Computing Awards for Excellence: Innovative Project of the Year shortlist

BBC Worldwide

BBC Worldwide has transformed its BBC Showcase event, working with Microsoft to replace DVDs with an online digital viewing service.

Clients from more than 200 media groups are invited to search and view new and upcoming programmes at the annual four-day event in Brighton. In response to positive client feedback generated by the success of this year’s event, Showcase 2008 will be fully digital.

The project has reinforced BBC Worldwide’s belief that IT can lead a business, as well as support it. BBC Worldwide is established as an international technology leader, in readiness for what it sees as an imminent revolution in international media.

BT

Project Sophia was created as a way to efficiently extract business value from BT’s seven petabytes of information, embedded in 2,700 legacy systems.

Developed in-house by BT and named after the Greek goddess of knowledge and wisdom, Project Sophia combines Web 2.0, semantic web and software as a service (SaaS) technologies to link data with constructive business knowledge.

Sophia can automatically integrate data from multiple systems, and identify and repair discrepancies in customer information.

BT believes that SaaS technology will influence IT spending, encouraging organisations to abandon up-front investment in favour of on-demand pay-per-use expenses.

Channel 4

At the end of 2006, Channel 4 became the first major broadcaster to offer its home-grown content through a video-on-demand system.

Channel 4’s 4oD service is worth $480m (£238m) in the UK alone, according to researcher Informa, and as a pioneer in bespoke video-on-demand provision, is well positioned to secure market share.

The service offers free and pay-per view content and users that combine both consume almost three times more content. The service, which uses VeriSign security technology, allows Channel 4 to distribute its content at a lower cost and to a higher standard. In attracting the user, 4oD fulfils its main challenge, as repeat use is higher than anticipated.

East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust

As part of the delivery of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust worked with suppliers CSC and Medusa Medical Technologies to pilot the use of an electronic patient care reporting (ePCR) and data management software system.

Many technicians and paramedics were unfamiliar with computers, but were soon convinced by the benefits of the user-friendly ePCR system, which allows access to the national drug formulary. Life-saving benefits include the ability to transmit patient information before the patient’s arrival at accident and emergency. The system will also be able to link with other NPfIT programmes, enabling secure and immediate sharing of information in an emergency.

Innovation Leeds

Leeds Youth Justice Service (LYJS) introduced digital pen and paper technology to reduce reliance on paper-based documentation.

Working with vulnerable, anxious and potentially violent young people, LYJS strikes a balance between achieving efficiency and presenting a traditional “paper and pen” approach. A digitally-enabled smart pen records pen movements using an in-built camera. The movement is translated into an image or sent as XML data, eliminating the need to physically store or return paper documents.

Support and development is provided by Innovation Leeds, a specialist part of Leeds City Council’s IT department established to promote innovation in IT for the benefit of the community.

Northumberland County Council

Since Northumberland County Council (NCC) became the first county to enable exchanges for broadband in 2003, ADSL take-up across the county has risen to 42 per cent.

NCC sees investment in higher-capacity SDSL broadband technology as essential to supporting existing businesses and encouraging new ones.

Through the Northumberland Strategic Partnership, NCC and development agency One NorthEast have jointly agreed to invest £8.7m in providing improved access throughout the county. The Northumberland Open Network, a partnership between the county and district councils in the south-east of the county, is determined to pull the region away from the bottom of the country’s league tables for gross value added for the knowledge economy.

PDSA

PDSA promotes responsible pet ownership and provides about 40,000 preventative treatments and 1.8 million free treatments to the pets of people who cannot afford to pay veterinary fees.

Amstrad e-mailers were introduced to PDSA’s 182 charity shops to form a UK-wide IT infrastructure for less than £5,000. PDSA has replaced its handwritten sales capture form with an HTML form, improving accuracy and reducing the need for posting and faxing information to head office.

Area retail managers are also sent high-level business intelligence via a daily SMS text message, allowing them to make decisions based on the latest information.
In favouring low-cost equipment over cutting edge technology, PDSA identified an innovative way to accommodate its own needs.

Service Personnel and Veterans Agency

The Ministry of Defence worked with EDS to implement the Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) system, a single human resources application for all three armed forces.

Millions of lines of data from obsolete legacy systems have been transferred to JPA. The implementation was the largest of its kind in the world and could eventually be further enhanced to enable mobile internet connection.

JPA can be accessed by troops in deployed operational environments throughout the world. Users are able to update their own personal information and process their own low-level claims online, significantly reducing administration.

The project has generated savings of £100m to be reinvested in the armed forces’ fighting capability.