Category: News
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Breaking News – The Treasury has announced Off-Payroll IR35 Reforms to be repealed from April 2023
The IR35 Reforms, which were introduced into the Public and Private Sectors in 2017 and 2021, will no longer apply from April 2023, meaning contractors working for an organisation through an intermediary will retrospectively once again be responsible for determining their employment status and paying the appropriate amount of Tax and National insurance contributions.
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Skills Gap or Wage Gap – Two Separate But Heavily Entwined Issues
Jim Marshall responds to TechEast UK recent Twitter post "Do we have a tech skills gap or a pay gap?" - http://bit.ly/2tctTD3
Skills Gap? No, Wage Gap @TechEastUK
Pay Gap
For years I have also been working with customers to set realistic expectations around the costs for skilled and talented people. The salaries and contract rates for Developers in particular have stagnated over the last 10 years in a period of high demand.
I agree with much that has been said:
- Offshoring and Outsourcing has reduced the perceived value of Software Development. Whilst we look at Costs as day or hourly rates rather than overall Project Cost set against quality and timeliness of delivery then this will often appear to stack up.
- Too many employers are referencing a ‘skills Gap’ when they are just not willing to pay the market salary for a skilled Software Engineer, or
- Too many employers are:
- Not willing to invest in the training and development of the next generation (higher education establishments are often blamed for not having ‘industry ready’ coding graduates, but we need to look at other industries and the in-house industry training programmes for Accountants or Solicitors or Architects – the expectation there is usually to build a career, not to simply ‘plug in a resource’), or
- Not willing to retrain talented IT professionals that require refresher courses on the next generation of languages and technologies
Skills Gap
…. having noted all the above ….
In my experience a high proportion of individuals return to live where they grew up or where they were educated.
If we are not able to persuade our young talented people (of @TechEastUK) to join the tech sector then our region will most likely experience a more genuine Skills Gap. So that even with reasonable Post education salaries we are simply not able to generate enough supply for industry demand.
What are your thoughts on this provocative subject? We’d like to hear them on our social media streams or via email – info@ ifrecruit.com.
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Investigatory Powers Bill and how it could affect UK Tech
The Investigatory Powers Bill, controversially nicknamed the Snooper’s Charter, passed into law in late November 2016, giving the government unprecedented level s of access to state surveillance in the UK.
Critics have been very vocal about the bill calling it an ‘absolute disgrace to both privacy and freedom’ in a petition asking the UK government to repeal its new Investigatory Powers Act which amassed more than 206,300 signatures. Despite a large proportion of the public finding the legislation to be a gross invasion of privacy, and a potential victim of a data leak or hack waiting to happen, the government insists the bill is required to fight terrorism.
The chairman of the Internet Service Provider’s Association (Ispa) spoke to the BBC last year about his concerns, “you can try every conceivable thing in the entire world to [protect it], but somebody will still outsmart you. Mistakes will happen. It’s a question of when. Hopefully it’s in tens or maybe a hundred years. But it might be next week.”
The bill will act as a replacement for the expiring Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (Dripa), passed in 2014, which had often been misused in the past.
An FOI request made by the Liberal Democrat’s shows councils have previously used the act for trivial information, such as, car clocking, dog fouling and even dog barking. The Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary Brian Paddick said: ‘Spying on the public should be a last resort not an everyday tool.’
‘As with any legislation, there is a significant risk that authorities will use powers in a way that Parliament never intended. That is why it is vital we have proper oversight in place that ensures any surveillance is targeted and proportionate.’
What does this mean for you?
- Web and phone companies (CSPs) will be required to store the browsing history of all customers for 12 months for access by police, security services and other public issues upon issue of a warrant. This will come into force before the end of the year and will detail the date, time and duration of these actions. The act has faced fierce opposition and backlash for enabling public bodies to grant themselves access to details of internet usage and telephone calls without suspicion of crime or independent sign-off.
- Blogger Chris Yiu compiled a list of the 48 organisations and departments that will be able to access the browsing records of individuals without a warrant. This list includes various police, military, and government departments as well as Food Standards Agency and the Gambling Commission.
- Security services and the police now have new powers to acquire and analyse large quantities of data in bulk, such as, NHS health records, in some cases without a warrant.
- For the first time, the law will allow security agencies and law enforcement to hack into computers, phones and networks to eavesdrop on communications with a warrant.
What can this mean for the UK Tech sector?
When the bill was first introduced by Theresa May in 2012, it saw a strong pushback from modern tech companies: Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo who proposed to “reject any proposals that would require companies to deliberately weaken the security of their products via backdoors, forced decryption, or any other means.”
The bill has retained the legal basis to force companies to create a backdoor to encryption for services, such as, WhatsApp, iMessage and Facetime. Apple has openly criticised the bill cautioning that “a key left under the doormat would not just be there for the good guys. The bad guys would find it, too.” The government is, nevertheless, required to gain a warrant in order to obtain access to any such back doors. However, the bill has shed no light on exactly how the government plans to tackle end-to-end encryption. Theresa May said in a statement to the House of Commons that the government has no intentions of weakening or banning encryption, but the law will place requirements on tech companies to hand over the encrypted date when necessary in an unencrypted fashion.
Tech Companies have voiced their concerns about the extraterritorial nature of the law, which will force foreign companies with British consumers to comply, even if their home countries have conflicting laws, as the US currently does.
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Ada Lovelace day: A celebration of women in Tech
Tuesday 11th October, also known as Ada Lovelace day, is an international day of celebration for the achievements of women in science, engineering and maths. The day aims to increase the profile of women in STEM, create new role models for women and encourage more girls into STEM.
But who is Ada Lovelace and why is she so significant? Credited as the founder of scientific computing in an era when the participation of noblewomen in intellectual pursuits was not widely encouraged. She collaborated with Charles Babbage, identifying his calculating machine for its potential to manipulate symbols rather than just numbers, foreshadowing modern computing a century in advance.
Here’s our top 5 pioneering Women in Tech who have made an impact in the technology world:
1. Sheryl Sandberg
The Chief Operating Office of Facebook, a company made up of only 33% women and 67% men (with only 17% of women in technical roles) is arguably one of the biggest and most well known tech companies in the world. Sandberg is powerful not only as a top executive for the world’s fifth most valuable brand, but also as a voice of female empowerment in the workplace.2. Joan Clarke
Largely forgotten and overshadowed in history, Clarke worked alongside Alan Turning as a fellow cryptanalyst and codebreaker in Hut8 during WWII at Bletchely Park, and received an MBE in January 1946 for her contributions during the war. Clarke succeeded as a female cryptanalysis at a time when intelligence wasn’t really appreciated in women.3. Shafi Goldwasser
A two time Nobel Prize winner in theoretical computer science, Goldwasser helped pave the way for other women in the technology industry. Her biggest and most noted achievement to date is her work on interactive and zero proofs which serve to allow secure transmission of information over the internet.4. Sister Mary Kenneth Keller
From Cleveland, Ohio, Keller was the first woman in the United States to receive a PhD in Computer Science in 1965. Keller founded the Computer Science Department at Clarke College in Iowa, establishing a master’s degree program for computer applications in education. Her vision extended beyond education and reached toward artificial intelligence, intrigued by the mechanical stimulation of the cognitive process.5. Radia Perlman
Sometimes dubbed as the “Mother of the Internet”, Perlman is most famous for her invention of the Spanning-tree protocol (STP) which is fundamental to the operation of network bridges. Her work transformed the Ethernet protocol from using a few nodes over a limited distance, into something able to create large networks. -
What Brexit could mean for the Technology Sector
30 Jun 2016 A roundup of the key issues the UK Tech Sector will face in the wake of the Brexit vote
In a tantalisingly close result, the British public voted to leave the European Union in an advisory referendum on 23rd June much to the astonishment of the world. The implications of the vote have raised numerous constitutional questions and left many anxiously wondering what effects it could pose for the UK and global technology sector as a whole. The lasting consequences won’t be known for many years but the current state of affairs is demonstrating some immediate ramifications. Within hours of the result, shares in technology companies have plummeted alongside the falling value of the pound and the FTSE 100. BT saw a 9.73% drop in shares, TalkTalk saw more than a 12% drop and Capita, an international outsourcing firm, has seen an 11.65% drop.
A number of surveys of technology businesses reported an overwhelming majority in favour of remaining in the EU – with access to skilled personnel across 27 countries, the ability to strike better trading deals and extensive funding benefits at the forefront of their reasoning. Some of the most notable tech giants in the UK including Microsoft, BT, IBM, Virgin Media and a further 30 tech leaders penned an open letter urging voters to remain in the European Union. They described a “decision to exit the EU would leave tech firms and their customers facing significant and prolonged uncertainty, and leave the UK side-lined on key decisions that will shape a digital market of 500 million consumers.”
Immigration
Within the tech sector, London has been widely renowned as the digital capital of Europe and one of the most diverse technology ecosystems in the world – and its future as such is largely hanging in the balance. 1.56 million people are currently estimated to being employed in digital companies in the UK, with 328,000 of those working in London alone. Tech City forecast digital employment to grow by 5.4% by 2020. A percentage growth expected to be higher than that of all other occupations combined. However, Britain’s removal rom the European Union can greatly impact these growth expectations.
One of the greatest concerns posed in the face of Brexit is what it means for companies and their abilities to hire talent and tap into investment opportunities. Once outside the EU, the UK will no longer benefit from the free flow of skilled workers coming out of the European Union. Large Tech Giants like Facebook, Apple and Amazon have relied on our immigration policies, building large offices in the UK as a means to take advantage of and recruit from the EU. Roughly 1 in 5 London workers are an EU national, according to Tech Advocates. With access to 500 million skilled personnel (a population greater than the US) revoked, the UK could be faced with a skills shortage; a venture which can cause significant disruption to the tech sector, creating the possibility of a downturn, and the delaying or scaling back of projects that could be vital to the advancement of tech.
Many see the UK as a gateway to Europe, and a move out can force companies and workers to cast their eyes elsewhere to pre-empt issues of immigration or restricted trade. All eyes will now be on the UK government to see what kinds of rules and regulations get introduced that can grant EU citizens visas to work within the UK.
Digital Single Market
Europe has sought to craft rules that protect intellectual property and consumer data, eliminate roaming charges and end country-by-country restrictions on content provided by the likes of Netflix. This is referred to as the Digital Single Market (DSM) which is expected to save the EU €415 billion a year. Britain’s decision to leave the EU will ultimately threaten Europe’s effort to create a simplified market in which the UK was its biggest advocate. A Digital Single Movement has the potential to boost domestic tech companies that can rival Silicon Valley. The UK, a substantial market for American Internet companies, is likely to impose its own regulations after Germany’s Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, ruled out single market access in the face of Brexit.
Investors want their companies to expand into new markets as a means to grow in size and revenue; however, they want this to be a process that can be manoeuvred as easy as possible. Exit from the EU has to potential to make this increasingly more difficult as investors will have to contend with two different sets of rules and regulations. Ultimately, fragmentation of the market has the potential to throttle digital scalability and profits, especially for Britain.
Privacy Shield
Brexit makes it increasingly likely that big heavyweights like, France and Germany, craft rules and regulations that make things increasingly difficult for US Tech firms who currently dominate 51% of Europe’s digital market. Europe has a deep-seated insecurity where the US Tech sector is concerned, forging ahead with regulations and lawsuits that address privacy concerns, digital and financial data. Companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook have all faced challenges over issues such as: taxation, antitrust and privacy matters at the hands of the EU.
Being part of the European Union has meant that the UK has benefited from a number of data protection laws. One law in particular is extremely vital and yet to be instigated, the ‘Privacy Shield’, a means that enforces US companies to comply with privacy laws that protect European Union citizens. The new regulation could have the potential to prohibit European’s data being used in mass surveillance. Exiting the EU would mean that Britain would have to enforce their own law along the same lines of the ‘Privacy Shield’ to protect Brits and their data.
“If the UK wants to trade with the single market on equal terms we would have to prove ‘adequacy’ – in other words, UK data protection standards would have to be equivalent to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation framework starting in 2018,” said a spokeswoman for the Information Commissioner’s office in a statement.
FinTech
London’s crown as the global capital for FinTech is currently under threat. Currently one of the most promising growth sectors in the UK has become the most hard-hit with the prospect of losing access to European markets.
In 2015, the British FinTech sector generated £6.6bn in revenues and attracted roughly £524m in investment. With over 61,000 people employed within the FinTech industry, it is currently larger than rival techhubs in New York, and the combined FinTech workforce of Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong.
The inhibited access to the free movement of people and the single market can be largely detrimental to the outcomes of this industry. JPMorgan has stated that it could move an undisclosed number of its 16,000 staff based in the UK to the EU as they may have no choice but to re-organise their business model. Brexit could make it increasingly more expensive and complex to attract and retain talent from oversees as well as forcing start-up business to seek opportunities outside of the UK to build their businesses.
Funding
A major concern the industry now faces is its access to funding. Previously, universities and research labs received €8.8 billion of funding from the EU over a 6 year period leading up to 2013. In 2013 alone, the British Private sector received £1.4 billion in funding from the EU. As a result of leaving the EU, it is expected spend will drop significantly. John-David Lovelock, research vice-president at Gartner, has forecast the current growth for UK IT spending to be at 1.7%. “Brexit will drop this figure between 2% and 5%,” which will put spending growth figures in the negative should Lovelock’s predictions be proven correct.
Author Jessica Aston
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December’s Anglia IT Community Event
11 Dec 2015 Technological evolution is integral to the very core of modern culture, its influence touching every aspect of living. Public spheres are altering; the importances of face-to-face relationships within the business sector are no longer vital operations.
Technological evolution is integral to the very core of modern culture, its influence touching every aspect of living. Public spheres are altering; the importances of face-to-face relationships within the business sector are no longer vital operations. Communication in this age of technological dependence is instantaneous and simple. With the integration of mobile phones, e-mails, social networks, tablets and web-conferencing into the modern world, we are never out of reach from another human being whether they are 5 feet away or 5 thousand miles away.
Within the IT sector, the rate of change has never been faster; the skills of today are skills that will no longer be necessary in the future. The ability to stay relevant is vital for the road to success. EACS, an award winning and trusted provider of IT solutions and managed services, brought these issues to the forefront in an event hosted by the Anglia IT Community on the 11th December at Bury St. Edmunds. A synopsis of the event noted that:
“Automation and machine learning are key drivers for businesses to be operationally efficient. The net result is that the administration tasks of today, such as passwords resets, account creation etc. will become a thing of the past and evolve to a model of self service. IT teams will look very different in the future. The perception of IT being a few nerds that sit in a darkened room talking in a language that nobody understands will change. Educational changes will eventually see a rise in the uptake of girls actively pursuing IT and Science as a career. This diversity will filter through in the years to come that will add a different dynamic to the IT teams of the future.”
But how does this affect those who have already established themselves in the IT sector?
Companies or individuals that take advantage of new tools and technologies as they become available will have an advantage over those who are either late adopters or who enter the market at a later date. Therefore, it is integral to the advancement of companies and individuals that there is room for innovation and the creation of value strengths to aid the development of different skills when planning for the inevitable changes within IT. The success of graduate programs and apprentices will hinge on a company’s attitude and ability to plan for the future. Inevitably, Flexibility is key to an IT professionals bid for success.