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Yes this is the same initiative as the Cabinet Office IDA programme. However the delivery is being managed in a variety of ways. Department of Business Innovation and Skills is one of the implementation strands of the overall programme which is why they are quoted in this article. An additional four strands from different Goverment Departments make up the initial implementation phase of the programme. This is in line with the ICT Strategy and the devolved Crown responsibilities which now exist for the delivery of IT systems into government.

Presumably a convenient means of MPs battling on another front with the banks, or possibly another innovate message to the industry. Either way it is likely to take up more time and money as MPs get involved in the Payments Council, with no gain to the customer.

Loved Dave B's history lesson in payments though.

As the lovely Liz Lum has me on her FinGodessTech list my favourite today is of course a data related one, from the marvelous websci guys at Southampton.

Nigel Shadbolt explains that they have made the earth shattering decision to abandon the RDF format for Linked Data, and move to PDF for all their data. He even posts a visualisation backed up by Google search data explaining why the decision was inevitable.

Here is the link if you would like to read it for yourself.

http://blogs.ecs.soton.ac.uk/data/2011/04/01/pdf-selected-as-interchange-format/

Absolutely valid point Andy.

VocaLink has a great product in FPS, and it is easy to see why the implementation of the full service was prioritised by the big banks.

However it was clear at Sibos 2010 (I delivered a cloud keynote and led a cloud innovations stream) that priorities in 2011 would be led by leverage of a mobile, and where possible cloud platform. 

As the architect of the payment engine for the original BACS Service, I will be intrigued to see whether as you predict, competition will indeed dictate the next steps. 

Hi Brett, 

Another great blog post.

My own experiences over the last few weeks indicate that the present incumbents might be now be at the table talking about the sorts of innovation you describe, however it is the new players who are taking action. For example the announcement of the NFC enabled Google handset, one of many such changes to come.

However this all shakes out in the coming months, not years that banks think that they have to change, one thing is absolutely certain, you have been writing the message long and large to initiate that change.

Already looking forward to the next blog!

Sorry it has taken a while to respond as I had to get my login sorted, Liz I loved this blog piece. 

You make some valid points and as we all know the core systems are difficult to change, which is why they largely haven't been changed. What I believe is different today is that the disruption has already started outside of the system. Despite this there is a long term resistance to unravel the spagetti legacy systems, this has persisted due to a general lethargy based on, why bother.

The answer to the question of why bother, is that the basic systems can be morphed from purely operational/historical use to cash generating platforms. These systems contain a goldmine of data which if ported to a Data as a Service Cloud platform with powerful analytics tools could not only reform the operations globally, but could be packaged and sold to the client base. 

I know that this innovation is already taking place, from a number of private one to one discussions with Swift members, as a Cloud Leader for Innotribe at Sibos. 

This innovator has no intention of forgetting the benefit of energising the world weary cynics, and including them in agile teams containing the next generation of innovators.

For the record the Google Apps project for PSD did not remove all the duct tape and chewing gum, however even after completion, the agile team continued to work on this, so only duct tape left now.