Broadband Policy and Local Government

6 May

In the UK we hardly need the example of the increasingly fragmented approach so clearly visible in Australia to underline the need for Local Government intervention.

A recent study from ‘down under’ noted that:

In the Australian context, the recent decision to build the NBN using a mix of technologies will leave the country with a patchwork of different levels of access to the infrastructure as well as producing different speeds across the network. This will intensify the need to investigate the implications of telecommunications at the local level, as Australian local governments then need to respond differently based on the level of access provided for them in each case.[1]

The example is not needed in the UK because we already have a fragmented mix of technologies and, since the late 1980’s, never stood much of a chance of envisioning a more cohesive approach to digital infrastructure.  It is, however, only in recent times that Local government has taken a more determined attitude to this lever of economic and societal development.

But illustrating local impotence, there’s a common link in that final phrase ‘provided for them in each case’ – a sense that incumbents are a law unto themselves as if still nationalized and a touching national belief in the power of market competition.

This newfound realization of the significance of digital infrastructure at the local level is not merely driven by the need to catch up with central government programmes for online transactions in the cause of greater efficiency. Nor is it entirely induced by the devolutionary ‘letting go’ of top-down controls – a hesitant process that reveals great lack of imagination and inbred presumptions of local incompetence.

More than that is the emergence (though we still say it quietly) of municipal enterprise – the realization that local government has the clout and competence to play a vital role in creating economic and societal well-being. And, moreover, not cowed into silence on account of outdated and over-simplistic ideologies that would label Public=Bad and Private=Good.

Summoning the will-power to be so bold, Local Authorities are beginning to leverage their strengths – even where the outcomes disrupt the supposedly ‘natural’ order of things, like incumbent dominance.  Local leaders do of course need to ‘gather strength’ – not least because they do not get much comfort or assistance from national regulators who are mired in refereeing markets whose definitions are increasingly irrelevant at a local level.

In the context of ‘austerity’, there is thin cover in the search for ‘efficiency gains’ (AKA cutting costs) but the real motivations are to take ahold of the shambles and JFDI.  That is why there will be many more Gigabit Cities across the UK long before London aspires to join the 21st century.

Leadership strength is best applied holistically – and digital investment is but one (albeit enabling) part of local economic and community development. Those leaders who can grasp the bigger picture are unlikely to let go of the opportunity to deliver real benefit for local businesses and citizens.

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[1] Local Government and Broadband Policy in Australia: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2015.1073976

 

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Smart Cities/Intelligent Communities – policy directions

29 Apr

hi=-tech buildingI spent nearly the whole of last week in Dubai – speaking to business leaders from India about the development of Intelligent Communities.  My address was based on a paper The Prospects for Places and Communities – IOD Global Convention April 2016 – a substantial reworking of an earlier paper from 2015. I also chaired a panel discussion with the MD of a risk management consultancy, the Head of HR for an oil & gas company, the MD of an education and teaching service and a Professor from Greenwich University UK.   The theme concerned Excellence and Innovation in a Digitalised Economy and the context was the role of enterprise in the development of Smart Cities throughout India.

The common experience was that while many ‘Smart’ pilot projects had raised wider interest there was concern about the local leadership strength for more substantial development programmes. There is, of course, huge diversity of policy direction and expertise within the Indian National, State and Local Government levels because priorities and awareness levels differ widely. But this observation applies equally across the UK and other parts of Europe.

One of the downsides of being away from base for nearly a week is the email mountain that builds up – but that stack of emails also reinforced my view that technological enthusiasms are, certainly in the UK, getting in the way of local leadership clarity.

https://khub.net/web/paul.thompson.1/blog/-/blogs/digital-transformation-the-rise-of-the-digital-city

https://www.itu.int/en/itunews/Documents/2016-02/2016_ITUNews02-en.pdf

http://www.telecomtv.com/articles/iot/bristol-is-open-preparing-the-ground-for-the-programmable-city-13507/

http://www.westminsterforumprojects.co.uk/forums/agenda/uk-smart-cities-2016-agenda.pdf

http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/business/research/city-redi/news/2016/april/rcuk-urban-living-partnership-call.aspx

https://theknowledgeexchangeblog.com/2016/04/18/delivering-digital-differently-how-should-we-provide-public-services-in-the-future/

https://www.publictechnology.net/articles/opinion/smart-cities-next-stage?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Email&utm_content=Daily%20Email+CID_715d86dace54ded75cbd55a8df3f23a8&utm_source=Email%20newsletters&utm_term=Smart%20cities%20the%20next%20stage

http://www.telecomtv.com/articles/iot/digital-greenwich-using-iot-to-connect-people-not-their-toothbrushes-13483/

https://www.publictechnology.net/articles/news/european-commission-unveils-data-support-package?utm_medium=email

National Innovation Plan: call for ideas – Department for Business, Innovation and Skills – Citizen Space

In amongst these references you can, if you search hard enough, find some pointers towards the sort of goals that communities might reasonably expect. However the overall theme is technological – the means – rather than discussion of the purpose of all this effort.

In addition to summarizing the principles that underpin the development of Intelligent Communities I spent much time discussing with business leaders where they saw the boundaries of their business interests.   It is clear from a great many case studies that enterprise involvement in matters normally assumed to be in the public domain, and particularly the engagement with Universities and Colleges, plays a huge and often decisive role in local economic and societal development.  That scope for Public/Private engagement is hugely under-developed in India as much as in the UK.

Also lurking in my inbox was an interesting paper ‘How to Measure the Economic Impact of Universities’.  This methodological overview set out the complexity of the challenge but also usefully pointed to a range of measures that could be further developed.

There is a great deal of work needed in the UK to further define the principles for local economic and societal development and to build local leadership expertise.   Needs vary, leadership contexts and infrastructure challenges are hugely diverse and there can be no simple model for nation-wide application. But taken together the underlying objectives can form the basis for a cohesive development structure.

The time has passed for yet more pilots and demonstrators of clever technologies.   There is massive scope for setting out guidance and best practice mission indicators for communities of all sizes.  It is now time to encourage local leaders to develop more ‘intelligent’ frameworks for future local economic and societal developments.

 

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The O2 NextGen Digital Challenge Awards 2016

6 Apr

The O2 NextGenAwards2016hires

 

Yes – you read the headline correctly.   NextGen is delighted to announce that the 2016 NextGen Digital Challenge Awards now features O2 as headline sponsor.

The origin of the Digital Challenge 6 years ago may have been rooted in concerns for fixed-line broadband innovation but the awards programme has over the years increasingly featured the mobile sector. The worlds of fixed and mobile are in reality, highly interdependent and will become more-so as infrastructure planning for the next generation of 5G gets underway.

However, there’s another dimension in the emergence of public sector interest in services delivery. Speaking with Billy D’Arcy, Managing Director, Public Sector Business at O2, it’s clear that their interest in backing the Digital Challenge derives from a strategic understanding of the value of community champions. “The public sector works on behalf of all of us to provide a number of essential services. At O2, we are committed to helping the public sector deliver the best experiences for citizens. We also want to make sure their employees, both customer facing and in offices, can work effectively. We do this by helping to simplify processes using ICT solutions while adhering to increasingly restrictive budgets. As a result, we wanted to work with NextGen to celebrate the organisations that go the extra mile. That’s why the O2 NextGen Digital Challenge Awards 2016 will celebrate innovation, success and leadership in the UK’s digitally focused economy.”

The Digital Challenge has an excellent track record of identifying and celebrating achievements in the public sector that, in the general flood of marketing messages, might be overlooked – and inadvertently overlooked particularly by policy makers in and around Westminster. With this year’s awards presentation scheduled for October 13th in The House of Lords these important public sector and community messages will raise awareness amongst key policy influencers.

Full details of the awards programme and how anyone can nominate projects that have impressed can be found here. This is an Open Call and entry is free. The Digital Challenge honours projects and digital endeavours from across all sectors of the economy. The independent judging panel is keen to acknowledge projects and team effort rather than specific products or individuals.

The Open Call ends on May 27th

Shortlisted Finalists for each Awards Category will be announced on June 15th at the Connected Britain/NextGen conference in London.

 

 

 

 

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FISP Calls for Greater Connectivity Ambition – London, a Gigabit City?

30 Mar

hi=-tech buildingFollowing a survey that exposes the extent of digital discontent amongst Londoners, the Foundation for Information Society Policy issued a challenge to London’s mayoral candidates to tackle infrastructure issues.

FISP suggests that a public-owned agency could be based on the successful model of Transport for London – the UK’s most successful Municipal Enterprise.   The new agency (codenamed Digital for Londoners) would be charged with transformation of London to a Gigabit City by 2020.

The FISP proposal targets more than raising London’s standing as a major connected city and its economic competitiveness – the proposal is designed ‘to enhance the lives of Londoners (and their children) and all who work in the UK capital‘.

For full details visit http://www.fisp.org.uk/dfl/

 

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Managements Sans Frontières

15 Mar

thinking_heads smallWith great respect to the brilliant medical charity, their title springs to mind as I try to make sense of a minor deluge of academic reports and real world experiences.   Boundary issues abound – and not just in the contexts of Humpty Trumpty’s Great Wall of Machico or the UK’s Brexysteria.

Deep down we all like the comfort of borders but so often spend our lives trying to break down barriers. Parents observe that unruly/spirited teenagers need some boundaries. Accountants would be lost for numbers without tidy columns.  Regulators regularize.  Centralist governments prefer broad-based averages.  Mass marketers shriek Sun-like headlines. But devolutionists see city-states as empowering even as citizens complain of postcode lotteries.  And businesses everywhere seek differentiation by ‘redefining’ markets.  In the 1970’s Tom Paxton would sing ‘The Thought Stays Free’ and, like wireless signals, ideas do not respect borders.

So the Work Foundation report (Working Anywhere) says 2017 will be another peak – the last gasp of working 9 to 5 (that will no longer be ‘the way to make a living’) as the daily trek is commuted to life outside of an office for the average commuter.   They will, of course, still have boundaries. They will still log in to their networks (their presence measured) and no-one yet is predicting the end of corporate monthly reports – not least because bean counters hunger for beans to count and managers imagine they are managing.

There are boundaries we willingly choose to adopt (like marriage) and there are those we (mostly) tolerate for a peaceable society – like speed restrictions. Then there are the envelopes we’d like to stretch – or rip apart. The constantly changing balances between wrapping things up and encouraging creative agility is not something that can be bolted down. Great enterprise leaders know that rules are ‘made to be broken’ (sometimes) and urge their law-abiding followers to ‘think differently’ – ‘outside of the box’.

At this time it is difficult to comment on EU affairs without offending (for myriad reasons) all 784 (28 squared) sides to immigration debates but it is surely blindingly obvious that people will always wish to move and economies need to import and retain talent. With extreme provocations the future tides of humanity will, like the weather, be increasingly difficult to anticipate and, as Canute demonstrated at the shore, unconstrained.   National identity is increasingly a curious notion – especially for the English where ‘ish’, sort of, defies the absolute.

Travel is said to broaden the mind and, in these networked days, virtual travel is a great substitute for the physical effort of getting from A to B – which is partly why the Work Foundation predicts the decline of inflexible working.  But traveling (physically or intellectually) has great inequalities. Academia has huge capacity for stating the blindingly obvious – but sometime it needs to be said.  Pointing out that the  Further_We_Travel_the_Faster_We_Go is not some supposedly great insight designed to justify investment in the UK’s HS2 project but anyone contrasting the time and effort needed to get to London with the effort of travelling within the place will get the point.   But the real point, surely, is about journeys of the mind; ideas. The more outlandish they are the greater the chance they’ll make a real difference. The further you reach the faster you’ll get there – compared to some gradual, incremental, barely-noticeable, short-term, thoroughly non-alarming, improvement process.

We (being very English) often frown on ambition. Centuries of terribly polite censure have curbed our creativity but digitally-networked borderless freedoms cannot now be denied.  Empowerment (the need for it) has wrong-footed those once-great institutions that presume they know best. Who needs all that bandwidth?   What for, exactly? The defence of their comfortable market borders gets in the way of ideas flow – the brick walls can but delay their decay.

So why not? Why not demand a Gigabit? Why stick at home when your partner’s work is far away. Go with him and let the global network handle your usual work-flow. Why return home and only then shop for food when it could have been pre-ordered online from your hotel bed on the far side of the world? It needs only the very real experience of a three-way Skype call with callers in Hampshire, a colleague now in Argentina and a customer in his car somewhere on the M6 to prove the point that, increasingly, borders are meaning less.

Can we manage without borders? In work, in life and in politics we have little or no choice. Ring-fenced isolationism will not (cannot) relieve any of us from responsibility. The best that management can muster is to invest time and effort in avoidance of unexpected consequences and not inadvertently trigger catastrophic outcomes – like civil wars. A bit of forward planning might help. Will the economic decline of London be stalled by a fully-fibred future? Are we, in Europe, ready for a great American exodus if Trump triumphs?

So, yes we need some borders and others we need to relax. A single market across Europe is brilliant. Greater devolution of central authority to Manchester can be empowering – if you trust in the mayor’s capacity to manage.  Localism with expansive freedoms will always contend with the average central reductionist.  Maybe, one day, someone, most probably some uncouth little chap, most probably from some distant place via an online device and twitter, will point out that some wee emperor is nae wearing any clues – and the whole world will once again collapse in a sea of irreverent laughter and/or tears.   Dougal will shake his head, sorrowfully, and say ‘what a way to run a country’ and the credits will roll – leastways for one last time.

Managements Sans Frontières?  We should follow where the angels have dared to tread – beyond the borders of your mind.   If you stretch the imagination it rarely goes back to its original shape.

 

 

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Holding the Line: fibre futures overstated?

7 Mar

In one respect at least Ofcom’s recommendations from its Digital Communications Review announced last week quickened the pulse of investors in future-proofed fibre infrastructure.

Fiber optics

Serious analysts described the moves as “a huge boost in helping the nation catch up with other countries’ increasingly advanced broadband infrastructures”. In media interviews, Ofcom’s Chief Executive Sharon White was keen to point out that UK had already achieved 2.6% penetration for Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) as an indicator of progress.

That 2.6% figure contrasted markedly with the report just seven days earlier that the UK had once again failed to reach the threshold of 1% penetration for inclusion in the European league table of optically connected homes and buildings.

Close inspection of Ofcom’s report reveals that the data was not Ofcom’s own assessment but relied on estimates by consultancy Analysys Mason – and, in turn the consultancy’s data supports a 2% UK penetration achievement in availability (not actual connections) of FTTP – a figure that compares unfavourably with Denmark (over 30%), Spain (over 60%) or Japan (70%).

So, discounting the quoted 2.6% figure (which may simply have been ‘over enthusiasm’), the 2% availability figure, if customer take-up were then estimated at 25%, would explain the difference between last week’s Ofcom-induced excitement and the previous week’s FTTH Council Europe disappointment.

Does this matter?

Supporters of BT’s Fibre to the Cabinet strategy and their plans for G.Fast would say not. What matters, they’d say, are not massive headline download speeds but sufficient capacity with which we can get along – leastways for the time being.   Others, of course, profoundly disagree – pointing to demands for symmetry, lower latency, future-proofing and an altogether better use of the UK’s energy supply.

There is another reason why the presentation of statistics matters.  Regulators – particularly those who would claim to be evidence-led – should surely be expected to present their views in ways that can be fairly understood by their primary audience, the citizens, businesses and public sector agencies on which the economy depends.

Ofcom’s outputs last week were greeted with mixed reviews – a welcome for clear intent on competitive Duct and Pole Access and severe doubts on the practicality and efficacy of such measures.  It is now for Ofcom rapidly to pursue their recommendations with renewed vigour – if only to prove that they were not misguided in stopping short of full separation of BT and its Openreach honey-pot.

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This article was first published by Total Telecom 07/03/2016

 

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Letting go of hopes not fully grasped?

5 Mar

Greek FlagIn March 2015 at the height of the Greek financial crisis I wrote of the great brain drain (‘Grexodus’) that would do lasting damage to that country’s future fortunes.  Little did anyone realise that within the year that brain drain would be replaced by a massive potential brain gain as thousands of migrants flock to its shores.

Most of those now escaping from the horrors of war-torn Syria, Afghanistan or North Africa are hoping to make their way beyond Greece to settle in the supposedly stable havens of Northern Europe – but their passage is now blocked as EU States shrug off Schengen and shrink back into populist isolationisms as if folk have forgotten the point of being ‘better together’.

We may despair of the lack of pan-European political mettle, the failure of long-term leadership and the collapse of collective moral decency, but amongst these dark clouds is a potential silver lining for that woefully disregarded Greek State. The question now is whether the Greek government and the people can rise to the opportunity.

Amongst the weary but determined families trekking north are many professional families well qualified to fill the gaps left by the earlier flight of the disenchanted – the loss of thousands of doctors, researchers, students, engineers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, teachers, technicians and nurses.  The lucky recipients of that talented brain drain were Germany, Canada, USA and Australia.  In that 2015 fallout, few came to the UK (further diminishing our global growth prospects) but that was hardly surprising given the prevailing attitudes of extreme right & left-wing politics and media meeting themselves on the far side of the circle.

So, the question is: What is Greece doing to encourage those who could be tempted to stay – to learn Greek – to assimilate into local culture – to rebuild their lives and contribute to economic and societal growth?   Germany, initially at least, set a fine example. But will Greece be able to muster the enterprise?

We must hope so – for surely the rest of Europe must learn, and learn in time, that global mass migrations are the unintended consequences of disastrous failures of political leadership and disunity.

‘Learn in time’, I wrote. In time to stave of the tide of human misery and suffering that now besets us, or, in time to equip our leaderships with the intellectual and moral strength to deal with the next flood?  How will attitudes change when we Europeans must cope with thousands fleeing the USA in the event of a Trump presidency?

It is surely not beyond the wit of humankind to get a grip – to better imagine and manage the more easily foreseen consequences, particularly as the supposedly unforeseen lessons are being played out before our unastonished, but tearful, eyes.

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Sparks of Creativity as Energy and Digital Futures Collide

26 Feb

Digital technologies consume way too much energy and present an environmental and sustainability issue that demands a fresh design approach

Very few commentators link Energy and Digital policy topics. Even fewer policy developers understand how they are intertwined.

Each policy is on a single track but heading towards each other. Both engines of the economy urgently need collision avoidance. Knocking heads together now can circumvent an even greater mess.

Only now are the full consequences of strategic decisions made in separate silos decades ago becoming clear. Attributing blame and short-term attitudes for current and future shortcomings is, alas, too easy.   It doesn’t add up to a plan of where we go from here but first there’s a need for everyone to understand that we have a problem.

Basically the Internet will not scale – meaning that as demand increases, digital infrastructure performance will suffer and energy supply will become more fragile.

Regardless of which growth forecast you believe – and most insiders bet on a doubling of devices over the next decade – without radical overhaul, the predominant current and planned digital access technologies (how you get connected) will consume way too much energy. It is an environmental/sustainability issue that demands a fresh design approach to ensure resilience of these basic utilities.

The solutions are twofold – generate vastly more electricity or waste far less of it on inefficient forms of digital connectivity. No one is suggesting that we put the entire economy into hibernation.

The first option – generate vastly more – is decidedly unattractive and hugely risky in terms of the UK’s energy supply security. But current efforts to reduce demand need rethinking.

The second option – boost connection capacity but at the same time use far less energy – is technologically possible but demands a complete rethink by dominant suppliers – whether they are in fixed line or mobile markets or both.

Digital Management

It is simply not possible to envisage future energy sufficiency (Ref 1) to push signals down copper cables or send mobile signals over great distances – like more than 200 metres – given the sort of high frequency spectrum that is now available.

All mobile services are themselves ultimately dependent on fixed line connectivity to route to and from the wider Internet. Moreover, the implications of using higher frequency radio spectrum are that the much-vaunted low-power 5G designs will be dependent on fibre connections from millions of locations and will look like Wi-Fi on steroids – with demands way beyond the creaking copper connections of yester-year.

How many slightly overlapping 200 metre radius circles fit into the UK’s 65 million acres? That, of course, is a very hypothetical question – we live in a multi-channel landscape – but, as digital applications accelerate, the current lack of any mobile coverage on thousands of miles of UK roads illustrates the challenge.

Enthusiasts for maintaining use of legacy copper networks insist on pointing to technologies that seem to increase their capacity (if only in one direction) but these in turn exacerbate the energy challenges. Their application is misplaced. Sure, run fibre all the way to a building and then use the technology to push the signals a little way further inside the building – but even that local in-building distribution is inefficient compared to low power wireless technologies like WiFi.

Energy Management

At the same time, Energy Management systems have developed to render past infrastructures obsolescent. The top down view of energy – generators, the national grid, local distribution – is being turned on its head. Alternative energy sources – solar, wind, tidal, wave, ground heat pumps – are popping up all over the place.

Soon the complexity of managing demand will be further complicated by new local storage options. One thing that will not help lessen the load is the current and expensively failing UK Smart Meters project.

Collision Avoidance

So what if policy developers for both Energy and Digital better understood each other?

We don’t need to dwell on the past mistakes – but refocus minds on where they go from here.

For around the same investment cost as Smart Meters the Digital camp could reduce Energy demand by between 5-10% – depending on how quickly they buckle down to eliminating copper networks.  But, of course, much of that Smart Meter money has already been spent – some would say, wasted.

On the other hand the costs of fibre have been falling and the investment returns rising – a completely different investment scene to that prevailing 2 decades ago. The cost savings come from all aspects of network deployment.   That could easily be accelerated with liberalization of incumbents’ passive infrastructure – the ducts and poles,

And the net benefit of this silo-fusion?   Accelerated economic growth and greater energy supply security – massively faster connectivity and far fewer power failures.

If only it was that easy to knock government and industry heads together to avoid an unexpected collision. Maybe, in our newfound love of devolution, city mayors will be resolved to point out that the utility emperors are lacking decent underwear.

Brace, Brace.

_______________

Notes/References

  1. Telecoms & Exponential Growth- Cochrane TJV8 Pt4  (PDF download)   Cochrane P, Telecoms and Exponential Growth, ITP Journal Vol. 8/4 Oct/Dec 2014 reproduced with permission of the Institute for Telecoms Professionals www.theitp.org

This article was first published by Computer Weekly 26/Feb/2015

 

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Germany Out-Qualifies UK in Future-Proofed Fibre League

17 Feb

QUESTION:

Which country’s Prime Minister is also the Minister for Communications and Media?

 The annual gathering of European fibre fans rarely produces surprises.

Every year I note few delegates from the UK. Every year I report that the UK is notably absent in the fibre penetration league tables. Every year the table gains extra lines. Now that Germany and Poland appear in the table, the UK’s absence is even more obvious. The entry qualification is at least 1% penetration of Fibre to the Home or Building – full fibre that is, not some halfway house still dependent on copper.

Table 1:  European_Globalranking_endsept2015 (PDF download)

BT and DT have long shared an enthusiasm for leveraging their existing copper assets – and the sudden appearance of Germany in this table does not imply some huge change of incumbent heart.

The shift more likely reflects the success of alternative operators and municipal networks –and, statistically, their greater willingness to provide data on their success. In contrast, the UK’s alternative networks have learned to avoid any great political visibility and BT has been reticent in admitting to its own success in FTTH in order not to shade its FTTC strategy.

The rapid FTTH/B growth of Spain and Portugal does however reflect decisions by the main players – a recognition that long-term infrastructure investment is best done once rather than in short-term projects with more-expensive retrofitting.

Many would argue that, with new copper technologies such as G.fast, there’s ample life left in old copper networks. Even the FTTH Council Europe recognizes its value when applied correctly. If the fibre reaches the building, then G.fast can boost internal distribution and avoid engineering visits to install new kit. So whilst FTTH Council Europe distances itself from stratospheric hype’n’hope performance claims, the manufacturers of clever kit for copper are not dismayed.

Critics will say that the patches of fibre brilliance only occur in small places – like Jersey, Andorra, Luxembourg, Cumbria, or Stockholm – but, unlike London, these are places that cannot afford to be complacent.

Luxembourg (this year’s host for the FTTH Europe conference) has been served by a diverse mix of broadband technologies. Now they can boast that over 50% of the Grand Duchy has future-proofed FTTH available – and is en route to being a fully Gigabit digital Duchy by 2020. This incumbent-led investment is, of course, merely the essential enabler of future economic growth, inward investment and social development.

As the Prime Minister (who also doubles as Minister for Communications and Media) says, “We want a smart Luxembourg within a smart Europe.”

[This article first appeared in Total Telecom  17/02/2016]

 

 

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NextGen Digital Challenge 2016 – Open Call

22 Jan
NextGen Awards 2016
OPEN CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

Now in its 6th year, the NextGen Awards, celebrate digital endeavour and honour the achievements of great projects and their teams from across the UK and Ireland.

Nominations are now invited from across all economic sectors and from within all communities.

Nomination is free of charge and requires only the completion of a simple online registration form.

Entries will be assessed by a judging panel that is independent of any supplier interests. To allow scope for new initiatives, the 2016 Awards Categories will be finalised after the Open Call closes on 27 May.

Previous winners and shortlisted entries can be found here

The Open Call for Nominations closes on Friday 27 May.

Short-listed Finalists and Award Categories will be announced in June.

Finalists will be invited to prepare their submissions (A4 template provided) to the judging panel by the end of July.
NextGen Digital Challenge Awards
Awards will be presented at the prestigious NextGen Digital Challenge Awards Dinner and Ceremony on 13 October – hosted by the Earl of Erroll in the House of Lords, Palace of Westminster.

For more information visit here
NOMINATE NOW

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