Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Post

View the full list of portfolios for each minister: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-science-innovation-and-technology#people

Given today's news regarding #crowdstrike, it's probably time for the new Government team to revise the overly simplistic #cloudfirst strategy in favour of a hybrid mix of resources. Common protocols eg S3, NFS, with different backend resources and code are a good thing; as is having a mix of on prem and cloud resources. It also feels that the updates by crowdstrike were rolled out without question, in the past (admittedly when the frequency was lower), organisations used to test updates and patches before deploying. It would also seem sensible to have a mix of hw/sw architectures; no Linux, Unix or MacOS systems went down in today's outage. In many ways this is a bit like building resilience in agriculture. If all farmers grow the same variety of crop, the risk of a catastrophic disease outbreak increases. It is therefore better to have some diversity.

🤝 Great to see such a strong team of modernising & businesslike Ministers appointed by 10 Downing Street to the vital Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (I don’t know Feryal but deligted to see my good friends Peter Kyle #PatrickVallance Chris Bryant & #MaggieJones appointed) An encouraging sign that the spirit of non-partisan spirit of all-party / cross-party commitment to the importance of #Science #Technology #Engineering & #Innovation for UK prosperity, opportunity & global security which I worked hard to maintain in the last 14yrs is continuing. The new Government will have new priorities but I hope the commitment to - S T Framework - ARIA - Clusters - Regulatory leadership - UKRI & ecosystem reform - Leveraging greater private sector, philanthropic, sovereign and pension investment alongside public sector - Industrial Strategy will continue to flourish …. 🙏🤝

We have reached a definitive moment in time and space where clean energy technologies and AI will show how we need to reset human inteligence, logic and our conflicts orlf intrests with economic growth strategies. A wise man once said to make change, we do not need to start from scratch, we learn from past mistakes, and we start from present and future experiences. Reshaping the previous logic, and inteligence that failed humankind is not change, means we learned nothing new and / or where not starting from experiences. UK, Global Governments and Investor have no risk when investing in affordable clean energy, renewable, or recycling sustainable technologies that producing FREE ENERGY COMMODITY. The only investment risks to investors, stakeholders, and Global governments is the risk of loosing profits, economic growth strategies from supporting AFFORDABLE, renewable, clean energy low energy CONSUMER urban and remote generators TECH. The risks is caused by investors, and governments protecting profits for as long as they can hold out. However, while we wait for Governments and Investors to stop protecting profits and decide to support low energy consumer renewable, clean energy technologies needs the weak and vulnerable suffer.

Diverse I.T. infrastructure can work but throwing money at it now won't reduce the risk. Critical infrastructure should be off the Internet and all updates controlled and validated but why not already? Cost and basic lacking in IT systems installation regulations. All OS and software providers should have in place the startup checks so that this error would be prevented and the last restore or backup used. Both MS and Crowdstrike have some serious questions to answer. Win 12 and Win server and Apple OS will be so different you wait and see.

Good to see the Space is recognised as a sector, less so that the focus is on Space Science. Even when broadcasting is removed, Space Science accounts for 2% of the space economy from the last Size & Health figures. Science remains important in the Space Sector, , but without the rest of the sector being championed we will continue to see the buy out of companies by overseas entities, the loss of strategic capabilities such as spectrum rights and the UK on the margins of conversations affecting the whole sector

The success of Chandrayaan-3 as the first-ever mission to land near the moon's south pole proved India’s ‘quantum jump’ in space sector. A new era of UK-India tech co-operation has begun. Recognising the increasing role of technology in national security and economic development, the Prime Ministers of India and the United Kingdom are launching a new ‘Technology Security Initiative’ (TSI) to elevate the strategic partnership between the 2 countries to the next level. The TSI builds upon the ambitious bilateral cooperation agenda set out in the India-UK Roadmap 2030, and will bring into sharper focus collaboration in critical and emerging technologies (CET) across priority sectors. Details at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-india-technology-security-initiative-factsheet/uk-india-technology-security-initiative-factsheet  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/india-uk-technology-security-initiative-suchith-anand-wjzue This year also commemorates the 100th anniversary of S.N. Bose's pioneering work in quantum mechanics. Satyendra Nath Bose was one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics. Details at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Nath_Bose 

I thank the UK government for launching the Ministerial taskforce to kickstart work on child poverty strategy. Details at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ministerial-taskforce-launched-to-kickstart-work-on-child-poverty-strategy https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn081lyqw44o I wrote an open letter requesting UK Government to urgently take steps to provide Free School Meals to all students in all UK schools. Details at https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/geoforall/2024-July/006509.html The gap in attainment between richer and poorer students is at its widest (at both primary and secondary level) since 2011.   Details at https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/jul/16/rich-poor-education-attainment-gap-england I am calling for a long-term national strategy to close the attainment gap, alongside wider efforts to reduce, and ultimately to end child poverty in the UK. Urgent action is needed by the UK government to tackle this issue. I am grateful to everyone working for education opportunities for all.

Congratulations to the new Secretary of State, Peter Kyle, and all of the newly appointed ministers!

This brilliant news 4 of the 5 positions are filled with scientists/members with a science background