It’s official: President Barack Obama has chosen veteran Army Gen. Martin Dempsey to succeed Adm. Mike Mullen as chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff. Obama’s Memorial Day announcement, first floated last week , moves the president close to completion of the rebuilding of his national security team as he…
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Nearly 3,000 contracts awarded since January prompts Treasury to clamp down on ‘use it or lose it’ spending policy The coalition has contracted private companies at the rate of nearly £56.6m a day since January, according to a Guardian analysis of government documents that casts new light on the extent of Whitehall’s reliance on firms to do its work. Nearly 3,000 contracts have been awarded this year, including a burgeoning bill for the government’s reforms. They include unexpected costs arising out of the coalition’s “bonfire of the quangos”, new Whitehall advisers for “free” schools and contracts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds to help reform GP commissioning. The Department for Education has tendered for “lead advisers” to support its reforms in free schools and academies while the Audit Commission, scrapped by the government, has had to spend thousands more because of its stalled closure. There are four consultancy contracts to “aid the transition” to GP commissioning, a central part of the health bill. They are collectively worth up to £300,000. The government is conducting a so-called listening exercise during a natural pause in the legislation, which was set up in response to widespread opposition. The details emerged amid 2,849 contracts each worth more than £10,000 signed by ministers since the turn of the year, revealing for the first time the rate and pace of government outsourcing. On average contracts are being signed at a rate of £56.6m a day. There is some evidence of a spike in spending in the runup to the end of the financial year deadline of 1 April. In March there was a small increase in the number of contracts awarded, though their value was not significantly higher. The Treasury is known to have suspected that some departments were applying a “use it or lose it” policy to their spending, and even fined one department, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, £20m based on those suspicions. On the government’s busiest day, 4 April this year, it signed 79 contracts with a collective value of £242.8m. They included contracts for handheld radios at the Ministry of Justice, toilet maintenance in Forestry Commission parks and the dispensing of HIV medicines. The bulk came from a £200m plan for apprenticeships in support services for the forces, signed by the Ministry of Defence. The details of the four new NHS contracts to “aid the transition to GP commissioning” come after the Guardian revealed last month that David Nicholson, the chief executive of the health service, had written to his staff suggesting that they should “maintain momentum” for the planned changes, despite the consultation process that is under way and signs that the legislation will be substantially rewritten. The Department of Health said the listening exercise was genuine and the contracts were “not specific” to the legislation. “They are part of our ongoing work to support and engage frontline GPs. We do this regardless of current reforms, and have done for a long time,” it said. But John Healey, the shadow health secretary, said the contracts added to confusion over the government’s plans. “It’s been clear throughout the ‘pause’ period that the government will plough on with its NHS plans. The mixed messages we’re hearing from David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley are merely another part of their mishandling of the NHS.” Private contracts Treasury and culture The Treasury spent £532,767 on desks for its Westminster offices, the contracts, which span the surprising and mundane, reveal. The new workbench-style tables will allow more people to work from the 1 Horse Guards Road grade II listed building as part of a project to reduce the costs of running the department and allow for hotdesking in future years. The spirit of the royal wedding seems to have inspired the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Last month it tendered for a contract worth £50,000 to £100,000 for “decorative rope-work flagpole adornments” for ceremonial use on The Mall. The National Gallery tendered for a £22,000 reception for its trustees described as an “evening reception for guests who provide generous support for the gallery”. Audit Commission Ministers have been forced to pay thousands of pounds after the botched closure of the local government spending watchdog. Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, announced the commission’s abolition last August. It and it was on the list of the coalition’s “bonfire of the quangos”. S, ince then the closure date has slipped repeatedly and employees of the slimmed-down operation do not know its termination date. Government contracts show that after it scaled back its human resources, it reopened its graduate recruitment scheme when it became apparent it would last a little longer and so had to pay £30,000 to an outsourced firm to conduct its recruitment process. Separately, the Department for Communities and Local Government has this month awarded a £99,838 contract to the international consultants FTI Consulting to carry out a one-month research project into the future of local audit. School Olympics The DCMS is advertising for a commercial rights adviser to sell advertising and sponsorship for the school Olympics. The contract, tendered in April, invites people to bid to run the commercial operation, meeting all the expenses of the rights operation, and being remunerated on a payment-by-results model from a percentage of the income generated.It is understood that the culture secretary has expressed an interest in Sainsbury’s being involved. It comes just weeks after the Department for Education paid £10,000 for survey work to inform an independent review, which is under way, into the commercialisation and premature sexualisation of childhood. Liberal-Conservative coalition Conservatives Liberal Democrats Quangos Polly Curtis Simon Rogers guardian.co.uk
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Nearly 3,000 contracts awarded since January prompts Treasury to clamp down on ‘use it or lose it’ spending policy The coalition has contracted private companies at the rate of nearly £56.6m a day since January, according to a Guardian analysis of government documents that casts new light on the extent of Whitehall’s reliance on firms to do its work. Nearly 3,000 contracts have been awarded this year, including a burgeoning bill for the government’s reforms. They include unexpected costs arising out of the coalition’s “bonfire of the quangos”, new Whitehall advisers for “free” schools and contracts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds to help reform GP commissioning. The Department for Education has tendered for “lead advisers” to support its reforms in free schools and academies while the Audit Commission, scrapped by the government, has had to spend thousands more because of its stalled closure. There are four consultancy contracts to “aid the transition” to GP commissioning, a central part of the health bill. They are collectively worth up to £300,000. The government is conducting a so-called listening exercise during a natural pause in the legislation, which was set up in response to widespread opposition. The details emerged amid 2,849 contracts each worth more than £10,000 signed by ministers since the turn of the year, revealing for the first time the rate and pace of government outsourcing. On average contracts are being signed at a rate of £56.6m a day. There is some evidence of a spike in spending in the runup to the end of the financial year deadline of 1 April. In March there was a small increase in the number of contracts awarded, though their value was not significantly higher. The Treasury is known to have suspected that some departments were applying a “use it or lose it” policy to their spending, and even fined one department, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, £20m based on those suspicions. On the government’s busiest day, 4 April this year, it signed 79 contracts with a collective value of £242.8m. They included contracts for handheld radios at the Ministry of Justice, toilet maintenance in Forestry Commission parks and the dispensing of HIV medicines. The bulk came from a £200m plan for apprenticeships in support services for the forces, signed by the Ministry of Defence. The details of the four new NHS contracts to “aid the transition to GP commissioning” come after the Guardian revealed last month that David Nicholson, the chief executive of the health service, had written to his staff suggesting that they should “maintain momentum” for the planned changes, despite the consultation process that is under way and signs that the legislation will be substantially rewritten. The Department of Health said the listening exercise was genuine and the contracts were “not specific” to the legislation. “They are part of our ongoing work to support and engage frontline GPs. We do this regardless of current reforms, and have done for a long time,” it said. But John Healey, the shadow health secretary, said the contracts added to confusion over the government’s plans. “It’s been clear throughout the ‘pause’ period that the government will plough on with its NHS plans. The mixed messages we’re hearing from David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley are merely another part of their mishandling of the NHS.” Private contracts Treasury and culture The Treasury spent £532,767 on desks for its Westminster offices, the contracts, which span the surprising and mundane, reveal. The new workbench-style tables will allow more people to work from the 1 Horse Guards Road grade II listed building as part of a project to reduce the costs of running the department and allow for hotdesking in future years. The spirit of the royal wedding seems to have inspired the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Last month it tendered for a contract worth £50,000 to £100,000 for “decorative rope-work flagpole adornments” for ceremonial use on The Mall. The National Gallery tendered for a £22,000 reception for its trustees described as an “evening reception for guests who provide generous support for the gallery”. Audit Commission Ministers have been forced to pay thousands of pounds after the botched closure of the local government spending watchdog. Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, announced the commission’s abolition last August. It and it was on the list of the coalition’s “bonfire of the quangos”. S, ince then the closure date has slipped repeatedly and employees of the slimmed-down operation do not know its termination date. Government contracts show that after it scaled back its human resources, it reopened its graduate recruitment scheme when it became apparent it would last a little longer and so had to pay £30,000 to an outsourced firm to conduct its recruitment process. Separately, the Department for Communities and Local Government has this month awarded a £99,838 contract to the international consultants FTI Consulting to carry out a one-month research project into the future of local audit. School Olympics The DCMS is advertising for a commercial rights adviser to sell advertising and sponsorship for the school Olympics. The contract, tendered in April, invites people to bid to run the commercial operation, meeting all the expenses of the rights operation, and being remunerated on a payment-by-results model from a percentage of the income generated.It is understood that the culture secretary has expressed an interest in Sainsbury’s being involved. It comes just weeks after the Department for Education paid £10,000 for survey work to inform an independent review, which is under way, into the commercialisation and premature sexualisation of childhood. Liberal-Conservative coalition Conservatives Liberal Democrats Quangos Polly Curtis Simon Rogers guardian.co.uk
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Military to gain a new range of offensive options to defend critical installations around the country from cyber attacks The UK is developing a cyber-weapons programme that will give ministers an attacking capability to help counter growing threats to national security from cyberspace, the Guardian has learned. Whitehall officials have revealed that the UK needs to have a new range of offensive options, and not just bolster defences around the country’s critical services and government departments, which regularly come under attack from hackers. The armed forces minister, Nick Harvey, told the Guardian that “action in cyberspace will form part of the future battlefield”, and though he said cyber-weapons would not replace traditional weapons, he admitted he now regards them as “an integral part of the country’s armoury”. It is the first official acknowledgment that such a programme exists. Recognising that there is bound to be concern about when such weapons are used and who would sanction it, Harvey said they would be governed by the same rules that apply to the deployment of other military assets such as special forces. “We need a toolbox of capabilities and that’s what we are currently developing,” he said. “The circumstances and manner in which we would use them are broadly analogous to what we would do in any other domain.” He added: “Cyber is a new domain but the rules and norms, the logic and the standards that operate in any other domain … translate across into cyberspace. “I don’t think that the existence of a new domain will, in itself, make us any more offensive than we are in any other domain. The legal conventions within which we operate are quite mature and well established.” Though the nature of the weapons being developed remains top secret, it is understood that the Cabinet Office and the Cyber Security Operations Centre at GCHQ have taken the lead on the issue, and that in time there will be some input from the Ministry of Defence. The MoD recently appointed General Jonathan Shaw to head a defence cyber-operations group, and though he does not have an IT background, his experience as a battle-hardened commander from the Parachute Regiment will help refine what might be useful to the military. Shaw told the Guardian cyberspace represented “conflict without borders”. The potential damage caused by highly sophisticated computer viruses was underlined last year with the discovery of the Stuxnet virus, which successfully disrupted Iran’s uranium enrichment programme. The Iranians have accused the Israelis and the US of designing and deploying Stuxnet, which set some of their centrifuges spinning out of control. Experts have described the virus as being so complex and technically advanced that is “beyond any threat we have seen in the past”. “Someone had the intent to weaponise a virus,” said Ilias Chantzos, a security expert. Though Whitehall officials deny Britain had any involvement in the development of Stuxnet, its discovery added to the urgency of beefing up the country’s cyber-defences. Last year’s national security strategy made cyber-security a tier one priority, and an extra £650m was found for it in the strategic defence and security review (SDSR). Harvey told the Guardian that digital networks were now “at the heart of our transport, power and communications systems”, and this reliance had “brought the capacity for warfare to cyberspace”. “The consequences of a well planned, well executed attack against our digital infrastructure could be catastrophic … With nuclear or biological weapons, the technical threshold is high. With cyber the finger hovering over the button could be anyone from a state to a student.” Though Harvey did not specify where future threats might come from, he warned that “it would be foolish to assume the west can always dictate the pace and direction of cyber-technology”. He highlighted how China, for one, is developing “modern militaries and modern technologies”. The foreign secretary, William Hague, told a security conference in Munich in February that the Foreign Office had repelled a cyber-attack a month earlier from “a hostile state intelligence agency”. Sources told the Guardian at the time that the attack was believed to be from Chinese intelligence agencies . In his Munich speech, Hague called for agreement on “acceptable rules” for how countries behave in cyberspace. On Monday night General Graeme Lamb, a former director of UK special forces, told the Guardian that, if anything, the SDSR had not gone far enough in addressing the country’s potential vulnerabilities and should have been more radical. He said that the national security council should have stopped the MoD from committing “its resources towards a more traditional defence posture”. “The emerging threats we face are … breathtakingly complicated and far more sinister, far more deadly and far, far more likely [to be used]. Modern technology increasingly allows the individual to bring to bear industrial violence against our citizens previously the exclusive right of states … complacency has dulled our vision. This reality has for some time been creeping up on us.” Professor Peter Sommer, an expert in technology and security affairs, said that it would not be difficult for GCHQ and other agencies to recast what they were doing to defend against cyber-attacks into a first-strike capability. “Any nation which carefully researches cyber-attack methods for defensive purposes has all the knowledge required for offensive activity. You can also easily argue that a well-targeted attack is low-cost, readily deniable and saves lives by disrupting the enemy. The interesting question then becomes, what are the rules for deployment? “I suspect the UK will be borrowing from the doctrines which govern our special forces such as the SAS. It will all be covert but will stop at damaging civilians and assassinating heads of state. And the detailed rules will not be published.” He also warned that the UK was in danger of having “too many overlapping and competing agencies and initiatives”. Military Defence policy Hacking Viruses Data and computer security Nick Hopkins guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Military to gain a new range of offensive options to defend critical installations around the country from cyber attacks The UK is developing a cyber-weapons programme that will give ministers an attacking capability to help counter growing threats to national security from cyberspace, the Guardian has learned. Whitehall officials have revealed that the UK needs to have a new range of offensive options, and not just bolster defences around the country’s critical services and government departments, which regularly come under attack from hackers. The armed forces minister, Nick Harvey, told the Guardian that “action in cyberspace will form part of the future battlefield”, and though he said cyber-weapons would not replace traditional weapons, he admitted he now regards them as “an integral part of the country’s armoury”. It is the first official acknowledgment that such a programme exists. Recognising that there is bound to be concern about when such weapons are used and who would sanction it, Harvey said they would be governed by the same rules that apply to the deployment of other military assets such as special forces. “We need a toolbox of capabilities and that’s what we are currently developing,” he said. “The circumstances and manner in which we would use them are broadly analogous to what we would do in any other domain.” He added: “Cyber is a new domain but the rules and norms, the logic and the standards that operate in any other domain … translate across into cyberspace. “I don’t think that the existence of a new domain will, in itself, make us any more offensive than we are in any other domain. The legal conventions within which we operate are quite mature and well established.” Though the nature of the weapons being developed remains top secret, it is understood that the Cabinet Office and the Cyber Security Operations Centre at GCHQ have taken the lead on the issue, and that in time there will be some input from the Ministry of Defence. The MoD recently appointed General Jonathan Shaw to head a defence cyber-operations group, and though he does not have an IT background, his experience as a battle-hardened commander from the Parachute Regiment will help refine what might be useful to the military. Shaw told the Guardian cyberspace represented “conflict without borders”. The potential damage caused by highly sophisticated computer viruses was underlined last year with the discovery of the Stuxnet virus, which successfully disrupted Iran’s uranium enrichment programme. The Iranians have accused the Israelis and the US of designing and deploying Stuxnet, which set some of their centrifuges spinning out of control. Experts have described the virus as being so complex and technically advanced that is “beyond any threat we have seen in the past”. “Someone had the intent to weaponise a virus,” said Ilias Chantzos, a security expert. Though Whitehall officials deny Britain had any involvement in the development of Stuxnet, its discovery added to the urgency of beefing up the country’s cyber-defences. Last year’s national security strategy made cyber-security a tier one priority, and an extra £650m was found for it in the strategic defence and security review (SDSR). Harvey told the Guardian that digital networks were now “at the heart of our transport, power and communications systems”, and this reliance had “brought the capacity for warfare to cyberspace”. “The consequences of a well planned, well executed attack against our digital infrastructure could be catastrophic … With nuclear or biological weapons, the technical threshold is high. With cyber the finger hovering over the button could be anyone from a state to a student.” Though Harvey did not specify where future threats might come from, he warned that “it would be foolish to assume the west can always dictate the pace and direction of cyber-technology”. He highlighted how China, for one, is developing “modern militaries and modern technologies”. The foreign secretary, William Hague, told a security conference in Munich in February that the Foreign Office had repelled a cyber-attack a month earlier from “a hostile state intelligence agency”. Sources told the Guardian at the time that the attack was believed to be from Chinese intelligence agencies . In his Munich speech, Hague called for agreement on “acceptable rules” for how countries behave in cyberspace. On Monday night General Graeme Lamb, a former director of UK special forces, told the Guardian that, if anything, the SDSR had not gone far enough in addressing the country’s potential vulnerabilities and should have been more radical. He said that the national security council should have stopped the MoD from committing “its resources towards a more traditional defence posture”. “The emerging threats we face are … breathtakingly complicated and far more sinister, far more deadly and far, far more likely [to be used]. Modern technology increasingly allows the individual to bring to bear industrial violence against our citizens previously the exclusive right of states … complacency has dulled our vision. This reality has for some time been creeping up on us.” Professor Peter Sommer, an expert in technology and security affairs, said that it would not be difficult for GCHQ and other agencies to recast what they were doing to defend against cyber-attacks into a first-strike capability. “Any nation which carefully researches cyber-attack methods for defensive purposes has all the knowledge required for offensive activity. You can also easily argue that a well-targeted attack is low-cost, readily deniable and saves lives by disrupting the enemy. The interesting question then becomes, what are the rules for deployment? “I suspect the UK will be borrowing from the doctrines which govern our special forces such as the SAS. It will all be covert but will stop at damaging civilians and assassinating heads of state. And the detailed rules will not be published.” He also warned that the UK was in danger of having “too many overlapping and competing agencies and initiatives”. Military Defence policy Hacking Viruses Data and computer security Nick Hopkins guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan remembered their fallen comrades in Memorial Day services nearly a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that sparked the Afghanistan war. In that country, dawn flag-raising ceremonies honored the more than 1,400 who have been killed, the AP reports. “We reflect…
Continue reading …Despite the recent truce in the Yemen capital of Sanaa , fighting rages on in the country, with hundreds of government soldiers firing on protesters in the southern city of Taiz today. A medical official and other witnesses tell the AP at least 20 were killed when the soldiers stormed a…
Continue reading …A former French foreign minister says he will represent the Libyan victims of NATO bombings, and that he would defend Moammar Gadhafi in the International Criminal Court if asked. “If he asked me, yes, of course,” says Roland Dumas. “(But) I don’t think it is going to happen.” Dumas was…
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Blatter insists only ‘Fifa family’ can stop him winning re-election on day of high drama in the wake of corruption allegations Fifa’s president, Sepp Blatter, has faced down a barrage of criticism over corruption within football’s governing body and vowed that only “the Fifa family” could prevent him being re-elected unopposed on Wednesday . After a day of high drama in which Qatar threatened legal action against Fifa’s secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, for implying it had bought the right to host the 2022 World Cup, Blatter defiantly insisted there was nothing for Fifa to investigate. “Crisis? What is a crisis?” asked Blatter, the day after a presidential election candidate and a Fifa vice-president became the third and fourth of Fifa’s 24 most senior politicians to have been suspended from football over corruption allegations in the past six months. Blatter’s stubbornness has been reinforced by the knowledge that he will be elected unopposed for another term on Wednesday. The same congress of national federations will now be his judge, he claimed. “They will decide if I am a valid or a non-valid candidate, or if I am a valid or non-valid president.” There were some references to reforms Blatter intends to take up. One is for Fifa’s ethics committee to be strengthened. Blatter, alone on the press conference podium at Fifa headquarters, spoke of “all the devils who are in this game”. It is not a criticism that is likely to shake the support of his member organisations. But the lack of support among football fans for his 13-year stewardship of the world game was clear as “Blatter out” became the second most popular international trend on Twitter . Fans were responding to a day of extraordinary revelations at Fifa’s $100m (£61m) Zurich headquarters. An email leaked by the suspended Fifa vice-president, Jack Warner, had earlier apparently raised the most damaging allegations of corruption surrounding Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid. In it, Valcke, Blatter’s closest aide as secretary general of Fifa, stated that Qatar had “bought the World Cup”. Qatar quickly denied the allegations. Hours later, Valcke issued his own clarification. “When I refer to the 2022 World Cup in that email, what I wanted to say is that the winning bid used their financial strength to lobby for support,” he said. “I have at no time made, or was intending to make, any reference to any purchase of votes or similar unethical behaviour.” Blatter, who as president has a statutory responsibility for the line management of Fifa’s secretary general, refused to express any view about Valcke’s explanation. “I don’t answer that question and I ask for your understanding,” he said. “You have received the Fifa general secretary statement. I am the president; I am only here to talk about the president.” Fifa’s reputation suffered a further blow with the emergence of photographic evidence of neat bundles of cash allegedly paid to the Bahamas Football Association by the Qatari former Fifa presidential candidate and president of the Asian Football Confederation, Mohamed Bin Hammam, in an effort to garner support for his election campaign. In an almost satirical touch, the money had been delivered in a brown envelope. Chuck Blazer, the American Fifa official who is the chief accuser of the two senior figures to have been suspended this week, stated when asked if he thought Fifa was corrupt: “I think individuals are.” Like Warner, however, Bin Hammam continues to attack the process that has led to his “temporary exclusion” from all football activity. Bin Hammam has stated his intention to appeal against the decision by the Fifa-appointed ethics committee to force him out of football while investigators carry out their own inquiries into the alleged activities of Warner and Bin Hammam. Blatter’s refusal to brook any criticism of his oversight of Fifa was put in relief by the public comments of Coca-Cola, a major sponsor. “The current allegations being raised are distressing and bad for the sport,” said Coca-Cola, adding its weight to the concerns raised by Adidas last week. “We have every expectation that Fifa will resolve this situation in an expedient and thorough manner.” Though those words may seem lightweight, they are a significant departure from the usual steadfast support Fifa sponsors demonstrate for the organisation. Usually, they separate their partnership with the World Cup from any controversy at Fifa House. Now, in a potentially strong coalition of interest forming against Fifa, world governments are joining the sponsors. In addition to the UK parliamentary inquiry into football governance, the Australian government – whose 2022 World Cup bid failed against Qatar’s – has also begun to express grave concerns. Newspapers in the Middle East even likened the situation in Fifa to the Arab spring that has unseated a number of governments in the region. “If governments try to intervene in our organisation then something is wrong,” Blatter conceded. Then he added: “I think Fifa is strong enough to deal with the problems inside Fifa. I am sure that the day after tomorrow at the congress we will prove we can solve the problems – if there are any – inside the congress.” Blatter made one apparently extraordinary admission. Under his presidency the annual revenues of football’s world governing body have grown to $1.3bn as it feasts on sponsors’ and broadcasters’ appetite for the World Cup. That presidency began in 1998, making his remark revelatory. “I have to say we had no problems until 1998; this was a modest Fifa – now we are a comfortable Fifa,” he said. Although ultimately he angrily left the press conference amid journalists’ heckles, nothing appears set to discomfit Blatter. Fifa Sepp Blatter Jack Warner Jérôme Valcke Mohamed bin Hammam Qatar Matt Scott David Conn guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A power struggle in Iran between president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei appears to be resolving, as the country’s supreme leader publicly backed Ahmadinejad yesterday, reports the Los Angeles Times . “While there are weaknesses and problems, the composition of the executive branch is good and appropriate, and the government is…
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