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Back in November, a new report ‘Evaluating SME experiences of Government procurement,’ commissioned by the British Venture Capital Association together with the CBI and the Federation of Small Business, found that small businesses continue to face a number of barriers in winning public contracts.

Recent cases of lost data have damaged Scottish public perception of government competence Over 80% of the population in Scotland has lost confidence in the UK government’s ability to look after personal data; this is the stark finding of the first comprehensive survey of its kind into the psychological impact of recent public sector information losses. The survey, commissioned by Australian quoted software company, Objective Corporation and conducted by YouGov, has identified a complete breakdown in trust and soaring concerns over fraud and identity theft.

Scotland is to be given responsibility for all planning and nature conservation matters at sea up to 200 miles from the coast. Currently the Scottish Government only had control to 12 nautical miles, with the Westminster parliament making most of the decisions further from the coast. Details of the extent of the devolved powers will become clear when the Scottish Marine Bill goes before parliament in the spring. With a fine sense of timing, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers urges a £40m fund and investment in the national grid and in skills as it believes that Scotland has the potential to provide 10% of Europe’s wave energy and a quarter of the continent’s tidal power.

Craneware Plc took the title of Scottish Software Company 2008 and Best International Software Business at the Scottish Software Awards ceremony organised byTargeting Innovation in conjunction with Straightline Publishing. Of the six winning software companies, the web sites vary considerably, with several sadly convinced that their liveware founders faces were irrelevant to any issue of interest or success. However, it is worth noticing that in several cases it is the CTO among the co-founders. Currently the website Scottish Software Awards.Co.UK is still running its 2007 winners.

Two hours out of an available 8,765 hours/year is the amount of independent TV drama made in Scotland. The 2005 TV drama series Sea Of Souls, with its Scottish cast including Bill Paterson, Dawn Steele and Iain Robertson, picked up a Scottish Bafta in 2005, but is named as the only independently produced drama made in Scotland and broadcast to the whole of the UK during 2007.

Scotland will face a recession so severe that it could claim up to 60,000 jobs, according to the Ernst & Young Scottish Item Club in it annual forecast which predicts the economy will contract by 0.4% next year — the worst figure for 19 years — with financial services bearing the brunt of the downturn.

House of Commons Home Affairs Committee has called for more cash to be made available to provide mobile PDA to every front-line police officer. However, seventy per cent of the 349 officers surveyed by the Scottish Police Federation said the PDAs they trialled had made them less efficient, while around 25% said there was 'no change'. Less than 10% said handheld devices made them more efficient. Software problems with the Scottish trial meant electronic notes were often corrupted, forcing officers to spend time re-entering evidence back at the station.

At the ITI Scotland annual public meeting (APM) at the end of October in Edinburgh, attended by almost 100 key stakeholders and members of the public, ITI Scotland outlined its performance during the financial year to 31 March 2008, its programme of activities and ambitious plans for the future. To date it had committed £134m in funding across a portfolio of 25 programmes, with 11 complete, 12 licence deals have been signed and 132 patents filed.
Of the one and only question asked from the floor, the inevitable one, concerning finance in our times, was deftly turned aside by the joking comment that 'no-one was waving red flags yet."
Barely two weeks later, hot on the heels of announcing a £9.3m investment over a period of up to four years for ITI Life Sciences to develop Ubiquitin Proteasome System, the red flags are now as plentiful as fallen autumn leaves.

While Glasgow Caledonian spends £207,000 on its boardroom, and travels to India and China to attract students from there, Edinburgh and the other major Scottish Universities report that the finance sector is heading back to reskill, with a boom in postgraduate students this month, especially in advanced business courses and the more stable professions, such as medicine and teaching.

In the HIghlands & Islands region, Digital Recyclers run by Kenneth and Julie Whitehead from their home near Tain, recycles used computers. So far the credit crunch is proving good for business. They need larger premises and equipment, specifically an industrial guillotine to chop-up old hard drives. But according to them, there has been confusion and delay. Seeking a grant to obtain the equipment, Kenneth Whithead finds that Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) say they do not administer that anymore, and the Highland Council also disclaim responsibility. In Edinburgh, communities final plea to the Edinburgh Council to rethink the handling of a new Government fund has been rejected. Dozens of local organisations, including many that tackled poverty for decades, will loose staff or shut their doors, due to the impact of the much-criticised Fairer Scotland Fund (FSF) scheme, replacing seven previous measures, including the community regeneration fund, but with a narrower criteria meaning many lose out.

Twelve finalists, six in the 2008 'Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust (PSYBT) ‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year and six art and craft creatives in the Jolomo Awards' are now competing for the national titles. The Jolomo PSYBT awards will be announced on 27 October in Oban, and the Entrepreneur award in Glasgow on 17 November.

A lot of attention is paid to the Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) by both the UK government and in the North by Scottish Enterprise. But one sector, the home business, is unloved by officialdom and mostly ignored. It has taken an independent startup, Enterprise Nation, to produce a focused report on a grass roots economy, which officially gets gets precious little recognition.

A consortium of deaf organisations, campaigning for deaf people to have equal access to the telephone is taking its case direct to Parliament. As part of the ‘Bringing Deaf Telecoms into the 21st Century’ campaign, TAG, which represents all the main UK deaf organisations concerned with telecommunications and broadcasting, held a reception for MPs at Portcullis House, Westminster.

Deaths linked to the hospital superbug MRSA reached record levels in Scotland last year, with the number recorded more than double that logged seven years ago. That infection was a factor in 230 deaths during 2007, according to data from death certificates released by the General Register Office for Scotland yesterday. But this month a BASF plastic Luran S BX 13042 which has the property of killing microbes goes on show in Germany. The material belongs to the specialties found in the styrene plastic product line and is currently the only ASA (acrylonitrile-styrene-acrylate copolymer) with an antimicrobial effect. Sample amounts are already available in white.

The 14 NHS boards across Scotland are to share £1m to help with securing USB ports to improve IT security. Funding, from Scottish Government's eHealth budget, will be used to help boards comply with new government standards, using software to lock-down computer USB access. The new rules on encrypting NHS data were introduced after the discovery of paper patient records at a disused hospital.

Think CCTV, and the £5bn projected ID cards are intrusive? MI5 currently has a database system that can store and monitor British emails, texts and call, but can only proceed with this surveillance, (we are told) if it has been approved by the home secretary. Now Government plans to put MI5 in the shade, by spending £12bn on a database to monitor and store everyone's internet browsing habits, their emails as well as phone records of texts and calls.

In remote branch businesses the scenario is traditionally of visiting directors flying in, finding fault with the local team, causing grief, and to everyone's relief, flying out again. Not so the migrating director of today and the rise of modern web technology is believed to be driving more and more company directors to base themselves up north, new research has found. Perhaps added to environmental changes which have always had a major impact on migration.
According to data analysis firm KDB’s Annual Survey of UK Company Directors 2008, there is a gradual migration of directors from the south to more northerly regions in England, as well as Scotland and Wales.

It's an ill wind....scuttleback suggests that the fall of the house of the Bank of Scotland was a deliberate and well orchestrated plan, under cover of the current financial maelstrom, by which Lloyds TSB emerges with a giant share of the UK's mortgage market, and some have become very rich as a result. More to follow perhaps, if Barclays can work the same trick on RBOS. Or is it all just conspiracy theories?

The new head of the Pharmaceutical Industry Association, Andy Powrie-Smith believes Scotland should take part in more clinical trials. The new director previously head of the British Lung Foundation Scotland charity - which fights for patients suffering a range of unglamorous chest diseases, but frequently deadly, in his new job "spends a lot of my time trying to get better medicines for patients."

Scotland’s software, IT and communications businesses employ more than 105,000 people and currently generate approximately £5bn or 5% of Scotland’s GDP. It should be more. As young degree students look around Scotland for work, many with excellent qualifications will go south and rarely return. Others hang on grimly trying to prove that there is a route to their desired work, despite an inadequate 'skills' training, seemingly implicit, but often omitted in degree studies and a paucity of hiring companies. Now a report by nmp on behalf of ScotlandIS, the software, telecommunications and IT trade body, shows Scotland risks under-performing against its innovative potential due to a lack of relevant skills. Documented evidence now supports this link and the report urges the need to embed these skill sets across the Scottish economy if aspirations for a 'high value add' country are ever to be realised. Time for a high tech Czar perhaps?

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