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The article addresses issues on the penalty paid by CSC company to the National Health Service (NHS) trust for the delay of deployment of patient administration software under the National Program for information technology (IT) in Great Britain. According to CSC spokeswoman, information that is related to penalties either paid by or requested by CSC are confidential. She adds that they are on final stages of agreeing the roll-out of the new platform that will be available in 2008. Moreover, it points out that the current patient administration software is an administrative system which has limited clinical functionality.

In the absence of a funding program or substantial support from industry, much research and many initiatives on women and computing in Great Britain follow a "self-help" style. Women and men who are interested in gender-related issues often find that they must maintain a research area more acceptable to the academic establishment as a primary interest. Despite this tension, women and computing is a lively research topic. The women into technology approach addresses the limited presence of women in information technology (IT), and focuses on education, training and equal opportunity initiatives to increase the number of women in the IT field. Sociological and philosophical approach focuses on the nature of IT work, the gendering of technology. There are a number of initiatives in Great Britain, but Women into Computing (WIM) has been the most active in this tradition. WIC provides a great deal of support and friendship for women starting up gender-oriented research program.

Six days of conferences, seminars and workshops are being offered by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) at its 18th World Congress in Toulouse, France on 22-27 August. The BCS is IFIP's UK member body and a leading contributor among more than 60 national member organizations. The main body of the congress, from 23-26 August, offers nine concurrent conferences on subjects ranging from e-business and e-government to virtual organizations, security, artificial intelligence, smartcards, safety system development, parallel systems and computer science.

The article discusses the significance of technological innovation of the mobile phone industry on information technology (IT) industry in Great Britain. The IT industry observers have remained uncertain regarding the value of Third Generation and Fourth Generation services including video calling to the consumer. The business sector sees the increasing productivity as a sign of growing the business by 65 percent since the launching of the system. The introduction of mobility to business applications reflect a number of challenges which include technical and practical difficulties.

This article reports that the British Department of Health has reacted with limited enthusiasm to a call by more than 20 academics in computer-related sciences for an independent audit of the technical feasibility of the British National Health Service (NHS)'s national programme for information technology (IT) (NPfIT). In response to an open letter the department said that the national programme for IT is under constant review, scrutiny and audit by parliament and government bodies. An investigation into the project by public spending watchdog the National Audit Office has been delayed by nearly a year. Although there is still widespread support for the aims of the NPfIT, it has failed to win the hearts and minds of the clinicians and NHS staff that will eventually use the systems, according to John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office. The complexity of the project, delays, changes in leadership and policy issues that in part led to the academics' call for a technical audit have been tracked by the journal "Computer Weekly" over the past four years.