This year, there were 94,870 applications from UK 18-year-olds to study computing-focused courses, marking an almost 10% increase over 2022 when 86,630 applications were made.
Specifically, on the various computing-focused courses, software engineering saw a 16% increase in applications over 2022, computer science saw an 11% rise, while artificial intelligence had 4% growth, and computer games and animation a 2% boost.
The overall year-on-year increase in computing applications means that it’s the seventh most popular subject area, behind business and management (184k applications), social sciences (178k), medicine (156k), design and creative arts (126k), biological and sports sciences (105k), and engineering and tech (96k).
UCAS’s application data also shows that there’s been a slight increase in applications from UK 18-year-olds from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, totalling 11,870 this year — 760 more people over 2022.
However, computing and tech in general remaining a male-dominated area is reflected in the new data: out of all the computing applications made by UK 18-year-olds, only 18% came from women. This marks a 1% increase compared to 2022, and a 2% increase from 2021.
The number of overall course applications from UK 18-year-old applicants is also at its second-highest level to date – 319,570 in 2023, down from 326,190 in 2022, but up from 311,010 in 2021.
Speaking on the rise in computing-related course applications amid the backdrop of rapid technological advancements, Clare Marchant, Chief Executive of UCAS, said: “We know that changes in the world around us translate into increased demand for certain courses, as we saw for economics post-2008, and for medicine and nursing during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“These new figures suggest students are becoming increasingly inspired to study computing thanks to the rise of digital and AI.”
Rashik Parmar MBE, Chief Executive of the British Computer Society (BCS), also commented, saying: “Teenagers in the UK know that AI will change the world forever; it shouldn’t surprise us to see this soaring demand for computing degrees.
“AI is already reshaping how cancer is diagnosed, how we tackle climate change, how we work and how we communicate. The thousands of young men and women applying for computing through UCAS do so because they want a say in this future.
“Ethics and diversity are vital in AI and we want people from every background to know that the tech profession needs them.”
This news that more UK 18-year-olds are applying to study computing comes at a crucial time. Across the world, the tech sector continues to face a pervasive candidate and skills gap.
In a move to alleviate the issue in the medium- and long-term, a plethora of UK-based initiatives to inspire and help get school leavers and education returners alike to study tech courses have been launched.
A recent example from within Scotland is the RGC Online programme, developed and launched by Robert Gordon’s College, which offers Higher Computing Science and Higher Applications of Mathematics with additional tech modules for remote students across Scotland.
While a sizeable focus amount of focus is being dedicated to those at college age and above, several schemes are trying to help students developer a deeper interest in tech from a much earlier age.
For instance, the “BBC micro:bit — the next gen” campaign from BBC Education is offering a set of 30 BBC micro:bit devices and new online teaching resources to every primary school across the UK, totalling around 700,000 micro:bits.
The BBC micro:bit is a pocket-sized computer that introduces schoolchildren to how software and hardware work together.
Just yesterday, on 13 June, DIGIT reported on the news that Scots EdTech company Robotical had secured a six-figure deal for its trademark robot, Marty, which is being deployed to help make learning about coding and robotics more engaging.
360 Martys have been rolled out in classrooms throughout the Capistrano Unified School District (CUSD) estate in California, with pupils in CUSD’s 32 elementary schools currently learning to code with the robot.
According to CFIT, the time-limited, open finance-focused coalition aims to demonstrate the power of leveraging financial data to deliver better financial outcomes to consumers and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The Open Finance coalition is set to begin its work this summer to identify and unlock access to data sources that have the potential to improve financial outcomes for consumers and facilitate better access to financial services for SMEs.
After the initial work, it’s been said that working groups will then create specific outputs — such as new proofs of concept, products, or data partnerships — that could make a positive difference to both UK businesses and consumers.
Organisations committing to the Open Finance coalition include Amazon Web Services, IBM, Mastercard, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, EY, KPMG, Monzo, Revolut, Zopa Bank, Experian, and Innovate Finance, as well as others such as the City of London Corporation.
In terms of Scottish representation in the coalition, there’s the Smart Data Foundry — the Scots mission-led organisation helping the public, private, and third sectors to harness data for good — as well as tech and data recruitment agency MBN Solutions.
Speaking on the announcement of the coalition, Charlotte Crosswell OBE, Chair of CFIT, said: “We have the foundations and all the ingredients to drive Open Finance forward.
“Given the current challenges related to the cost of living, we firmly believe that by leveraging existing data and unlocking new datasets, we can have the biggest impact in the shortest time on the wellbeing of UK SMEs and consumers.
“We will be able to show the impact that an ambitious Open Finance roadmap can have. The time for action is now, to ensure that we continue to lead the world in financial innovation whilst maximising economic growth across all regions of the UK.”
Bryn Coulthard, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Smart Data Foundry, also commented, saying: “Working with CFIT and the coalition partners to accelerate innovation in Open Finance is a natural alignment with Smart Data Foundry’s purpose to unlock the power of financial data to help improve people’s lives.
“We’re excited to work in coalition with so many fantastic organisations to create real impact in this area driving positive change for consumers and SMEs alike.”
DIGIT last reported on Smart Data Foundry — which is based at the University of Edinburgh’s Bayes Centre, the institution’s innovation hub for AI and data science — when it announced a new partnership and the launch of two new open-banking focused tools with Ozone API, the standards-based open API platform.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the owner of Twitter, has announced his latest venture, xAI, the goal of which is to “understand the true nature of the universe.”
Led by Musk and advised by Dan Hendrycks — who currently serves as the Centre for AI Safety’s Director — the founding team behind xAI consists of 12 people who have previously worked at companies such as DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, and Tesla.
In their previous roles, members of the founding team have worked on and led advancements in artificial intelligence including OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, as well as contributing methods that are commonly used in the field.
In a tweet, co-founder Greg Yang said that xAI “will enable everyone to understand our mathematical universe in ways unimaginable before,” and that “developing the ‘theory of everything’ for large neural networks will be central to taking AI to the next level.”
Speaking on how xAI aims to balance risk of AI with the promise of the technology, Musk said “If it tried to understand the true nature of the universe, that’s actually the best thing that I can come up with from an AI safety standpoint,” and that “I think it is going to be pro-humanity from the standpoint that humanity is just much more interesting than not-humanity.”
More details of the new venture are set to be discussed in an upcoming Twitter Spaces session tomorrow, 14 July.
In April of this year, Musk said he was going to “start something which I call ‘TruthGPT’, or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe,” in an interview with Tucker Carlson of Fox News.
However, xAI is not the first artificial intelligence company he has founded: he was a co-founder and early funder of OpenAI, which launched in late 2015. He cut ties with the company three years later.
According to Semafor, people familiar with the matter said ties were severed after CEO Sam Altman and the other co-founders declined Musk’s proposal to take over the company and run it himself.
In a bid to make progress on its mission of understanding the “true nature of the universe,” the newly launched AI company said that it will work closely with Twitter, Tesla, and other companies.
The Edinburgh-based photonics company has been awarded almost 10% of the £25 million available from Innovate UK’s Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition fund for quantum-enabled positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) solutions.
The money is set to be invested into establishing and scaling the production of quantum gravity sensors which can accelerate advancements in the autonomous navigation of shipping vessels and provide next-gen navigational precision to tankers on the open seas, where GPS and satellite navigation are poor.
Relatedly, and according to a study commissioned by Innovate UK, the economic impact to the UK of a five-day disruption to global navigation satellite systems has been estimated at £5.2bn.
With the new £2.3m investment, it’s been said that the firm has secured the largest single amount awarded for quantum investment in Scotland to date.
Commenting on the funding success, Dr. Ben Szutor, the recently appointed CEO at Skylark Lasers, said: “We are excited to continue our development efforts within the fields of quantum technologies. This is a milestone moment for Skylark Lasers as this new funding will enable the full-scale commercialisation of our quantum portfolio.”
“Scotland is at the forefront of worldwide laser innovation and this funding will further excel Skylark Lasers as a pioneer in the development of quantum technologies, and allow us to grow the business in the coming years.”
Skylark Lasers is a portfolio company of Par Equity, the Edinburgh-based tech VC firm. Alastair Moore, Senior Investment Manager at Par, commented: “It’s brilliant to see Skylark Lasers recognised as one of the most innovative companies in the UK’s quantum technology ecosystem through the award of this transformational grant.
“This complements the progress that the team has delivered over the past 2 years in developing and bringing to market its high-power lasers for scientific and industrial applications.
“As a deep tech investor focused on backing the best teams and technologies in the north of the UK, it is greatly rewarding to see this progress being made with Skylark continuing to pave the way in quantum innovation and commercialisation.”
Further, Roger McKinlay, Challenge Director Quantum Technologies at Innovate UK, added: “We’re delighted to be helping Skylark Lasers build up their portfolio of high-performance quantum products for which there is growing customer demand.
“Here is evidence that the UK’s technical leadership is now being translated into real industrial capability.”
Specifically, the report — which is compiled by S&P Global from responses to questionnaires sent to around 100 Scottish recruitment and employment consultancies — found a further decline in permanent staff appointments across Scotland.
This continued fall marks the fifth month of the current contraction. That said, the rate at which permanent appointments decreased in Scotland was weaker when compared to the UK as a whole.
The number of candidates available for permanent jobs during June also fell. While the decline is softer than the average recorded over the last 29 months of contraction, June’s pace of decline happened to be the strongest in the last three months.
In particular, recruiters noted that skill shortages and lingering market uncertainty had impacted candidate numbers. Though, the shortages and the subsequent competition around skilled candidates has driven up starting salaries.
Permanent starting salaries increased again across in Scotland in June, with the rate of growth quickening from May’s 27-month low. The rate at which Scottish salaries increased outperformed the UK average.
Demand for permanent staff also increased across Scotland last month. But, after having slowed for 13 months, the rate of expansion accelerated at the end of the quarter and outpaced the UK’s rate.
On the new data, Sebastian Burnside, the Chief Economist at RBS, said: “The latest recruitment survey data for Scotland pointed to further falls in hiring activity across both permanent and temporary jobs markets at the end of the second quarter.”
Further, “Despite vacancies increasing […] this caution around the outlook combined with candidate shortages meant that recruiters struggled to fill roles. A tight labour market also meant that firms raised their starting salaries and wages further in order to attract suitable candidates.”
The candidate and skill shortages are facets that both the UK and Scottish tech sector have had to grapple with in recent years.
For instance, new research from the Robert Half Jobs Confidence Index and the Centre for Economics and Business Research found that there are on average 52,000 unfilled IT jobs in the UK.
In a bid to help alleviate the pervasive issue, Rich Wilson of Gigged.AI recently took to DIGIT to advocate for “quiet hiring” as a potential short-term solution for bridging tech’s candidate and skills gap.
In a recent National Audit Office (NAO) report concerning the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) financial accounts, it has come to light that the DWP is expanding its use of machine learning for identifying potential benefits fraud.
Since 2021, the DWP has used a machine learning model to flag potentially fraudulent claims for University Credit (UC) advances. The model was created by training an algorithm using fraud referrals and historic claimant data, and it makes predictions about which new benefits claims could be fraudulent or contain errors.
When a claim scores above a certain threshold, it gets referred to a caseworker for review. The caseworker then performs a manual review of the claim.
Responding in 2021, Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties and privacy campaigning organisation, said that “Leaving a computer to decide whose benefits application needs to be reviewed is an invasion of privacy and opens the door for unfairness and discrimination in the welfare system.”
The NAO report published last Thursday highlighted that the DWP is set to invest around £70 million between the 2022-23 and 2024-25 financial years into “advanced analytics” in a move to deepen its anti-fraud technological capabilities.
Further, it underscored that since last year, similar machine learning models have been designed and piloted to prevent fraud in four “key” risk areas of Universal Credit — people living together, self-employment, capital, and housing.
Despite the DWP expecting “advanced analytics” to help it generate savings of £1.6 billion by 2031, the report states that there is an “inherent risk” that the algorithms which flag benefits claims for review could be biassed “due to unforeseen bias in the input data or the design of the model itself.”
While the report says that the DWP has “tight governance and control” of its machine learning and has put safeguards in place, the DWP’s ability to test for unfair impacts across protected characteristics is “currently limited.” This is due to claimants not always answering the optional demographics-focused questions when making a benefits claim.
Alison Garnham, the Chief Executive of the Child Poverty Action Group said that “Expanding the technology while ignoring calls for transparency and rigorous monitoring of and protections against bias will risk serious harm to vulnerable families,” in a comment made to the BBC.
In spite of the “challenge in balancing transparency over how it uses machine learning to provide public confidence in the benefit system with protecting its capabilities by not tipping off fraudsters about how it tackles fraud,” the report suggests that the DWP “should be able to provide assurance that it is not unfairly treating any group of customers.”
The UK Space Agency will back the development of future telecommunications technologies and aerial connectivity projects with £20 million in funding, it’s been announced today by the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Chloe Smith.
Companies looking to develop applicable tech solutions can now apply for a share of the £20m funding pot.
“Projects could include developing connectivity for aerial platforms with hybrid capabilities that can seamlessly switch between satellite and terrestrial networks, or traffic management for innovative vehicles such as electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, or ‘flying taxis’,” the UK Government said.
The call for project proposals is being run in coordination with the European Space Agency (ESA) as part of its Advanced Research in Telecommunications Services (ARTES) programme, of which the UK Government committed £190 million to in November 2022.
In addition to being evaluated against the inherent themed criteria of the call, proposals will be considered under five general assessment criteria.
This includes the approach and methodology of the project, its potential financial return for the UK space sector, how innovative it is, its part in the relevant supply chain, and the wider direct and indirect benefits of the project.
The deadline for submitting expressions of interest is set to close on 1 September 2023 at 11am, while the deadline for submission of proposals, if successful at presentation stage, is “midday” on 20 November.
The DSIT Secretary of State unveiled the support during a speech at the opening of the European Space Agency’s new conference centre at the Harwell Space Cluster in Oxfordshire.
“From using drones to quickly get medicines to hospitals, through to boosting mobile network access in remote areas, the benefits of aerial connectivity cut through many aspects of our lives,” said Smith.
“The Government’s £20 million investment will further strengthen the UK’s fast-growing satellite communications industry, which already contributes more than £10 billion to our economy and supports over 26,000 jobs. It will improve our health and security, too, and support our plan to level up every part of the UK.”
Josef Aschbacher, the Director General of the ESA, further commented: “The UK has a strong track record for innovation in telecommunications and we are proud to work with our UK partners to develop innovative technologies that will support industries across the economy by boosting aerial connectivity.
“This activity demonstrates the excellent cooperation between the UK and ESA, and is a great example of how the seamless connectivity delivered by space-enabled 5G is set to transform society and industry.”
To read the application guide for the call, click here.
In recent years, redirecting and/or reusing waste heat from data centres has been touted as a way of helping data centres to be more sustainable amid the drive towards net zero.
But do what do waste heat initiatives look like in practicality, what are the concerns of data centre operators in 2023, and how can waste heat be harnessed properly?
According to the new Waste Heat: The Data Centres’ Warm Embrace report from the digital built assets consultancy BCS, the topic of redistributing or reusing excess heat generated from the running of data centres is “increasingly discussed.”
The firm is right in saying this: in Germany, for instance, the Bundestag is expected to pass an amended Energy Efficiency Act, which sets a blanket quota for waste heat reuse from data centre facilities.
Theoretically, by repurposing waste heat, the operators of data centres can reduce the impact the centres have on the local and wider environment, as well as leading to an array of benefits for local businesses and communities.
One example of such an initiative is integrating waste heat into district heating systems, which BCS’s report points to as being common in Northern Europe.
Relatedly, the report suggests that they’ve “seen mini data centres used as ‘digital boilers’ to heat swimming pools with the local authorities benefitting from the water being heated to 30oC for 60% of the time and a refund for the electricity used by the data centre.”
BCS also outlined that greenhouse cultivation, urban farming, and manufacturing processes are all areas that could benefit from the harnessing of data centre waste heat.
That said, the findings uncovered in BCS’s latest data centre survey of data centre experts — and which was conducted by research firm iX Consulting — highlight the concerns of operators, and perhaps underscore the potential difficulties that hold back initial or increased commitment to waste heat initiatives.
Specifically, the 2023 survey has shown that 63% of respondents expressed concerns about the efficiency of power generated using waste energy. Though, 73% of respondents shared this view in 2022, representing a 10% fall in apprehension when compared to last year.
Further, BCS says that the 2023 survey also shows that concerns around economic viability of the use of waste heat are declining, with 15% fewer respondents claiming that this was an issue.
Insights from the recent BCS survey outlined in the report, then, indicate that while specific concerns are present they are also diminishing.
In light of these declining concerns, how could waste heat efforts ramp up moving forward so that the suggested benefits could be unlocked? BCS says that increased collaboration between data centre operators, local governments, and community stakeholders is key here.
“Engaging with local communities, conducting feasibility studies, and implementing appropriate infrastructure are necessary steps to ensure the successful integration of waste heat into community initiatives,” the report reads.
The report punctuated that “The waste heat generated by data centres represents a valuable resource that, if properly harnessed, can benefit local communities in numerous ways.”
To read the full Waste Heat: The Data Centres’ Warm Embrace report, click here.
The two lawsuits, filed by the San Francisco-based Joseph Saveri Law Firm alongside lawyer Matthew Butterick, claim that the copyrighted works of Sarah Silverman, Christopher Golden, and Richard Kadrey were used to train OpenAI’s and Meta’s large language models (LLMs) without the authors’ permission.
As its name implies, an LLM is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that utilises massively large datasets and deep learning techniques to then generate a wide variety of text-based outputs, from writing Python code and poems, to summarising a highly complex scientific term or published book.
Large language models are also what underpin contemporary generative AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot.
In the new filing against OpenAI, it claims that the authors “did not consent to the use of their copyrighted books as training material for ChatGPT. Nonetheless, their copyrighted materials were ingested and used to train ChatGPT.”
Similarly, the filing challenging Meta — whose LLM is called LLaMA — alledges that the authors “did not consent to the use of their copyrighted books as training material for LLaMA,” and that “Nonetheless, their copyrighted materials were copied and ingested as part of training LLaMA.”
In particular, the latter filing proclaims that “Many of Plaintiffs’ books appear in the Books3 dataset” — a dataset that is supposedly a part of ThePile, an alledgedly 825 gibibyte dataset that contains many smaller datasets combined together.
The former filing also claims that when prompted, ChatGPT “generates summaries of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works—something only possible if ChatGPT was trained on Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works.”
Speaking on the Meta filing in particular, Joseph Saveri, founder of the Joseph Saveri Law Firm, said: “As artificial intelligence continues to change every aspect of the modern world, we must recognize and protect the rights of artists such as these authors against unlawful theft and fraud.
“LLaMA is not just an infringement of authors’ rights; whether they aim to or not, these products will eliminate ‘author’ as a viable career path. This case represents a larger fight for preserving ownership rights for all artists and other creators.”
Last month, the law firm filed another class-action lawsuit against OpenAI regarding copyright for the authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad.
The filed lawsuits, no matter what procedes, highlight the broader concerns that many people — not least professionals in the creative industries, as well as global regulators — currently have concerning potential copyright issues amid the generative AI explosion.
According to Joseph Saveri and Matthew Butterick, “Since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT system in March 2023, we’ve been hearing from writers, authors, and publishers who are concerned about its uncanny ability to generate text similar to that found in copyrighted textual materials, including thousands of books,” they said.
Specifically, across 199 deals, a total of $2.9 billion (£2.3bn~) was invested in the UK fintechs in the first half of 2023. This represents a drop of 37% when compared to the second half of 2022.
Of those 199 deals, 111 of them took place in the first quarter of 2023, equating to $2bn (£1.6bn~) of capital invested. In the second quarter, 88 deals took place, worth $864 million (£677m~).
Further, London was found to be the location where the vast majority of fintech funding was placed, attaining 91% of all UK fintech funding.
Innovate Finance’s report suggests that the slowdown isn’t unexpected, however. Venture capital investors predicted a downtrend in the industry body’s 2022 Innovate Finance Summer Report and, since the first quarter of 2022, there have been five consecutive quarters of reduced investment.
On this, Janine Hirt, the CEO of Innovate Finance, said: “The drop in global and UK FinTech investment is an expected result of the current economic landscape, reflecting the cautious investor sentiment as seen across equity markets over the last 12 months.”
Despite such headwinds, the UK retains its place as the second best market globally for fintech investment, only behind the U.S which had $15.6bn (£12.2bn~) invested across 663 deals.
In Europe, the UK retains its leading position. In second spot is France with $728m (£570m~) across 41 deals, followed by Germany with $536m (£420m~) across 33 deals, and then followed by Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Estonia, Ireland, and Denmark in the top ten.
One particular facet highlighted in the FinTech Investment Landscape H1 2023 report is the noticeable gender gap when it comes to fintech funding.
Specifically, the H1-focused report found that female founded or co-founded fintech companies represent a mere 2.2% of investment in the UK. In the full year of 2022, the figure was 4.9%.
On this, the report’s authors noted “there remain key areas where improvement is crucial, including the funding of diverse innovators. Female-founded or co-founded companies make an ever smaller proportion of the UK FinTech landscape.”
In terms of how fintech funding could play out in the latter half of 2023 and beyond, the report’s authors stated that “investors and startups alike are watching the second half of 2023 for indicators of economic recovery and lower inflation rates in order to pick up the pace of investment in 2024.”
To read Innovate Finance’s latest report in full, click here.
Having noticed their potential and backed the likes of DirectID, Aveni, and Gigged.AI — companies who are all making waves in Scotland and beyond due to their innovative ideas and technologies — it’s fair to say that Par Equity, the Edinburgh-based venture capital firm, is one of the major players in Scotland’s tech venture capital landscape.
But it’s taken continued evolution to get the VC firm to the influential, heavyweight position it’s in today. As Andrew Noble, Partner at Par Equity, said: “We’ve evolved Par Equity over time — there’s no doubt about that. Both in terms of our business mission and philosophy, but also in terms of our investment strategy.”
Back in its early days, the firm directed investment towards generalist tech companies. Now, fifteen years after the company’s founding, its investment strategy is far more honed: it’s driven by IP-rich, high-growth potential B2B tech companies based in the North of the UK, especially companies across HealthTech, ClimateTech, and IndustrialTech. This strategy is evidently working, seeing as its portfolio has raised over £410 million as of March 2023.
And it’s how the firm has evolved — and is still evolving — its business philosophy that’s just as interesting as its growth in strategy. Specifically, Par has been doing lengthy internal work to ensure it’s operating in a progressive and positive manner, including gaining B Corp status — the globally-recognised gold standard for aspects like sustainability and social responsibility.
To learn more about Par Equity’s multifaceted evolution thus far — and how, as a VC, it’s aiming to lead by example for both other VCs and its portfolio companies — DIGIT sat down with Andrew Noble, as well as Lucy Kelly, the firm’s Operations Manager who has been steering its ESG (environmental, social, and governance) efforts.
A Developed Investment Strategy
In order to fully discuss Par Equity’s interconnected evolution, we need to turn back time to the late ‘00s.
In 2008, Paul Atkinson, Robert Higginson, Paul Munn, and Andrew Castell — four esteemed businesspeople, ranging from serial entrepreneurs to serial technologists — noticed a curious dichotomy regarding angel investing and venture capital.
For those in need of a quick reminder: angel investing is where individuals provide early-stage businesses funding out of their own pocket in exchange for equity, usually offering tailored advice and mentoring along the way to support the leaders of the business.
Venture capital firms, meanwhile, make far larger investments in early-stage businesses and startups — and have a dedicated, professionalised process for guiding the businesses towards profitability and a worthwhile return on investment.
In terms of the dichotomy itself, the group of four dug into the return profiles of angels and VCs. They discovered that, at the time, the amateurs (read: the angel investors) were outperforming the professionals (the VCs).
The group then began to consider how the discipline and rigour of a venture capital-led organisation could be married with the angel investment ecosystem, thereby realising the full benefits of both approaches. This, ultimately, acted as the raison d’etre for Par Equity’s founding.
Once the firm was established, however, a little work was needed to guide Par Equity’s unique investment strategy.
“Originally, the thinking was, ‘we’ll set up a fund and we will cornerstone it with fifty to a hundred individual investors who have capital and very specific skills within certain areas,’” Noble explained.
But, amid the weight of the Great Recession, setting up this kind of fund proved difficult.
“They managed to get all the individual angels in, but then struggled to raise the institutional capital — and these angels wanted to do deals. So what came as a sort of extension of that was that we had an angel network; a really well-informed, deep-pocketed angel network,” noted Noble.
“Those angels operate on an execution-only [a term Par Equity uses to mean “self-advised”] basis — many of them also invest into our discretionary managed funds, and they invest alongside our funds on identical terms. We really think this turbocharges our model, because that community really helps us across the main touch points of the venture capital process,” he continued.
With the hybrid investment model, Par Equity began by investing in generalist tech companies at pre-seed and seed stage, given the checks that could be written at the time, and what the market was suggesting would be a wise decision.
One instance of such a company is ICS Learn, a provider of online learning courses in the UK.
“We did a really interesting turnaround on a company called ICS Learn, which is a distance learning business — in fact, the oldest distance learning business in the world, set up originally in the late 1800s,” explained Noble.
“That business was going to the wall. We saw an opportunity within that and we turned it around and ended up selling that to private equity five or six years later.”
Another example is Aircraft Medical — a medical devices developer and producer that was particularly involved in the video laryngoscope market. Par Equity invested in the company in 2011, and by 2015 it was bought in a $110 million (£72m~) acquisition.
“A lot of those early-stage investments have done very well for us,” Noble indicated. “Equally, we’ve had some investments that haven’t worked so well, too.” Venture capital investing is, of course, never without its risks.
But it was Par Equity’s successes that enabled the firm itself to grow, and later sharpen its focus on what and where it was investing in.
“We tried to drill down on where the opportunities lie — and what we discovered with our network, the experience of the network, the experience of the team, the profile of companies that we like to back, it all pointed towards B2B, IP-rich companies,” he said.
What’s more, while London continues to be a major location for attracting talent and capital, the North of the UK has a robust and often underappreciated pipeline for bringing about innovative, cutting-edge tech companies.
“Interestingly, when you profile the universities across the UK, and you look at which universities here are truly world-class in research and development, there are about 16 of them — and eight of them are in the North of the UK, in our patch.
“So, what we’ve got is a dislocation of capital across the UK as a whole, but a really interesting pipeline of those types of companies that are in our sweet spot.”
It’s this continued evolution of its investment strategy over the last 15 years that’s helped Par Equity get to the position it’s in today: a venture capital firm with an angel network of over 200 people; a firm that’s backed 77 companies — 93% of which were or are in the North of the UK; and a firm whose portfolio has raised over £410 million.
Although Par Equity developed and iterated on this important front, another crucial aspect of the firm has been evolving — and continues to evolve — too: its philosophy.
A Deepened Business Philosophy
Last month, on 8 June, DIGIT exclusively revealed that Par Equity had officially become an accredited B Corporation.
For those who don’t yet know, becoming a certified B Corp is quite the feat: it broadcasts to the world that your business meets high standards of performance, accountability, and transparency on a range of important factors related to aspects like the environment and social responsibility.
What’s more, attaining B Corp accreditation is by no means easy: you have to answer hundreds of in-depth questions, varying from your employee inclusion policies to your carbon footprint, to receive a score that may or may not hit the needed B Corp threshold.
In fact, B Lab — the non-profit behind the globally-recognised B Corp certification framework — says themselves that it’s rare for companies to initially achieve the score needed to be deemed a B Corp.
Considering the sheer amount of work involved in becoming a B Corp — and how lengthy the process can be, too — it’s fair to say that Par Equity is taking its environmental, social, governance, and related efforts seriously, and this is but one example of how its business philosophy has progressed and deepened over time.
In 2021, Lucy Kelly joined Par Equity as its Operations Manager, specifically helping to drive its ESG-oriented initiatives and impact forward.
Speaking on the long — but undeniably worthwhile — process of becoming a B Corp, she said: “It was an amazing exercise because you have to go through over 200 questions across six themes: you’ve got governance, workers, community, environment, customers, and disclosures. It’s incredibly thorough and rigorous.
“You’re diving into all areas of the business, and you also have to involve the whole business — everyone in the team was bought into it.”
According to Kelly, it took around three months to get through the assessment and collate all the data points from the various members of the team.
After the application was submitted, there was then an almost nine-month waiting period to get through to the verification stage due to the immense backlog of companies trying to become B Corps.
On May 2nd of this year, however, Par Equity officially learned that they had become a B Corp.
Par Equity’s increased focus on its business philosophy, and having a broader positive impact, has been in the works for a while now; as Noble commented, “It’s something that we’ve tried hard to work on over the last four or five years.”
But why has a significant amount of thinking and time been dedicated to efforts like getting B Corp accreditation, helping launch and then sitting on the steering committee of ESG_VC — a pan-European project to improve the ESG credentials of early-stage businesses — or signing up and being members of the Investing in Women Code, the commitment to increasing the finance provided to women-led businesses in the UK?
One part of the answer is that undertaking and being involved with initiatives such as these is a core part of the team’s shared and individual DNA.
While touching on Par Equity’s diversity and inclusion (D&I) work — the firm has a D&I committee that meets quarterly — Kelly stated that “As a team, it’s as simple as it’s what motivates us. […] It’s something that’s core to Andrew, it’s something that’s core to me,” she said. “So there’s the personal side of it.”
However, there are the positive knock-on effects it has on the wider business ecosystem, too.
As Kelly said, “Having a diverse workforce, we know, is better — and there are better results from that. So longer-term for the ecosystem, it’s going to deliver better outcomes.”
One aspect both Kelly and Noble commented on is how, through these initiatives and actions, Par Equity can lead by example. And by leading by example, the firm can help its roster of portfolio companies to follow suit.
As Kelly mentioned, “We want to build amazing businesses. […] And we know that those with strong ESG credentials are seen as being less risky, more resilient, so they’re more attractive — the more we can help portfolio companies have those strong ESG credentials and build them in from the early stages where it’s much easier to do than at later stages, the better. But we can’t expect them to do it unless we are walking the talk.”
That said, Kelly and Noble recognise that this evolution of philosophy — and the work on the efforts that underpin it — is an ongoing journey, and is by no means over just because the firm has already made exciting headway.
“We, Par, need to look internally and say, ‘right, what are we doing to instil change? How are we thinking about that? What more there can we do?,’” stated Noble. “And it is an ongoing journey; it’s continuous improvement and continuously seeking to do the best that we can as a VC firm.”
Kelly concurred with this sentiment: “There’s always more we can do, there’s always more we want to do — so it’s very much a forward-focused journey.”
Par Equity’s Evolution Is Not Over
After sitting down with Kelly and Noble and learning about the ins and outs of Par’s journey thus far, it’s clear that, as a VC firm, Par Equity is certainly not one that’s fixed or stuck in its ways; it’s one that has continually evolved in so many different aspects.
As we’ve now seen, it’s the evolution of the firm’s investment strategy and its business philosophy that’s especially notable, not least due to the symbiotic nature of it. With the refining and intensifying of the philosophy, it then can have a consequent, positive impact on the business side — all while setting a further precedent for Par Equity’s portfolio companies, as well as other VC firms in Scotland and across the UK.
In 2023, Par Equity’s evolution is not over — and long may that continue.
Trained on a massive amount of textual data, large language models are a type of generative AI (artificial intelligence) which can generate various text-based outputs. It’s the technology that underpins contemporary tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
Considering the wide and positive capabilities of large language models, but also the current notable concerns and issues, the Communications and Digital Committee is aiming to examine what needs to happen within the next one to three years to help ensure that the UK can respond to the related opportunities and risks.
The Committee has stated that this will include “evaluating the work of Government and regulators, examining how well this addresses current and future technological capabilities, and reviewing the implications of approaches taken elsewhere in the world.”
While a Bloomberg Intelligence report recently found that the generative AI market is poised to face significant growth, expanding to over £1 trillion in the next ten years compared to just under £32 billion in 2022, issues regarding contradictory or incorrect information, data privacy, and copyright are just some of the reasons behind growing international calls for regulation.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), for instance, recently said in a blog post that LLMs “contain sonme serious flaws,” including the potential for bias and what’s known as “hallucinations” — a confident response from AI that isn’t justified by its training data. Further, the NCSC noted that a “concern is that an LLM might help someone with malicious intent (but insufficient skills) to create tools they would not otherwise be able to deploy.”
As part of its inquiry, the Committee has put out a call for evidence on LLMs, asking questions such as how LLMs will develop over the next three years, how adequately the UK Government’s AI white paper deals with LLMs, and how the UK’s regulatory approach compares to the likes of other jurisdictions, including the EU, the US, and China.
Speaking on the recently launched investigation, Baroness Stowell of Beeston, the Committee’s Chair, said: “The latest large language models present enormous and unprecedented opportunities. Early indications suggest seismic and exciting changes are ahead.
“But we need to be clear-eyed about the challenges. We have to investigate the risks in detail and work out how best to address them – without stifling innovation in the process. We also need to be clear about who wields power as these models develop and become embedded in daily business and personal lives.
“This thinking needs to happen fast, given the breakneck speed of progress. We mustn’t let the most scary of predictions about the potential future power of AI distract us from understanding and tackling the most pressing concerns early on. Equally we must not jump to conclusions amid the hype.
“Our inquiry will therefore take a sober look at the evidence across the UK and around the world, and set out proposals to the Government and regulators to help ensure the UK can be a leading player in AI development and governance.”
While taking a balanced approach to the regulation and safeguarding of LLMs and generative AI is important, there is a certain degree of urgency required — not least because LLM-powered AI tools are already well used, whether in a covert capacity or not.
According to a survey covered by Business Insider, 43% of working professionals have used tools such as ChatGPT at work, but 68% of which haven’t told their bosses about using them.
Since its inception in 2019, the UK Government’s AI Council has provided guidance on AI policy and how it intersects with national security, defence, data ethics, skills, and regulation.
However, the AI Council’s Terms of Reference established that members would sit on the Council for a fixed-term period of up to three years, and the terms of its members are coming to an end, according to the government’s latest update, published July 7.
In lieu, the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) is establishing a “wider group of experts” to advise on a range of issues relevant to the Department, including artificial intelligence. It’s been said that the expertise of former AI Council members will still be drawn from within this wider group.
Further, the government said that the wider group of expertise will “complement the recently established Foundation Model Taskforce,” which is being set up to help further the UK’s capabilities in “safe and reliable” foundation models and has £100m in initial funding behind it.
During the group’s last meeting, Chloe Smith, the Secretary of State for DSIT thanked the Council members and the Chair, Tabitha Goldstaub, for their contributions and the “key role the Council has played in the development of the UK’s early strategic approach to AI policy.”
As part of the government’s AI regulation white paper, published in March of this year, it mentioned that the government would “review the role of the AI Council.”
Last month, ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair and ex-Leader of the Opposition William Hague released a report titled A New National Purpose: AI Promises a World-Leading Future of Britain. As part of the report, a call was made for the dissolution of the AI Council, and for advice to be sought elsewhere.
“While industry figures have predicted some advances and privately warned of major risks, existing government channels have failed to anticipate the trajectory of progress. For example, neither the key advance of transformers nor its application in LLMs were picked up by advisory mechanisms until ChatGPT was headline news,” mentioned the report.
Among its recommendations, the report suggested that: “Government should comprehensively overhaul its approach to seeking advice on this technology. This should include dissolving the AI Council while prioritising meaningful input from leading global tech companies.”
Who, exactly, will make up the “wider group of expertise” going forward has yet to be announced.
The funding is being made as part of the fourth round of the Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition (CMDC), which seeks to help develop new, sustainable technologies that can connect people, goods, and services in a greener manner.
The competition itself is funded by the UK Government’s Shipping Office for Reducing Emissions (UK SHORE), and is delivered by Innovate UK.
The latest round of funding will be open for applications from 2 August until 27 September. The projects must develop, test, and deploy green maritime technologies focused on either on-vessel technologies or offshore/shoreside infrastructure at locations such as ports and wind farms.
With the fourth round of funding, the total amount of investment provided through the CMDC has reached £129m. The first three rounds of the CMDC have awarded more than £95m to 105 maritime sector greening projects across the UK.
One example of a project that’s had its proposal succeed is the Lifecycle Energy Solutions for Clean Scotland/UK Maritime Economy project. Delivered by the University of Strathclyde and Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited, the project is a lifecycle feasibility study for Scottish Enterprise by evaluating the technical and commercial possibilities of using hydrogen for zero emission ferries.
Another example is the NEPTUNE project from the Shetland Islands Council, the University of Strathclyde, Ricardo, and Rosyth Royal Dockyard Limited. The project aims to prove the feasibility of developing a desk-based Decision Modelling and Support System (DEMOSS) digital tool to help analyse, scope, and develop plans for supporting the maritime eco-system’s transition to zero emission.
Speaking on the CMDC’s fourth round, the Maritime Minister Baroness Charlotte Vere said: “Pushing the boundaries of possibility is integral to the UK’s global ambition of a greener maritime sector.
“That’s why today’s new round of funding continues to set that course, not only keeping our climate goals on track but also boosting opportunities for private investment, new jobs and growing the economy.
“The UK’s maritime sector is one of the most competitive and innovative in the world and today’s latest clean maritime demonstration competition funding is testament to that.”
Further, the UK Chamber of Shipping Chief Executive, Sarah Treseder, added: “Instilling confidence in the UK shipping industry to invest in new technologies and fuels is central to reaching net zero.
“This funding, with a focus on real world demonstrations, will help to do that and unlock investment from across the shipping community to deliver the technologies that will reduce emissions while ensuring shipping remains at the heart of the UK’s economy.”
With the UK Government’s net zero target, the UK is legally required to have reduced its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 100% from 1990 levels by 2050.
According to the Department for Transport’s UK Domestic Maritime Decarbonisation Consultation: Plotting the Course to Zero paper, UK domestic maritime vessels represented around 5% of the UK’s domestic transport GHG emissions, and emitted around 5.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2020, which the paper notes is the latest year for which data is available.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, the Scottish Government has its own net zero target of 2045, as well as maritime-focused targets such as having 30% of state-owned ferries to be low emission by 2032 and, by the same year, for low emission solutions to be widely adopted at Scottish ports.
To resolve the incident, “All precautionary steps are being taken to manage the situation,” the university said.
University colleagues are working closely with internal and external experts, including authorities such as Police Scotland, the Scottish Government, and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
In consultation with the external support, the university has “been following a controlled process and are making steady steps towards a resolution.”
On certain pages of the university’s website, the following text currently appears: “Areas of our website is currently down and we apologise for any inconvenience this might cause. We are working to resolve this as soon as possible, please check back again soon.”
The news of the incident comes as UWS students celebrate summer graduations, with physical events taking place between June 4 and today, June 7.
The statement noted that “Graduations are continuing as planned this week with no interruption.”
It also confirmed that the university “continues to keep staff and students informed.”
While a cyber-attack hasn’t been outright specified in this scenario, higher education institutions across the UK such as universities are unfortunately prime targets for disruption and attacks.
The Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) found that half of higher education institutions and three in ten further education colleges reported experiencing breaches or attacks at least weekly, according to its 2023 Cyber Security Breaches Survey.
According to Mastercard, its new Consumer Fraud Risk tool helps to predict scams in real-time, providing banks with the intelligence to help stop a payment before funds are lost.
The tool has been suggested to be based on insights from fraud-related transactional data, and is overlaid with specific analysis factors such as account names, payment values, payer and payee history, and the payee’s links to accounts associated with scams.
TSB has been named as one of the first banks to have adopted the tool.
According to Mastercard, “the bank says that it has dramatically increased its fraud detection.” The payment network processor also said that based on TSB’s results, “the amount of scam payments prevented over a year would equate to almost £100m saved across the UK, should their performance be mirrored by all banks.”
Interestingly, last month, Robin Bulloch, TSB’s Chief Executive, apparently signed a letter to the UK Government on how the UK has become a “global hotspot” for scams.
The other banks that have signed up to use Mastercard’s tool allegedly include Bank of Scotland, Halifax, and Lloyds Bank, as well as the fintech unicorn Monzo.
The banks are to adopt the tool over the course of 2023, Mastercard said.
Speaking on the adoption of Mastercard’s tool, Paul Davis, the Director of Fraud Prevention at TSB, commented: “Spotting fraudulent payments among millions made every day is like finding a needle in a haystack, with scams becoming ever more complex – so prevention and monitoring tools are key.”
“Our partnership with Mastercard is providing the intelligence needed to identify fraudulent accounts and prevent payments ever reaching them.”
While Mastercard is rolling out Consumer Fraud Risk in the UK first, the payment network processor says it’s assessing further international markets to scale the solution.
As UK Finance’s Annual Fraud Report 2023 highlighted, over £1.2 billion was stolen through fraud in 2022, which marks a slight reduction of 8% over the previous year.
The report found that social engineering — when criminals manipulate or dupe victims into handing over potentially sizable sums of money — continues to be a key driver for fraud losses in 2022.
From romance to investment to impersonation scams, UK Finance’s data also shows that there was a 6% increase in scam cases.
In Scotland alone, overall fraud skyrocketed by 194% in 2022, according to research from professional services firm KPMG.
This finding comes from the recently published European tech ascendancy: Unlocking a continent’s innovation potential report, created by Creandum, the Stockholm-headquartered venture capital firm which backs early-stage tech companies, in collaboration with Dealroom, the tech startup data and intelligence provider.
The report has defined future unicorns as startups valued between $250 million and $1 billion which have raised since 2018. Meanwhile, a fully-fledged unicorn is generally defined as a private company that has reached or surpassed the $1 billion valuation threshold.
Specifically, the report highlighted that 34% of future unicorns are currently headquartered in the UK. The UK is followed by the “rest of Europe” at 22%, France at 16%, Germany at 15%, the Nordics at 8%, and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) at 5%.
The above figures largely align with the statistics regarding the venture capital received in H1 of 2023: the United Kingdom secured 35% of the funding share, followed again by the “rest of Europe” at 19%, France at 17%, Germany at 15%, the Nordics at 11%, and CEE at 3%.
As it stands, Europe has 514 unicorns in 2023, spread across 65 cities and 25 countries. For instance, Tallinn — Estonia is particularly renowned for its tech unicorn output despite its comparatively small population and market size — has six unicorns, Stockholm has 31, Berlin 35, Paris 44, and London 105.
When it comes to the tech and business talent needed to drive innovation — and for possible future unicorns to indeed become unicorns — the report highlighted that Europe is comparatively well-placed.
For instance, Europe has 40% more developers than the US; students in the UK, Spain, Italy, France, and Germany are more interested in STEM-focused degrees compared to the US; and Europe is home to various leading universities for computer science and engineering, not least the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and Imperial College London.
Further, in terms of density and innovation, Oxford is ranked as the third best science cluster in the world, coming only behind Boston and the Bay Area in the US.
“Over the past two decades, Europe’s tech scene has undergone a seismic shift, moving from an outsider to a global challenger,” said Staffan Helgesson, General Partner at Creandum.
“Europe now possesses all the essential ingredients for this continued revolution: a wealth of talent, a maturing ecosystem and entrepreneurial role models for the coming generations. By harnessing these strengths, Europe can lead the world in new innovation in all sectors.
“We have seen first hand how software has been a catalyst for disruption, accelerating the pace of innovation across various sectors. However, in the end it is the individual entrepreneur who will determine the success or failure of a venture.”
The full report can be read by navigating to the bottom of this blog post.
While the report from Creandum and Dealroom underscores the sheer potential of the UK’s tech sector, many notable figureheads and organisations have recently suggested that the country will fall behind if the UK Government doesn’t amend its tech-related policies, regulations, and strategies.
For instance, in May, the CEO of Revolut — UK’s largest unicorn — said that “it’s hard to do business in the UK” and that “there are higher taxes to pay and an extremely bureaucratic regulator,” according to The Times.
Last month, at the beginning of June, techUK — the trade association — released a report that called on the government to ensure that the UK’s tech industry remains competitive and innovative, and provided 18 proposed solutions to the government for doing so.
“We need politicians to act, set out a long-term plan for the sector, provide a better approach to regulation and deliver on strategies for key technologies,” said Julian David, techUK’s CEO.
This is but one of the findings from the Centre’s sixth annual Active Cyber Defence (ACD) report. The ACD itself is an NCSC programme aiming to tackle high-volume cyber-attacks that affect people’s everyday lives through a number of interventions and services.
The Suspicious Email Report Service (SERS) is one of the publicly available services offered. The ACD report discovered that, between January and December last year, 7.1 million suspicious emails and URLs were flagged by organisations and members of the public via SERS. This equates to just under 20,000 reports per day, or one every five seconds, and marks a 33% increase compared to 2021.
The NCSC found that last year’s reports led to the removal of over 72,000 malicious URLs across 40,000 scam campaigns, with the malicious URLs reported being removed from the internet within six hours on average. Further, around 235,000 malicious URLs have been eliminated by the NCSC since SERS’ launch in April 2020.
The NCSC’s Takedown Service — the centrally-managed service for finding malicious sites and then notifying the host or owner for their removal — saw a drop in the number of takedowns, with the takedowns of URLs falling from 3.1 million in 2021 to 2.4 million in 2022. The NCSC points to a reduction in frequency of certain threats, such as cryptocurrency investment scams, as the reason behind this.
Despite its fall, cryptocurrency investment scams continue to be a high-volume attack type, while the fake shop, phishing URL, brute force attack, web shell, and malware infrastructure URL attack types similarly remain highly used.
The overall increased usage of the NCSC’s publicly available cyber tools by organisations across Britain was also underscored in the sixth annual ACD report. For example, organisations using Mail Check — the NCSC’s platform for assessing email security compliance — rose from 1,530 in 2021 to 2,452 in 2022, with universities, colleges, schools, and charities cited as the primary drivers in this uptick.
Additionally, the NCSC’s Exercise in a Box (EiaB) tool, which allows organisations to improve upon their responses to cybersecurity incidents in a virtual environment, had 18,500 users worldwide, marking an increase of around 40% over 2021.
On many business’ desire to be cyber secure and resilient — and their usage of NCSC tools such as SERS, Mail Check, and EiaB — Martin McTague, the National Chair of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), said: “We’ve long championed building cyber resilience among small firms, given the persistent risk of cybercrime.
“A fifth of small businesses see cybercrime as the most impactful crime in terms of both cost and disruption to their operations.
“NCSC is doing the right thing by making its services accessible to SMEs so that they can better protect themselves in the digital world.”
Meanwhile, Jonathon Ellison, NCSC Director for National Resilience and Future Technology, said the following on the results of the latest ACD report: “In a cyber threat environment that resembles the Hydra – cut down one attack, another springs up in its place – ACD is once again doing unparalleled work to keep the country safe.
“As this latest report shows, cyber security is not the sole preserve of tech specialists: businesses are increasingly alive to and eager to engage with the cyber risks they face, signing up in swathes to make the most of NCSC data and expertise.
“Small businesses have a key role to play in making it safer to work and live online, which is why we’re making it even easier for them to shore up their defences with accessible, free tools and soon, to manage these effortlessly via our integrated MyNCSC platform.”
To read the full version of the latest ACD report, click here.
After concluding its own internal investigation into the UK-wide disruption to 999 call services on Sunday 25 June, BT — which manages the 999 phone system — has provisionally identified that 11,470 unique calls failed to connect.
According to the telecoms company, a “complex software issue which had never been seen through our continuous testing regime” affected the 999 phone system. The issue had apparently caused a caching issue, resulting in impacted calls not being routed correctly and the user’s call being disconnected.
A “robust temporary fix” is currently in place while a permanent fix for the issue is being tested. The system is said to be stable and running as normal.
The telecoms company also said that it had taken until Wednesday morning to get in touch with the unconnected callers to establish whether further help was needed. In the instances where callers couldn’t be reached, BT has passed details onto the police to investigate.
In general terms of what happened on the technical side last Sunday, BT said that 999 call handling agents began to experience problems with some emergency calls being cut off on connection to the emergency services at 6:24am. By 7:02am, an internal incident was raised.
BT runs three primary network clusters for its 999 phone system, each of which can handle 999 call traffic. However, the cluster which was affected was initially unclear, leading BT to decide to switch to a backup system.
The transfer to the 999 backup system was attempted at 7:31am — however, it had proven unsuccessful. “While the backup system itself was ready to handle calls, the complex transfer process had not been completed successfully. We have since put in place steps to simplify this process,” stated BT.
During attempts to restore the system to full service, BT returned to one of the primary network clusters. But as it became apparent later on, the cluster that had been selected was the one which had the underlying issue. “This resulted in callers being unable to connect to the 999 service between 07:32 and 08:50,” BT said.
The transfer to the backup system was successfully initiated at 8:37am for calls from a landline, and 8:50am for calls from a mobile.
At 11:54am, BT began to bring over non-emergency traffic back to the non-affected primary network clusters, while the impacted cluster was isolated. After extended monitoring, and from 2:52pm, BT started moving emergency calls back to the primary network clusters. By 4:56pm, all emergency calls were being handled by the primary 999 system once again, BT said.
Diagnostics and a temporary fix on the impacted network cluster meant that it was reintroduced at 8:50pm for non-emergency traffic first. Emergency calls were also brought over at 9:29pm after no issues were experienced.
In addition to BT’s internal investigation, Ofcom — the communications regulator — has also launched an investigation.
“Our investigation will seek to establish the facts surrounding the incident and examine whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that BT has failed to comply with its regulatory obligations,” the regulator said on Wednesday.
BT said that it “will fully cooperate with Ofcom’s investigation.”
Salesforce’s survey, which was conducted in partnership with YouGov in May of this year, reflected the thoughts and opinions of nearly 1,400 full-time, UK-based workers across sales, service, marketing, and commerce.
Statistics-wise, over one-third (38%) of respondents are using or planning to use generative AI in their roles — but just under two-thirds (62%) say they lack the skills when it comes to using such tools in a safe and accurate manner.
Despite generative AI’s potential to streamline various work-related processes and tasks, thereby increasing productivity, there’s a distinct wariness around trust and security risks.
On this, 58% cited bias as a concern, while 46% said the same regarding inaccuracies in generative AI outputs. Further, a lack of human contextual knowledge (70%) and human creativity (66%) point to the need for human input and control.
As worries over potential inaccuracies and privacy issues mount, some companies are halting their employees from using generative AI tools like ChatGPT in a professional capacity.
For example, and according to The Wall Street Journal, Apple has restricted the use of ChatGPT and other external artificial intelligence tools like GitHub’s Copilot over concerns that workers could release confidential data.
However, earlier this month, DIGIT reported on a new GitHub survey that found the vast majority of software developers are already using AI coding tools, with 67% saying they use the tools both in work and out of it, and 25% saying they use them purely at work.
On Salesforce’s findings — and on trust, safety, and accuracy in generative AI — Zahra Bahrolouloumi, CEO at Salesforce UKI, said: “Generative AI is the most important technological breakthrough of our lifetime, revolutionising how businesses interact with customers.
“But its potential will only be realised if we put trust and safety at the centre of this technology. This starts with managing data. Pulling from data sources that are relevant, representative, and complete.”
Salesforce’s previous research underscored the AI skills shortage that organisations are facing amid the explosion in generative AI interest, adoption, and usage: just 1 in 10 UK workers feel they have AI skills.
This skills shortage can then deepen safety and security worries. As Salesforce found in its latest research, over two-thirds of UK workers (67%) are concerned that their broader teams don’t have the skills to effectively and safely use generative AI.
As organisations transition to this new technology, over half (55%) of respondents said that they would like their employers to provide them with generative AI training.
On this, Bahrolouloumi added: “To stay competitive and drive long-term transformation for their customers and business, organisations need highly skilled people to use trusted data sources and ensure sensitive data is kept secure.
“The need to prioritise upskilling at every level has never been more clear nor urgent.”
The information was revealed to mark the 20th anniversary of the response to the cyber-attack made against the UK Government in June 2003.
After an employee had noticed “suspicious activity” on one of their workstations, cyber experts were asked to investigate — though, there was no dedicated government agency or organisation set up to deal with cyber-attacks at the time.
The experts had found the suspicious activity was related to a phishing email. They then sought help from the information assurance arm of GCHQ, the Communications-Electronics Security Group (CESG).
The CESG’s analysis uncovered that malware designed to steal sensitive data had been installed. This raised “suspicions about the attacker’s intent,” and helped to set “in motion a series of actions that was transformative to cyber incident investigations.”
As part of this series of actions, GCHQ brought together its signals intelligence capabilities with its cyber security function, helping to investigate and identify the perpetrator, the NCSC said.
After analysis and international engagement, the CESG concluded that the intent of the attack had been cyber espionage by a nation state, although the nation state in question wasn’t named by the NCSC.
When the NCSC was founded in 2016, the CESG was incorporated into the organisation alongside the Centre for Cyber Assessment, CERT-UK, and the Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure (now known as the National Protective Security Authority).
Speaking on the 20th anniversary of the GCHQ’s first response to a state-sponsored cyber-attack, Paul Chichester, the director of operations at the NCSC, said: “Twenty years ago, we were just crossing the threshold of the cyber attack arena, and this incident marked the first time that GCHQ was involved in a response to an incident affecting the UK Government.
“It was also the first time that the UK and Europe started to understand the potential online risks we faced and our response transformed how we investigate and defend against such attacks.
“The NCSC and our allies have come such a long way since this incident, and it is reassuring to be at the forefront of efforts to develop tools and techniques to defend against cyber threats and keep our respective nations safe online.”
In the NCSC’s Annual Review 2022, which was published last November, a specific section was dedicated to state threats. It suggested that the organisation has “continued to see state actors present a significant threat towards the UK and global cyber security.”
The report noted that “the regimes that continued to present the most acute cyber threat to the UK and its interests were Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.”
The upsurge in the interest, proliferation, and usage of artificial intelligence (AI) — brought on by the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI last November — has led to intensified questioning over how AI could affect various aspects of society moving forward.
For many people, not least marginalised people themselves, some of the most important questions on AI concern how it could negatively impact marginalised communities if the teams working on AI systems aren’t diverse, and if the AI systems themselves aren’t trained on representative and reliable data.
According to McKinsey’s The State of AI in 2022 study and report from last December, just 27% of people working in teams that are developing AI solutions identify as women, and just 25% identify as racial or ethnic minorities. Further, 29% of people said their organisations have no minority employees working on their AI solutions.
In a bid to support and grow diversity in the field of AI by supporting, championing, and building diverse communities in AI, Diverse AI — which is a volunteer-led, not-for-profit organisation — has been launched in person through events in London and Edinburgh.
The London launch event on 21 June was led by Diverse AI’s founder Toju Duke, who’s a Programme Manager for Responsible AI at Google, while last night’s Scottish launch was led by co-founder Steph Wright, the Head of the Scottish AI Alliance, the organisation working to deliver on Scotland’s AI strategy.
“We believe that AI can truly transform our lives for the better, but this is only achievable if the people that work in and around it are truly diverse,” Wright said. “Truly diverse” encapsulates a wide mixture of people from across different races, genders, sexual orientations, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, religions, and more. “The homogeneity of the field is a widely recognised problem, and it’s a root cause of many of the negative impacts.”
The organisation aims to meet its mission of supporting and growing diversity in AI mainly through community-, collaboration-, and championing-oriented efforts. As Wright said, Diverse AI is “wanting to support the diverse talent that’s already working in AI, making sure they’re staying in AI, and to make sure that diverse voices are represented — and then, also, to try and attract more diverse people into the fields of AI.”
On this front, Wright explained that the focus isn’t solely on supporting technical AI roles. “The focus is always on technical roles or entrepreneurship. But the truth is, those two roles can’t exist without everyone else that enables the sector to thrive; you have your product managers, project managers, business development, marketing, communications, admin — and they all work in AI.”
To help facilitate its aims, the organisation has several key programmes of activity — including aspects such as research and education — led by their respective team leads. Dawn Hunter, who serves as Diverse AI’s Community Empowerment Lead and is also a Project Manager at Scottish AI Alliance, touched on the community empowerment efforts.
“We have a clear objective for community empowerment: it’s about developing and growing an inclusive and supportive community of diverse voices and minds working, researching, developing, implementing, and living with AI,” she said.
Hunter mentioned that the initial community empowerment work focuses on the LGBTQ+ community, and that, as an example of such work, they’re currently engaging with equalities and LGBTQ+ student union representatives at universities across the UK in order to get them engaged in online networking events for LGBTQ+ university students interested in AI.
The LGBTQ+ community is just one community that the organisation aims to support, and Hunter gave a call to action for others to get involved and help champion their own communities: “This can be any marginalised community; you can be part of the neurodiverse community, you can be part of that disabled community, you can be part of the Black and minority ethnic community […] as long as this community is marginalised in the AI space currently and you want to be a champion for it.”
Near the end of the talk, Wright mentioned how, for those interested in getting involved in the organisation more generally, it’s possible to become a member of Diverse AI for free. By doing so, it’s possible to join a community of diverse people working in AI, thereby being able to share, support, learn, and collaborate in a safe space. Further, members can join Diverse AI events online and in person, as well as have opportunities to lead or volunteer across the aforementioned programmes, among other benefits.
A paid membership is also hoped to be introduced this August, which will offer additional advantages to members, such as being added to the Diverse AI membership directory, which will help showcase and champion the diverse talent already working in AI.
Before the talk introducing Diverse AI came to a close, and before being met with the audience’s round of applause, Wright ended with an open invitation: “I’m inviting you all to come join us on a journey to a diverse AI future.”
For readers wanting to learn more about or get involved with Diverse AI, visit the organisation’s homepage here.
On Sunday morning, and seemingly due to a technical fault, emergency services across the country reported that 999 calls were failing to connect. According to The Guardian, the issue was confirmed shortly after 8.30am, but by 9.52am, BT — which manages the 999 phone system — said that its back-up platform was “now working.”
Ofcom’s rules require BT and other providers to take all necessary steps to ensure uninterrupted access to emergency organisations as part of any call services offered. Further, they require providers to take all necessary measures to ensure the fullest availability of calls and internet in events such as network breakdown.
“Our investigation will seek to establish the facts surrounding the incident and examine whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that BT has failed to comply with its regulatory obligations,” the regulator said in a statement.
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service was one of the Scottish emergency services that shared alerts on Sunday, saying that “The National 999 system is experiencing technical issues” and that “many calls are not connecting,” redirecting callers to control room staff instead.
This was before they issued a later update, advising callers to “Please call 999 in the event of an emergency” as normal.
The Scottish Government took to social media on Sunday to also provide guidance, in one post stating that “There is a technical issue with the 999 call system which may cause some delays,” before later saying that “The technical issue affecting 999 calls in some areas across the UK has now been resolved” and that “Systems are working as normal and people should dial 999 in an emergency.”
The following Monday, 26 June, Viscount Camrose — the Parliamentary Under-secretary of State for the Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) — shared in the House of Lords that the now-resolved issue with the 999 call system was reported to the UK Government at 9.20am on the Sunday.
Further, he said that in addition to Ofcom’s investigation, BT is also performing its own internal investigation.
According to The Guardian, a BT spokesperson has said that the telecoms company is nearing the end of its internal investigation and will share the findings with the government, Ofcom, and emergency services on Thursday.
This is just one of the findings uncovered in the research firm’s survey among 501 respondents, 182 of whom were LE CIOs in North America and the EMEA and APAC regions.
While the vast majority pointed towards wanting to grow their IT teams, 14% of CIOs said that they expect their IT staff to decrease in number, and 5% expect their headcount to remain unchanged.
Additionally, 67% percent of LE CIOs plan to grow their IT headcount by at least 10% to support their enterprise’s digital initiatives, such as operational excellence and customer experience.
On the desire to grow IT team sizes, Jose Ramirez, a Senior Principal Analyst at Gartner, said: “Attracting and retaining technology talent remain critical areas of concern for CIOs.
“Even with advances in AI, Gartner predicts that the global job impact will be neutral in the next several years due to enterprise adoption lags, implementation times and learning curves.”
However, despite their plans, many CIOs are facing hiring roadblocks. For instance, in response to economic volatility — and the global tech talent shortage — 41% of LE CIOs report slow hiring for IT roles, 35% point to decreased overall IT budget, and 29% report an IT hiring freeze.
In a bid to attract and retain talent in spite of global challenges, Ramirez said that CIOs are undertaking slightly different approaches with promising talent.
“CIOs are taking proactive steps to combat economic volatility by relaxing geographic and role requirements to expand their IT talent pipeline,” he said.
“Some organizations have found success by hiring early-career technologists and providing upskilling opportunities to fill critical technology needs.”
The research firm’s survey also found that nearly half of LE CIOs plan to invest in training programs to upskill and/or reskill IT staff to ensure their teams have the appropriate roles, skills, and capacity to meet objectives.
Further, 46% of CIOs plan to establish “fusion teams” — i.e. multidisciplinary teams that blend together technology, analytics, and business domain expertise and share accountability for business and technology outcomes — to help bridge gaps in talent and skills.
While the tech skills gap is a far-reaching issue, the impact of it in the UK is particularly well-documented.
For instance, in May, DIGIT reported on research which uncovered that 33% of large UK companies cite the lack of in-house technical expertise as a key factor for stymying their digital transformation efforts.
Rich Wilson, the CEO of Scots talent platform Gigged.AI, recently wrote an opinion piece for DIGIT in which he suggested that “quiet hiring” — the act of encouraging internal staff mobility, upskilling and reskilling them, and engaging contingent workers — could be a short-term solution to the pervasive problem.
The comments come as the Commission responds to the government’s AI white paper, which was published in March of this year and sets out a framework with guiding principles for existing regulators to manage and oversee the rapidly developing technology.
While the watchdog broadly agrees with a principle-based framework for regulating AI, it says that a greater focus on human rights and equality — alongside much greater funding for its regulators like itself — is urgently needed for the effective and efficient managing of AI’s potential.
If these suggested measures don’t materialise, the EHRC’s Chairwoman, Baroness Kishwer Falkner, has said that “the equality risks associated with AI will continue unchecked.”
Upon the publishing of EHRC’s response, Baroness Falkner said: “We welcome the government’s focus on safe and responsible AI development, including the need for fairness in the way AI is implemented. But the proposed regulations do not go far enough.
“People want the benefits of new technology but also need safety nets to protect them from the risks posed by unchecked AI advancement.
“If any new technology is to bring innovation while keeping us safe, it needs careful oversight. This includes oversight to ensure that AI does not worsen existing biases in society or lead to new discrimination.
“To rise to this challenge, we need to boost our capability and scale up our operation as a regulator of equality and human rights. We cannot do that without government funding.”
The EHRC’s full, 23-page response points out that regulators are perhaps best placed to address AI’s challenges and support its responsible usage and growth, not least due to regulators’ subject and sector expertise in addition to existing industry links — but only with the appropriate funding in place.
“We are ambitious for the role the EHRC can play in ensuring AI safely protects equality and human rights,” said Baroness Falkner. “We are already collaborating with other regulatory bodies to achieve this goal.
“As AI technology continues to advance at an unprecedented pace, we must strike the right balance between innovation to improve public services and UK businesses, and the safeguarding of human rights and equality for everyone in Britain, as enshrined in law.”
The EHRC isn’t the first regulatory body to respond on the UK Government’s proposed plans for AI regulation.
For instance, in April, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said that it welcomed the government’s intention to convene regulators, but sought greater clarity on the respective roles of government and regulators when it comes to issuing guidance and advice.
At the beginning of this month, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published its initial response to the AI white paper, suggesting that they see the benefits of a pro-innovation, proportionate, trustworthy, adaptable, clear, and collaborative framework.
However, also in early June, Richard Lochhead, the Scottish Government Minister for Small Business, Trade, and Innovation voiced his concerns at the Chamber over the UK’s “hands-off” plans, suggesting that it could impact Scotland’s ability to effectively manage both AI’s potential and risks.
“We are a bit concerned that the current UK government plans for the hands-off, non-statutory regulation of AI will not meet Scotland’s needs,” he said. “We don’t want to create unnecessary red tape, but we do have a duty to create the right supportive environment for business to thrive, and also for citizens to be protected.”
The UK Government’s AI white paper itself was launched all while an open letter which called for a moratorium on AI development was gaining significant traction, receiving support from other 1,000 tech leaders, including Steve Wozniak, the Apple co-founder, and Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology.
The facilities, known as “TEFs” (short for Testing and Experimentation Facilities), are large-scale reference sites open to technology providers across Europe to trial AI solutions — including software, hardware, products and services — in real-world settings and at scale.
In addition to the facilities’ physical and virtual services, the TEFs also seek to support technology providers with the appropriate expertise to integrate and validate their solutions. Such expertise is set to be drawn either in-house or from an external source, such as research and technology organisations.
The four centres focus on the high-impact sectors of healthcare, manufacturing, cities and communities, as well as agriculture and food.
TEF-Health concerns how AI can help build upon and improve the healthcare sector — for example, with medical imaging and diagnostics.
The AI-MATTERS TEF, meanwhile, covers AI’s usage in manufacturing, and the CitCom.AI TEF will help test AI solutions targeting the sustainable development of cities and communities.
Lastly, agrifoodTEF relates to AI in the agricultural and food production sector — for instance, AI products that could help farmers and grain aggregators with crop storage.
As AI and ML technologies develop exponentially, the need to test them in real world or close to real world scenarios — like the TEFs offer — are of crucial importance to ensure that they’re responsible, safe, and trustworthy when practically used.
The four European test centres have been made possible due to around €220 million (£189m~) in backing from the European Commission, more than half of the Member States, and 128 partners, according to the Technical University of Denmark who leads the CitCom.AI TEF.
A launch event was held today in the Danish capital of Copenhagen.
The European Union is currently being heralded as the leader when it comes to the AI regulation and laws, and the launch of its AI testing facilities serves as a reminder of the trade bloc’s commitment to the appropriate navigation of AI.
In particular, the EU’s AI Act, which has been cited as the first law on AI by a major regulator anywhere, aims to ensure that AI systems placed on the EU market are safe and respectful of existing laws and values.
Earlier this month, on June 14, the European Parliament adopted its negotiating position on the AI Act with 499 votes in favour, 28 against, and 93 abstentions.
The next step, then, is for EU countries in the Council to discuss the final form of the law, with the aim of reaching an agreement by the end of the year.
According to the government, 3,600 people in the UK this year are looking to gain cybersecurity skills and knowledge in a bid to land a role in cyber through the Upskill in Cyber programme.
Further, almost half of applications were submitted by women, and more than half of total applications have come from people outside London and the South East.
The initiative is aimed at UK-based adults over the age of 18 who have no prior professional experience in cybersecurity, and are able to commit to the remote, virtually-delivered 14-week programme.
Upskill in Cyber is a part of the UK Government’s £2.6 billion National Cyber Strategy, which aims to ensure that the UK adapts, innovates, and invests in the UK’s cyber efforts, a key part of which includes building a larger cyber-focused workforce.
“The UK’s cyber sector is growing exponentially,” said Minister for AI and Intellectual Property, Viscount Camrose.
“In just 12 months we’ve seen our 58,000 strong workforce jump by 10%, and ensuring we can maintain a steady supply of diverse, highly-skilled professionals is vital to meet the needs of our growing digital economy.
“It’s encouraging to see record numbers from a wide range of backgrounds and communities coming forward for this year’s Upskill in Cyber Programme. However, this is ultimately just one piece of the puzzle.
“We must continue our work with industry and education to improve tech skills across the economy, and we are continuing to invest in the potential of our brightest minds at all levels to unlock opportunity for people right across the country.”
Last year’s Cyber security skills in the UK labour market report highlighted the country’s prescient cyber skills gaps: 51% of businesses — approximately 697,000 — have a basic cyber skills gap, i.e. the people in charge of cybersecurity in those businesses lack the confidence to carry out the kinds of basic tasks laid out in the government-endorsed Cyber Essentials scheme.
In a bid to help bridge the cyber skills gap, the UK Government has launched a collection of education-focused initiatives, of which the Upskill in Cyber programme is a part.
For instance, in addition to Upskill in Cyber is the Cyber Explorers programme, which is geared towards 11 to 14-year-olds and teaches them essential cyber skills through a free online learning platform.
Additionally, there’s the National Cyber Security Centre’s CyberFirst, which is again aimed at young people, helping them to become interested and grow into cybersecurity careers.
However, as Viscount Camrose mentioned, getting people into the cyber industry is but one piece of the intricated puzzle to bridge the cyber skills gap in the longer term.
When it comes to women’s place in tech especially, systemic barriers are still impacting their ability to enter the workforce in the first place, as well as their retention and career progression.
According to a new collaborative report from Code First Girls and Tech Talent Charter, and on the question of “Why do women’s careers progress slower than men’s?,” 63% of respondents point to the issue of stereotyping, while 53% say maternity leave, 39% say family-life balance, and 38% say double-standards.
The effect the rapidly developing technology has on contemporary jobs in the UK labour market is just one of the key areas delved into in the new Generative AI and the UK labour market report, while topics such as its subsequent social, economic, and productivity-related implications are also covered.
When it comes to the occupational impact of generative AI, writers, authors, and translators are at the top of the list, with a share of 43% of their tasks susceptible to automation. KPMG pointed to how text-based generative AI could be used to accelerate important aspects of writing-oriented roles, such as the drafting process.
Following writers are programmers and software developers — similarly writing- and creation-focused roles, though more technical in nature — with as much as 26% of the tasks performed by them being at risk of automation.
Earlier this month, DIGIT reported on a GitHub study that found 92% of devs are already using AI coding tools — like GitHub’s Copilot — to heighten code quality and more quickly, with 67% saying they use them both at work and out of it.
The third-most potentially impacted roles are public relations professionals and communications directors, with a share of 25% of tasks being open to automation. Next, however, is another tech-oriented role: IT user support technicians, with a share of 23%.
In spite of these findings, Yael Selfin, Chief Economist at KPMG UK, said: “While we do not anticipate many job losses as a result, changes to work practices of some occupations could still lead to short-term skill mismatches, as the labour market adjusts to the new technology. Additional support will be needed to facilitate the transition of affected workers to new occupations.”
The report also suggests that while certain professions could, as we’ve seen, be more impacted, a large swathe of occupations will likely see little to no impact from AI technologies. Out of the 412 occupational categories — including construction, manufacturing, retail, and hospitality — considered by KPMG, around 60% is set to see almost no impact. However, this could change in time.
As Selfin said, “It is important to note that the impact of Generative AI, while significant for some occupations, does not appear yet to have the potential to encompass many others, which limits the overall impact on the economy.
“However, the technology may facilitate faster progress in areas such as programming and R&D, which in turn could generate a significant boost to productivity, beyond the impact on the immediate tasks affected by this technology.”
In conclusion, KPMG doesn’t anticipate that AI will lead to falls in overall employment in the long-term; around half of the displacement impact of generative AI is expected to be offset by the creation of new tasks within the affected jobs.
This offsetting could also lead to an AI-facilitated productivity boost of around 1.2%, generating a potential £31bn of GDP to the UK economy within the next ten years.
To read the Generative AI and the UK labour market report in full, click here.
In June 2014, the Cyber Essentials scheme — which is operated by the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), and delivered through the IASME Consortium — was launched in a bid to help businesses protect themselves against the ever-changing cyber threat landscape.
A recently published report, commissioned by DSIT and conducted by Pye Tait Consulting, has revealed the scheme’s strengths since its inception nearly a decade ago, but it’s also underscored several concerns and highlighted areas of improvement.
Perhaps most notably, the report outlined that, as of the end of May 2023, there have been around 35,500 total Cyber Essentials certifications. Considering that the UK private sector boasts around 5 million businesses — around 1.1m of whom are employers — this shows that just a fraction of UK businesses have taken up the scheme.
However, uptake of the scheme is in fact rising year-on-year: in January 2017, fewer than 500 certificates were issued per month, but in January 2023, the figure was just under 3,500.
Could awareness be a factor in the scheme not having wider adoption among UK businesses? According to separate government figures, 59% of large businesses are aware of Cyber Essentials, while this falls to 50% for medium-sized businesses. Just 14% of businesses overall, however, are aware of the scheme, and just 15% of charities are aware.
According to the new DSIT report, almost two thirds (64%) of the 74 surveyed organisations that have never undertaken Cyber Essentials had not heard of it prior to taking part in the survey.
When businesses are aware of the scheme, however, the most common reason (mentioned by 34%) for undertaking it is that it’s a requirement of a public sector contract, suggesting that, in some cases, the initiative is seen as a means to an end, or a hoop to jump through.
Regarding the support that’s available to businesses undergoing the scheme, more than half of respondents (54%) described it as very helpful, and 36% said it was quite helpful. Though, more than a fifth (21%) of lapsed Cyber Essentials users described support as not very or not at all helpful.
On the question of whether the scheme is good value for money — the overall mean spend to obtain certification is estimated to be just below £5,000 — the majority (58%) strongly agree or agree, while just over a quarter (26%) are ambivalent, and nearly one fifth (16%) disagree or strongly disagree, painting a mixed picture regarding perception of value.
That said, the core goal of the Cyber Essentials scheme — to level-up cybersecurity knowledge and know-how — does seem to be having the desired effect: the majority of respondents believe that going through the Cyber Essentials process has improved their cybersecurity awareness and understanding (71%), which has thereby bolstered their ability to mitigate organisational cybersecurity risks (52%).
Further, over two thirds (67%) of respondents said that they would recommend the scheme to others, with charities and trusts especially viewing the scheme as cost-effective and accessible, suggesting that the scheme is indeed worthwhile for gaining a baseline cybersecurity knowledge.
In terms of possible improvements, the report’s writers said that “All surveyed organizations were asked in what ways they think the Cyber Essentials scheme could be improved in the future, with suggestions falling into the following five main themes: i) better tailoring and scalability; ii) improvements in communication, guidance and support; iii) reduced cost; iv) quality and scrutiny of assessments; and v) synergy with other security schemes.”
The flight, dubbed “Galactic 01,” is a scientific research mission, and will carry scientists from the National Research Council of Italy and the Italian Air Force to conduct microgravity research.
The second commercial spaceflight, “Galactic 02” — which is for “private astronauts” — is planned to take place in early August, with monthly commercial flights expecting to fly thereafter.
“We are launching the first commercial space line for Earth with two dynamic products — our scientific research and private astronomy space missions,” said CEO Michael Colglazier on the announcement of the commercial spaceflight service.
“This next exciting chapter for Virgin Galactic has been driven by innovation, determination and a commitment to delivering an unparalleled and truly transformative customer experience.”
A Long Time Coming
The lead up to Galactic’s first commercial spaceflights has been a longtime coming — nearly 20 years, in fact. In 2004, Branson founded Virgin Galactic, with the company aiming to get customers, or “astronauts,” up to the edge of space by 2007.
Delays and disasters — including a fatal accident during testing of its SpaceShipTwo plane — have pushed back efforts to launch commercial spaceflights properly time and time again. In May this year, its latest test mission, “Unity 25,” which carried a crew around 54 miles above the Earth, was dubbed a success.
In a bid to become astronauts themselves, customers have agreed to pay up to $450,000 (£353K~) for a ticket to board Galactic’s spaceflights. On top of a reservation for the trip, Galactic’s website states that customers will experience a multi-day training and preparation retreat at Spaceport America, bespoke flightwear, an astronaut insignia, and photographs and videos, among other additions.
Just last month, another of Branson’s space-oriented companies, Virgin Orbit, was in the news as it was announced that it was selling its assets and permanently ceasing operations.
The company, which launched satellite-containing rockets from beneath modified Boeing 747s, had been stumbling since a prominent mission failure in January this year.
The mission in question, which took place from Spaceport Cornwall, represented the first time a satellite space mission had been launched from UK soil — but the rocket carrying the satellites couldn’t reach orbit due to a technical “anomaly.”
Afterwards, the company experienced a furlough period, followed by major staff reductions, and an announcement of bankruptcy.
Regarding the longevity of Galactic, Laura Forczyk, a space industry analyst and founder of the consultancy company Astralytical, said the following to Popular Science: “I do not have high hopes for Virgin Galactic’s long-term stability due to their excruciatingly slow pace to become operational, their high company expenses, and their mixed safety track record.”
“I don’t think that their revenues are going to be able to catch up with their expenses unless there is a significant change in operations.”
Yesterday was the last day of the Online Safety Bill’s journey through Parliament, which is a set of new proposed laws to help protect children and adults online.
The amendment to the Bill, which was brought forward by Baroness Beeban Kidron and backed by the Bereaved Families for Online Safety group, will give coroners the ability, through Ofcom, to force co-operation when deaths suspected to be related to online abuse and harm are investigated.
If tech platforms don’t comply, they could then face a fine of 10% of their global revenue.
“Our changes to the Bill will seek to ensure that Ofcom has the powers it needs to support coroners and their equivalents in Scotland, so that they have access to the information they need to conduct investigations into a child’s death where social media may have played a part,” said Lord Parkinson, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Arts and Heritage.
Further, Baroness Healy, who has various policy focus areas including media, as well as community and families, said: “Where a child has died, sadly, and social media is thought to have played a part, families and coroners have faced years of stonewalling, often never managing to access data or information relevant to that death; this adds greatly to their grief and delays the finding of some kind of closure.
“[…] These amendments would mean that tech companies now had to comply with Ofcom’s information notices or face a fine of up to 10% of their global revenue.”
Some platforms have “digital legacy” features in place, which allows the families of deceased users to access their online accounts. However, features like these aren’t appropriate or helpful when children die suddenly.
The Bereaved Families for Online Safety group, who have backed the amendment, was founded in 2017. It includes the parents of Olly Stephens, who was fatally stabbed in 2021 following a dispute on social media.
Outside parliament yesterday, Olly’s mother, Amanda Stephens, said that the amendment “does feel like progress,” and that Olly’s “legacy for us is that he would always stick up for the underdog and would never accept people being bullied,” according to the BBC.
This suggestion came during a meeting between the Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee at the House of Lords yesterday, which was attended by Spielman as well as Chris Russell, the National Director for Education at Ofsted.
While the overall discussion and questions revolved around many different aspects of schooling and education in Britain, the topic of technology and an apparent disinterest in technology-related school subjects arose numerous times.
“I’ve repeatedly commented publicly on my concerns about the decline in technology in particular, and it distresses me when I go around schools and see splendid facilities lying empty for no very obvious reason,” Spielman said. “And I am told, in schools, that they don’t have many people taking those options.”
On the decline in tech subject uptake — which includes classes like computer science and design and technology — Spielman did point towards systems that require children to make choices about which subjects they’re going to study at a young age as unhelpful.
“We are unusual in this country in being so permissive in allowing children to make life-changing decisions at such an early age; many countries simply don’t give children the opportunities to select themselves out of things at age 13 or 14 the way that we do,” said Spielman.
“If we want more children taking technology subjects throughout the system, then probably removing some of that flexibility and freedom of choice at that age is the only sensible way of achieving that.”
During the meeting, Lord Baker of Dorking — a former education secretary — relayed his displeasure with the drop off in technology subjects, and advocated for curriculums in Britain to reflect the contemporary world.
“Only 13% of children study computing from 11-16; the rest don’t. In fact, computing in schools has dropped by 45% since 2016. We live in the AI age, you know — and that is not covered in our schools today,” he said.
One particular question posed to Spielman during the meeting concerned whether it was difficult to recruit teachers in tech-oriented subjects.
“There’s always a chicken and an egg in this,” said Spielman. “For example, we touched on making languages non-compulsory at key stage 4 — that led to a rapid falloff in children taking languages to GCSE, which led to a reduction in the number of language teachers the system recruited, which led to reductions in training. […] A change of demand takes time to feed through into qualified teachers able to meet demand.”
Last month, DIGIT reported on the news that Alistair Forbes, the founder of the not-for-profit organisation Scottish Tech Army, called for education authorities to adopt new approaches to inspire students to get into tech, amid a sizeable decline in computer science teachers and the ongoing tech skills gap.
The AI-powered tools can be used by doctors to help diagnose and treat conditions such as strokes, cancers, and heart conditions more quickly.
According to the government, the funding will be open for bids for any AI diagnostic tool that trusts want to deploy, but will have to “represent value for money for the funding to be approved.”
In addition to the £21m fund, the Health and Social Care Secretary, Steve Barclay, has also committed to rolling out AI stroke diagnosis technology to all stroke networks by the end of 2023 — up from today’s 86% — helping patients suffering from a stroke to get treated faster.
So far, the government has invested over £120m into 86 different AI technologies aiming to support stroke diagnosis, screening, cardiovascular monitoring, and managing conditions at home.
“Artificial intelligence is already transforming the way we deliver healthcare and AI tools are already making a significant impact across the NHS in diagnosing conditions earlier, meaning people can be treated more quickly,” Barclay said.
“As we celebrate the NHS’s 75th birthday and look ahead to the future, I’m focused on adopting the latest cutting-edge technology across our health and care system to ensure we can continue to deliver the best care for our patients and cut waiting times, which is one of the government’s five priorities.”
Dr Katharine Halliday, President of the Royal College of Radiologists, also commented, saying: “At a time when diagnostic services are under strain, it is critical that we embrace innovation that could boost capacity – and so we welcome the Government’s announcement of a £21 million fund to purchase and deploy AI diagnostic tools.
“All doctors want to give patients the best possible care. This starts with a timely diagnosis, and crucially, catching disease at the earliest point. There is huge promise in AI, which could save clinicians time by maximising our efficiency, supporting our decision-making and helping identify and prioritise the most urgent cases.
“Together with a highly trained and expert radiologist workforce, AI will undoubtedly play a significant part in the future of diagnostics.”
In a bid to help NHS staff find information and guidance on deploying AI devices safely, the government recently announced its AI & Digital Regulation Service.
The government said that this has “made it easier for developers and adopters of AI to understand regulations governing AI in the NHS,” and is “saving them time in bringing products to market.”
While AI has the potential to revolutionise healthcare, the Pew Research Center found that six in ten adults said they would feel uncomfortable if their healthcare provider relied on artificial intelligence for things like disease diagnosis.
Despite the public concern over the use of AI in crucial settings like healthcare, AI is showing promise in its ability to support doctors and other medical professionals to help their patients.
In May this year, DIGIT reported on the news that researchers from the University of Edinburgh found that their AI-based tool, “CoDE-ACS,” was able to rule out a heart attack in more than double the number of patients when compared to current testing methods, and with an accuracy of 99.6%.
These findings come from a survey conducted in May by YouGov on behalf of Appraise. A representative sample of over 100 MPs was asked to answer a series of questions relating to AI and governance.
When it comes to those who are confident, the data shows a minuscule party divide: 7% of Conservative MPs agreed that existing regulators have the expertise needed, while this number was 6% for Labour.
However, overall, the research shows that 69% — more than two-thirds — do not have confidence in existing regulators to govern AI.
The data also shows that while 44% of MPs are optimistic rather than pessimistic about AI – just 27% feel the other way – they are yet to fully grasp the subject. Just under a quarter (23%) of MPs say they understand the implications of AI.
Furthermore, the survey uncovered that 45% of MPs think AI is developing too fast, with 22% disagreeing with this statement. Relatedly, 60% of MPs said they prioritise safety in the rollout of AI, but 14% said they prioritise innovation and growth.
On the survey’s findings, Aidan Muller, one of the two co-founders of Appraise, said: “AI is going to be truly transformative for society. Understandably, our government and policymakers are still getting to grips with its implications. But we need more proactivity than a wait-and-see approach.
“We need an extensive public dialogue informed by deep expertise, and we need it sharp. Existing regulators don’t have the required expertise, and it seems MPs are aware of this.
“We don’t want AI to just be shaped by companies who may prioritise innovation over societal concerns. The health of our democracy is at stake. But also, we don’t want knee-jerk policymaking governed by fear.
“We’re calling for an informed debate in which all stakeholders can take part. This is an opportunity for us to shape the AI that we want, for the society we deserve.”
James Boyd-Wallis, Appraise’s other co-founder, also said that “We need greater debate about what is safe and what is not and strike a balance between the upsides and the downsides. That’s the only way we’ll get effective policy, informed by evidence, that supports a vibrant AI sector and our society more broadly.”
How should AI be regulated? What does too much regulation look like? Similarly, what is too little regulation? These are the questions governments across the world are debating amid the rapid development of artificial intelligence.
This time two weeks ago — on June 8 — Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that the UK will host the “first” global summit on AI safety this autumn. However, concerning the profound impact that AI can have across myriad aspects of society, whether this date is too late or not does come into question.
Speaking of AI policy and regulation, last week, ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair and ex-Leader of the Opposition William Hague released a report titled A New National Purpose: AI Promises a World-Leading Future of Britain. In it, they lambasted the government’s current AI bodies, suggesting that a more expert AI advisory is needed moving forward.
James Phillips, who’s a co-author of the report — and also a previous science and technology advisor at 10 Downing Street — took to Twitter to say the following on the report and the perceived lack of AI advisory expertise.
We highlight that existing government advisory channels and systems for AI have failed for AI. Whilst industry figures have warned in private of the rapid pace of change, the government has been blindsided. Existing institutions have not oriented to this agenda effectively. pic.twitter.com/2YQ2xFAON5
According to Gartner’s research, banking and investment organisations are predicted to spend nearly $270bn (£212bn~) on IT services alone. This acts as a reminder of the important role IT service providers have in supporting such organisations to navigate opportunities and challenges alike.
Meanwhile, the second largest spending category for banking and investment services organisations is software. This area is set to see the largest growth out of all IT categories in 2023 — 13.5% compared to 2022 — totalling around $174bn (£136bn~).
Then, coming in as the third largest spending category is telecom services at just under $80bn (£62bn~). This is followed by internal services at $55bn (£43bn~), then devices at $37bn (£29bn~), and lastly data centre systems at $36bn (£28bn~).
Interestingly, when it comes to data centre systems, Gartner’s 2023 CIO and Technology Executive Survey discovered that more than half of banking and investment services CIOs plan to increase investments in cloud, while reducing IT spending in their own data centres.
This is reflected in Gartner’s recent findings: in 2022, banking and investment services organisations spent around $34bn (£26bn~) on data centre systems, which was a growth of 13.2% compared to 2021. However, in 2023, spending on data centre systems is suggested to be $36bn (£28bn~), meaning that growth is set to slow.
Another fascinating insight concerns the prediction for internal services spend, which at $55bn (£43bn~) is an increase of 4.2% in 2023 compared to 2022. Gartner points to the global talent shortage as the cause, with the increase in spend in this area helping to support the increased costs of hiring and retaining talent.
According to Gartner’s findings, there’s only one area where a fall in spending is forecasted, and that’s in devices. This continues the trend that was seen in 2022, where device spending was $37.9bn (£29.7bn~), marking a -9.9% change compared to 2021. In 2023, the spend is set to be $37.1bn (£29.1bn~), representing a change of -2.1%.
Speaking on Gartner’s new forecast and the findings which underpin it, Debbie Buckland, Director Analyst at Gartner, said: “Current economic headwinds have changed the context for technology investments in banking and investment services this year.
“Rather than cutting IT budgets, organizations are spending more on the types of technologies that generate significantly higher business outcomes. Spending on software, for example, is shifting away from building it in-house, in favor of buying solutions that generate value from investments more rapidly.”
For companies across the globe, especially enterprise-level organisations, cloud adoption is a crucial aspect of digital transformation efforts. And to help ensure that cloud adoption — as well as cloud management and optimisation — is successful, there’s the Cloud Centre of Excellence.
But what is a Cloud Centre of Excellence, or CCoE, exactly? How does an organisation go about building a Cloud Centre of Excellence? And, perhaps most importantly, what are the short-, medium-, and long-term benefits of a CCoE in the first place?
Speaking to a crowded hall of attendees at DIGIT’s 2023 Cloud First Summit in Edinburgh, Alex Radu — who’s JPMorgan Chase’s VP Product Adoption Lead, Cloud CoE — discussed and answered these very questions.
To better understand the Cloud Centre of Excellence, its benefits, and how to go about building one within your organisation, here’s a general rundown of Radu’s talk alongside some of her helpful, actionable suggestions.
A Cloud Centre of What?
“I thought really long and hard about how I could explain this, so anyone could understand it — whether you do have a CCoE in your company, whether you don’t, or whether you’re thinking about starting one,” Radu explained. And, like all great speakers at technology conferences, she simplified a somewhat complex concept by using a Star Wars analogy.
“People often see the CCoE as the most sage of the Jedis — Yoda. They think it’s the be-all, the do-all, the end-all of your cloud organisation. They also sometimes think it’s only for experts, because it’s the ‘Centre of Excellence’ […] and that it’s there to be the central governance or control entity. That couldn’t be further away from the truth,” she prefaced.
“Instead, it’s more like the Alliance: it should be more like a joint alliance of people who are there to support, enable, and further your cloud goals or strategy,” explained Radu. “They should be there to streamline and improve how you adopt and migrate to cloud.”
As a small aside, Radu noted that a CCoE isn’t always called a CCoE: “the CCoE is called a lot of different things — it might be a ‘Centre of Cloud Knowledge,’ it might be ‘Cloud Champions’; people have different names for it,” she mentioned.
Whichever name or acronym is used, Radu re-confirmed that “ultimately, it’s about bringing the people that can help and know most about cloud in your organisation together to make informed strategic decisions about your cloud future.”
The Real-world Benefits of CCoEs
To illustrate just how advantageous Cloud Centres of Excellence can be, Radu discussed a selection of real-world benefits during her talk — and the below examples are just a handful from that selection.
For instance, one notable benefit Radu cited is that the CCoE helps organisations to be more holistic when it comes to the new products and services or features that it wants to use, with the CCoE helping oversee which service best meets the needs of all the organiation’s teams and which service makes most financial sense.
Speaking of financial sense, another advantage that Radu mentioned is the inherent visibility over things like cloud-based organisation accounts. “If you have that visibility across your organisation, and you have a central point where it can all come to, it can actually help you save money. Yes, the cloud can save money, but only if you do it right,” she noted.
One more substantial benefit of CCoEs relates to compliance and security. “Again, if you’re vending accounts from a central place, you can then create security guardrails, where it can actually help you terminate some instances; like if you have a password rotation policy, it can help you actually monitor those risks and remediate those risks without the application teams having to do anything,” she explained.
“But,” as Radu punctuated and rightly pointed out, “you need to have a central organisation actually looking at those things and implementing them.”
Considering the Right Structure for Your CCoE
For those interested in reaping the benefits of a CCoE themselves, Radu had an important point to make: it’s crucial to recognise that, when it comes to thinking about and then building a CCoE, what works for another company may not necessarily work for yours.
“There is no one-size-fits-all,” she said. “There are frameworks, there are ideas, there are ways you can implement it, but ultimately, it will only work if you do the work, and you should discover what works for you in doing that work.
“That implies looking at where you are in your migration journey or your adoption journey; how mature the organisation is; how big the organisation is; what type of skills you have and people you have; what type of people you need to bring together; and how you can structure your CCoE or your cloud organisation going forward.”
As Radu mentioned, considering CCoE structure — i.e. how your Centre is set up — is an essential step in getting CCoE efforts right. And to help with this, Radu provided a broad overview of the most prevalent CCoE structures, including the centralised, decentralised, and semi-centralised organisational structures.
On the centralised structure, she said that is usually “works for smaller businesses where you don’t have that many organisational units or teams, and you can actually have just one central organisation that will be your CCoE to inform […] your architectures, your governance, your guardrails, your FinOps practices, optimisations.”
“Now, if you are a bigger company, you might look at a decentralised model, where you have a CCoE embedded to each of your organisational units,” Radu advised. “That means you gain that advantage of knowing exactly what your teams need, knowing exactly what you need to build for them to use cloud in the most effective way.”
However, the decentralised structure isn’t without its downsides. “At the same time, you don’t really have that connectivity between the different CCoEs to drive that holistic, enterprise vision and strategy,” she noted. “So everyone’s doing things in their own way, and sometimes doing the same things, but no one talks to each other, so you don’t actually know.”
To bridge the potential pain points of the decentralised approach, there’s the semi-centralised structure. This particular structure is where “you have a cloud cell — which is like your own CCoE organisation with your organisational unit — but then you then have a central CCoE that brings them all together.”
As Radu clarified, it’s “really good in really big companies, because you not only have the individual cells meeting the needs of your teams in those organisations, but you also bring them all together to learn from each other, share, build better frameworks, build better guardrails together, and making sure that they’re all leveraging the best information that they have. This is what we [JPMorgan Chase] use.”
People are undeniably at both the heart and the brain of any Cloud Centre of Excellence. But what does a CCoE team look like, exactly?
To illustrate, and using the example of a CCoE team operating in semi-centralised structure, Radu suggested that you can “have your central CCoE team that’s mainly there for the strategy, governance structure side to steer everyone to steer the ship together.
“But then in your cloud cells, you can actually have some different types of roles. And that could be things like compliance, it might be things like security, Information Security Managers; you might have FinOps Managers that look at your cost optimisation and your spending; you might have your adoption and engagement side of your team; you also might have the Cloud Platform Engineers.”
The variety of people in the CCoE is an aspect that Radu specifically wanted to draw attention to, emphasising the fact that it takes myriad people with a whole host of skills to make a CCoE work.
“Not everyone in a Cloud Centre of Excellence will be a Cloud Engineer, or a cloud engineering expert; not everyone will be a cloud veteran,” Radu stressed. “There are a lot of other people that are really good at a lot of other things — like security, like financials […] a lot of other training, learning. They’re not just cloud, but they are all focused on cloud.”
That said, the people that you do bring into the CCoE need to yield particular traits, because “for someone to decide to be an enabler and decide to spend your time driving others to adopt or migrate to cloud, they do need to be a certain type of person.”
As outlined in one of Radu’s slides, the traits in question include having a growth mindset, being innovative, resilient, and result- and outcome-driven, good at relationship building and influencing, as well as being empathetic and customer-centric.
Radu wholly acknowledged that “people like this are really hard to come by,” and that training people to help grow into such traits is a surefire way to ensure that your CCoE has what it needs to be a successful endeavour.
Building Your Cloud Centre of Excellence
After giving an overview of some of the CCoE’s most important aspects, Radu supplied five steps for getting to work and actually building out your organisation’s own Cloud Centre of Excellence.
“The first part — and this is the hardest,” she said candidly, “is getting the data and understanding what it is that you’re trying to build with your CCoE. What is it that you’re actually trying to get from it? And why do you need it? Because if you don’t know why you want it, you’re probably not going to build it very well.”
The second step concerns leadership buy-in, and the need to explicitly show how a CCoE will support your company’s cloud efforts. “This is a tricky one — you need to have leadership that believes in your idea and you,” said Radu. “You can also go in and show them and demonstrate to them how this would help you,” but “if you don’t have a strong case, they will just dismiss it.”
Thirdly, it’s getting a strong and diverse team together. “Again, it doesn’t have to be new people […] but it’s all about getting them to talk to each other and getting them to work together to improve what you already do in cloud,” she explained.
The fourth step — or steps — meanwhile, concerns setting up the environment, processes, governance, and compliance. “The next steps […] are actually starting to implement these in real life, in your environment and in your infrastructure.”
Finally, the fifth step is “to start reusing, reorganising, and enabling. So basically, using all of that expertise, all of those people together to actually start contributing and leveraging each other’s knowledge and experience,” she said. This is, after all, what the previous efforts have led up to — and will help to bring about cloud excellence going forward.
Cloud Excellence in Your Organisation
Having a Centre of Cloud Excellence, then, is an undeniably useful way to align knowledge, skills, and resources amid the shifting sands of a company’s cloud adoption and subsequent consumption. And hopefully, due to Radu’s talk and/or this rundown, you’ve been inspired to start your organisation’s very own cloud-focused Alliance.
The funding package, which includes £16m in UK funding and a potential £9m more from international allies, will further support the Ukrainian Government to efficiently and effectively respond to cyber-attacks made against its cyber infrastructure amid Russian invasion.
It will also develop and aid Ukraine’s forensic capabilities to analyse system compromises, attribute attackers, and build better evidence to prosecute the attacks.
Furthermore, the programme — which launched shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, but was only officially announced to the public in November as to maintain its operational security — has been extended by an additional two years.
The programme had an initial backing of £6.35m in funding.
According to the UK Government, Ukraine has since defended themselves against attacks including “destructive wiper-ware” — malware that deletes or destroys an organisation’s access to data and files — as well as espionage-ware.
On the boost to the programme, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “Russia’s appalling attacks on Ukraine are not limited to their barbaric land invasion, but also involve sickening attempts to attack their cyber infrastructure that provides vital services, from banking to energy supplies, to innocent Ukrainian people.
“This funding is critical to stopping those onslaughts, hardening Ukraine’s cyber defences and increasing the country’s ability to detect and disable the malware targeted at them.”
As the report reads, “The volume of Russian-attributed or supported cyberattacks occurring in Ukraine is unprecedented: the Russians are maintaining a very high operational tempo.
“Participants identified several distinct types of Russian- attributed cyber operations that have occurred in Ukraine, including denial-of- service or distributed denial-of-service attacks (DoS or DDoS), destructive attacks or cyber effects operations, data weaponisation, and disinformation.”
As part of Russia’s efforts, Ukraine’s infrastructure concerning its energy sector has been a particular target, the report suggests.
Despite the digital onslaught against them, the ECCRI called attention to the “incredible resilience and determination” of the Ukrainian cyber response, as well as the sustained and “remarkable network of supporters from the West.”
The Scots investment firm backs science, engineering, and technology companies that have the aim of addressing societal and environmental challenges.
Eos’ investment strategy focuses on early-stage equity investments across the key areas of disease diagnosis, prevention, and treatment; energy security, climate change, and pollution; food and water security; and sustainability of industrial processes and infrastructure.
The funding from British Business Investments will be allocated to invest alongside Eos’ Angel Syndicate and EIS Innovation Fund.
Andrew McNeill, Managing Partner at Eos, said the following on the announcement: “The British Business Investments commitment will enhance our ability to back some of Scotland’s most exciting early stage science and technology companies.
“We are already bringing this relationship to life, with recent investments into Bioliberty and Dxcover, and are in conversations about a strong pipeline of opportunities.”
Further, Andrew Durkie, Partner at Eos, said: “We are pleased to be working with British Business Investments, to have their support, and to become one the latest Scottish investment firms on its Regional Angels Programme.
“The initiative enables Eos to extend our support for companies targeting global issues, and having a positive impact on the world.”
Judith Hartley, CEO, British Business Investments, also commented: “The Regional Angels Programme plays a vital role in developing the early-stage funding ecosystem across the UK Nations and Regions, bringing together finance, business experience and skills to support the development of high-growth smaller businesses.
“By investing alongside Eos’s Angel Syndicate and EIS Innovation Fund, this £10m commitment from British Business Investments will support early-stage science and technology companies in Scotland and across the UK.”
In April this year, DIGIT reported on the news that the Scots investment firm had expanded its portfolio and added to its leadership team as it sought to accelerate growth.
Investee companies are now at a total of 19, with the latest investment being in Edinburgh-based Bioliberty, the robotic rehabilitation specialist.
The investment firm’s latest hire, Jill Arnold — who was former Head of SIS Ventures — joined as Investor Relations Director.
Eos’s portfolio includes Carcinotech, Chromacity, Cumulus Oncology, Dxcover, Nth, Green Bioactives, ENOUGH, GM Flow, ILC Therapeutics, Naturbeads, Novosound, Penrhos Bio, RAB Microfluidics, Rooser, Waire Health, Wobble Genomics, and Xelect, as well as the aforementioned Bioliberty.
The Digital Economy Skills Group is the industry and public sector partnership aiming to enhance the country’s digital capabilities.
As the new chair, Lepper, who’s Head of Cloud Commercial and Optimisation at education software company Tribal, takes over from Ross Tuffee.
Tuffee has spent the last three years at the head of DESG, working with 25 other members to influence the delivery of the vital digital skills that are needed in Scotland.
Lepper’s appointment comes at a time when the potential impacts of technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning on jobs and skills dominate headlines.
“The world is changing and changing fast. Even I find it hard to keep up sometimes!” said Lepper.
“My job and that of the DESG is to make sure we shape and nurture our country’s future talent so we can exploit opportunities offered by new technology such as AI, augmented reality, cloud computing and robotics.
“I want to see a Scotland where technology is accessible to all, and the opportunities it presents are recognised on a global scale as fair & equal, irrespective of background, gender or individuality.”
Phil Ford, the Head of Digital Economy and Financial Services at SDS, also said: “Cameron is a long-standing member of the DESG so he knows exactly what needs to be done, and he can hit the ground running.
“I look forward to working with him and the other amazing DESG partners to implement our recently launched five-year Digital Economy Skills Action Plan.”
The plan outlined many beneficial actions to be undertaken, and highlighted five priority action areas which include creating a digital skills pipeline for young people, improving the evidence base of current and future digital economy skills needs, and bolstering SMB digital leadership skills.
To read the Digital Economy Skills Action Plan in full, click here.
The Foundation Model Taskforce was first announced earlier this year, with the UK Government backing it with an initial £100 million to build sovereign capabilities in foundation models — the tech underpinning generative artificial intelligence — as well as helping guide AI safety, research, and development.
The newly announced chair is the founder of Songkick, the concert directory website, as well as venture capital firm Plural. He has co-authored the State of AI report since 2018, and is also a visiting professor at University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.
The government has said that, under Hogarth’s leadership, a key focus for the taskforce will be undertaking safety research in the run-up to the global AI safety summit which is set to be hosted by the UK later this year.
Further, the government has said the taskforce will carry out research on AI safety and inform broader work on the development of international guardrails that could be put in place to address the various risks.
On the appointment, Hogarth said: “UK scientists and entrepreneurs have made many important contributions to the field of AI, from Alan Turing through to AlphaFold.
“The Prime Minister has laid out a bold vision for the UK to supercharge the field of AI safety, one that until now has been under-resourced even as AI capabilities have accelerated.
“I’m honoured to have the chance to chair such an important mission in the lead up to the first global summit on AI Safety in the UK.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who Hogarth will be reporting directly to, also commented, saying: “The more artificial intelligence progresses, the greater the opportunities are to grow our economy and deliver better public services.
“But with such potential to transform our future, we owe it to our children and our grandchildren to ensure AI develops safely and responsibly.
“As one of the leading figures in UK tech, it’s great to have Ian leading our expert taskforce, empowered with authority and agility to build our leadership in AI safety and development.
“It will ensure we do things differently and move with the same pace and vigour as we rise to meet the task ahead.”
Hogarth’s appointment comes during calls for the UK Government to be more responsive to technological advancements — like the recent developments in large language model-powered generative AI — rather than reactive.
In the lengthy report, they take aim at the current government’s AI bodies, advocating for better AI advisory as development on artificial intelligence deepens.
“While industry figures have predicted some advances and privately warned of major risks, existing government channels have failed to anticipate the trajectory of progress,” Blair and Hague wrote in the report.
“For example, neither the key advance of transformers nor its application in LLMs were picked up by advisory mechanisms until ChatGPT was headline news.
“Even the most recent AI strategies of the Alan Turing Institute, University of Cambridge and UK government make little to no mention of AGI, LLMs or similar issues.”
One of the report’s co-authors, James Phillips, a previous science and technology advisor at 10 Downing Street, took to Twitter to discuss the report.
He said: “We highlight that existing government advisory channels and systems for AI have failed for AI. Whilst industry figures have warned in private of the rapid pace of change, the government has been blindsided. Existing institutions have not oriented to this agenda effectively.”
According to Dstl, the collaboration between the executive agency of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and Google Cloud will focus on five specific key areas.
The first is getting access to Google Cloud’s AI-oriented technologies, processes, and people, thereby accelerating Dstl’s technology adoption.
Second is opening access to — and supporting engagement between — Dstl and the Google Cloud Marketplace, including Google Cloud’s wider partner ecosystem, as to broaden the supply chain.
The third concerns supporting Dstl’s training and upskilling with Google-led learning and development opportunities that are tailored to the defence sector.
Fourth is enabling Dstl to benefit from Google Cloud’s technologies across civilian applications and other industries, as to explore where tools developed for other purposes can help solve UK defence challenges.
Lastly, the fifth involves sharing proven approaches and ways of working to create an innovative AI research environment, including tools, infrastructure, talent attraction, and retention.
The news of the MoU signing was announced by Paul Lincoln, the 2nd Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, during London Tech Week.
He commented: “As one of the most transformative and ubiquitous new technologies, AI has enormous potential to transform societies.
“Dstl’s collaboration with Google Cloud is one of the significant steps Dstl is taking to prioritise research, development, and experimentation of technologies in line with our commitment to safe and responsible AI.
“Last year, the Defence AI Centre (DAIC) was formed to accelerate defence’s ability to harness the game-changing power of AI.
“This collaboration is an exciting opportunity for Google Cloud and defence to work together for a secure and prosperous UK.”
Helen Kelisky, UKI Managing Director at Google Cloud also commented: “We are delighted to have signed a MOU with Dstl on this important initiative.
“AI has potential to assist the ministry in a broad range of use cases, including cybersecurity, disaster response, and employee productivity. We look forward to helping Dstl in its commitment to using AI boldly and responsibly.”
Last month, DIGIT reported on the news that the UK – alongside Australia and the US — hosted an artificial intelligence and autonomy trial as part of the aim to rapidly drive these technologies into military use.
The trial saw the initial joint deployment of Australian, UK, and US AI-enabled assets in a collaborative swarm to detect and track military targets in a representative environment in real-time.
At the helm of the strategy is the Geospatial Commission, the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) body that’s responsible for setting the UK’s geospatial strategy and promoting the use of location data in the country.
The new UK Geospatial Strategy 2030, which is a refreshed version of its predecessor from 2020, updates the Geospatial Commission’s priorities for the rest of the decade to help expand location data and tech innovation and usage.
The government claims that the new strategy will unlock “billions” of pounds in economic benefits through the harnessing of technologies like satellite imaging, artificial intelligence, and real-time data, in turn improving the use of data in areas including transportation, urban planning, and environmental management.
One particular priority of the 2030 strategy is the continued rollout of the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) — a digital map of underground pipes and cables that supports the installation, repairing, and operating of buried infrastructure.
While a minimum viable product is currently being used in Wales, North East England, and London, the strategy sets out the ambition for it to be available in Northern Ireland and the rest of England by spring 2024, and to be fully operational by 2025.
In Scotland, a separate programme which is outwith the Geospatial Commission, called VAULT — short for the Scottish Community Apparatus Data Vault — has already been implemented.
The Geospatial Commission also aims to conduct a review of the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA) — which sets out how the Ordnance Survey provides location data and expertise to England, Scotland, and Wales — to help it remain fit for purpose over the next seven years.
Among the other priorities outlined, the Commission aims to host an international geospatial conference in 2024, publish a report on the cross-cutting challenges and opportunities for location data in the health sector, and release key findings from the earth observation pilot.
On the new strategy — and, more generally, the value of location-oriented data and tech — Sir Bernard Silverman, Chair of the Geospatial Commission, said: “Location-based insights have proven their enduring value again and again – during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, tracking outbreaks across the country was critical to inform public health decisions.
“The power of location will continue to underpin solutions to our biggest challenges including climate change, energy security and economic growth.
“Our strategy supports the drive towards the adoption of critical technologies and continued investment in UK research and development.”
Sue Daley, Director of Technology and Innovation at techUK also commented, saying: “We welcome the Government’s continued focus on nurturing a thriving geospatial ecosystem.
“Investing and scaling our capabilities in geospatial technologies will help the UK in its journey to becoming a science and technology superpower.
“We look forward to seeing how this strategy is put into action to unlock opportunities across our economy.”
The new geospatial strategy — which was announced by Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Chloe Smith — comes during the UK Government’s push to become a global tech leader by 2030.
Regarding location data and technologies specifically, the UK has a fighting chance in attaining the number one ranking — but will the efforts outlined in the 2030 strategy be enough?
According to a 2022 report produced by the United Nations Statistics Division and Geospatial World, the UK is ranked second in the world for geospatial capability, with the US clinching first place.
The UK Geospatial Strategy 2030 can be read in full here.
The survey — which was conducted in partnership with Censuswide, the research firm — presented over 100 UK-based C-suites working in large companies or enterprises with a series of questions relating to their business’ cyber preparedness.
On top of discovering that just 47% of business leaders think their business has adequate cybersecurity budgets, over a third (39%) feel their organisation isn’t suitably primed to respond to a cyber breach.
Further, 35% of leaders surveyed feel they don’t have enough skills within their organisation to guide the firm through a potential cyber-attack.
A possible explanation for this feeling of unpreparedness and a shortfall in budget is that 40% of respondents said protection against potential cyber breaches isn’t a number one priority for their company.
This is despite the fact that 32% of businesses experienced a cyber breach or attack in the last 14 months, with the statistics being much higher for medium businesses (59%) and large businesses (69%), according to the UK Government’s Cyber security breaches survey 2023.
On the data that Auxilion’s survey produced, Philip Maguire, the company’s CEO, said: “Despite the warnings and widespread news coverage of cyber breaches, it is quite alarming to see leaders feeling like they don’t have the adequate budget, buy-in or expertise required to protect against threats.
“There’s no doubt about it – cybersecurity should be one of – if not the number one – priority for business leaders. The damage that can be caused from a reputational and financial standpoint means this should be taken far more seriously at leadership level.”
So that businesses can effectively protect themselves amid the ever-changing cyber threat landscape, an appropriate security budget that affords cybersecurity teams to monitor, thwart, and respond to threats is needed.
Earlier this year, DIGIT reported on findings that suggest Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) see budget as the biggest barrier to strategy execution in 2023.
Specifically, 51% of the respondents of tech recruitment firm Stott and May’s Cyber Security in Focus report cited budget as the primary inhibiting factor to delivering on strategy, which has overtaken the other issue of internal skills (34%).
Further, 44% of respondents said their cybersecurity budget will stay the same or decrease, and that, as a result, strategic investment has little for experimentation, thereby potentially limiting cyber preparedness and response as continuing threats push on and new threats emerge.
This is just one of the many insights gleaned from GitHub’s The developer wishlist survey, which asked 500 software developers at enterprise companies a series of questions relating to their day-to-day work in 2023 — and, most pertinently, how AI has impacted it.
Breaking down the finding that 92% of devs use AI coding tools, 67% said they use them both in work and outside of it, 25% said they use them at work, and 6% said they only used such tools outside of work.
Underpinning the want to utilise AI coding tools is the belief that they can help devs to meet performance standards through heightened code quality, faster outputs, and fewer production-level incidents. In fact, 70% of developers noted that AI tools offer them an advantage in their work.
What’s more, developers think that using such tools is an effective way of upskilling while at work: 57% of respondents said AI coding tools help them to deepen their coding language skills, for instance.
Individual performance aside, a large majority of respondents — 81% — said that AI coding tools will foster greater collaboration within their teams and organisations. Security reviews, planning, and pair programming were cited as the most notable points of collaboration to be bolstered by such tools.
Interestingly, while AI coding tools are being positioned as conducive to enhancing productivity and collaboration — both individually and collectively — the survey suggests that developers don’t think these tools are fundamentally changing the software development lifecycle, but rather bringing extra efficiencies to it.
In terms of AI in relation to the knotty issue of burnout, 41% of GitHub’s survey respondents said that AI coding tools can help with prevention of burnout. According to a separate study conducted by Haystack Analytics, the majority (83%) of software devs are suffering from burnout.
Taking a step back from AI and looking at the daily work of devs more generally, the survey discovered that developers spend the same amount of time waiting for builds and tests as they do writing new code, suggesting that the time-consuming wait is still a persistent problem.
Further, obstacles such as waiting on code reviews, builds, and test runs and are having the biggest impact on overall satisfaction.
The survey also highlighted how the aspects that devs value the most and want to dedicate the appropriate amount of time to are in conflict with what their performance is measured on.
As an example of that, the respondents said that they’re measured on the number of incidents they resolve, but they believe that it’s the approach they take to handling and resolving those issues which is more important.
Additionally, the respondents believe that communication and collaboration is just as important as code quality when it comes to measuring performance, and should be treated as such.
GitHub’s full report on the survey’s findings can be read here.
A consortium led by Dundee’s Abertay University has been selected by the government to host one of four new labs set to appear across the UK.
The labs will specialise in the future of virtual production: a new range of real-time content production techniques using computer-generated imagery (CGI), augmented reality (AR), and motion capture to create virtual experiences, sets, and worlds.
For instance, instead of adding visual effects and CGI in post-production, virtual production allows filmmakers and the like to create large-scale, digitally-generated environments using LED panels. Performers can then interact with these environments in real-time as a faster, less expensive alternative to green screens.
The R&D lab, which will be located at the Water’s Edge Studios, is set to combine expertise from Abertay University, the University of Edinburgh, Scots game development studio 4J Studios, tech incubator CodeBase, and Interface, the organisation connecting businesses with academia.
Professor Gregor White, who is the Dean of the School of Design and Informatics at Abertay University, said: “Virtual production is one of the most exciting emerging applications of media technologies in the world right now. There is enormous potential for virtual film production to be the next major tech success story for the UK.
“Abertay’s academic expertise in the technologies used to create the real-time media, alongside University of Edinburgh’s expertise in generative AI is second to none.
“Our intention will be to use our research expertise to drive innovation, and the entrepreneurial and investment experience of the broader partnership to deliver economic growth and jobs of the future for the UK creative industries sector.”
In addition to the Dundee-based lab, two other regional hubs will be launched in Yorkshire and Belfast, led by the University of York and Ulster University respectively.
Furthermore, a national lab will be led by Royal Holloway, University of London, alongside core partners such as BT, Pinewood Studios, and Abertay University.
The UK-wide network of labs is part of more than £223 million in government spending on the creative industries — which digital technology often plays a major role in — since 2021.
Last month, at the Enders Media and Telecoms 2023 & Beyond Conference, Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer spoke on her aim to maximise potential within the creative industries, citing an ambition to grow the sector by £50 billion by 2030 and to build a pipeline of talent into it.
As part of the £223 million in funding for the creative industries, Dundee’s video games research unit, InGAME — which is also led by Abertay University, in partnership with the Universities of Dundee and St. Andrews — received support through the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Creative Industries Clusters Programme.
The recently published report, Progress with Making Tax Digital, which digs into the efforts surrounding the development of the scheme, outlines that it’s now costing £1.3 billion up from the initial forecast of £226 million.
Making Tax Digital, which was first announced in 2015, aims to help modernise HMRC’s systems for VAT, corporation tax, and self-assessment income tax, requiring businesses and self-employed individuals to keep digital records via software and submit them online each quarter.
However, the scheme has faced numerous delays, with it being pushed back four times since its announcement in 2015.
NAO’s report has found that HMRC’s original plan to introduce Making Tax Digital by 2020 was “unrealistic,” and “did not allow sufficient time for HMRC to explore the full range of options that would achieve the programme’s aims and select one that it could implement.”
With the latest estimated cost of introducing Making Tax Digital being £1.3B, it marks a 400% increase in real terms since 2016. By March 2023, £642M had already been spent on the scheme.
Additionally, the report relays that there is set to be around £1.5B in upfront transitional costs from business taxpayers with incomes over £10,000 to comply with Making Tax Digital.
Despite the challenges, HMRC still expects the scheme to generate a positive return on investment, estimating a £3.9B in additional tax revenue by helping to drive down taxpayer errors.
On the report’s findings, Gareth Davies, the Head of the National Audit Office, said: “The repeated delays and rephasing of Making Tax Digital have undermined the programme’s credibility and increased its costs. They put at risk the support of taxpayers and delivery partners, including those who are essential to the programme succeeding.
“Our audit identified the omission of significant costs from some business cases. It is obviously important that business cases for major programmes such as this contain all the relevant information to support decision-making.
“HMRC’s plan to digitalise the tax system has the potential to improve the system’s efficiency and effectiveness. It has made some recent progress on VAT but it has not yet tackled the most complex elements of the programme and significant delivery risks remain.”
The NAO says that HMRC’s ability to secure value for money now depends on “developing a more robust business case exploring the options for progressing MTD, resolving questions about design, and rigorously managing risks to delivery.”
In response, the Office suggests that HMRC undertake a series of actions, including reassessing its existing delivery plan to test whether it’s realistic and offers the best value for money, and developing plans for how it will help taxpayers prepare for Making Tax Digital, with a focus on those who are less digitally proficient.
In 2023, Estonia is something of a tech powerhouse — and potentially even a blueprint for all countries, large or small, on how to foster the right internal conditions for tech startups to arise and excel.
Despite being a country of only 1.3 million citizens, it’s managed to produce ten tech unicorns — companies that have reached $1 billion in valuation without being listed on the stock market, which in Estonia’s case includes the likes of Skype and Wise.
Further, it boasts a tech sector worth roughly double the country’s national budget, and is home to around 1,300 tech startups.
To gain insight into what’s contributed to the success of Estonia’s tech sector, an exclusive roundtable was held on 8 June at the Edinburgh headquarters of Scots tech firm Forrit, with the Estonian Ambassador to the UK, Viljar Lubi, as the special guest.
During the course of the roundtable, Lubi dove deep into how Estonia got to the advantageous position it’s in today, citing its agile government, a simple taxation system, reduced bureaucracy, increased collaboration, and its tech companies’ international outlook, among various other aspects.
A small country with global ambitions
As a small country, the global-mindedness of Estonia’s tech scene is something of a necessity: to grow and scale like their international counterparts, companies need to tap into markets outside of Estonia due to the size of the country’s own market.
On this, Lubi mentioned that “all our startups need to go global from day one.”
It is this collective, internationally-focused mindset — rather than an inward-looking posture — that directly lends itself to a thriving tech sector and culture, and is one facet that Peter Ferry, the Estonian Honorary Consul in Edinburgh, believes Scotland would do well to emulate.
“A Scottish company can […] find a customer, even a few customers, get funded, and not leave the postcode area,” he said. “In Estonia, it just doesn’t happen — the market is tiny, so the companies have a global outlook from day one. And their funding profile has an immediate global outlook because that’s just the way that the environment works.”
Relatedly, Lubi touched on how having such an outlook means that Estonia’s tech scene moves quickly: “If they exceed, they exceed fast. If the idea is bad, they die fast,” he said.
The global-mindedness of the Estonian tech scene, then, is also a way to filter ideas and companies that won’t succeed in the long run, thereby helping tech founders and talent to move onto more promising companies faster.
A deeply invested, agile government
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the subject of how government interacts with and responds to business was a topic that arose multiple times during the roundtable.
For Lubi, the Estonian Government’s ability to act quickly and respond to the collective needs of its founders was something that invoked pride. “Agility of government is one of our trump cards — we can change the environment if needed,” he noted.
As just one example of how Estonia facilitates an agile, collaborative government-business relationship and environment, Lubi mentioned that “for years, we’ve had this practice — usually twice a year — where founders, VCs, and angels have a roundtable with the Prime Minister.”
As part of these discussions, a wishlist from participants is supplied to the government, and potential solutions to the raised issues are conceived.
Nick Price, the CEO of tech recruitment company Bright Purple, commented on how impressive it is that Kaja Kallas — the Estonian Prime Minister — is deeply in tune with her country’s tech sector. On this, he said, “when you listen to her talking about her interaction with tech, she’s joined to the hip.”
In light of the Estonian Government’s agility, receptiveness, and symbiosis with its tech sector, it raises the questions: could the Scottish Government perhaps be more in tune with Scotland’s tech sector, if not the overall business landscape, and also be more responsive to it?
For Peter Proud, the CEO and founder of Forrit, the answer is yes. “There’s a real disconnect between government and business here in Scotland at the moment.” He added, “people like myself are drifting away […] because I don’t feel we’re being listened to.”
On that disconnect, Proud relayed a recent experience. “I was asked to sit on an economic development day — a workshop on startups. I was the only person that started a company there. Everyone else was from a government agency,” he recalled.
However, during the roundtable, Duncan Hart — the co-founder and CEO of DeepMiner, a tech company that specialises in AI and machine learning for data analysis and decision-making, and whose solutions are used by industries including government — said that he’s witnessed a positive governmental change over time regarding agility and responsiveness.
Collaboration — across the board
During the roundtable, another area of clear consensus was greater collaboration: be it the founders of companies talking to each other to share knowledge and learnings, to cross-talk between the public and private sectors.
In Estonia’s tech sector, there’s a deep-rooted culture of collaboration between locally-based founders and businesses — of helping each other learn, grow, and succeed — and this is something that has helped propel its success. “They really want to help each other,” mentioned Lubi.
Price agreed that Estonia’s culture of collaboration is something that’s particularly apparent, and is similarly present across the Baltics as a whole.
“What they do is collaborate — they collaborate the hell out of each other,” he said. “It’s interesting going back to Skype, Wise, and Bolt — I’ve been over there and met them all — because they chat away about how they’ve built their companies.”
Sharing experience-based knowledge about what’s worked — and, perhaps more crucially, what hasn’t — not only helps founders to steer their companies in the right direction, but it also builds a supportive ecosystem and in turn deepens a collaborative culture.
Proud agreed that collaboration is something wholly essential to a successful business, not least during the early stages. “It’s really difficult to start a company; you’ve really got to roll your sleeves up. Sitting in your bedroom, working at home all the time isn’t going to make it happen. You’ve actually got to collaborate.”
Adopting Estonia’s learnings in Scotland
Estonia’s tech success story is — and continues to be — an inspiring one.
To help ensure that Scotland’s own tech sector remains accessible, innovative, and expansive going forward, perhaps the industry can look to what’s been cited as some of Estonia’s major proponents of success.
As mentioned during Friday’s engrossing hour-long roundtable, this includes an unwavering global outlook from tech companies; a deep-rooted culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing; and a proactive, agile government-business relationship and environment.
By taking multiple leaves out of Estonia’s playbook, who knows how many more Scottish tech unicorns we’ll be able to usher in?
Space-based solar power collects energy from the sun in outer space and then distributes it back to Earth via satellites, with the technologies required to facilitate this transferal rapidly emerging.
For instance, the University of Cambridge is receiving £770,000 to develop ultra-lightweight solar panels that can endure high-radiation environments for a prolonged period, helping to increase satellite longevity and improve energy yields.
A second university, Queen Mary University in London, is receiving over £960,000 to develop a wireless power transmission system with high efficiency over a long range, to support the technology to direct solar power from the satellites back to Earth.
The government has stated that technologies such as these have a “huge” potential to boost the UK’s energy security, reduce dependency on fossil fuels, and drive down household bills, seeing as the sun is visible for over 99% of the time.
Further, according to a study commissioned by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy in 2021, space-based solar power could generate up to 10 gigawatts of electricity a year by 2050, equating to a quarter of the UK’s power needs.
The study also suggested that the technology could create a multi-billion pound industry, creating 143,000 new jobs across the UK in the process.
Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, is set to discuss the funding and the projects later today at London Tech Week.
On the funding announcement, Shapps has already said: “I want the UK to boldly go where no country has gone before – boosting our energy security by getting our power directly from space.
“We’re taking a giant leap by backing the development of this exciting technology and putting the UK at the forefront of this rapidly emerging industry as it prepares for launch.
“By winning this new space race, we can transform the way we power our nation and provide cheaper, cleaner and more secure energy for generations to come.”
Dr Mamatha Maheshwarappa, Payload Systems Lead at the UK Space Agency, also commented, saying: “Space technology and solar energy have a long history – the need to power satellites was a key driver in increasing the efficiency of solar panels which generate electricity for homes and businesses today.
“There is significant potential for the space and energy sectors to work together to support the development of space-based solar power, and the UK Space Agency has contributed £1 million to these innovative projects to help take this revolutionary concept to the next level.”
The announcement of the UK Government’s funding into space-based solar power projects comes at a particularly exciting time for the sector.
Earlier this month, scientists at Caltech — the California Institute of Technology — claimed to have distributed solar power from space back to Earth for the first time.
According to Caltech, its space solar power prototype — called MAPLE, an acronym for Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment — was launched into orbit in January this year, and has been suggested to be operational.
“Through the experiments we have run so far, we received confirmation that MAPLE can transmit power successfully to receivers in space,” said Ali Hajimiri, who leads the team that developed MAPLE.
“We have also been able to program the array to direct its energy toward Earth, which we detected here at Caltech. We had, of course, tested it on Earth, but now we know that it can survive the trip to space and operate there.”
Further, Hajimiri added, “To the best of our knowledge, no one has ever demonstrated wireless energy transfer in space even with expensive rigid structures. We are doing it with flexible lightweight structures and with our own integrated circuits. This is a first.”
The report, D&I for Tech Leaders: How to Hire, Retain and Progress Women in Tech report, mainly draws from data uncovered in Code First Girls’ and TTC’s recent surveys regarding the UK tech landscape and women’s position in it.
When it comes to the matter of entering the tech workforce in the first place, the report outlines that systemic barriers continue to remain.
For instance, 73% of respondents in Code First Girls’ community point to a lack of confidence as their biggest obstacle, while for 59% it’s the preconception that the industry is still for men.
For 55% it’s sexism in the workplace, and for 53% it’s a lack of education and upskilling.
When women in tech do get through the door, they then face inequitable experiences, according to the data.
For example, 54% say that they’ve experienced “mansplaining” — an explanation by a man that’s defined as condescending, overconfident, or inaccurate.
Meanwhile, 50% have had questions directed to someone else, 41% were assigned lower-level tasks, and 31% received unwanted sexual advances.
Relatedly, on the question of “Why do women’s careers progress slower than men’s?,” 63% of respondents point to the issue of stereotyping, while 53% say maternity leave, 39% say family-life balance, and 38% say double-standards.
When it comes to the main contributing factors underpinning why women are leaving their roles, 54% point to no clear career pathway or progression.
Further, 49% cite unfair pay or a lack of salary progression as a factor, 44% say burnout, 35% say ineffective senior leadership, and 17% say sexism, racism, or another discriminatory act.
Based on these shared insights, and in a bid to help employers retain female tech talent and also help bridge the pervasive skills gap in the UK, Code First Girls and TTC have supplied the following recommendations:
Flexible working. Employers should offer a range of flexible working options, and also discuss these options upfront during the hiring process.
Audit systems for bias. All processes in the career lifecycle — from recruitment to promotion processes — should be cleared of bias.
Offer tech skills programmes. Offering tech skills programmes can demonstrate a commitment to career progression, growth, and upskilling.
Engage or run reskilling and returners programmes. Both routes into tech and career mobility can be facilitated through a variety of targeted programmes.
Enhanced family leave policies. Particularly for longer periods away from work, such as maternity leave.
Fair remuneration. Fairness can be demonstrated through salary transparency and pay parity measurement.
Reproductive healthcare. Policies and behaviours that support employees and reproductive health should be implemented.
Conduct regular listening activities. Safe environments where employees can give feedback and be listened to should be created.
Support a healthy work-life balance. Individualised approaches to employee support in wellbeing and professional development should be undertaken.
Develop robust HR practices. An inclusive and safe workplace culture should be cultivated, and supported by robust HR practice to deal with emerging issues.
Commenting on the report, Anna Brailsford, CEO of Code First Girls, said: “It is no secret that the tech industry has for too long been a boy’s club – but the dial is shifting and we want to accelerate that progress.
“With the UK continuing to suffer from a glaring skills gap, improving family leave and reproductive healthcare policies should be a first step to help retain women in this vital industry.
“To get women into the industry – and crucially keep them there – we cannot ignore their needs. Through these recommendations, we hope that the industry can speed up their efforts to narrow the gender inequality gap and bring the tech industry into the 21st century.”
Lexie Papaspyrou, Co-COO at Tech Talent Charter, also commented, saying: “If we are to make a difference in the fight for better gender diversity in tech, we must go beyond “just hire more women.”
“Tech workers are looking for companies that understand their desires around career development, flexibility, work-life balance, family-forming, wellbeing and inclusion.
“We have a fantastic opportunity to grow the tech talent pipeline by tapping into new sources of talent and harnessing the skills already available, but businesses need to be informed on what this looks like in practice for their talent strategy.
“Our new report sets the bar for what it takes to attract, develop and retain women in tech, based on the efforts of hundreds of companies going through these challenges right now.”
To read more about the report’s insights and recommendations, click here.
Techscaler is a tech startup support programme — backed by a £42 million contract from the Scottish Government, and delivered by Edinburgh-headquartered CodeBase — aiming to deliver on the key priorities outlined in the Scottish Tech Ecosystem Review (STER) report.
STAC, meanwhile — which is supported by Scottish Enterprise, CENSIS (Scotland’s Innovation Centre for sensing, imaging, and IoT technologies), and Glasgow-based product design firm Filament — is an accelerator helping scaling Scottish IoT startups to be globally competitive.
Startup founders participating in Techscaler and STAC are set to benefit from an expanded range of founder-oriented support, including mentorship, specialist expertise, education courses, a network of workspace hubs across the country, events and meetups, and STAC’s Glasgow design studio and prototyping lab space.
The design studio and lab in particular includes a 3D printing suite, laser cutters, CNCs (computer numerical controls), testing zones, and two rooms worth of tools to help founders develop and iterate hardware.
On the announcement, CodeBase’s Chief Strategy Officer, Steven Drost, said: “I am excited about this partnership, because it signals a moment of maturity for the ecosystem.
“The partnership brings together two different strands of startup building — software and hardware. Combining those strands enables both to learn and build and grow faster — this can only be a good thing for Scottish tech.”
STAC’s CEO and Co-founder Paul Wilson also commented, saying, “Since we launched in 2021, STAC’s mission has been to create a centre of excellence, an IoT tech cluster here in Scotland.
“Techscaler has the resources that will help us achieve that mission more rapidly. We admire the bold approach of CodeBase, and we share the common goal of developing companies for global competition.”
Scottish Government Wellbeing Economy Secretary Neil Gray added: “This partnership between the Techscaler programme and Filament STAC marks more progress towards Scotland becoming one of the world’s leading homes for start up businesses.
“The Internet of Things, by connecting devices from washing machines to driverless cars to the internet, promises previously unheralded opportunities for tech startup founders in Scotland.”
The collaboration with STAC is the latest news regarding the £42m Techscaler programme.
In the last few months alone, Techscaler has launched a scaleup programme for Scottish tech entrepreneurs in partnership with Silicon Valley firm Reforge; established an NHS link-up for entrepreneurs to work alongside clinicians and gain access to patients and anonymised data to help test ideas, products, and services; and launched the “Startups First Steps” founders course in a bid to drive company creation and economic development.
DIGIT’s Graham Turner attended the launch event for the Startup First Steps course at the beginning of last month, and spoke to CodeBase’s VP of Education, Jim Newbery, to gain some insight into the programme, its creation, and its aims.
The government has said that the UK’s upcoming AI summit, which is set to take place this autumn, will consider AI’s risks and how they can be appropriately mitigated through co-ordinated international action, helping to develop a shared approach to AI.
The announcement of the summit comes after a recent spat of discussions and meetings from members of the UK government with world leaders, businesspeople, and tech figureheads regarding AI.
In addition to having discussions on these issues with members of the G7 at the Hiroshima Summit last month, Sunak also met with the CEOs of AI firms OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic, to discuss how AI can be developed safely and regulated responsibly.
As part of his in-progress visit to Washington DC, Sunak is set to stress the importance of a collaborative AI approach, as to develop an international framework for the safe and reliable development and use of AI.
“AI has an incredible potential to transform our lives for the better. But we need to make sure it is developed and used in a way that is safe and secure,” said Sunak.
“Time and time again throughout history we have invented paradigm-shifting new technologies and we have harnessed them for the good of humanity. That is what we must do again.
“No one country can do this alone. This is going to take a global effort. But with our vast expertise and commitment to an open, democratic international system, the UK will stand together with our allies to lead the way.”
The explosion in AI interest and usage was triggered by the release of OpenAI’s generative AI chatbot ChatGPT by in November 2022. It also intensified the debate regarding how it should be regulated, which is still continuing given the complexities involved.
Next week, on 14 June, the European Parliament is set to vote on its proposed AI Act — which aims to introduce a common regulatory and legal framework for artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, in the UK, Richard Lochhead, the Scottish government’s Minister for Small Business, Trade, and Innovation, voiced his concerns last week over the UK government’s “hands-off” plans regarding AI regulation.
“We are a bit concerned that the current UK government plans for the hands-off, non-statutory regulation of AI will not meet Scotland’s needs,” he said.
He also called for a four nations summit on the implications of AI to be held “as soon as possible.”
While a summit is now in the works — albeit global, rather than specifically for the four nations — it’s yet to be seen whether the proposed summit date of autumn is perhaps too far in the future, given how quickly global regulators now want to address AI risk.
The regulator has predicted that the data that comes from neurotech — technology which has been developed to interface with the nervous system, such as to monitor or modulate the brain — will become widespread over the next ten years.
However, the ICO suggests that if these emerging neurotechnologies aren’t appropriately trialled, developed, and tested on a wide range of people, there’s a risk that inherent bias and inaccurate data could become embedded in neurotech.
If the tech isn’t trialled and assessed on a variety of people to ensure that data collection remains accurate and reliable, the inaccurate data could negatively impact people and communities — with neurodivergent people potentially being at particular risk if the tech has been trained on neuro-normative patterns, the ICO have said.
Further, the ICO said that neurotech use in the workplace could lead to unfair treatment. For instance, specific neuropatterns and information could be seen by employers as undesirable, thereby potentially causing people with such neuropatterns to be overlooked for promotions and employment opportunities.
In a bid to help developers and users of neurotechnologies, the ICO has mentioned that it is developing specific neurodata guidance in the medium-term. Further, it’s said that it will provide sector-specific case studies to highlight good practice by 2025, among other efforts.
“To many, the idea of neurotechnology conjures up images of science fiction films, but this technology is real and it is developing rapidly,” commented Stephen Almond, the Executive Director of Regulatory Risk at the ICO.
“Neurotechnology collects intimate personal information that people are often not aware of, including emotions and complex behaviour. The consequences could be dire if these technologies are developed or deployed inappropriately.
“We want to see everyone in society benefit from this technology. It’s important for organisations to act now to avoid the real danger of discrimination.”
As the ICO highlights, neurotechnologies are rapidly emerging, and is already being used in the healthcare sector under strict regulations. It’s also quickly developing for use in a variety of areas including wellbeing, sports, and marketing.
At the end of last year, Precedence Research — the market research and consulting organisation — found that the global neurotechnology market size is expected to be worth around $38.17 billion by 2032, equating to around £30.5b in British pounds.
Simultaneously, as the neurotech’s market size grows, there’s growing international concern over neurotechnologies from ethical and human rights standpoints, such as how the technologies may affect the brain, and how the data stemming from neurotech could be used in dubious ways without strict regulation across different sectors.
In the UNESCO’s recently-published paper, The Risks and Challenges of Neurotechnologies for Human Rights, the authors suggested that “we need to assess how far current human rights frameworks are equipped to protect neural rights, or whether there is a need for a new set of neuro-specific human rights, such as the right to cognitive liberty, mental privacy, mental integrity and psychological continuity.”
B Corp certification is a designation for the social and environmental performance of a business that is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on a range of factors — from employee benefits and charitable giving, to supply chain practices and input materials.
While B Corp accreditation is often referred to as the gold standard for positive sustainability- and social-oriented efforts, Par Equity — which focuses on growing startups across HealthTech, ClimateTech, and IndustrialTech — is one of only a few VC firms in the UK to secure this status.
Since the firm’s launch in 2008, the VC firm has continued to lead by example in this area, having helped launch ESG VC — a pan-European project to improve the ESG credentials of early-stage businesses.
The B Corp certification is further evidence of the direction that Par Equity is taking both internally and with its portfolio companies.
On the firm’s direction, Andrew Noble — who’s been a Partner at Par Equity since 2019, and has also previously served as both Associate and Director — said: “For years now, we have been investing in the next generation of businesses, in companies that can transform our future.
“Examples from our investment portfolio include Nova Pangaea Technologies, which is a world leader in developing sustainable aviation fuel; and Advanced Electric Machines which design and manufacture a range of sustainable electric traction motors that are far greener than other technologies and are fully recyclable.”
The VC firm has also been investing in commercial forestry since 2010, working with Scottish Woodlands. In December 2021, this expanded with the financing of the Glen Dye Moore project — a joint venture with Aviva and Scottish Woodlands to redevelop 15,700 acres of woodland and peatland, and is set to capture 1.4 million tons of CO2 in the process.
Lucy Kelly, Operations Manager at Par Equity, who led the 18-month project towards B Corp certification, added: “Obtaining B Corp certification is a long and stringent process. We are delighted to have attained the required standard, and can now be recognised for this. It is an important foundation for the next stages in our growth as a business.”
According to B Lab — the non-profit behind the B Corp certification framework — the UK is one of the fastest growing B Corp communities across the globe, with more B Corps than in the whole of mainland Europe.
Further, Scottish B Corps make up around 4.5% of the UK B Corp community, and represent 8.3% of the UK’s “Best for the World” honourees, who are recognised as top-performing companies in terms of generating positive social and environmental impact through their businesses.
The new innovation centre is set to combine business insights from the banking group with the university’s research, data, and social science expertise, to co-create data-driven solutions for the future of banking.
The Centre aims to bring the latest academic developments and thinking in data science and Artificial Intelligence (AI), climate change, business, and the social sciences to tackle issues in the banking sector.
The Centre — which will be led by the other data-oriented innovation hubs Edinburgh Futures Institute and the Bayes Centre — will draw on knowledge from over 100 academics across the university.
Further, innovation activity is set to include challenge-led research and development activities, as well as skills and talent development for bank staff and university students.
Supported by Edinburgh Innovations — the University of Edinburgh’s commercialisation service — the partnership is planned for five years, with an initial commitment of £2 million from NWG for the first two years of activity.
The centre builds on previous collaborative work between the university and the banking group around technological innovation in financial services provision, harnessing data for public good, and climate education.
Commenting on the announcement of the partnership, Professor Sir Peter Mathieson, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, said: “Our world is faced with a variety of significant and complex challenges, from poor health to climate change and the complicated mix of challenge and opportunity associated with the emergence of artificial intelligence.
“The Centre for Purpose-Driven Innovation in Banking will bring together the University’s expertise with NatWest’s in-depth data and business understanding to co-create multidisciplinary research with business applications. The insights generated will help us translate cutting edge research into real world solutions to benefit society.”
Dame Alison Rose, CEO of NatWest Group, commented further, saying: “By combining the University of Edinburgh’s world class research and social science expertise with NatWest’s in-depth customer and business understanding, we are creating a partnership which drives innovation and ensures that our customer experience is best in class.
“This, once again, shows that through the power of partnerships, we can support the people, families and business[es] we serve and help them thrive.”
The announcement of The Centre for Purpose-Driven Innovation in Banking marks another of the University of Edinburgh’s initiatives involving data, and yet another related programme that could help the Scottish capital meet its goal of becoming the European data capital.
In April this year, DIGIT reported on the news that Edinburgh was on the rise as a European data capital, despite stiff competition from the likes of Dublin, Amsterdam, and Stockholm.
Significant funding from the Data-Driven Innovation initiative (DDI) — which is a 15-year, £661m investment programme supported by £270m in capital funding from the UK and Scottish governments — has helped bolster the Scottish capital’s ambitions to become the recognised European leader in data.
The funding — which comes from the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) — will enable the twocatapults to work alongside industry partners and small businesses, as to drive greater resource efficiency and energy efficiency (REEE) in manufacturing via advanced digital technologies.
As part of the two-year programme, five industry partners are to work with Digital Catapult and HVM Catapult to scope and define two real-world sustainability challenges each. Then, around ten startups will join the programme to brainstorm and trial innovative solutions to address these challenges through digital technology.
Five manufacturing partners, who are to be supported by experts at Digital Catapult and HVM Catapult, will then use the startups’ solutions to help drive down carbon emissions, increase productivity, and cut costs.
The programme comes amid demand for the greening of the manufacturing sector, and to help the industry meet the UK government’s environmental objectives.
As referenced in University College London’s Towards Net Zero in UK Manufacturing report, the manufacturing sector contributes around 12% of all UK greenhouse gas emissions.
With the Climate Change Act, the UK government is committed by law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 100% of 1990 levels (net zero) by 2050.
On the new programme, Katherine Bennett CBE, the CEO of HVM Catapult, said: “Without doubt, sustainable manufacturing must be the number one priority for the sector, and the development and integration of new and existing industrial digital technologies is critical to this.
“By bringing together industry heavyweights, technology developers and subject-matter experts to prove-out ideas and develop them rapidly, this programme can find solutions to the biggest challenges facing manufacturers right now.
“Through this, we can deliver a UK manufacturing sector that is resilient, flexible, productive and – vitally – environmentally sustainable.”
Jeremy Silver, Digital Catapult’s CEO, also commented, saying: “The UK’s vibrant tech startup sector is a deep well of untapped opportunity for manufacturing industries.
“Resource and energy efficiency gains are examples of the ways in which advanced digital technologies – and the innovative startups that use them – support growth and sustainability gains for industry through new products and services that can disrupt traditional approaches.
“Digital Catapult-led programmes such as the Made Smarter Technology Accelerator and the Made Smarter Innovation Digital Supply Chain Hub have already shown how to make smart use of small amounts of public money to drive private investment and create tangible impact in support of both large industrial players and smaller, agile businesses.”
In the report, the technology trade association calls on the government — and whichever government takes over in the next general election — to provide the necessary support to help the country’s tech industry remain globally competitive and innovative.
“While the UK is a strong and dynamic tech market with ambitious plans to further our position as a technology leader, over recent years we have fallen off the pace and our delivery has faltered,” the report states. “Currently we are at risk of losing our position as a leader in tech and the benefits that this brings.”
To help usher in a more conducive environment for the creation, growth, and leveraging of tech and tech companies in the UK, the report underscores myriad pain-points and suggested 18 actionable solutions, so that the government can “ensure that we can remain at the global forefront of technological innovation.”
In summary, techUK’s proposed solutions are:
Improving access to day-to-day digital services, cutting costs for both central and local government, as well as improving public services.
Making the UK one of the most trusted, safe, and secure places to be online.
Plugging the digital skills gap to boost pay, opportunity, and national resilience.
Making sure everyone has access to the online world.
Delivering the digital transformation that the NHS and social care system needs.
Rethinking the approach of how technology can support the criminal justice system.
Regaining the UK’s reputation as a global leader in Open Data and rank among the five countries on the UN E-Government Index.
Ensuring the UK holds on to its fintech crown.
Growing tech clusters across the UK.
Supporting a thriving digital and AI ethics ecosystem to enable better governance and regulation.
Digitising the day-to-day economy, helping small businesses get ready for AI.
Fixing the UK’s broken scale up economy.
Ensuring we have a competitive innovation economy.
Commercialising and deploying the emerging technologies vital to a growing and resilient economy.
Building a smarter approach to foreign and trade policy for the UK.
Boosting the competitiveness of the UK as a green technology hub.
Empowering individuals and businesses to better understand and improve environmental footprint.
And making tech greener.
On the new report and the suggested ways of tackling current compounding issues, Julian David, the CEO of techUK, said that “we need politicians to act, set out a long-term plan for the sector, provide a better approach to regulation and deliver on strategies for key technologies.
“That is why techUK has set out our UK Tech Plan, presenting 18 examples of how technology can build a better future for people, society, the economy and our planet and recommendations on how to ensure our regulatory system can cope with the faster pace of technological change and the AI revolution,” he continued.
The plan has been published amid recent vexation from notable tech players regarding how the UK government handles the tech industry.
Last month, Nikolay Storonsky, the CEO of Revolut — the London-based fintech company which is Europe’s most valuable fintech firm — said that “it’s hard to do business in the UK” and that “there are higher taxes to pay and an extremely bureaucratic regulator,” according to The Times.
This week, Microsoft President Brad Smith is set to meet with UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to “voice his frustration,” according to Bloomberg, surrounding the CMA’s decision to block the acquisition of video game maker Activision Blizzard over concerns of making the cloud gaming market non-competitive.
The funding has been awarded by the Department for Transport through the Transport Research and Innovation Grant (TRIG) programme. This year, a total of 67 transport tech projects — 80% of which are based outside of London — have received financial support.
The TRIG programme was launched in 2014 in a bid to support innovative projects, ideas, and concepts that could facilitate a better transport system — including transport decarbonisation, weather resilience, and improving the passenger experience.
The government has said that the funded projects and companies this year include:
Makesense Technology, to create an app that uses augmented reality (AR) to create walking routes to help visually-impaired travellers navigate railway stations.
Bluewater Engineering Ltd, to develop its SKYTUG system which uses large kites to tow ships at the same speed as a traditionally-powered craft, which could help reduce the use of polluting engines and decarbonise shipping.
IONA Logistics Ltd, to explore how autonomous drones based out of small delivery hubs can be used to deliver small packages faster and cheaper to hard-to-reach rural areas.
Transreport Limited, to create an app that allows disabled and older passengers to book the support they need on plans in advance to improve the experience. (This app is already in use on trains.)
Port of Tyne, to explore the viability of using remotely-controlled — and in some instances automated — electric heavy-duty robots to replace HGVs to provide a cleaner, faster alternative.
CC Informatics, to explore the use of drones to create 3D digital models of structures — such as bridges and rail tracks — to identify cracks and defects in the structures that would otherwise be invisible, meaning repairs can be made quicker.
Imperial College London, to research the use of Kiacrete — a new type of paving made from recycled materials instead of concrete — to see how it can be used on highways to drain away surface water and reduce flooding.
Since its inception, the TRIG programme has supported nearly 300 transport-focused tech projects, providing around £12 million in funding support.
On this year’s programme winners — and the TRIG programme more generally — Minister Jesse Norman said: “From making travelling easier for visually impaired passengers to improving rural connectivity, these winning projects have the potential to transform the future of transport.”
“The Government wants the UK to be a world leader in the future of transport, and through the TRIG programme the Department for Transport is supporting innovators and businesses to decarbonise and improve transport while growing the economy and supporting jobs across the UK.”
Nicola Yates OBE, the Chief Executive Officer of Connected Places Catapult — the TRIG programme’s delivery partner — said: “By getting funding into innovative start-ups, we are creating jobs of the future and growing vital areas of the economy.
“Transport Research and Innovation Grants support high-potential innovators to develop their ideas into new products and services. In addition to an injection of funding, companies that join the TRIG cohort benefit from access to experts from Connected Places Catapult to help them on their journey to commercialisation.”
Compare the Market’s latest research — which looked at the scope of broadband download and upload speeds across the UK — found that the local authorities of the Orkney Islands, Shetland Islands, Argyll and Bute, Na h-Eileanan Siar, and Highland had the poorest broadband download rates.
Specifically, the residents and businesses of the Orkney Islands had access to an average download speed of 41 Megabits per second (Mbit/s) — the slowest in the UK — followed by the Shetland Islands’ 43.3 Mbit/s, Argyll and Bute’s 46.3 Mbit/s, Na h-Eileanan Siar’s 48.5 Mbit/s, and Highland’s 50.7 Mbit/s.
On the other side of the spectrum, the English city of Hull was found to have the fastest average broadband download speed at 228.4 Mbit/s.
The results of Compare the Market’s latest findings come as work continues to connect rural Scottish areas with improved internet access and speeds.
In 2021, the Scottish government made a commitment to the R100 (“Reaching 100%”) infrastructure programme, which sets out to enable every home and business in Scotland with access to super fast broadband speeds, and at least speeds of 30 Megabits per second.
Contracts for the programme were awarded to BT, the multinational telecoms giant. Due to ongoing global supply chain issues, it’s estimated that R100 contracts will be completed in 2028.
In addition to R100, other initiatives — like Project Gigabit, the UK government’s flagship programme for connecting hard-to-reach communities with fast broadband, and Shared Rural Network, which aims to deliver 4G coverage to 95% of the UK — are underway to improve digital accessibility and connectivity for the people living and working in the country’s most isolated locations.
On Compare the Market’s findings, Liz Cameron, the Chief Executive of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, said to The Times: “It’s clear that the provision of fibre broadband, 4G and 5G coverage across Scotland remains poor — holding back businesses, particularly in many rural, remote and coastal parts of Scotland where provision often remains substandard.
“The Scottish government needs to deliver on the promises of the R100 scheme and ensure superfast broadband connectivity to every home and business in Scotland as a priority.
“Businesses need to see the government pull out all the stops to remove barriers to rollout, invest in deployment and work with providers to ensure that all parts of Scotland receive the coverage and speeds that they deserve.”
In April, DIGIT reported on research conducted by the Federation of Small Businesses on the impact that poor digital connectivity has on rural businesses.
For instance, almost a third (32%) of rural small businesses continue to report issues with their broadband, with just 17% of their urban counterparts saying the same.
Further, the research revealed that twice as many rural businesses reported unreliable broadband has affected their ability to contact customers (14% vs 6%), reduced the competitiveness of their business (11% vs 5%), and led to a loss of business or sales (10% vs 5%).
Richard Lochhead, Scotland’s Innovation Minister, also commented on the findings, saying the following to The Times: “Broadband is the responsibility of the UK government. Despite this, the Scottish government’s R100 and Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programmes have already connected about one million properties across Scotland to faster broadband.
“We are investing more than £600 million through the R100 contracts, extending full fibre broadband access to some of the hardest-to-reach rural communities in Scotland.
“The R100 programme has delivered new full fibre subsea cables across Orkney and Shetland and building on land is under way. This is complex and will take time, however it will provide future-proofed connectivity for decades. In total, it is expected the R100 contracts will connect more than 5,700 properties across Orkney and Shetland.
“A further 8,400 homes and businesses in Argyll and Bute will also benefit from access to faster broadband through the R100 contracts.”
Established in 2014, the centre — which is a part of the University of Edinburgh — helps companies, organisations, and individuals to grow operations, develop new projects, and ensure they have the data skills needed to move forward in a world that’s becoming more and more AI- and data-led.
The Data Lab’s advisory boards each has its own scope: the Governance Advisory Board’s responsibilities, for instance, include setting the centre’s strategic, compliance, and finance direction.
The Innovation Advisory Board, meanwhile, consists of data leaders providing direction for the centre’s innovation-oriented activities and approach to project investment.
Lastly, the Education Advisory Board’s members identify and understand local industry needs — including skills and education requirements — and provide direction in scaling The Data Lab’s education portfolio.
The new members to appointed to the Governance Advisory Board are:
Abel Aboh, Data Management Lead at the Bank of England
Simon Hewitt, currently serving on the Education Advisory Board, moves to the Chair role.
These 20 new board members have already assumed their terms, which will last up to three years.
On the announcement of the new appointees, Les Bayne, Chair of The Data Lab, said: “The Data Lab is ideally placed to ensure Scotland maximises the economic and social opportunities from the current global inflection point in data science and AI.
“The experience our new board members will bring to The Data Lab will be immeasurable. The 20 new non-executive advisors will bring a wealth of relevant and exceptional experience.
“It is particularly exciting to see so many broad and varied backgrounds within our new members. I would also like to thank those members of our boards that have completed their term for their support and guidance including Shona Cowan from NHS NSS, Grant Smith, Dave Shaw, and Dr Helen Brown.”
Brian Hills, CEO of The Data Lab, also commented, saying: “We were overwhelmed by the volume and quality of applications for our boards; a true testament to the reputation of The Data Lab and Scottish data and AI innovation.
“The newly appointed board members bring an exceptional range of skills and perspectives across industry, academia and the public sector as we continue in our vision to create the world’s most impactful data and AI community.”
DIGIT last reported on The Data Lab in May when it was announced it had partnered with an organisation south of the Scottish border for the very first time.
The partnership is with The Data Shed — the Leeds-based data engineering consultancy focused on delivering data transformation projects that reduce business risk and on understanding the potential of data.
The partnership seeks to boost the profile of The Data Lab in England, while also raising awareness of what Scotland can offer in terms of data skills and business opportunities.
Speaking at the Chamber yesterday, and specifically during the Chamber’s “Trustworthy, Ethical and Inclusive Artificial Intelligence — Seizing Opportunities for Scotland’s People and Businesses” debate, Lochhead put forward his concerns on how No.10’s AI regulation approach could impact Scotland’s ability to appropriately manage AI’s advantages and risks.
“We are a bit concerned that the current UK government plans for the hands-off, non-statutory regulation of AI will not meet Scotland’s needs,” he said. “We don’t want to create unnecessary red tape, but we do have a duty to create the right supportive environment for business to thrive, and also for citizens to be protected.”
“We have a vision to make Scotland a leader in the development and use of AI in a way that is trustworthy, ethical, and inclusive,” he mentioned. “But most of these levers in terms of regulation are currently controlled by the UK government. Data protection; consumer protection; equality and human rights; employment regulations; medical devices regulations; telecommunications; financial services; self-driving cars — they’re all reserved matters to the UK government.”
As part of his efforts to help foster a safe, supportive Scottish environment for AI, the Minister mentioned that he will write to the UK Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology, Chloe Smith, to request an intensified dialogue between the UK government and the devolved administrations.
The Minister also called for a four nations summit on the implications of AI to be held “as soon as possible,” as to kickstart the UK-wide intensified dialogue that Lochhead seeks.
Furthermore, he has announced that he is commissioning the Scottish AI Alliance — the partnership between the Scottish government and the Data Lab, which provides a focus for dialogue, collaboration, and action on all things AI in Scotland — to lead an independent review of what Scotland should do to maximise benefits of AI, all while simultaneously controlling the risks.
“It’s the job of democratic governments to ensure that the benefits are spread as fairly as possible, and the risks controlled,” the Minister noted.
The debate in the Chamber — and Lochhead’s comments — come as the AI industry faces increased scrutiny from global regulators in a bid to limit the potential negative societal impacts of AI as it advances.
Earlier this week, DIGIT reported on the news that the Centre for AI Safety’s statement that “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” has been signed by myriad notable tech figures, not least Sam Altman — the Chief Executive of OpenAI, the company behind generative AI chatbot ChatGPT.
The Snugg-EDF collaboration aims to support homeowners across England and Wales improve their energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions by connecting them with EDF’s network of approved installers.
With access to EDF’s installers, Snugg’s users can schedule them to fit air source heat pumps, solar PV panels, and insulation — including loft, cavity wall, and solid wall.
To request a quote from an EDF installer, users need to:
Build their efficiency plan on the Snugg platform to identify areas for home efficiency improvements.
Answer a few questions about their home to receive accurate quotes from an EDF-approved installer.
Schedule the installation with the chosen EDF installer.
The collaboration with EDF expands Snugg’s installer coverage and simplifies energy efficiency efforts at an important time in the UK’s journey towards Net-Zero.
Snugg’s analysis of Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) ratings in Bristol reveals that 59% of homes have an EPC rating worse than C.
By implementing energy efficiency improvements, Snugg estimates that residents in Bristol could save a total of £91 million per year, while also reducing the city’s annual carbon emissions by 250,000 tonnes.
Improving home energy efficiency is essential for the UK to reach its Net-Zero targets, and Snugg’s collaboration with EDF is a step towards helping to meet these goals.
Snugg CEO, Robin Peters, said: “We’re delighted to join forces with EDF to help our customers improve the energy efficiency of their homes more easily.
“As awareness of the need for future-proofing homes grows and the UK strives to meet its Net-Zero targets, it’s crucial that we accelerate the transition to a carbon-neutral world.
“Our collaboration with EDF is a significant step forward in achieving that goal, empowering homeowners to embrace greener, more sustainable living.”
EDF’s Senior Manager of Propositions & Sales, Katharine Baker, also commented, saying: “This marks an exciting new chapter for us as we work with Snugg to bring energy efficiency measures to customers.
“Our installer network offers measures from heat pumps to solar panels enabling customers to take control of their home’s energy efficiency.”
Last week, DIGIT reported on the news that Snugg had secured a grant from the UK government’s Green Home Finance Accelerator (GHFA) programme.
The funding is set to be to used by the Scots startup to develop a “Green Home Hub” that will help finance providers better understand the needs of customers who are considering investing in home energy improvements.
This latest research was conducted by Censuswide, the research company, on behalf of The Open University in Scotland. It posed a series of questions concerning the cross-sector skills gap to 200 owners and senior managers of small- and medium-sized enterprises based north of the border.
Specifically, the areas of people management (25%), finance (24%), digital technologies (22%), and project management (20%) are where respondents are especially encountering skills shortages.
In Scotland, the tech skills gap has been particularly pronounced, impacting companies both in and outwith the tech sector.
According to the Tech Labour Market, Scotland report from the British Computer Society (BCS), growth in demand for IT staff in Scotland has outstripped the UK as a whole, with increases of 89% and 45% respectively over the Q3 2017-2023 period.
Further, BCS’ report also outlined that job-related education and training among IT specialists was lower in Scotland than in any other UK nation or region — excluding Northern Ireland — during the third quarter of 2022.
Relatedly, The Open University in Scotland’s survey highlighted a lack of awareness among SMEs of the access they have to Scottish Government-funded employee training support, which could aid with alleviating the country’s tech skills gap.
The survey found that less than a third of businesses had heard of the Scottish Funding Council Upskilling Fund (31%) and the Part-Time Fee Grant (29%).
Further, only 32% of businesses surveyed knew about the Flexible Workforce Development Fund (FWDF), which offers SMEs access to £5,000 of free, flexible online training with the OU in Scotland, supported by the Scottish Funding Council.
75% of respondents said that they would be likely to consider accessing funds in the next 12 months.
On the survey’s findings, David Allen, Senior Partnerships Manager, The Open University in Scotland, commented: “Despite two-thirds of businesses overwhelmingly reporting skill shortages, current financial and economic pressures mean training budgets are often squeezed at the expense of skills development. This does not need to be the case.
“Through the Flexible Workforce Development Fund, SMEs can access fully funded high quality, flexible online training that addresses many of the core skills shortages facing them.”
“Two-thirds of SMEs surveyed were unfamiliar with the available Scottish Government funded support. This is a core reason why the Open University in Scotland is determined to raise awareness of initiatives such as FWDF.
“A positive outcome of our research is 75% of business owners surveyed are now likely to consider accessing Scottish Government-funded training in the next 12 months. It’s an opportunity for the taking.”
The government has called the Video Games Research Framework a “best-practice supporting tool” for video game research, aiming to increase understanding of how video games impact individuals, societies, industries, and the economy. The improved understanding could then aid with implementing or amending gaming-related policies.
The guide itself is composed of three main chapters: Research topics and priorities; research standards and methodologies; and data ethics, data privacy, and data sharing. Two annexes — one on safe and secure data sharing for researchers, and another on legislation and standards — are included.
In addition to the guidance, the framework also sets out a variety of priority areas in need of deeper and more robust evidence, including why people interact with games, games’ impact on physical and mental health, and the influence of in-game features like spending and advertising on the player experience.
Further, the framework outlines researchers’ legal obligations under UK data protection laws, and directs users to guidance from expert bodies such as the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) on how data can be appropriately collected and handled during studies.
On the guide’s publication, Professor Tom Rodden, DCMS’ Chief Scientific Advisor, said: “DCMS supports some of the most exciting sectors in the UK and it is my priority to ensure that policymaking in the department is underpinned by the best possible science, research and evidence to drive growth and enrich lives.
“The Video Games Research Framework aims to facilitate high-quality research in the field of video games – promoting inclusive, transparent and independent practice.
“I am excited to see how adoption of the framework shapes new research and benefits not just policymakers in government, but the games industry and everyone who chooses to make video games a part of their lives.”
According to the government, the video games industry is one of the UK’s fast-growing creative industries, contributing £2.8 billion to the economy and employing over 27,000 people.
Recently, at the Enders Media and Telecoms 2023 & Beyond Conference, Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer discussed her aim to maximise potential within the creative industries — which includes video games — with an ambition to grow the sector by a further £50 billion by 2030, to create a million extra jobs in the industries within the same timeframe, and to build a pipeline of talent.
John Whittingdale, Minister for the Creative Industries, said the following on the video games industry and DCMS’ new framework: “Video games are a booming industry – employing thousands of people and contributing billions to our economy, whilst bringing enjoyment to people in fun and challenging ways.”
“Today’s plans will encourage more research and study in this area so we can better support the opportunities of this highly innovative sector while also protecting players.”
Dan Wood, Chief Strategy Officer and Acting Co-CEO of the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (Ukie), also commented, saying: “The establishment of a new Video Games Research Framework will provide objective, robust evidence, strengthening our understanding of the impact of video games across society.
“As a sector, we will never stand still on this issue and will continue to work collaboratively with government, academia, and industry partners, within the principles of the Video Games Framework to ensure any future change is driven through strong evidence.”
In the UK — and beyond — the Scottish city of Dundee is hailed as one of the most influential cities for video games, and is most notably home of the AAA game developer Rockstar Games — the creators of Grand Theft Auto.
Abertay University is also said to have launched the world’s first named computer games degree, and has since established the Centre for Excellence in Computer Games Education.
The innovation hub is set to provide start-up, spinout, and scaling life science companies that are addressing contemporary health challenges and issues with offices, incubator laboratories, commercialisation and growth programmes, plus access to mentors, professional networks, and investors.
With the potential to accommodate up to 400 bio-entrepreneurs from life science companies, the University of Aberdeen, Robert Gordon University, and NHS Grampian, the hub has been launched to foster innovation, invention, and investment, thereby accelerating sector-oriented scientific and technological development.
The new ONE BioHub is led and co-funded by Opportunity North East (ONE), with funding from the UK government, the Scottish government, and Scottish Enterprise. The University of Aberdeen and NHS Grampian are the hub’s strategic partners, providing the site for the hub at Aberdeen’s Foresterhill Health Campus.
The hub has been formally launched to members of the life sciences community, partners and stakeholders by Scottish government Innovation Minister Richard Lochhead.
Commenting on the hub’s launch, Sir Ian Wood KT GBE, chair of ONE, said: “ONE BioHub will be the transformational place in the North East of Scotland for the entrepreneurial life sciences community and growth sector to meet, share, learn, start up, innovate and grow.
“It will be a new game-changing technology and business cluster in Aberdeen, accelerating life sciences commercialisation, translating research into solutions in the market, improving health and wellbeing, creating high-growth businesses and high-value jobs, and harnessing the potential of science, technology and innovation to diversify the economy.
“This adds an exciting new business dimension to our economy.”
Deborah O’Neil, OBE FRSE — who chairs the life sciences board at ONE and ONE BioHub, and is also the CEO of Aberdeen biotech company NovaBiotics — said: “North east Scotland is serious about its life sciences opportunity.
“The region is home to world-class research and innovation in the University of Aberdeen, Robert Gordon University and NHS Grampian, a thriving community of 2,500 life scientists and a cluster of dynamic biotech, medtech and healthtech businesses.
“ONE BioHub will make more of all these strengths, assets and talented people. It will inspire the next generation of bio-entrepreneurs to commercialise innovation in the city, solve health challenges and create lasting economic value.”
Richard Lochhead, who launched the £40M life sciences hub, commented: “ONE BioHub will be a tremendous asset for the North East and the whole of Scotland.
“It will allow the already thriving life sciences cluster in the region to continue growing, innovating and succeeding. This includes important work in developing innovative treatments for conditions like Alzheimer’s Disease and cancer.
“This reflects the key role that life sciences have in our National Strategy for Economic Transformation and forthcoming National Innovation Strategy. And the partnership working that has made ONE BioHub possible exemplifies what is needed for the successful transformation of our economy.
“That is why the Scottish Government has invested £10 million in BioHub through the Aberdeen City Region Deal.”
As reported by outlets like The Times, Ellis has told PwC workers in an internal livestreamed presentation last week that “For professional services, where researching and summarising data is a key part of junior roles, AI has the potential to fast-track year one trainees to year three. You’re freeing people up to do more.”
Further, “The latest wave of AI will likely bring people back to the office. People are going to want to learn from others face-to-face, and the best way a human can differentiate themselves from a robot is in person.”
AI and Modern Work Life
While there’s been much musing on how AI could impact employment — research from the World Economic Forum, for instance, found that AI is to certainly play a part in “significant labour market disruption” — Ellis’ comments raise an interesting question: Could where people work be influenced by AI’s rapid development and deployment?
The COVID-19 pandemic saw an increased adoption of hybrid and remote working models by employers across the globe — and for many employees, it was an introduction to alternative ways of working outwith the status quo of full-time, in-office working.
According to a survey commissioned by Willo — the Scots asynchronous video interview platform — for example, more than a third of Scots would now quit their job if their employer wouldn’t let them work from home, with people under the age of 45 being more likely to consider doing so.
Data gathered by LinkedIn corroborates the desire for employers to offer work from home options; more than a third of workers across the UK said they would quit if their employer demanded them to work at the office full-time.
To boot, according to Willo’s survey — and despite of the cost-of-living crisis — more than half of Scottish respondents (57%) also said they were unlikely to consider working from an office again.
But could these statistics change? Could AI ultimately lure workers back to the office due to a want to show both face and value in person amid AI’s numerous capabilities?
AI and the Future of Work
Job security in the face of rapidly-developing technology was already a noted concern for workers. According to PwC’s 2022 annual global workforce survey — published before ChatGPT was released — a third of people said they were worried about the prospect of their role being replaced by technology within three years time.
Since generative AI chatbot ChatGPT was made open to the public in November 2022, employers have been increasingly eyeing generative AI’s potential: 45% of execs say ChatGPT has led to increased investment in AI, according to a recent Gartner survey. Meanwhile, IBM’s CEO, Arvind Krishna, said in an interview that IBM expects to pause hiring for job roles that could be done by artificial intelligence.
Like many other companies looking to be at the cutting-edge of technology, PwC is also embracing AI. Last month, PwC US announced plans to invest $1 billion over the next three years to expand and scale its artificial intelligence offerings.
The company has also announced a “strategic alliance” with Harvey — a startup funded by the OpenAI Startup Fund — which creates AI tools for professional services.
However, as employer interest and investment in AI clearly increases after ChatGPT’s explosive entrance, it’s yet to be seen whether AI adoption will ultimately influence people to go back to the office.
Jollife’s appointment to Glasgow-headquartered Novosound is a part of the tech firm’s launch of a new leadership team, led by CEO and co-founder Dave Hughes, and composed of Simon Patterson as Chief Commercial Officer, Gwen Grant as Chief Administrative Officer, and Jolliffe as CFO.
Jolliffe, who began his career in Grant Thornton LLP’s corporate finance team, was also previously Finance Director of UK Power Operations at Scottish Power, Chief Executive of Pyroguard — a subsidiary of CGI International — and was most recently CFO at Optoscribe.
Optoscribe — a Scots tech company that developed 3D lasers for the telecoms sector — was acquired by semiconductor manufacturer Intel Corporation in 2022.
On Jolliffe’s appointment, Hughes said: “It’s a remarkable coup to have David, a seasoned executive with a wealth of international experience from thriving technology companies and global industrial giants, join our team.
“As we embark on the next phase of growth and secure contracts across the UK, Europe, and North America, having David on board in Scotland, the birthplace of ultrasound, is invaluable.”
The company seeks to expand into North American markets with its wireless, wearable ultrasound technology, citing demand from clients in the healthcare, wellbeing, and fitness monitoring sectors.
“Recently, groundbreaking advancements in ultrasound technology have emerged, such as the recent work by the University of California San Diego into ultrasound system-on-patch (USoP) tech and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT),” said Hughes.
“In this revolution towards accessible, wearable, healthcare devices, Novosound stands at the forefront, demonstrating that its commercially available technology is an integral part of this narrative.”
Last December, Novosound signed a commercial partnership agreement with PAVmed Inc., the Nasdaq-listed diversified medical technology company, to develop tech to advance intravascular imaging.
The PAVmed agreement furthers Novosound’s move into healthcare and its regional expansion into North America. Previous contract wins have included BAE Systems and GE Aviation, and Israeli-based digital health company dSound.
In 2022, Novosound secured its latest investment, a £3.7 million round led by Par Equity, supported by Foresight Group, Kelvin Capital, and Scottish Enterprise.
In response to various factors resulting in both worldwide and localised turmoil and pressures — from inflation to the tech talent shortage — the research firm has predicted that government IT spending will rise to a total of $589.8 billion (£476b~) this year, marking a 7.6% increase over 2022.
“Global challenges like inflation and workforce scarcity and their local repercussions are testing the abilities of government CIOs to respond with appropriate service delivery mechanisms and organizational accountability,” said Apeksha Kaushik, Principal Analyst at Gartner, regarding the company’s latest forecast.
“In addition, the “great resignation” and the competing demand from the commercial sector have forced governments to re-examine their approaches to counterbalance internal talent scarcity.”
As part of responding to these difficulties, a meaningful portion of governmental IT budgets are suggested to go towards tech modernisation.
“Governments are increasingly spending their IT budgets to replace legacy applications. Gartner’s 2023 CIO and Technology Executive Survey showed that 57% of government CIOs plan to increase funding for application modernization in 2023, up from 42% in 2022,” said Kaushik.
Breaking down the total forecasted spending of $589.8b, around $209b is set to be spent on IT services, $184b on software, $69b on internal services, $68b on telecom services, $33b on devices, and $27b on data centre systems.
At $209b, IT services is the area predicted to have the most money allocated towards it, as compensation restraints and the IT talent shortage become more pronounced challenges for governments across the globe.
However, software is pointed to as the highest growing segment in 2023 ($184b), with a potential 13.5% growth in spending compared to 2022, as governments seek to replace legacy IT systems and software and modernise their tech.
The only area of IT where there’s suggested to be a decrease in spending concerns devices: Gartner forecasts that governments will allocate around $32b towards devices in 2023, marking a fall in spending of approximately 4.6%. In 2022, the money global governments spent on devices was around $32b, which was around 8.7% down from the previous year.
The tech talent gap and skills shortage is a notable global problem, and one that the UK government isn’t excluded from.
In their report on the Central Digital and Data Office — which leads the digital, data, and technology function for government — the National Audit Office outlined how the worsening skills shortage is threatening government digital transformation here in the UK.
“Many believe the talent is simply not available in the marketplace to achieve the degree of transformation the government needs,” the report stated. “If the current skills shortages persist, government may need to review what activities it can realistically achieve, given the skills it has or can acquire.”
This statistic comes from the agency’s survey of over 350 business leaders across the UK and US working in financial and professional services, undertaken in light of the five-year anniversary of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
Communication — or lack thereof — on GDPR requirements could potentially be the reason underpinning the breaches: only a third of firms surveyed (33%) have organised formal training on GDPR, with 28% rather relying on written policies and procedures. Further, 18% depend on informal discussions and reminders and 6% provide none of those already mentioned.
In terms of the benefits following GDPR’s introduction, respondents noted improved data protection practices (33%), increased data privacy awareness amongst employees (27%), and improved customer trust in their organisation (15%). However, 20% say that GDPR has also increased their organisation’s compliance costs.
Looking forward, firms want to see more rules put into place to protect consumer data. Just over half of those surveyed (54%) said they would like to see stricter data protection requirements, with more than a third (33%) saying they would like to see increased penalties for non-compliance.
Yogesh Shah, CEO of iResearch Services, commented on the survey’s findings, saying: “While meeting data regulations such as GDPR requires an upfront financial investment, the news this week surrounding Meta highlights how the cost of non-compliance can far outweigh this.
“Data breaches can also have a damaging long term effect on a firm’s brand and reputation, and so it is positive to see that firms are welcoming stricter regulations to reduce their likelihood of experiencing a data breach of their own.”
The news Shah is referring to is the story that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has received a record-breaking €1.2 billion (£1bn) fine from Irish regulators for its breach of GDPR data sharing policies.
The €1.2b fine was announced by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission after a decade-long case which concluded that Meta was transferring European users’ data in a way that created risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms of the users.
Earlier this week, DIGIT also reported on research from Macro 4, the software development company, which uncovered that 18% of UK IT leaders aren’t confident about their firm’s GDPR compliance.
Through a single point of integration, BR-DGE’s merchants can access a host of payment providers, fraud capabilities, and alternative payment methods.
With this new partnership, BR-DGE merchants are set to benefit from Volt’s Open Banking tool, which connects to over 1,800 global banks and routes payments in real-time via its network to optimise payment flows.
BR-DGE merchants are set to also gain access to Volt’s Open Banking fraud prevention tool, Circuit Breaker, which was created to better counter fraudulent activity by identifying and blocking suspicious payment activity.
The BR-DGE-Volt partnership follows growing merchant demand for innovative Open Banking technology, and reflects recent figures showing Open Banking usage hitting a milestone of 7 million consumer and SME users in the UK, according to CMA9 data.
Increased adoption is being driven by businesses looking for lower costs from their payments infrastructure, and the potential to provide customers with a higher quality user experience, among other benefits.
Volt joins over 300 technology and payment providers that have signed up to BR-DGE’s partnership programme. One of the last BR-DGE partnerships DIGIT reported on was a collaboration with American Express.
“Merchants across sectors are looking for payment partners that enable them to access the very best fintech innovations,” said BR-DGE’s Head of Partnerships, Tom Voaden.
“Partnering with Volt enables BR-DGE to continue to offer merchants the very best security and Open Banking technology in order to support their growth.
“Open Banking and fraud prevention are high on the payment priority list for businesses, and it is only set to grow in importance as firms look to better serve and protect their customers.”
Richard Drury, Volt’s VP Partnerships, also commented, saying: “We’re excited to bring real-time Open Banking payments, backed up by intelligent fraud prevention, to BR-DGE’s merchants.
“We’ve seen huge demand from e-commerce businesses for payments that settle faster, are easier for shoppers to initiate, and which don’t come with high fees.
“These retailers are understandably extremely keen to reduce the impact of fraud, too. Open Banking payments, which benefit from bank-grade security, are inherently safer – but Circuit Breaker, which enables merchants to set up rules governing fraudulent transactions, takes security to a new level.
“We look forward to helping BR-DGE’s merchants realise its benefits.”
Through the government’s UK Space Agency arm, the newly-created Space Clusters and Infrastructure Fund (SCIF) will award match funding to approximately 5-10 projects from UK organisations, receiving up to £10 million each.
Specifically, the funding is available to industry and academia who are able to deliver projects to procure, build, or upgrade R&D facilities and equipment that will bring “high potential, high value” space technologies to market.
The government has suggested that the projects should “provide critical anchor points at the local level for new businesses, investment, and research, and aim to create hundreds of jobs in areas of the UK that need it most.”
Although proposals are welcome from anywhere in the UK, the UK Space Agency is set to allocate the majority of its budget outside of England’s Greater South-east, citing levelling-up efforts.
On the funding’s announcement, George Freeman, Minister of State at the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT), said: “The UK space industry — worth £17.5 billion to the UK economy and creating new companies and careers all around the country from Glasgow Space City to Spaceport Cornwall — is a key part of the UK Innovation Economy.
“This £50 million Space Clusters and Infrastructure Fund is the UK’s first fund dedicated to support the space industry develop the R&D facilities key to growing the space clusters across the UK, helping to generate investment, create jobs and enable UK space companies’ cutting-edge technology to be made mission-ready for new commercial satellite markets.”
The UK Space Agency’s Chief Executive, Dr Paul Bate, also said: “The UK has a thriving space sector, which is well-established and globally respected. We are growing this exciting sector further, by catalysing investment, delivering missions and capabilities, and championing the power of space to improve lives.
“The Space Clusters and Infrastructure Fund demonstrates the government’s commitment to space and will help deliver the ambition set out in the National Space Strategy to build one of the most innovative and attractive space economies in the world, developing new skills and creating jobs.”
Lizzie Kerr, Director of UKspace, the industry trade association, added: “R&D underpins so much of the UK space industry’s activities and continued innovation. UKspace therefore welcomes this funding commitment from the Government which has the potential to impact many of our members, by developing and renewing facilities, and bringing growth and employment across the UK.”
More details about SCIF — including guidance on completing the application form — can be found here.
The California-headquartered rocket company is currently in the process of selling its main assets, with auction bids amounting to about $36 million (£29m). This is a fraction of the $3.7 billion (£2.9bn) that Orbit had been valued at in 2021.
As part of an official statement, the company said that “As Virgin Orbit embarks on this path, the management and employees would like to extend their heartfelt gratitude to all stakeholders, including customers, partners, investors, and employees, for their support and dedication over the years.
“It is through their collective efforts that the Company has been able to achieve significant milestones and make lasting contributions to the advancement of satellite launch in the United States and the United Kingdom.”
Virgin Orbit, which launched satellite-containing rockets beneath modified Boeing 747s, had been reeling from a major mission failure in January this year.
The mission — which took place from Spaceport Cornwall — was supposed to be a historic moment for the UK, representing the first time a satellite space mission had been launched from UK soil. However, a technical “anomaly” meant that the rocket carrying satellites couldn’t reach orbit.
Around two months later, in mid-March, Virgin Orbit’s CEO Dan Hart told employees that Orbit was “initiating a company-wide operational pause,” and placed them on furlough while the company tried to secure a funding lifeline.
At the end of March, it was announced that the company would lay off about 85% of its staff — amounting to around 675 jobs — as it struggled to secure the external funding that it needed.
Shortly after the layoffs announcement, at the beginning of April, Virgin Orbit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. and sought to sell the business to a willing buyer.
Nearly two months later, on May 23, the company announced that it would permanently cease operations.
In its statement, the company said that “Virgin Orbit’s legacy in the space industry will forever be remembered. Its groundbreaking technologies, relentless pursuit of excellence, and unwavering commitment to advancing the frontiers of air launch have left an indelible mark on the industry.”
The statistic comes from Macro 4, the software development company. They tasked research firm Vanson Bourne with surveying 100 UK IT leaders and decision-makers working in large enterprises about GDPR.
When IT leaders were asked if they were completely satisfied that the way they store, process, and use personal information is fully compliant with the GDPR, 18% of IT said they either didn’t agree or didn’t know.
On this, Jim Allum, Director of Macro 4’s Commercial and Technical department, said: “With five years to get their processes in place, you would expect that most technology leaders would feel confident that they are now fully compliant. But it’s obvious from the data that many are still struggling.”
The survey also revealed that 85% of respondents feel it’d be easier if the UK stayed with the data privacy requirements enshrined in the GDPR, rather than creating a separate set of post-Brexit regulations under the proposed Data Protection and Digital Information Bill (DPDIB).
“On the face of it, you would expect that business would welcome the DPDIB. It promises to simplify compliance, cut unnecessary red tape and promote innovation,” Allum commented.
“However, change brings uncertainty and this may explain why the IT leaders we questioned seem to want the status quo to prevail. There’s still a lot of complexity and also unanswered questions about what will happen in practical terms if the new bill comes into force.”
“Businesses that operate in both the UK and EU may fear that they’ll end up having to comply with two separate sets of compliance standards. They could be thinking, ‘It’s better the devil you know’.”
In addition to the already mentioned stats, 66% of IT leaders feel that the GDPR has made customers more aware of the need to protect their personal information — making them less willing to trust businesses with it.
“Most IT leaders seem to feel that the regulations have made people more suspicious about how their data is being used,” Allum said.
“This is possibly because people are better informed now about how their data could be compromised or misused. Media headlines about major data privacy breaches and huge GDPR non-compliance fines levelled at well-known brands will have reinforced the overall lack of trust. All this means that organisations need to work harder than ever to demonstrate that they’re managing data within the rules.”
Earlier this week, DIGIT reported on law firm CMS’ GDPR Enforcement Tracker Report, which collated GDPR-related fines and trends over the past five years.
It found that insufficient technical and organisational measures are the leading causes of fines — not least non-compliance with general data processing principles.
By March 2023, over 1,500 GDPR-related fines were recorded in CMS’ Enforcement Tracker database, amounting to a sum of around €2.77.bn (£2.4bn~).
Currently based at the Bayes Centre — the University of Edinburgh’s innovation hub for AI and data science — the Smart Data Foundry is a mission-led data innovation organisation serving the public, private, and third sectors, helping them to harness data for good.
In the new partnership with Ozone API — the standards-based open API platform — the Smart Data Foundry has launched two tools in a move to support financial innovation: the Standards Library and the Innovation Atlas.
The Standards Library aims to help financial institutions and innovators understand the global landscape, making it quicker and easier to acknowledge and compare the different technical standards adopted by a geography or financial system.
Meanwhile, the Innovation Atlas provides an overview of what open banking initiatives are happening where. The levels of financial inclusion, telecommunication challenges, and banking and data privacy regulations are documented and viewable in a navigable map.
Ongoing additions and updates are set to be added to the Standards Library and Innovation Atlas on a quarterly basis, as to reflect the changing global landscape.
“We are delighted to partner with Ozone API to bring these two products to market, allowing for the acceleration of innovation in Open Banking, Open Finance and Open Data across the globe,” said Bryn Coulthard, chief product and technology officer at the Smart Data Foundry.
Huw Davies, co-founder & chief commercial officer at Ozone API, also commented, saying: “Today’s launch of the Standards Library and Innovation Atlas could not come at a better time as we see ever increasing complexity in the global standards landscape. We know, as we’re at the sharp end of helping banks and regulators around the world to deliver standards based open APIs.
“We’re delighted to partner with Smart Data Foundry to deliver these valuable tools to the market in order to help accelerate innovation.”
Formerly known as the Global Open Finance Centre of Excellence, the Smart Data Foundry was founded in September 2020 with an initial £23m in funding from the UK government through the UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) flagship Strength in Places Fund.
The Scots not-for-profit has since delivered a number of data projects in collaboration with financial institutions, including research into the impact of COVID-19 and the cost-of-living crisis on the over-50s.
DIGIT last reported on the Smart Data Foundry when the organisation appointed its inaugural board at the beginning of this year.
Making up the inaugural board is Zachery Anderson, Chief Data Officer at NatWest Group; Professor Kim Graham, Provost at the University of Edinburgh; Stephen Ingeldrew OBE, Chairman at FinTech Scotland; Fiona Duncan, Chair at the Promise; and Professor Chris Speed, Director at the Edinburgh Futures Institute.
According to new research from Scottish Enterprise — which used data supplied by Beauhurst — Scotland achieved its highest amount of equity investment on record in 2022, but deal participation fell, including in the Scots digital and IT sector.
The agency’s research, “Investing in Ambition: Scotland’s Equity Risk Capital Market 2022,” highlights that despite fewer deals, a total of £953 million in investment was put into Scottish firms last year, marking a 26% increase over 2021.
Where did the largest value deals go?
In particular, three Scottish deals with an investment value of over £50m took place in 2022, coming to a total of £315.3m. This is an increase of around £220m from last year.
The deal with the highest investment value — £164m — went into GoFibre, the independent Scottish broadband provider and network builder. This week, GoFibre announced that they’re expanding rural broadband to a further 82,000 premises.
The second-highest value investment of £101.3m went into TauRx Pharmaceuticals, who specialise in neurodegenerative disease treatment, and the third-highest of £50m went into Well-Safe Solutions, the firm who offer decommissioning services for on and offshore wells.
What about actual deal numbers?
According to the research, deal numbers in Scotland were the lowest they’ve been since 2018, with 407 deals taking place in 2022.
So what were the deal numbers in each sector (and keeping in mind that a deal is counted in as many sectors as are relevant for the business — a single company could both be operating in “digital and IT” as well as “business services,” for instance)?
The Scottish digital and IT sector — which is the country’s top performing sector — had a 8% decrease in deal participation, with 189 deals compared to 206 in 2021.
This, however, is in line with deal numbers falling generally in the UK, with most sectors witnessing a drop in deal participation.
Technology and engineering — the country’s second-top performing sector in terms of deals — had 163 deals in 2022, marking an increase of 2% compared to the previous year.
As Scotland’s third-best performing sector, firms in the area of business services had 144 deals in 2022, a fall of 13% when compared to the sector’s 166 deals in 2021.
The hardest hit sector in terms of deals was fintech, which was down 68%. The aerospace and satellite sector also had fewer deals, and was down 50% in 2022.
That said, the oil and gas sector received a 70% boost in deals, with 17 in 2022 over 10 in 2021. Further, the non-renewable energy sector saw a 30% positive change, with 24 deals in 2022 compared to 18 in 2021.
Where did the deals come from?
Breaking down where the majority of Scottish deals came from in 2022, the government drove the highest number of deals at 119 (a -4% change compared to 2021), totalling a value of £275m (-10%).
In second place are angel networks, who drove 88 deals (+19%) and totalling £122m (+9%).
Third is private equity and venture capital firms, who drove 87 deals (-5%) with an overall value of £428m (+17%).
In light of the research’s findings and the fall in deal numbers, Kerry Sharp, Director of Entrepreneurship and Investment at Scottish Enterprise, said that investors are “focusing on the needs of existing portfolios and they are becoming increasingly selective and are showing signs of changing risk appetites.”
However, despite this, Sharp said that “This latest research shows that Scotland continues to punch above its weight in securing significant investment for its most innovative and ambitious companies.”
To read Scottish Enterprise’s research in full, click here.
AG Elevate is a fast-track, 10-month accelerator programme designed to advance tech firms in all sectors through the legal and business challenges that may arise as they grow.
Since its first launch in 2017, AG Elevate has supported nearly 50 high-growth tech businesses to navigate the intersection of law and business.
In 2019, the Edinburgh-based firm Amiqus — the creators of a legal, public sector, and financial services compliance platform of the same name — was one of nine businesses selected to join the accelerator.
Amiqus and the rest of the cohort were assigned a legal mentor and a package of legal support. They also received access to professional industry networks, bespoke resources designed by AG, and the chance to build networks with like-minded people and businesses in the tech ecosystem.
“The Elevate programme provided us not only with invaluable support and insights, but also a great peer cohort of other high-growth companies based around the UK,” said Amiqus’ CEO, Callum Murray.
It’s been said that Amiqus has seen its turnover double year-on-year since 2019. Murray has also recently been shortlisted as a regional finalist for EY’s entrepreneur of the year.
Dave Anderson, co-lead of the AG Elevate programme and the Addleshaw Goddard Partner who co-mentored Amiqus through the accelerator, said: “Callum and the team have thrived and it’s fantastic that AG Elevate has played a small part in their story.
“As innovation and disruption continue to be in high demand across all sectors, we are excited to see the businesses that can follow in Amiqus’ footsteps.”
Businesses that become a part of the 2023 cohort are set to receive:
An assigned legal mentor who will meet with the business every month to identify legal challenges they’re facing and any areas of concern.
25 hours of free legal advice on any specialist areas, being legal advice on funding, payments, financial regulation, and technology.
Access to AG’s legal seminars and networking events.
Access to regular insight sessions hosted in collaboration with business mentors in the AG network.
And all other legal advice offered by AG will be provided at a 30% discount.
To qualify for consideration for a place on the 2023 AG Elevate programme, businesses need to have existing plans for high-growth and have received external funding.
Applications are now open and can be found on the Addleshaw Goddard website here.
“Blockchain Industry in Scotland Landscape Overview” — said to be Scotland’s first report into the blockchain economy — presents a summary of Scotland’s blockchain ecosystem as well as the technology’s benefits, challenges, and features.
“This is the first review of its kind into the companies, investors, and impact of blockchain that could unlock new and scalable innovation opportunities for our digital economy in Scotland,” said Suzanne Sosna, Scottish Enterprise’s Director of Economic Opportunities.
“The technology is most associated with the financial sector, but we wanted to look beyond that across industries where blockchain technology might be lesser known, but no less innovative, such as in education where it’s used to make qualifications secure.
“Scottish Enterprise will continue to support the development of blockchain technology to help business growth and innovation in Scotland.”
The report found that there are 60 blockchain-centric companies in Scotland, with most located in Edinburgh. These companies are using blockchain to develop new products or services, for recruitment and human resources tasks, energy and climate change efforts, crypto trading, and more. Further, there are 78 Scotland-based investors, 86 leaders, and 33 hubs with a blockchain focus.
In terms of the main economic opportunities for blockchain in Scotland, the report points to the sectors of finance, agriculture, manufacturing, healthcare, education, fast-moving consumer goods, spacetech, and energy as the areas that would benefit most.
The main challenges for wider adoption and usage of blockchain tech, however, include regulatory uncertainty, lack of technical expertise, and public perception — blockchain is often associated with cryptocurrency, which can instill negative perceptions due to the association with rogue and/or illicit activities.
Mentioned as one notable Scottish blockchain company is The Scotcoin Project. The Project designed their digital cryptocurrency to facilitate blockchain transactions within Scotland; they also use their digital currency to help Scotland’s third sector, going against the grain of broader society’s perception of what a crypto company is and does. Last month, DIGIT spoke to the Project’s CEO, Temple Melville — who has been listed in the report as a Scottish blockchain company leader — on their mission.
The report also highlights other blockchain-oriented companies like Glasgow-based Gigged.AI — a firm using artificial intelligence blockchain tech to create secure and transparent records of candidate qualifications, experience, and work history for businesses. The company most recently secured £1.6 million in a seed round led by Edinburgh-based Par Equity.
On the report, Dominic Jennings, Head of Strategic Partnerships for Deep Knowledge Analytics — the research company who produced the report on behalf of Scottish Enterprise — said: “The use of blockchain technology can encourage growth across a diverse range of sectors through the development of innovative and secure solutions with potential to significantly boost Scotland’s economic growth.
“Deep Knowledge Analytics is proud to have worked with Scottish Enterprise to produce this landmark report and to promote the future growth of the blockchain industry in Scotland.”
To read a one page version of the report click here, and for the full 80-page report click here.
With the new National Semiconductor Strategy, the UK government plans to invest up to £1bn in the next decade — with £200 million being invested over 2023-2025 — to help bolster the UK’s skills in semiconductor research, design, and compound semiconductor creation.
The government says that building on these domestic strengths can subsequently help to safeguard supply chains, protect the UK against security risks, and stimulate the growth of the UK’s semiconductor sector.
Semiconductors — often called microchips, or chips — are necessary components for most modern-day electronic devices, from mobile phones to computers to ventilation systems. They also underpin innovative technologies such as quantum and 6G.
While semiconductors are made from one element — like silicon — compound semiconductors are made from two elements or more, and have capabilities outwith silicon chips’ remit due to better performance. The government says that expertise with the creation of compound semiconductors is an area of UK science leadership.
On the strategy, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “Semiconductors underpin the devices we use every day and will be crucial to advancing the technologies of tomorrow.
“Our new strategy focuses our efforts on where our strengths lie, in areas like research and design, so we can build our competitive edge on the global stage.
“By increasing the capabilities and resilience of our world-leading semiconductor industry, we will grow our economy, create new jobs and stay at the forefront of new technological breakthroughs.”
Chloe Smith, the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) Secretary, also commented: “Semiconductors are the beating heart of all electronic devices, from powering our phones and cars to medical equipment and innovative new technologies like Quantum and AI which will make a real difference to all of our lives.
“Britain is already a world leader when it comes to researching and designing semiconductor technology – our new strategy will double down on these core strengths to create more skilled jobs, grow our economy, boost our national security and cement the UK’s status as a global science and technology superpower.”
Despite the UK government’s ambitions with the semiconductor sector, critics have already lambasted its £1bn strategy.
In a tweet, Labour shadow culture minister Lucy Powell said that the plan showed “significantly less ambition than our competitors.”
Dr Simon Thomas, the CEO of UK-based graphene semiconductor start-up, Paragraf, told the BBC that the announcement was “quite frankly flaccid,” and that it’s “a long way from addressing the needs of UK chipmakers.”
In recent months, the US and EU have pledged roughly $50bn (£40bn) and €43bn (£37bn) respectively to boost manufacturing in their regions.
The announcement of the proposed cuts — which will affect around 40% of BT’s global workforce — were made today in the company’s full-year earnings 2023 report.
The company currently employs about 130,000 people globally, with around 30,000 serving as contractors. Approximately 80,000 of the 130,000 workforce are UK staff.
The news of the workforce reduction came as the firm said its ongoing “cost transformation” was “on track,” with gross annualised cost savings of £2.1bn since April 2020 against a £3bn target.
In addition to the report revealing the company’s cost-savings thus far, it also shows that BT met market expectations with a 5% rise in full-year adjusted core earnings of £7.9bn, highlighting CEO Philip Jansen’s efforts to cut costs and grow profit.
“By the end of the 2020s BT Group will rely on a much smaller workforce and a significantly reduced cost base. New BT Group will be a leaner business with a brighter future,” said Jansen.
“We have delivered our outlook for FY23: this year we’ve grown both pro forma revenue and EBITDA for the first time in six years while navigating an extraordinary macro-economic backdrop. Over the last four years we have stuck firmly to our strategy and it’s working.”
The BBC also report that up to a fifth of BT’s proposed workforce cuts are set to come in customer services roles, as staff could be replaced by technologies including generative artificial intelligence, with Jansen supposedly saying that such advanced tech “gives us confidence we can go even further.”
Earlier this week, another British telecoms giant, Vodafone announced that it’s to cut 11,000 jobs in order to save costs.
The around 10% workforce reduction will be made over the next three years, as part of Vodafone’s turnaround plan.
The Committee’s Regulating Crypto report, published today, laid out the Committee’s stance that the UK government should move to “protect consumers from harm” by not regulating consumer crypto activity as a financial service, but rather as gambling due to the potential risks involved.
“Unbacked cryptoassets have no intrinsic value, and their price volatility exposes consumers to the potential for substantial gains or losses, while serving no useful social purpose,” the group of cross-party MPs said in the report. “These characteristics more closely resemble gambling than a financial service, an impression reinforced by the evidence we have received of consumer behaviour.”
The report highlights Bitcoin and Ether as two prominent forms of unbacked cryptoassets, but pointed out that “the price volatility of unbacked cryptoassets exposes consumers to significant risks of losses,” and that research into crypto adoption “estimated that 73–81% of the users that entered the Bitcoin market over 2015–2022 were likely to have lost money on their investments.”
In addition to laying out the potential risks of cryptoassets, the Committee also listed the potential benefits, including the ability to reduce the cost of payments and improve efficiency, and the improving financial inclusion.
Commenting on the newly-published report, Harriett Baldwin MP, chair of the Treasury Committee, said: “The events of 2022 have highlighted the risks posed to consumers by the cryptoasset industry, large parts of which remain a wild west. Effective regulation is clearly needed to protect consumers from harm, as well as to support productive innovation in the UK’s financial services industry.
“However, with no intrinsic value, huge price volatility and no discernible social good, consumer trading of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin more closely resembles gambling than a financial service, and should be regulated as such. By betting on these unbacked ‘tokens’, consumers should be aware that all their money could be lost.”
The Treasury Committee’s report on unbacked crypto regulation comes roughly a year after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced his ambition for the UK to become a global hub for crypto.
The announcement — which was made in 2022 when Sunak served as Chancellor — outlined plans involving legislation to promote the usage of stablecoins and to create a Royal Mint NFT.
However, as the Treasury Committee’s report highlights, plans for the Royal Mint NFT were dropped earlier this year.
The award, which is made possible by National Lottery players, provides match funding of subscriptions from companies that sign up as participating members of the Tech for Good Alliance.
The Tech for Good Alliance is a cross-UK initiative of the not-for-profit Scottish Tech Army. It provides a framework to both encourage and enable the development of skilled tech volunteering programmes, as part of tech companies’ social responsibility activities.
The Tech for Good Alliance’s three focus areas for the programmes and projects are: social justice, inclusion, and equality; environment and climate change; and skills and talent development.
The programme framework and the services provided to Tech for Good Alliance’s member companies allow them to develop their tech for good programmes and projects more efficiently and economically.
“In the course of its work, the Scottish Tech Army has seen the value that can be delivered by tech for good programmes, both its own and those of tech companies that have already made a commitment to and investment in programmes of this kind,” said Alistair Forbes, CEO of the Scottish Tech Army.
“The potential to grow the tech for good ecosystem in the UK and the resulting impact is very substantial but the overhead involved in setting up such programmes from scratch is a significant challenge for companies and their busy staff.
“This innovative funding award from the National Lottery Community Fund will allow us to scale the Tech for Good Alliance faster and further and will amplify the contribution of every company that signs up to join the Alliance.
“Scalability of the outputs of projects is a key principle that will greatly amplify the impact of the work of Alliance member companies and their staff.”
Neil Ritch, Scotland Director, the National Lottery Community Fund, also commented, saying: “This award means that the Scottish Tech Army will be able to support many more groups across Scotland.
“By leveraging the capabilities of private companies in the tech sector through the Tech for Good Alliance, this project has the potential to significantly accelerate the development and adoption of digital solutions in the third sector, which will be very much to the benefit of the people and communities that they serve.”
Just last month, DIGIT attended the Scottish Tech Army’s third annual Tech for Good Summit. Staff writer Elizabeth Greenberg reported on a panel which discussed the importance of skilled volunteering, and how the tech sector and the third sector can and should come together for cross-societal benefit.
At a Senate hearing on 16 May, Altman suggested that government intervention in the AI industry is necessary to keep it safe, and proposed the formation of a body that would regulate AI systems and companies.
Altman’s appeal at Congress comes during international calls for AI’s regulation, considering how generative AI and future advancements could profoundly impact areas such as jobs, education, privacy, and security.
Senator Richard Blumenthal — who chairs the Senate’s subcommittee on privacy, technology, and the law — opened the hearing with an audio recording that sounded like him, but was actually a voice clone trained on his speech patterns, reading opening remarks written by ChatGPT.
Blumenthal used this as an example of how AI could inherently affect privacy and security. “I am sure we’ll look back in a decade and view ChatGPT and GPT-4 like we do the first cell phones — those big, clunky things that we used to carry around,” he prefaced.
“But we recognise that we are on the verge of a new era. The audio and my playing it may strike you as curious or humorous, but what reverbated in my mind was: What if I had asked it, and what if it had provided, an endorsement of Ukraine surrendering or Vladimir Putin’s leadership?”
In response to the advancements being made in AI — and the developments that are yet to come — Altman advocated for regulation and governance, suggesting various ways the AI industry could be handled moving forward.
In addition to AI system licensing and de-licensing, Altman proposed that the government puts in various safeguards, such as safety standards for high-capability AI models, and safety reviews prior to an AI system’s deployment.
Further, he urged legislators to require independent audits from external experts outside of the government or the AI company in question, so that the AI systems operate within legislative guidelines.
“OpenAI was founded on the belief that artificial intelligence has the potential to improve nearly every aspect of our lives, but also that it creates serious risks we have to work together to manage,” Altman told legislators.
“We’re here because people love this technology; we think it can be a ‘printing press’ moment, but we have to work together to make it so.”
Altman was joined in testimony by two other AI experts, Christina Montgomery, IBM’s chief privacy and trust officer, and Gary Marcus, professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University. All three supported federal and global governance of the AI industry.
Senator Blumenthal indicated that the hearing was just the first in a series of committee hearings.
The cuts — which totals around 10% of Vodafone’s workforce — will be made over the next three years, affecting both its UK headquarters and offices in other countries.
They were announced in a statement made by Vodafone’s chief executive, Margherita Della Valle. She said that the firm’s “performance has not been good enough,” and that to “consistently deliver, Vodafone must change.”
As part of the company’s turnaround efforts — and in addition to the planned cuts — Della Valle aims for “significant” investment to be reallocated towards customer experience and brand during financial year ’24, to launch a “Germany turnaround plan,” and to undertake a “strategic review” in Spain.
“My priorities are customers, simplicity and growth. We will simplify our organisation, cutting out complexity to regain our competitiveness. We will reallocate resources to deliver the quality service our customers expect and drive further growth from the unique position of Vodafone Business,” she said in the statement.
Della Vale was appointed as Vodafone’s chief executive last month to oversee the firm’s turnaround, and had been serving as interim chief executive since January. Prior to that, she served as finance chief.
After her appointment, she said: “To realise our potential, Vodafone needs to change. We know we can do better. My focus will be to improve the service for our customers, simplify our business, and grow.”
Della Vale’s efforts to better Vodafone’s market position and performance come in after a fall in share prices in late 2022.
Earlier this year, it was reported that Vodafone was in talks with competitor Three UK to potentially undertake a merger. If a merger goes ahead, it would create Britain’s biggest mobile phone operator.
The “BBC micro:bit — the next gen” campaign will offer a set of 30 BBC micro:bit devices and new online teaching resources to every primary school across the country.
From today, 15 May, all primary school teachers can register on the BBC micro:bit website to receive micro:bit devices and a resource pack for their school between September 2023 and March 2023. Around 700,000 micro:bits are on offer.
The BBC micro:bit is a pocket-sized computer that introduces schoolchildren to how software and hardware work together, providing them with digital creativity and programming skills that can be carried into the future.
This new strategic partnership between the three bodies (the Micro:bit Educational Foundation was launched in 2016 as a micro:bit-focused non-profit, and Nominet is the manager of the .uk domain name) is a response to research suggesting that 65% of primary school children will end up working in jobs that do not exist today.
It builds upon the Micro:bit Educational Foundation’s three-phase national programme and primary pilot project — in collaboration with Nominet — that has focused on understanding the challenges facing UK primary teachers and improving digital skills education in primary classrooms.
Research from the Foundation and Nominet has shown that teachers feel overwhelmingly unprepared and lack confidence when teaching digital skills.
Alongside the delivery of the micro:bits, teachers will be supported with a roll-out of virtual teacher training delivered by the Foundation and training partners from each of the UK’s nations. A suite of cross-curricular resources, including classroom activities to get children interested in coding with their micro:bits, are set to be released in September 2023.
One primary school in Bradford took part in the primary school pilot project last year. Commenting on the pilot, the chief executive of the school’s trust said: “You could hear a pin drop, but then you also got that buzz of excitement as the schoolchildren were using the new technology, and speaking to the teachers, the resources that go alongside are just fantastic!
“The resources online are being used to their fullest, and this removes barriers for staff who might not initially have experience or confidence in teaching digital skills.”
Helen Foulkes, Head of BBC Education, said the following on the new campaign: “An ability to understand, participate and work in the digital world is vitally important to ensure young people are ready for the future so they can achieve their full potential.
“Yet, whilst education systems try to keep pace with rapid change, there is often insufficient support available to teach these digital skills.
“BBC Education is in a unique position to bring its education and tech partners together to help all primary schoolchildren across the UK to shape their best digital futures, as well as support teachers to implement digital skills into the curriculum. That is what the BBC micro:bit is all about.
“We’re looking forward to seeing the real impact the BBC micro:bit will continue to have on many young people’s futures and witnessing the device being used in all kinds of wonderful new ways amongst the digital makers, inventors and pioneers of tomorrow!”
The BBC’s micro:bit was originally launched in 2014 as part of the BBC’s Make It Digital initiative. It’s estimated that over seven million devices are now in use globally, and that 39 million young people from more than 60 countries have benefited from learning with the micro:bit.
The programme aims to equip UK businesses with the skills and knowledge to adopt digital technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, supercomputing, and quantum computing.
The trio each received a third of the funding pot to deliver accessible support for SMEs, in a bid to improve their competitiveness and growth through the adoption of digital technologies and methods.
The universities will utilise their expertise and industry engagement experience to enable the exchange of knowledge into UK businesses, as to help enhance their productivity, innovation, and growth.
Further, they will also promote the use of the digital adoption expertise that’s available from the Centre.
“The UK has always been at the cutting-edge of some of the most important technologies of tomorrow, but too often, we’ve failed to translate that unrivalled expertise into practical tools and resources which can benefit our wider business communities,” said Minister of State at the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, George Freeman.
“These new hubs will allow us to target support at a local level, while laying the foundations for a larger support ecosystem connecting companies right across the UK.”
Kate Royse, Director of the Hartree Centre, also commented, saying: “It’s important to us that support for digital technology adoption reaches as many companies across the UK as possible, and the Hartree Centre SME hubs will enhance that regional access.
“The partner organisations we’ve selected have a wealth of data science and AI expertise that builds on our own, and will be key to the Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation [programme] growing our SME networks and supporting more organisations to upskill and carry out digital transformation.
“The SME hubs will help the Hartree Centre support the UK to put digital innovation at the heart of our future economic sustainability.”
The University’s researchers — who have developed an AI-based tool to help clinicians diagnose heart attacks more accurately — found that their technology, dubbed “CoDE-ACS,” was able to rule out a heart attack in more than double the number of patients when compared to current testing methods, and with an accuracy of 99.6%.
CoDE-ACS was developed using data from over 10,000 patients in Scotland who had set foot in hospitals with a suspected heart attack. It uses routinely-collected patient information — such as age, sex, ECG findings, and medical history, as well as troponin levels — to predict the probability that an individual has had a heart attack. The result is a probability score from 0 to 100.
The researchers said that the algorithm performed well regardless of age, sex, or pre-existing health conditions, showing its potential for reducing misdiagnosis and inequalities across the population.
Scottish clinical trials are now underway, with support from the Wellcome Leap, the innovation investing firm, to assess whether the tool can help doctors reduce pressure on overcrowded A&E departments.
In addition to quickly ruling out heart attacks in patients, CoDE-ACS could also help doctors to identify those whose abnormal troponin levels were due to a heart attack, rather than a separate condition.
The current gold standard for diagnosing a heart attack is measuring levels of troponin, a protein that’s released during a heart attack, in the blood. However, the same threshold is used for every patient.
This means that factors — like age, sex, and any underlying issues — which affect troponin levels are not considered, affecting the accuracy of heart attack diagnosis. This can then lead to inequalities in diagnosis, which the new algorithm could help to prevent.
“For patients with acute chest pain due to a heart attack, early diagnosis and treatment saves lives,” said Professor Nicholas Mills, BHF Professor of Cardiology at the Centre for Cardiovascular Science, University of Edinburgh, who led the research on CoDE-ACS.
“Unfortunately, many conditions cause these common symptoms, and the diagnosis is not always straightforward. Harnessing data and artificial intelligence to support clinical decisions has enormous potential to improve care for patients and efficiency in our busy Emergency Departments.”
Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, also commented, saying: “Chest pain is one of the most common reasons that people present to Emergency Departments. Every day, doctors around the world face the challenge of separating patients whose pain is due to a heart attack from those whose pain is due to something less serious.
“CoDE-ACS, developed using cutting edge data science and AI, has the potential to rule-in or rule-out a heart attack more accurately than current approaches. It could be transformational for Emergency Departments, shortening the time needed to make a diagnosis, and much better for patients.”
The University of Edinburgh’s research into CoDE-ACS and its effectiveness was funded by the British Heart Foundation and the National Institute for Health and Care Research. The findings were recently published in the Nature Medicine journal.
EY, the professional services firm, has discovered in its 22nd Europe Attractiveness Survey — which looks at how different European countries fare as investment destinations — that the number of UK tech projects receiving FDI declined from 305 in 2021 to 234 in 2022, representing a change of nearly a quarter (23.3%).
Additionally, according to the firm’s survey, the UK’s share of Europe’s FDI for tech projects fell from 29.2% in 2021 down to 19.8% last year, as European countries played catch-up to recent UK growth in this sector.
However, despite the fall in tech market share, the UK was still the leading country in Europe for tech-related FDI.
Stepping back and looking at projects across all business industries and sectors, the UK had 929 FDI-backed projects in 2022, down from 993 in 2021 (-6.4%), and down from 975 in the pandemic-stricken year of 2020 (-4.7%).
Further, the UK’s 15.6% share of all European FDI projects in 2022 was down from 16.9% in 2021. UK project numbers reached a record high in 2017 with 1,205 total projects.
The UK’s leading sectors for FDI-backed projects in 2022 were tech (234), financial services (76), business and professional services (70), utility supply (68), and agri-food (61).
EY points to both political and economic turbulence as the likely reasons behind the across-the-board decline. “Political uncertainty and the ongoing impact of Brexit on trade and investment will likely have played a part in the UK’s performance – but Europe-wide factors, such as high energy prices and high inflation, will have had an impact on the UK’s attractiveness too.”
Peter Arnold, EY’s UK Chief Economist, commented on the survey’s UK tech-related findings, saying: “The UK’s tech sector typifies the country’s overall performance: project numbers are down but value remains solid with smaller projects not being prioritised.
“The sector has faced significant global headwinds, while the UK’s loss of market share may also represent other countries playing catch-up in the wake of the UK’s stellar tech performance from 2016 to 2019.”
Earlier this week, DIGIT reported on the news that Nikolay Storonsky, the CEO of Europe’s most valuable fintech company, Revolut — which is based in London — criticised Britain’s “extreme” bureaucracy.
Kemi Badenoch, the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, has sought an emergency meeting with Revolut over fears that the company may leave the UK.
In a new joint blog post, the two authorities urge companies to not “feed the cycle” of cybercrime, and to be up front about possible and confirmed cyber-attacks.
The NCSC and ICO argue that transparency is a net-positive, not least because the authorities can appropriately assist victim firms with navigating their situations.
To help companies feel more comfortable about reporting cyber-attack incidents, the NCSC and the ICO laid out a series of misconceptions about incident reporting — especially when it comes to ransomware.
They are as follows:
If an attack is covered up, everything will be ok
Reporting to the authorities makes it more likely the news will go public
Paying a ransom makes the incident go away
If there are good offline backups, a ransom won’t need to be paid
If there’s no evidence of data theft, the ICO doesn’t need to be informed
A fine will only happen if data is leaked
While writing about the first misconception — that everything will be fine if the cyber-attack is covered up — the blog’s authors used the analogy of a home burglary to illustrate the importance of incident transparency.
“Imagine that you come home from work to find your house has been burgled,” they wrote. “Instead of reporting it to the police and seeking support, you quickly tidy everything up and carry on as if nothing had happened, hoping no one finds out, and without investigating further.
“The next week your neighbour is burgled too, although you might not know about it because they don’t mention it. And then the burglars return to your place again because you didn’t spot that the unlocked window is still unlocked, so it’s easy for them to get back in.
“This is often how it works in a cyber incident, particularly ransomware. Every successful cyber attack that is hushed up, with no investigation or information sharing, makes other attacks more likely because no one learns from it. Every ransom that is quietly paid gives the criminals the message that these attacks work and it’s worth doing more.”
When it comes to another misconception — that reporting an incident to the authorities makes it more likely the news will go public — the NCSC mentioned that it doesn’t proactively make information public, nor does it share information with regulators without the victim firm’s consent.
Meanwhile, the ICO said they don’t disclose details beyond confirming whether or not an incident has been reported to them, but they wanted to remind firms that there may be a regulatory requirement to report.
Another myth the two authorities wanted to dispel is that a fine is only issued if data gets leaked. On this, the authors wrote: “A data leak isn’t the only reason for a fine, and you won’t always be fined if data is leaked,” and that the ICO ultimately looks at “the context of each individual case – it’s not just about whether or not data was leaked.”
“As a fair and proportionate regulator, the ICO understands that helping organisations to improve their data protection practices is also the best way to protect people’s data. If we find serious, systemic or negligent behaviour that puts people’s information at risk, enforcement action may be an option. But this isn’t a blanket approach.”
The post comes as CISOs and other cybersecurity professionals are feeling increasingly worried about the potential ramifications following a cyber-attack.
Earlier this week, DIGIT reported on the news that 62% of CISOs are concerned about being held personally liable for successful cyber-attacks at their company.
IbisVision’s refractive technology allows optometrists to run standard eye tests over the internet, and enables entire optical prescriptions to be conducted remotely.
It’s been said the £4.5M will be used by IbisVision to double its workforce and open a US office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
After having received a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) listing in March 2023, the company is apparently poised to win US sales, where it’s estimated there are around 110 million eye tests annually.
In addition to the US healthcare market, the Scots firm is also said to be eyeing the market in the European Union.
The £4.5M funding round is led by Miami-based Compiler VC. Compiler is an optical sector specialist, having developed and sold the For Eyes retail optician business which has 150 locations across the US.
Deepbridge and Scottish Enterprise — the growth capital experts — also supported the investment through Scottish Growth investments.
Deepbridge, Scottish Enterprise, and Compiler VC are all existing financial supporters of IbisVision.
On the announcement, Mark Roger, IbisVision’s CEO, said: “The commitment of our investor base shows they believe strongly in our story — that eyecare will be at the vanguard of remote healthcare, and IbisVision has the technology to make this a reality.
“Our mission is simple – to make eyecare readily available for anyone on the planet and that distance and time will never be an impediment to getting to an eye appointment.”
Compiler VC’s Co-Founder, Adam Wolman, also commented, saying: “Not only are we delighted to build on our investment relationship with IbisVision, we’re also very excited about their plans to expand and set up base in our home market in the US.
“We know the potential that this technology can bring to optometrists around the country and our expertise in the eyecare industry means that we can help IbisVision with its growth plans.
“But our ambitions for IbisVision extend well beyond the US and we believe the company’s technology could become the global standard for remote eyecare examinations.”
Ben Carter, Head of Life Sciences at Deepbridge, added further: “The continued progress of IbisVision shows the UK HealthTech industry can compete at the highest level.
“We are pleased to continue supporting this pioneering business whose technology has the potential to benefit patients globally.”
The contract is the initial step towards the CSA’s planned WildFireSat mission, which aims to monitor all active wildfires in Canada from space on a daily basis. This is to support wildfire management, provide Canadians with more precise information on smoke and air quality conditions, and more accurately measure the carbon emitted by wildfires.
For the contract, Spire will partner with OroraTech — the space thermal intelligence company. The two firms have previously worked together on the successful launch of OroraTech’s wildfire detection and monitoring mission on a Spire satellite in 2022.
OroraTech first partnered with Spire to launch its first payloads — a thermal infrared camera and data processing unit — on a Spire 6U satellite, which has since enabled OroraTech to advance towards its plan to provide data insights to customers every 30 minutes and within 3 minutes from detection at any place on Earth.
The CSA’s feasibility study contract for Spire and OroraTech is testament to how innovative satellite technology can be applied to improve wildfire monitoring and early detection methods. Data can be captured from remote areas of the world and processed quickly to identify current and future risks.
Canada spends around $1 billion every year fighting wildfires, with indirect costs estimated to be several times higher due to resulting property destruction, infrastructure damage, evacuations, health-related expenses, and wider economic losses.
The design and implementation of WildFireSat is anticipated to commence in Spring 2024, with the project expected to be delivered in 2029.
“We are delighted to be collaborating with OroraTech on another exciting project, building upon the momentum generated from our previous mission together,” said Frank Frulio, General Manager of Spire Space Services.
“At Spire, we have a strong track record of demonstrating the benefits that space can bring to life on Earth, and I can’t think of a more important and critical application than protecting our environment, people and property from destructive wildfires. We look forward to supporting the Canadian Space Agency on this important issue.”
Welcome to the latest edition of DIGIT’s monthly Movers and Shakers column.
Movers and Shakers gives you the low-down on recent news in the Scottish tech ecosystem, from recruitment to partnerships to awards.
This month’s column features a stellar mix of cutting-edge organisations and key players doing exciting things — read on to learn more!
Recruitment
Utopi
Fresh from raising their £5m Series A with SNIB, Utopi have been pro-active in acquiring top digital talent into their product team. Ross Gledhill joins as Director of Engineering, moving from his previous role as VP, Senior Lead Software Engineer at JP Morgan Chase in Glasgow.
Owen Maginnis joins as Security Architect, from his previous role at The Student Loans Company. Ivan Panasiuk joins to lead their QA capability having previously worked for US-based software delivery business Forte Group. Last but not least, Ugnė Černiauskaitė joins as UX designer from Stockholm-based bank, SEB.
Archangels
Scottish investment syndicate, Archangels, has appointed Professor Adam Stokes as its Academic in Residence.
Professor Stokes, Co-Lead of The National Robotarium and Deputy Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, will help Archangels review investment opportunities from Scotland’s most exciting life sciences and technology businesses.
Professor Stokes said: “Throughout my academic and entrepreneurial journey, I have always been passionate about nurturing Scottish tech start-ups. My membership of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Young Academy of Scotland and being selected for MIT/Harvard entrepreneurial development programme as part of the Scotland CanDo initiative were formative experiences which sparked my passion for working with and developing some of Scotland’s most exciting growing businesses.
“Working with Archangels gives me the opportunity to help other entrepreneurs in the Scottish life sciences and tech-ecosystems to realise their potential.”
Eos, the St Andrews-headquartered impact investment firm, has expanded its portfolio in Q1 of 2023, as well as strengthening its leadership team.
Its latest team hire, Jill Arnold — the former Head of SIS Ventures — has joined the Scots investment firm as Investor Relations Director as the company looks to accelerate growth.
The recent hire strengthens a leadership team that also appointed Andrew Durkie as Partner, and Andy Lothian and Sandy Kennedy as Non-Executive Growth Advisors in 2022.
“The Eos team and I feel very fortunate to have her on board,” said Ana Stewart, Eos Partner and chair and author of the recently published Scottish commissioned Pathways: A New Approach for Women in Entrepreneurship review.
Full-service Scottish law firm Thorntons has strengthened its specialist data protection team with the appointment of a new Data Protection Officer in the Edinburgh office.
Sajidha Iqbal joins the firm as it responds to a growth in demand from its public sector client base.
As an accredited specialist in data protection, privacy and information security, Sajidha brings over 8 years of experience to the role.
She joins Thornton’s specialist data protection services team working alongside specialists Loretta Maxfield and Morgan O’Neill, as part of the wider team to provide data protection law and best practice advice to businesses, charities, and public sector organisations across Scotland.
Glasgow-based Mac Recruit Group (MRG), which offers recruitment services to a number of sectors, is entering the tech sphere on the back of record growth in the Scottish ecosystem.
Stephen Hill will join as director, and Kevin Allan will be a principal consultant.
The two new members have a history in the tech sector, and say their new position in MRG will give them an opportunity to do things differently to grow its tech vertical.
“Although we are a globally focused business, it’s an exciting time in Scotland for tech companies. There has been a resurgence in Scotland’s tech industry and MRG are benefitting from their growth,” said Kevin Allan, the new principal consultant.
2i Testing, the test consulting and automation firm, has announced the appointment of Donald McLaughlin as their new Director of Sales.
McLaughlin brings more than 30 years of tech sector sales leadership experience from his previous roles at Cisco, Salesforce, and Siemens. He remains a passionate advocate for the importance of digital skills, and is a former chair of Scotland’s Digital Economy Skills Group and currently a STEM Ambassador.
Mclaughlin commented, “It’s great to be joining the 2i team at such an exciting time for the business as we begin a new chapter of growth and build on some of the amazing successes we’ve had over the last few years. We’ve recently achieved our Great Place to Work accreditation which is a fantastic endorsement of the people centric culture that’s been created within the business.”
Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT)
Seven leading figures in the UK’s science and technology sectors – including two astronauts – have been appointed as the first-ever members of the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) board.
The non-executive members of the DSIT board will provide overarching strategic guidance and insight to the government, as it looks to distribute government resources to improve innovation in the sector.
The seven non-executive members of the DSIT board are: Shonnel Malani, Tim Peake CMG, Ron Dennis CBE, Baroness Alison Wolf CBE, Melissa Di Donato, Saul Klein, and Professor Jason Chin FRS.
This appointment comes as part of the Scottish Government’s ongoing bid to drive digital transformation and innovation across the country.
Russell Dalgleish, Chair of Scottish Business Network, expressed his delight at the appointment, stating: “We are honoured to be chosen as the Cluster Driver Organisation for Scotland’s GovTech sector. This is a fantastic opportunity for us to work closely with CTS, CivTech and the Scottish Government to develop a thriving and innovative ecosystem that will benefit citizens, businesses and the public sector alike.”
Marine Biopolymers, experts in extracting natural polymers from seaweed for various applications, teams with the University of Glasgow in a new venture to explore the use of tailored alginates – a naturally-occurring material found in brown seaweed – to help develop batteries using silicon as an alternative to the currently used graphite.
Kirsty Neilson, product development manager at Marine Biopolymers Limited, said: “This is an exciting first venture into energy storage and we are hoping to be in a position to take a commercial solution to the market in the next three to five years.
“The new technology could underpin an entirely new supply chain and manufacturing market here in Scotland and we have already had encouraging conversations with potential partners. It would be great to see seaweed species indigenous to Scottish coastal waters being used to power everyday electronics and technology in the future.”
BAE Systems, the UK government defense contractor, has signed a ‘strategic’ agreement with Microsoft, aiming to support faster and easier development, deployment, and management of digital defence capabilities in an increasingly data-centric world.
The collaboration brings together BAE Systems’ knowledge of building digital systems for militaries and governments with Microsoft’s approach to developing applications using its Azure Cloud platform.
Commenting on the new agreement, Julian Cracknell, Chief Technology and Information Officer at BAE Systems, said: “Our innovative agreement with Microsoft will give us easier access to tools that help us make sense of this information for our customers – allowing armed forces to stay ahead of rapidly evolving threats, whilst maintaining the highest levels of security.”
Optima Partners, the Edinburgh-based business consultancy service, will work with H2O.ai to develop specialist resources and solutions for financial services.
The companies will work together to address challenges in machine learning with credit risk, fraud defenses, and customer service. Optima is made up of advisors, consultants, technologists, and data scientists who assist businesses in improving services, managing finances, and navigating customer decision processes.
“With an initial focus on Financial Services, we are looking forward to working with our current clients, and new opportunities, to bring the power of massively scalable AI and Machine Learning to support and protect consumers in their day to day interactions with Banks and Insurance businesses,” said Alan Crawley, CEO of Optima Partners.
The six figure investment from Innovate UK will allow MIRACL and Edinburgh Napier to engage in a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) programme with a focus on cryptography.
The investment into this partnership was led by Innovate UK, which is a national innovation agency. Its aim is to help UK businesses grow through the development of new products and services.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It will allow us to build on the knowledge of MIRACL and move forward our vision of creating a more trusted, secure and privacy-respecting internet,” said Professor Bill Buchanan, academic team lead at Edinburgh Napier.
Skills Development Scotland, Highland Council, and the Scottish Government
Skills Development Scotland (SDS) is working with the Scottish Government and Highland Council on a digital skills initiative which aims to train volunteers, provide teaching resources and tech kit — and trial online delivery to ensure people in rural areas don’t miss out.
The pilot programme kicked off on 27 April when the first-ever hybrid tech club event for Highland secondary school pupils took place. Participants were tasked with coding “a data selfie,” learning data science and coding skills to create their own unique piece of art.
Phil Ford, Head of Digital Economy and Financial Services at SDS said: “The digital skills gap in Scotland has now become critical and many tech jobs go unfilled every year.
“This is particularly true of the Highland economy where digital skills and jobs are now essential in non-tech sectors like agriculture, energy, tourism, food and drink and the creative industries.”
Delta Capita — the global capital markets consulting, managed services, and technology provider — has partnered with Aveni, the Scots regtech company, to advance its consumer duty offering by providing their clients with access to Aveni’s AI technology solutions.
“At Delta Capita, we are passionate about solving our clients’ problems by combining quality advisory services with the latest technology solutions, and so the decision to team up with Aveni was an easy one,” said Karan Kapoor, Head of Risk and Regulatory Consulting at Delta Capita.
“Aveni’s market leading NLP platform is fast and easy to implement and has been tailored specifically to support firms with the fast-approaching Consumer Duty regulation. This is why it has already been adopted by a number of credible clients.”
GP Bullhound’s Northern Tech Awards hosted their tenth anniversary awards ceremony, celebrating the companies who grew and made an impact throughout the Northern tech ecosystem this year.
The awards, which started in 2014, showcase fast-growing, promising companies in the North of the UK. This year’s event was held in the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh and hosted over 250 people.
The awards kicked off with the Northern Star Awards for early stage companies: Gig Pig won the Potential International Success Award; UMA won the Leadership Award, Sticky won the Innovation Award, and Recast won the Overall Judges Award.
Nine other awards were also announced. To see who else won, read more here.
Imperial War Museums’ War Games Jam
A team of Edinburgh Napier University students have triumphed at a UK-wide video game design competition with an original depiction of life in ‘fascist-occupied’ Italy.
The team made up of students from ENU’s BScs in Digital Media & Interaction Design and Sound Design won Best Concept at Imperial War Museums’ (IWM) War Games Jam, while claiming the highest overall score.
Drawing visual inspiration from Guillermo del Toro’s movie adaptation of Pinocchio, their game concept ‘Aging Like Buildings’ takes the player through a story narrated by a grandfather reliving his harsh experience during the 1940s in Italy.
Scots entrepreneur Nic Ross has been named as one of the innovative four entrepreneurs welcomed to the UK Space Agency’s accelerator programme this year.
Having always had a love for space, Edinburgh-based Nic Ross followed his dreams completing a PhD in Astrophysics at Durham University. After hearing more about space sustainability, Nic founded his own space sustainability business, Niparo, in 2020 and since graduating has focussed entirely on its success.
The other candidates, based throughout England include: Myles Harris, founding CEO, Space Health Research based in London; Ashley Johnson, founding CEO, Applied Atomics, also based in London; and Portia Bowman, founding CEO of Growbotics Space Ltd based in South East England.
KPMG, the professional services company, has launched its annual Tech Innovator in the UK competition, the 2023 edition marking its 10th year.
The competition has previously served as a springboard for tech companies such as What3Words, SafetoNet, FIDOTech, and 2022 winner HiiROC, who went on to win the global final during Web Summit.
The competition is open to scale up businesses from early-stage to accelerated growth, who are being invited to pitch their innovations and present their growth ambitions to panels of industry experts. The deadline for entries is 19 May.
An initial heat will take place in KPMG’s Edinburgh office on 20 June to find a final shortlist of innovators representing Scotland. Those shortlisted will be invited to a gala event to find the standout 2023 UK tech innovator.
The Defence and Security Accelerator’s Human Augmentation Competition
The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) has launched a new themed competition called Human Augmentation. Human Augmentation (HA) refers to the use of science or technology to temporarily or permanently modify human performance.
This encompasses a range of technologies, including exoskeletons, wearables, genetics, brain interfaces, pharmaceuticals, and bioinformatics.
This themed competition aims to develop novel, generation-after-next (GAN) prototype HA technologies which can be harnessed safely and ethically, that mitigate human performance as the limiting factor in a UK defence environment.
Marion Chapman, a cyber security specialist who retrained after retiring from a 37-year career in the civil service, was nominated for Computing’s Security Excellence Award.
Chapman had planned to quit work before being persuaded to join Cyber Security Scotland. Just three years after embarking her new career, Marion was shortlisted for Security Woman of the Year in the UK IT industry’s Oscars and praised as an inspiration for others.
She said: “It was hard to imagine a new career having spent so long in the civil service, and I didn’t really consider that I had many transferable skills.
“To now be nominated for an award just three years after starting out on a new career is a nice surprise.”
Deal-wise, Scottish scaleups saw 14 completed deals in the first three months of this year, raising approximately £70 million — the lowest raised by Scots businesses in the opening quarter of a year since 2020.
Eight of those 14 deals involved Edinburgh-headquartered businesses, while the other six were Glasgow-based businesses, according to KPMG’s latest Venture Pulse Report.
Last year, £181m was raised in Q1 across 41 deals. Further, across all quarters of 2022, £700m was invested in Scotland, marking a record total.
KPMG have suggested that such volumes are unlikely to be repeated this year, pointing to investor hesitancy creeping into the Scottish deals market as activity returns to levels seen before the pandemic.
“As a result of the pandemic and the substantial changes ushered in by businesses and consumers, 2021 and 2022 saw a large appetite for VC investment into Scottish innovation and our fast-growth businesses,” said Amy Burnett, KPMG Private Enterprise Senior Manager in Scotland.
“This was a bit of an outlier period, and what we are starting to see now is VC investment returning to normal levels, albeit compounded by a challenging economic environment.”
Like Scotland, total UK VC investment in Q1 (£2.9 billion) was the lowest raised by UK businesses in the opening quarter of a year since 2020, significantly down on the £8.2b raised in Q1 ‘21 and the £12.3b raised in Q1 ‘22.
Further, deal volumes were also muted, with just 402 deals captured in the data.
“The dip we’re seeing isn’t a trend confined to Scotland, as our data shows market uncertainty has caused VC investment to plummet across the UK and indeed globally,” commented Graeme Williams, Head of Corporate Finance M&A for Scotland, KPMG UK.
“As the cost-of-living crisis continues, investors are increasingly turning away from those sectors that rely on consumer spend to drive growth and doubling down on investments in sectors where technology is addressing big macro trends such as health tech and ESG.
“While VC investment is expected to remain soft over the next few months, we are expecting that some renewed activity will be seen in the second half of the year.”
In terms of some standout Scottish deals in Q1, Edinburgh-based fintech firm DirectID gained a €9m minority investment from IKEA’s investment arm, Ingka Investments; Glasgow-based blood test pioneer Dxcover secured almost £10m in Series A and grant financing; and Causeway Therapeutics, a University of Glasgow spin-out biopharmaceutical company specialising in tendon disease, raised £9m.
Sitecore’s survey, which posed questions to more than 400 brand marketers, suggests that 72% of UK marketers will prioritise spending on AI over the next 12 months.
Further, two-thirds of respondents (67%) will allocate up to 30% of their marketing budgets towards the technology.
However, respondents indicated that not all of the opportunities presented by generative AI will or can be initially taken advantage of.
This is due to a feeling of unpreparedness driven by now-outdated technology and a perceived lack of technological skills.
For instance, nearly half (45%) say that the marketing technologies they’re currently utilising aren’t equipped with the capabilities to leverage generative AI. In light of this, 70% plan to move towards more composable software solutions.
Additionally, 42% of marketers feel that their marketing team still lacks technical skills — though, 92% believe that AI will bridge skill gaps.
While some UK marketers are already experimenting with generative AI, they’re lagging behind their US counterparts.
In the UK, 63% have experimented with generative AI and are brainstorming ways to integrate the technology into their long-term strategy; across the Atlantic, this figure is 80%.
With many industries and departments becoming more interested in investing in and using generative AI, UK marketers are seemingly no different. Only 32% of respondents felt it was too soon to invest in generative AI, with 68% saying the opposite.
On the survey’s findings and how marketers are gearing up to invest in and utilise AI, Dave O’Flanagan, chief product officer of Sitecore, said: “Rather than becoming overwhelmed and exhausted by these advancements, we’ve found marketers to be bold and experimental in embracing technologies like ChatGPT.
“Unlike other tools that have been tough to implement, generative AI shows promise in not only being relatively easy to incorporate into composable martech stacks but also quick to have a measurable impact on marketing campaigns.”
Speaking of the UK and generative AI, DIGIT reported on the news last week that the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched a review into the AI market.
The review is being done to help guide AI’s use and development going forward, to examine how the competitive markets for AI could evolve, and what opportunities and risks these scenarios could bring for both competition and consumer protection.
Conducted by research firm Censuswide and published by Proofpoint, the 2023 Voice of the CISO report garnered insights from 1,600 chief information security officers into their new and continued challenges, expectations, and priorities.
The report delved into the mental and emotional challenges that CISOs experience, with 62% saying they’re worried about personal liability following a successful cyber-attack.
This perception of pressure varies by industry, however, with those working in retail (72%) and IT (68%) feeling the pressure of liability the most.
In light of the potential ramifications and repercussions for CISOs following a successful cyber-attack, 61% of respondents said they wouldn’t join an organisation that doesn’t offer directors and officer insurance (or something similar) to protect them from financial liability resulting from an attack.
The same number (61%) of CISOs also agree that they face excessive expectations — which is a 12% increase from 2022.
Again, this picture differs slightly depending on geography. CISOs in both Japan and France (75%), as well as the UK (74%), are most likely to agree that they face excessive expectations.
The rising pressure CISOs face has profound knock-on effects, which the report further highlighted. 60% of respondents say they’ve experienced burnout in the last 12 months, with only 15% disagreeing.
As Celeste Lowe, Group Director of IT Security at entertainment company Nine, said: “CISOs have always had a stressful job, but the additional pressures—like board expectations to deliver risk reduction faster and challenges in influencing middle management on delivering it, budget challenges and shortages of skilled talent—are creating an untenable situation for many.
“That’s why more CISOs are changing roles or leaving the cybersecurity field altogether. Finding a better balance may sound impossible, given the 24/7 nature of the role, but it’s absolutely necessary for maintaining resilience in the face of burnout.”
Worry, stress, and burnout aside, the report also shed further light on the current state of cybersecurity, and the cybersecurity preparedness of global organisations working across various sectors.
Nearly two-thirds (63%) of CISOs say they’ve dealt with the loss of sensitive information in the last year, with energy (71%), professional services (68%), and retail (68%) organisations bearing the brunt of the data loss incidents.
Further, 82% of CISOs agree that employees leaving their company played a role in a data loss event.
When looking forward, 68% of CISOs feel their organisation is at risk of experiencing a material cyber-attack in the next 12 months, with 25% rating the risk as very likely.
To read the 2023 Voice of the CISO report, click here.
In a message to staff on Monday, Ryan Roslansky, the platform’s chief executive, said that 716 staffing cuts would be made as part of an altered strategy amid shifting customer behaviour and slower revenue growth.
“As we guide LinkedIn through this rapidly changing landscape, we are making changes to our Global Business Organization (GBO) and our China strategy that will result in a reduction of roles for 716 employees,” wrote Roslansky.
He later continued, “We’ve learned we need to re-organize for greater agility and growth in FY24 and beyond and are focused on three themes – reorganizing how work gets done, becoming more agile, and aligning our teams for growth.”
As part of these efforts, the company is reducing its total headcount of 20,000 by 716, but also opening 250 new roles in departments such as operations and account management.
Those whose jobs will be cut have already been notified.
Additionally, Roslansky said that the company is also phasing out InCareer, LinkedIn’s local jobs app in China, as part of amendments to its China business strategy.
“Though InCareer experienced some success in the past year thanks to our strong China-based team, it also encountered fierce competition and a challenging macroeconomic climate,” reads Roslansky’s message.
LinkedIn — the only major Western social media platform operating in China — will phase out InCareer by 9 August.
“As we turn 20, we are entering a new decade for LinkedIn,” Roslansky wrote towards the end of the message.
“As we plan for FY24, we’re expecting the macro environment to remain challenging. We’re adapting as we have done this year and will continue to operate with the ambition we need to deliver on our vision and the pragmatism required to run the business well.
“We will continue to manage our expenses as we invest in strategic growth areas, knowing that the foundations we are putting in place now – for innovation, agility and scale – are setting us up for the years ahead.
“Our focus over the next week is on supporting our impacted colleagues. We are saying goodbye to exceptional individuals, and any company will be fortunate to have them.”
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said that, under new proposals, practices across England will be given £240 million to introduce online appointment booking tools and undertake an upgrade of phone systems to bring them into the 21st century.
“I want to make sure people receive the right support when they contact their general practice and bring an end to the 8am scramble for appointments,” said Health and Social Care Secretary, Steve Barclay.
“To do this we are improving technology and reducing bureaucracy, increasing staffing and changing the way primary care services are provided, which are all helping to deliver on the government’s promise to cut waiting lists.
“We are already making real progress with 10% more GP appointments happening every month compared to before the pandemic.”
Currently, an average-sized practice of 10,000 patients receives more than 100 calls in the first hour of opening every Monday, as people seek assistance with health issues that have developed or worsened over the weekend.
With advanced digital telephony, patients will receive a queue position, a call back option, and be provided with direct routing to the most appropriate professional — instead of hearing the engaged tone.
The modern phone system will also be integrated with clinical systems, so practice staff can quickly identify patients and their information from phone numbers.
Further, with the new online appointment booking and phone systems, patients can know on the same day how their query will be managed, rather than being told to call at another time.
“Where GPs have already moved over to these new technologies we see they free up the phones, making it much easier for people to get through to their general practice team,” commented Minister for Health, Neil O’Brien.
“As well as being more convenient for patients, these really easy to use digital tools allow a lot of patients to get the help they need without ever needing to go in for an appointment, which will help cut waiting lists.
“Investing £240 million in these modern tools and the help GPs need to move onto them will make things more convenient for patients, but also make the workload more manageable for general practice teams.”
In addition to the technological upgrades, the government and NHS England are to expand the role of GP receptionists to become “care navigators,” as to better respond to patients’ needs and speed up the booking process.
Ministers believe successful care navigation can help direct 40% of requests more effectively, while speeding up appointments.
The University’s new facility — dubbed the Lifespan Research Lab — will enable researchers to study cognition, behaviour, and brain function in people of all ages, from infants to older adults, and is said to be the first lab of its kind in Scotland.
Specifically, the lab has a range of specialist equipment that aids with the study of people who can’t effectively verbally communicate, such as young children who haven’t yet learned how to talk.
“Measuring cognition in circumstances where verbal communication is either limited or not possible is a significant challenge, such as in the case of infants and very young children,” said Dr Line Caes, Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Stirling.
“The equipment in the Lifespan Research Lab can be used on young children, opening promising avenues in cognitive assessment.”
The lab’s amenities include eye-trackers, mobile electroencephalography (EEG), skin conductance sensors, camera traps, and thermal imaging cameras.
The facility will also give researchers the ability to monitor the behaviour of children using cameras linked to a screen in a separate room, allowing them to conduct naturalistic observations of children’s free play and interactions with others.
The lab will complement the University’s fully-integrated research kindergarten, also said to be the only one of its kind in Scotland.
Researchers can make use of the Lifespan Research Lab for a multitude of projects, such as research on the cognitive capacity of children when dealing with uncertainty, increasing understanding of parent-infant interactions during everyday situations, and research into the development and decline of socio-cognitive abilities across the human lifespan.
“The establishment of a Lifespan Research Lab will bolster Stirling’s unique capacity for cognitive development research,” added Dr. Caes.
“The provision of eye-tracking, physiological, and neurological assessment in the same space will allow an extremely powerful, multifaceted approach to the study of cognitive-emotional development, including brain function.
“The University of Stirling is the only institution in Scotland with an in-house kindergarten and the addition of this lab that allows assessment of younger children will bolster this research capacity, facilitate research bids by various principal investigators and increase Stirling’s reputation as a leader in the study of cognitive development.”
Professor Alistair Jump, Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, also commented, saying: “Psychology at the University of Stirling continues to go from strength to strength.
“This investment in the new Lifespan Research Lab delivers exciting new opportunities to better understand cognition, communication and development across the lifespan, from infancy to old age.”
Located on the North coast of Scotland — specifically, on Sutherland’s A’ Mhòine peninsula — the spaceport is set to be used by Orbex to launch up to 12 orbital rockets per year, deploying satellites into Earth’s orbit.
Orbex, the Scottish rocket and launch services company based in Forres, signed a 50-year lease at the tail-end of last year to develop and operate Sutherland Spaceport, which will become the firm’s “home” spaceport.
To mark the start of construction, a ceremony was attended by a number of officials and stakeholders, including Richard Lochhead, the Scottish Government’s Minister for Small Business, Innovation, and Trade, Ian Annett, the Deputy CEO at the UK Space Agency, and David Oxley, Director of Strategic Projects at Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE).
In preparation for the spaceport’s first launch, Orbex is trialling numerous launch procedures and performing a variety of integration tests.
The Orbex Prime — the firm’s flagship rocket — was revealed last year. Prime is a 19-metre long, two-stage rocket designed to transport and release small satellites weighing up to 180kg.
When launched, six engines will propel the rocket through the atmosphere. The single engine on the second stage of the rocket will then complete the journey to Low Earth Orbit, allowing for a payload of small commercial satellites to be released into Earth’s orbit.
On the announcement of Sutherland Spaceport’s construction, Kristian von Bengtson, the Chief Development Officer and Interim CEO at Orbex, said: “With the construction of Sutherland Spaceport underway, this is an important piece of the puzzle that will make the UK a modern space nation.
“Just as importantly, we’re hopefully also setting the tone for how business can be a force for good, creating jobs and opportunities while minimising the impact upon the environment.”
Minister Richard Lochhead also commented, saying: “It is an incredibly exciting time for the space sector, with the first orbital launch from UK soil expected to take place in Scotland later this year.
“Despite our relatively small country, Scotland plays a leading role in the space sector and with the global market projected to grow to £490 billion by 2030, we are well placed to become Europe’s leading space nation by 2030.
“The space sector already plays an integral part of our daily lives, allowing us to stay connected, predict weather and monitor the effects of climate change. Sutherland Spaceport and Orbex will play a vital role in providing benefits for our people, our economy, and our planet.
“I was delighted to be able to visit Sutherland Spaceport for this important milestone. As I told Parliament last week, the Scottish space sector is opening up new frontiers.”
David Oxley at HIE commented further: “The start of construction at Sutherland Spaceport is an important milestone for the local community and the UK space sector.
“This has been a truly collaborative process and we are delighted to be working with Orbex to make Sutherland Spaceport a reality.”
The CMA’s review is being conducted in an attempt to better understand how foundation models — which include large language models, like OpenAI’s GPT-4, the basis for ChatGPT — are developing, and to produce an assessment of the conditions and standards that will best guide foundation models’ use and development going forward.
The review is also set to examine how the competitive markets for foundation models could evolve, and what opportunities and risks these scenarios could bring for both competition and consumer protection.
On the launching of the artificial intelligence market review, Sarah Cardell, the CMA’s Chief Executive, said: “AI has burst into the public consciousness over the past few months but has been on our radar for some time. It’s a technology developing at speed and has the potential to transform the way businesses compete as well as drive substantial economic growth.
“It’s crucial that the potential benefits of this transformative technology are readily accessible to UK businesses and consumers while people remain protected from issues like false or misleading information. Our goal is to help this new, rapidly scaling technology develop in ways that ensure open, competitive markets and effective consumer protection.”
The announcement of the review’s launch comes during sustained international calls for AI and its further advancement to be regulated, amid fears of how the technology could profoundly impact jobs, industry, and privacy, among other significant areas.
Just this week, more notable figureheads working in the tech industry and beyond have announced their trepidation over artificial intelligence, pointing to regulation as a necessary step.
Microsoft’s Chief Economist, Michael Schwarz, for instance, voiced his concerns at a World Economic Forum panel earlier this week. “I am quite confident that, yes, AI will be used by bad actors, and yes, it will cause real damage,” he said during the discussion. According to Bloomberg, Schwarz also said that AI clearly must be regulated, but that lawmakers should wait until the technology causes real harm.
Meanwhile, Lina Khan, the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission in the US, took to the New York Times to write an op-ed titled We Must Regulate A.I. Here’s How. “While the technology is moving swiftly, we already can see several risks. […] Enforcers and regulators must be vigilant,” she wrote.
Further, the British artificial intelligence researcher, Geoffrey Hinton — known as the “godfather of AI” — left his VP and Engineering Fellow post at Google this week so that he could speak more openly about his concerns regarding AI without worrying about how his comments could impact the tech giant.
Speaking in a personal capacity, Matt Clifford, the chairman of the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency, told the BBC that “There’s an enormous upside from this technology, but it’s essential that the world invests heavily and urgently in AI safety and control.”
Conducted as part of Gartner’s webinar series exploring the enterprise impact of generative AI, the tech research firm’s poll asked over 2,500 executives a string of questions on AI investment, engagement, and usage.
For the poll’s respondents and their organisations, the arrival of ChatGPT has caused an upsurge in both investment and interest. While 45% of execs say that AI-focused investment has grown in recent months, far more (70%) say that generative AI is currently being investigated or explored by their organisations.
Interestingly, and amid the on-going discussions about the pros and cons of AI and its advancement, 68% of the executives questioned believe that the benefits of generative AI ultimately outweigh the risks. In comparison, only 5% of respondents feel that the risks outbalance the benefits.
Gartner states that this outlook — benefit over risk — may shift further down the line, however. Frances Karamouzis, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, suggests that: “Initial enthusiasm for a new technology can give way to more rigorous analysis of risks and implementation challenges. Organisations will likely encounter a host of trust, risk, security, privacy and ethical questions as they start to develop and deploy generative AI.”
But what’s prompting executives to invest in generative AI in the first place? Over one-third (38%) of respondents cite bettered customer experience and retention as the primary focus for investment, while revenue growth (26%), cost optimisation (17%), and business continuity (7%) are the following focuses.
As organisations begin experimenting with generative AI, many are starting with use cases like code and content generation. However, while there can be a strong and initial value-add, Gartner says that AI has huge potential to have far greater business impact, especially when it comes to autonomously executing tasks such as IT processes.
On this, Karamouzis says: “Autonomous business, the next macrophase of technological change, can mitigate the impact of inflation, talent shortages and even economic downturns. CEOs and CIOs that leverage generative AI to drive transformation through new products and business models will find massive opportunities for revenue growth.”
How artificial intelligence intersects with automation — and the various knock-on effects it could have regarding employment — is a particularly contentious topic in the continued discussions regarding AI.
Earlier this week, the World Economic Forum released a report suggesting that nearly a quarter of all jobs are expected to change in the next five years, partly due to artificial intelligence.
