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Getting Rio

14 Jun

As Rio+20 gets underway and the mainstream media find this gathering of world leaders creeping into the news agenda, we give some time to considering how they will find consensus around fundamental issues for future sustainability.

The leaders will not be short of advice.  Lobbyists from every quarter of the globe and every sector of society are geared up for for a field day and honing their green credentials.

As great minds attempt to focus down on key global policy issues, the question that we hope the world leaders will ask of all those earnest supplicants is ‘Why are you telling me this?‘

And, when they jet back home to more mundane matters we hope that it will be a question they keep asking wherever and whenever they hear continuing excuses for the ‘digital deficit’ that blights the infrastructure that their citizens and venture leaders need for a return to economic health.

Full story here 

(Rio+20 will be reported for Groupe Intellex and NextGenTV by Marit Hendriks)

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Please hold during the silence

6 Jun

Having recently survived a series of bruising encounters of the Call Centre kind the editor is reminded that he has been writing this stuff for far too long.

He is also moved to wonder about progress and to share with readers a short note first published in 2004.

Back then the object of this writer’s ire was a phone company and today it’s a digitally different outfit – but at least the 2004 battle gifted us the headline ‘Please hold during the silence’.

With slightly better integration between departmentalised helpers, today’s call centre designers may lack poetry in their utterances but they are as addicted as ever to ‘the long button-pushing trail a-winding. . . . ‘

From the Group Intellex archive, ‘Hang on in there’ was written during one of those silences whilst waiting for a help-desk connection – and in those moments of reflection, when nothing more could be said or tweeted or text’d or posted, it sounded like a good rule for life.

Full story here

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Transforming Public Services – new report

4 Jun

Colin Coulson-Thomas has launched his latest report – Transforming Public Services – in which he debunks top-down management moves like restructuring.

What is really needed, he says, is far better performance support for people at the coal face – and this approach is cheaper, faster and far more effective.

You can find more of Professor Coulson-Thomas’s work in the Editorial (Management) section of the main Groupe Intellex publication.

Full story here

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Poet turns Plumber – for a day

3 Jun

Faced with the urgent need to boost digital access from the office at the end of the garden (also known as the Groupe Intellex international HQ) we made the decision to use optical fibre.

DIY skills were not much needed with a plastic optical fibre kit from Firecomms (Cork, Ireland) plus timely advice and encouragement from Networx3 – an exhibitor at NextGen Roadshows.

Full story and pictures here.

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The Digital Economy: there’s no going back

28 May

In our strongest editorial to date on the so-called Digital Economy  we assert that, in the same way that people say ‘the real economy’ without explaining what an un-real economy might be, there is no non-digital economy of any great substance.

Across every sector of the economy the qualifier ‘digital’ is redundant.  The digital infrastructure is as important to sustainable green policies for energy and transport as it is for Finance, Health and Manufacturing.   Fixing the ‘digital deficit’ is the first step towards economic recovery.

We suggest that to track the nation’s digital maturity we need to measure four things:  Fitness for Purpose, Balance, Hassle and Disruption.

Full story here.

See also previous editorial: Finding Nemode

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Business, Society and Public Services

23 May

It’s good to see the ‘Circular Economy’ mentioned in the RSA’s latest report but the primary concern is that policy development in public services and economic growth is not being tackled in any cohesive way.

Based on the experience of Community Study Tours in Scandinavia, Groupe Intellex has long argued that the glue that binds these things together is investment in a high quality digital infrastructure.

It may, of course, be far more obviously necessary in remote places, with extremes of weather and transport difficulties, to maximise the use of digital interaction for basic public services such as health and education but the impact has been equally beneficial for enterprise, innovation, competition, community development and the stimulation of inward investment .

The RSA report’s main title reflects the distinct labels of Business, Society and Public Services – regarded by many as being in entirely different camps –  but the subtitle – ‘a social productivity framework‘ gets a little closer to the ‘mashed up’ realities and interdependencies of the real economy.   It’s a brave step but probably far too much for ‘Sun headlined’  ideologically-driven policy developers looking for simple solutions.

Will sleepwalkers awake when digital floods rise higher than their knees?

Download the full RSA report (PDF) here

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Searching for new economic models

20 May

The tide of digital enablement – across the entire economy – has triggered research projects that seek to understand the foundations of new economic models.

The work may lead to new UK centres of research excellence and generate a source of independent and influential policy advice for businesses, organisations of all sizes, communities, governments and regulators.

Some aspects of the RCUK’s work will be presented at NextGen Bristol (17th July) in a workshop led by Prof. Roger Maull from Exeter University.

Full story here

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Beyond Metro Ethernet

17 May

The rapid pace of traffic growth in the networks used everyday by millions of businesses, governments and households shows no sign of slowing.

As more and more applications become common-place and digital networking is recognized as the essential enabler of economic growth, major operators (fixed and mobile) are beginning to understand the need for a more complete switch-over to an all-optical backhaul infrastructure.

Acknowledged Metro-Ethernet expert Dr. Arthur Smith has taken up a new role of COO at innovative Dublin-based Intune Networks in a move that will signal a bright future for all-optical packet switching.  This appointment – one of a series this year – confirms Intune’s steady build-up of high-level technological and managerial talent.

Full story here.

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On the road to Rio: Legacy and Lateness

15 May

The Groupe Intellex editorial ‘Sustainability: the end game for the next generation’ has attracted a great deal of attention and the feedback has been interesting.

It reveals that the themes that most catch readers’ attention are little to do with the UN’s Sustainability summit in Rio – there’s precious little hope expressed for successful outcomes and a great deal of apathy about global governance.

Top of the real concerns of readers are worries about the legacy that inaction will leave for future generations and the fact that after 20 years it still looks as if another twenty years may pass before political leaders are strong enough to address the digital investment that is needed to make progress on environmental issues.

Full story here.

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Muddling through – managing talents

8 May

In the Groupe Intellex commentary on a new report – ‘Talent Management 2’ from Prof. Coulson-Thomas – we found the space to quote from Pink Floyd’s anthem to wasted opportunities, ‘ Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way’, because it captures that sense of ‘muddling through’.

The report, however, should lift corporate spirits because it argues that there are fresh approaches to the challenges of managing the complexities of multiple objectives and understanding personal performance.  Previous tendencies to simplify or commoditise roles simply because any other approach is too darn complicated to measure can now be relaxed for a more comprehensive and supportive approach.

Senior executives and ‘high-fliers’ who rail at over-simplistic measures of their contributions may perhaps hope that with a new breed of performance management methodologies they’ll be less subject to over-expectations and, at the same time, investors may be encouraged to learn to take a wider, more nuanced, view of how expensively-recruited talent is being deployed.

Full story here.

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