s data properly protected and maintaining translation quality. We began by using Amazon Translate, a neural machine translation service from AWS; then, we collaborated with AWS solutions architects to add services for user validation and personal identifiable information (PII) needs to build our solution, Translate.

Translate has provided multiple benefits for our team since we launched it. First, the speed. Before we started using Translate last year, it could take as long as 19 days to get a document translated. Now, it takes us under 15 minutes. There is no obvious trade-off in quality. In the 12 months since implementing the programme, we have not had a single request for clarification about the documents translated.

Second, the cost savings are equally impressive. In 2021, we translated about 400 documents, each one costing an average of almost £160. Our annual translation costs of about £64,000 ($81,000) have since shrunk to £27 ($34), just 7p (less than 10 cents) per machine-translated document. Plus, the council did not have to invest any capital upfront, beyond the time of our tech team. The return on investment for this project verges on the surreal: somewhere in the region of 6.3 million percent.

Third, the application’s simple, user-friendly design makes it accessible for all our staff. It takes about 15 minutes to learn how to use it. In less than a month, our entire paediatric therapy department was using the new programme with ease.

At the heart of Translate’s success is its use of cloud services, which are key to promoting innovation cheaply and securely. For our needs, a serverless solution is far more resilient and requires less maintenance. More importantly, it opens up new possibilities. The cloud provides a safe place to experiment and explore ideas. And when we start to see potentially valuable results, it also enables us to share our work with others in order to pool resources and build more quickly.

The positive effect of this project extends far beyond the time and money saved by Swindon Borough Council. We have open-sourced our Translate solution and it can be applied to organisations with similar challenges all over the world—not just other local authorities, but also hospitals, schools, central governments, charitable organisations, and private sector enterprises. Inspecting bodies in the UK, including the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), have praised the solution, while those in our justice system have praised it for supporting inclusion and accessibility.

We have developed a more generic solution with built-in security and user management so that it can be safely adopted by our peers in the public sector. We have received widespread interest across the UK, including councils from Edinburgh to Newport, Southampton to West Berkshire already using the solution, and now also from two councils in France. The UK National Institute for the Blind is exploring how this could transform converting information into Braille.

We collaborated with City Trax Solutions, an AWS Partner specialising in empowering cities and local governments with cutting-edge, open-source technology, to the Translate solution. They managed deployment and testing, and delivered training and ongoing support. The solution also meets data compliance requirements. European cities such as Warsaw, Poland, and Rotterdam, the Netherlands, are now interested in this solution.

We’ve seen users apply the technology in innovative ways since it can be used across a range of council services. At Swindon Borough Council, the Warm Welcome Team used it to support refugees from Ukraine and Afghanistan. The Live Well Team uses it to promote cancer screening clinics and child vaccinations. The Adult Community Learning Team uses it as part of no-cost English courses. We’ve also provided schools with rapid turnaround information such as letters that must be translated for parents about school trips. We’re exploring how Translate can support the ways the council deals with incoming communications in any language by offering almost instant translations (such as phone calls, video calls, in person, email, social media, chat bot interactions, and more).

The overall impact of the project for the council has been profound. It has shown how we can take advantage of modern technology services to solve real business and community problems, at pace and in innovative ways; it also shows the power of collaboration with local communities and the private sector to harness new technology for positive societal outcomes. That has enabled us to become digital pioneers, and benefit other communities beyond our own. Above all, it has enabled us to free up financial resources and provide better, more efficient public services.

Originally posted here

The power of cloud: protecting citizen data from cyberattacks

Louise Westcott — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 14:03:24 +0000

Public sector organisations are digitising fast as they strive to deliver better and more cost-effective services. However, this puts them at increased risk of cybercrime. Recent high-profile data breaches and cyberattacks have cost millions and damaged public trust. With cloud technology, organisations can make the most of digital delivery while minimising their cybersecurity risk.

Convenience brings risk

The shift to digital is transforming how public sector organisations work. Online services have replaced paperwork and queues for council services. Machine learning is helping local authorities to predict where they should focus their resources. And cloud systems make it possible for council teams to work more efficiently, from anywhere.

This digital convenience does, however, come with risks. While they save money and greatly enhance what councils can do, digital services can also be vulnerable to cybercrime. Because of the sensitive data they carry, public service organisations are an especially popular target for hackers. According to insurers Gallagher, councils in the UK were hit by an average of 10,000 cyberattacks a day in the first half of 2022. Data from the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) shows that around 40% of the incidents it managed between September 2020 and August 2021 were aimed at the public sector.

The consequences of an attack can be serious. Data breaches have left many councils in millions of pounds of debt and have disrupted or disabled services, with staff sometimes forced to resort to pen and paper. Residents have received incorrect benefit amounts or have not received payments on time, and changes to council tax bills have not been applied, leading to residents paying incorrect amounts. It can take months to recover from a cyberattack. This can all cause lasting damage to a local authority’s reputation.

Technology is the key

For public service organisations, protecting against cyberattacks is not only about technology. Employees need to understand, for example, how to spot and avoid targeted attacks such as phishing, and to use correct password protocols and authentication.

But technology is the most important line of defence. Regardless of how security-aware its people are, a council needs its IT estate to be protected against constantly evolving cybersecurity threats. This means managing a never-ending cycle of patches and upgrades to legacy systems, which is expensive, time-consuming and places a huge burden of responsibility on IT teams.

Cloud: where the security is

Cloud solutions offer a way out of this situation. With a cloud-first IT strategy, hardware, software and security management are all managed by the cloud provider. On the face of it, this may itself feel like a cybersecurity risk. What if the provider is compromised?

Acknowledging this concern, in 2020 the NCSC published a whitepaper identifying 13 security benefits of cloud services. The paper points out that they solve the big security challenges faced by traditional technology environments, such as always knowing exactly which services are exposed to the internet and having a consistent approach to crucial security tasks such as authentication and monitoring.

The difference with cloud is scale and resources. Microsoft, whose Azure platform underpins Civica’s cloud software, spends billions of dollars each year on cybersecurity and employs thousands of security specialists. Cloud platforms like Azure run in highly secure data centres and have their security capabilities constantly updated to deal with ever evolving cyberthreats. The move to cloud means a move to state-of-the-art cybersecurity.

It may feel counterintuitive that the best way to protect citizens’ data is to put it in the cloud. But today, that’s where the greatest amount of cybersecurity investment and expertise is concentrated. By moving to the cloud, public service organisations can equip themselves with the highest level of cybersecurity while passing responsibility for it to the cloud provider. This leaves teams to focus on what they do best – creating and delivering better public services for the citizens they serve.

Originally posted here

4 ways lenders can prepare for navigating a perfect storm

Louise Westcott — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 16:04:40 +0000

Lenders are facing an unprecedented set of challenges.

It’s widely recognised that continued inflation, rising interest rates and the ensuing cost-of-living crisis will inevitably lead to increasing numbers of customers falling into arrears. As during Covid, in this environment, lenders will face the dual pressures of increasing provisions on the balance sheet and the increased operational expense of supporting their customers through this period. The customer service teams, and particularly those in collections, are likely to see increasing vulnerability, causing call volumes to increase significantly and forbearance options to become more complex. The operational challenges are significant; even if the additional resource that’s required can be secured, those new employees also have to be trained, equipped and retained.

This tough macro-economic environment unfortunately coincides with a challenging period in terms of compliance and regulation. The introduction of Consumer Duty in July 2023 means that lenders of all types and sizes need to examine the way they operate, and may need to adapt. This new and enhanced set of standards places consumers at the heart of the business, potentially changing the products they offer, the way they engage with their customers and the expectations of their suppliers. To compound matters, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, financial crime compliance has become increasingly challenging, with organisations constantly battling to ensure that systems are up to date with ever-changing PEPs and sanctions lists.

Organisations should be acting now to carefully manage the impact of these factors and fully prepare for what’s to come. Protecting and supporting all customers, particularly those who are vulnerable – identifying those at risk of falling into arrears and supporting those already in arears – will be tough, especially with one eye on capital requirements.

Our recent survey highlights where teams need to act

Sopra Steria surveyed over 1,000 consumers in February 2023. We wanted to understand how they were coping with the cost-of-living crisis and how they felt about the support they were receiving.

What was most interesting was the fact that around a fifth of people we surveyed (19%) said they weren’t confident they were able to pay all their bills. When we asked whether they were confident in being able to pay an unexpected bill, the figure rises to 30% who weren’t confident.

So, overall we’re seeing a lack of confidence in the finances of a significant proportion of the UK’s population. We also asked our cohort what they would do if they found themselves unable to pay a bill. While nearly 60% would seek support from friends or family members, what is worrying is that 15% of respondents said they’d ‘do nothing’.

What should lenders do to prepare?

The results of the survey also point to poor data quality and a lack of access to important data throughout the customer lifecycle. Over a third of respondents (36%) stated that they never get a personalised service from their main bank. To do so requires robust data collection and management, as well as a consumer-centric approach to engagement. The lack of reliable and robust data prevents many organisations from being able to effectively communicate with customers, or to make informed decisions.

Typical challenges we see lenders facing include:

data held on each individual is incomplete or out of date
data is stored in a legacy system which agents can’t access
data is heavily reliant on human inputs and susceptible to user errors

This lack of quality data and associated insights is also preventing financial services teams from forming a 360 degree view of their customers, and hampering their ability to identify and support ‘at risk’ people.

To properly prepare for the increase in demand from customers in financial difficulty, and to ensure full compliance with Consumer Duty in the care of all customers, lenders should act sooner rather than later in these key areas:

1. Using data for personalisation

The results from our survey show that people aren’t getting a personalised service, with appropriate decision-making. A siloed approach to data combined with poor data quality, management and access means many organisations are setting themselves up to fail as soon as a customer is onboarded.

To overcome these challenges, lenders need to take the time to fully understand the different data sources available to them. Making good use of behavioural data, showing how a customer interacts with your organisation at different touchpoints will give your teams insight and knowledge into how they are likely to behave in future. As a starting point do you know how often a customer phones your helpdesk, visits your website, or has a face-to-face interaction with one of your staff?

Investing in data analytics will then ensure this information is properly used to build different customer personas and segments, allowing for insight-driven decision-making and the creation of personalised services.

2. Prepare for change with predictive modelling

Predictive modelling of customer behaviour enables a forward-thinking and proactive view of the customer, helping to identify who is likely to default on a debt, and when. Using such insight will enable lenders to create successful contact strategies.

With so much change in the financial services environment, it can be difficult to look to the future and the challenges it holds. With the impact of the cost-of-living crisis reaching far and wide, there’s a real need to fully understand customers and their attitudes to debt. In particular, it’s critical to get a solid understanding of which consumers can’t pay – and protecting them – and effectively managing those who won’t pay.

The aim of the Consumer Duty is to ensure fair treatment of customers throughout their financial lifecycle. The reason why many financial services fail, especially in debt collection where we see expensive litigation and enforcement, is because debtors often feel mistreated. Our survey results show that quite a significant proportion of the population (15%) would choose to ‘do nothing’ if they couldn’t pay an unexpected bill. There is still a tendency for people to ignore chasing from lenders, as well as being reluctant to contact them for support.

3. Provide self-service options

In our survey, we asked people how they would prefer their lender got in touch if they were falling behind in their payments for a loan or mortgage. The results were very mixed, reflecting a real need for omni-channel services within this sector.

18% preferred to be contacted by post, 15% by telephone call, 16% via a text message and 12% by email. 9% preferred to be contacted via a mobile app, the same amount as those who preferred to engage with their lender at a branch. Clearly face to face communication is still important in some of the population’s financial lifecycle.

The results for this question specifically may reflect the nature of the situation. Debt is a highly sensitive and embarrassing topic for many. As our survey showed, debtors may not admit they have a problem and prefer not to actively seek help and support. Therefore, the type of communication people prefer will reflect those needs. The spread of preferences across the varying channels identified in our survey suggests people have different needs and prefer to engage in different ways. Banks and other lenders need to adapt their communication strategies to reflect that.

Self-service works for some people, but others will prefer the human touch. Some may not be able to visit a branch, especially with widespread closures, but some will be unable to engage digitally due to a lack of online access or skills.

To make successful debt collections a reality, customer journeys need to be designed with integrated touchpoints, offering customers the opportunity to pay on their terms via the channels they use and are comfortable with.

4. Integrated supply chain

To prevent bad debt, reduce operational costs, and make sure customers are cared for throughout their financial lifecycle, structured and proactive engagement is required. This can only be achieved with robust and well-managed data and analytics, supported by an appropriate service management model. This model should include not only the management and monitoring of in-house customer service teams’ activities, but also those activities carried out by other third parties within the supplier ecosystem.

Working with a Systems Integrator you can leverage sophisticated technologies such as Big Data, AI and Internet of Things (IoT) to provide real time insights into consumer behaviour and preferences. Using that insight, financial services providers can create those personalised customer journeys that consumers are looking for.

Next Steps

Unfortunately, the work by lenders to point people to the support that’s available, either from themselves or from the network of charities, hasn’t got through to consumers. There are still many in the population who either aren’t aware of the support available or are choosing to ignore their financial worries, rather than reaching out for the support that’s available.

At Sopra Steria we believe it’s time for change. Lenders who are proactive in their approach, revisiting their existing vulnerability and customer engagement methods will be better placed to handle the increase in demand for support we’re seeing from customers. As the cost-of-living crisis continues and Consumer Duty increases scrutiny and pressure on the sector, creating a solid foundation of customer-centric data and analytics will help teams to deliver compliant, personalised and supportive services right through the crisis and beyond.

Originally posted here

A cloudy outlook for your digital transformation?

Louise Westcott — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 13:55:22 +0000

I know this is embarrassing to admit, but I don’t really understand the cloud. Sure, I can describe what it does. I can even tell you all about the underlying technologies that make it work and how they fit together. With a fair wind, I might be able to walk you through the set up of a large cloud data centre and its operation. But, I’m not sure that really gets to the heart of the opportunities and challenges presented by the cloud.

This came home to me very clearly recently when I received a nasty surprise that one of the websites I set up had been hacked. Head to the URL of the site and you get a barrage of pop-up windows from the anti-virus software you’re running warning you about all sorts of dangers. Then checking my email, I found several messages from my internet service provider, domain name registrar, and internet security response teams threatening me with bans and fines unless I ceased this bad behaviour!

What on earth had I done to deserve this? The answer, of course, is that I have not really understood the risks and obligations of relying on a third-party cloud service. This shock is a wake-up call that brings home the implications of working in a digital world that relies significantly on cloud-based connectivity and service provision. Perhaps it also reinforces that mantra that you don’t really understand something until it has gone wrong and you have to fix it!

Into the clouds

The arrival of cloud computing is one of the most important and conspicuous trends in computer services delivery in recent times. It already has a widespread impact on digital transformation of business, making inroads in private and public sectors alike. Whether viewed as a natural extension of Internet-based computing or a completely new phenomenon, high-bandwidth interconnectivity coupled with cheap processors and storage serve organizations by creating large computing centers that may be located anywhere around the world.

Simply stated, instead of accessing computing resources on your desk, you are instead relying on the internet to take advantage of digital technology owned and managed by someone else. This could be nearby or on the other side of the world. These centralized computing centers can be created by a single organization, shared between organizations, or provided by third parties as a resource that can be acquired as necessary. This gives rise to digital technology infrastructures that can be coordinated more effectively via shared service centers and supported more efficiently using a flexible set of hardware and software services that can expand and contract as an individual or organization’s needs evolve.

This move towards a centralized approach for greater flexibility and efficiency in service delivery is not new. From the earliest days of computing there have been efforts to centralize computer resources, share access to costly infrastructure, increase flexibility of access to common services, improve responsiveness to peak demands for capabilities. What is new in the recent move towards cloud computing is the technology infrastructure that now makes that possible, the business environment forcing efficiencies across digital service delivery, the expanding global nature of many organizations and their supply chains, and a broader re-evaluation of the role of digital services supporting the organization’s value to its stakeholders.

According to the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the main focus of a cloud computing approach is to deliver ‘convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction’. The value of this approach is that it offers a great deal of flexibility to users of those resources. In particular, capabilities can be rapidly and elastically scaled up when demands for those capabilities increase, and similarly scaled down when demand falls.

The flexibility possible with cloud computing approaches is essential. Not only does it encourage dynamic relationships in the supply chain, it also provides much more explicit ways to look at infrastructure costs, to assign them to the role of each organization and team. It also encourages delivery approaches more suited to today’s highly diverse and rapidly evolving organizations.

We have seen many traditional solutions ported to a cloud platform. The opportunities and advantages of this switch are obvious. However, there are also many issues that must be considered in this move regarding security, privacy, and access. These concerns are best illustrated using a simple example; Setting up a website.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave

So, you want to build a website. Isn’t that now super-easy? Today, creating and managing a website seems like such a mundane activity. With all the experience we have had over the years, you would be forgiven for thinking that this was uninteresting. A done deal. Yet, even this activity provides a very useful illustration of the strengths and weaknesses of cloud-based services.

When I set up websites over 20 years ago, the task involved a lot of work to acquire, install, configure, and manage the system. Typically, I would need to build a new computer from scratch and get it running a core stack of LAMP infrastructure software. This provided the key services of Linux (operating system), Apache (web server), MySQL (database), and PHP (scripting language). Correctly configured (no mean feat!), this computer could be connected to the internet to act as a web server. Requests for webpages would resolve to an IP address that connected to this machine and the webpage would be returned.

By taking this approach, I was accepting all responsibility for security, privacy and access rights to the services I was hosting. Consequently, a great deal of effort was required to ensure correct configuration of this system, update all software to the latest versions, manage logfiles to view usage patterns, block unwanted access, build resilience into the systems in case of failure, and so on. A great deal of effort, but essential to maintain safe and continuous operation.

Move forward to today’s cloud-based world, and the choices for setting up a website are quite different. Essentially, you have 3 options (each with numerous variations):

1. Instead of setting up your own computer, cloud providers such as AWS and Google will provision a computer for you. This can be configured with a LAMP stack of software which they will manage on your behalf. Everything else remains as it was. You are responsible for installing software, managing webpages on the webserver, and for keeping this safe and secure.

2. A wide variety of web hosting companies such as Ionos, Bluehost, and 365hosts are now available who have built web management services on top of cloud-based infrastructure. They host software services for website management such as WordPress and give full access to allow you to manage and configure cloud-based capabilities for a wide set of needs such as file sharing, collaboration, sharing courseware, and much more. Rather than configure the core computing platform, these aspects are handled by the hosting company to ensure that platform is available and secure. Your responsibilities are to ensure that you manage your WordPress instance and all its web content effectively by keeping it up-to-date, configuring it appropriately, and monitoring its use.

3. Specialist website management companies such as Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace, and GoDaddy have created simplified webpage building tools and web hosting services. Each of these provides specializations using templates for websites in different categories (e.g., storefronts or online education providers) and customized integrations with other web services (e.g., accepting payments or verifying online identity). They perform all underlying management of the computer infrastructure for you and provide a customized set of web building options based on your needs, subscription level, and package of services you committed to buy. Crucially, you rely on the website management company to address all security and privacy concerns. You are freed of the burden of the vast majority of security and privacy issues (but not all!). To achieve this, they restrict the use of their systems. Through a set of managed services, they limit configuration options and prohibit many of the more advanced web capabilities that are emerging to provide a more robust environment.

These 3 levels of capability are all viable options when building a website. Each of them can be used successfully to deliver a meaningful service and meet your users needs. The challenge is to understand the implications, risks, and trade-offs between them. And it may not be obvious which is the right one for your needs. They have significant differences in cost profile, management processes required, flexibility to change, ease of upgrade, risk of being hacked, and so on.

If this set of choices on cloud-based infrastructure is complicated for hosting a website, imagine what this means when your organization’s key business processes are “rehosted on the cloud”. The issues and implications of this shift are significant. You cannot simply wave your hand and put this down as an “IT issue”. The choices you make have significant implications for many aspects of your business strategy, for the skills, processes and practices in which you must invest, and for the risks and responsibilities you personally assume when you transform your organization into a digital, cloud-based operation.

Heavy cloud but no rain

We are now all used to the idea that “everything is in the cloud”. From email to retail we expect to use the internet to access services being hosted by cloud providers as a key part of every digital transformation. However, it is important to remember that this shift requires that we adopt a different way of thinking about flexibility, risk, trust, and efficiency. As leaders and influencers, it is not enough that we get by with a high-level understanding of what it means to move to the cloud and pass on the obligation to others in the IT team. All of us need to keep being reminded that a cloud-based operating approach brings different responsibilities and behaviours affecting every part of the business. Don’t wait until you’ve been hacked to learn more about what it means to live in the cloud.

Originally posted here

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