Public Sector Roundup: Vale protects documents

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Vale protects documents with fault-tolerant servers

Vale Royal Borough Council has picked Stratus Technologies' ftServers managed by Hollinbay IT Services to keep its document imaging systems up and running for 400 employees.

Because the newly-updated document imaging system is so vital to the council, any downtime could hurt a number of departments. To protect the file system, the council looked at clustering, but found it was too expensive and instead opted for fault tolerant servers, which rolled out in March of this year.

Mike Prince, ICT technical supervisor at Vale Royal Borough Council, said: "Vale Royal Borough Council has around 400 users that are reliant on the Camino W2 document imaging system, and any incident of downtime would have a significant impact on the performance of the Council Tax, Benefits and Planning departments."

Students get digital map access

As of this month, tens of thousands of students, staff and researchers at universities across Britain will be able to access Ordnance Survey's digital maps online to help their studies in everything from archaeology to zoology.

The Digimap service is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and hosted by the EDINA data centre at the University of Edinburgh.

Lorraine Estelle, chief executive of JISC Collections said: "JISC has made significant investments in the Digimap platform, which has been created specifically for the education community. The continuation of the JISC subsidy enables colleges and universities to access millions of pounds worth of high-value and essential map data that would otherwise be beyond the means of most institutions. All of this, combined with the flexible licensing terms and conditions, allows the full enrichment of education and research."

Wales launches text messaging for foot-and-mouth

Wales has followed Scotland's lead and launched a text message service for alerting farmers and others to updates on the foot-and-mouth situation in their area.

Elin Jones, Welsh Assembly Government Minister for Rural Affairs, said: We are working extremely hard to help all of our rural communities at this very difficult time, and I believe that one way we can help is to provide up to date and accurate information. The introduction of our Foot and Mouth disease text messaging service will allow farmers and others with a vested interest to receive updates promptly, directly to their mobile phone, no matter where they are. By getting information to people as soon as possible, it will allow them to see how any changes will affect them and to help them plan accordingly."

To subscribe, text the word "Alert" or the Welsh "Gwybod" to 64118.

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