After RBS IT Crisis, More Banking IT Outage with Lloyds TSB Halifax BoS

We just wrote about banking IT problems in City AM  &  The Conversation,  now Lloyds TSB Halifax BoS experienced IT outage too. We will see more problems like this in the next few years, and something needs to be done about the ancient UK banking IT infrastructure before it is too late.

Pension crisis? We have bigger problems to worry about!

Link to my short piece in the Conversation - 

Pension woes abound, but our tech future is just as pressing

https://theconversation.com/pension-woes-abound-but-our-tech-future-is-just-as-pressing-22360

Britons have been warned that they must save six times more for their pension or face poverty. The message is that it’s time to embrace deferred gratification and start saving. The average pension pot is just £36,800. This would translate to a retirement income of a miserable £1,340 a year. And many people don’t even have this much saved.

UK banks risk financial meltdown if the long-term IT crisis remains unresolved

In City AM on 17th January 2014 -

UK banks risk financial meltdown if the long-term IT crisis remains unresolved

by Feng Li

January 17, 2014, 1:08am

ON THE busiest online shopping day of 2013, Cyber Monday, RBS faced an embarrassing IT system outage that left more than 1m customers unable to access their accounts for three hours. This wasn’t the first time. .... 

http://www.cityam.com/article/1389920882/uk-banks-risk-financial-meltdown-if-long-term-it-crisis-remains-unresolved

Seminal Works in e-Business/ Digital Business - Call for Recommendations

I am in the process of editing a major four volume set on ‘E-Business: Critical Perspectives in Business Management’, under Routledge’s long established Major Works Series.  The idea is to identify the most influential work in this domain – journal papers, papers in edited books, and occasionally, conference proceedings – and produce a collection of the most influential articles in this area for readers (around 80 in total).  This means the papers to be selected are not necessarily the latest publications but articles that have made tangible impacts on our thinking in the e-Business/ digital business area and on business practices.  As such, this will not require you (or anyone) to write a new paper:  I am only interested in published papers.

Please think about what papers have influenced your thinking in e-business/digital business related areas over the past 20 years, and I would appreciate it if you could share your thoughts.   If you have to recommend the top 5 to 10 papers in this area, then what would they be (and why?).   You are most welcome to recommend your own papers for inclusion; and please do feel free to pass on this call to other colleagues. 

My plan is to adopt a broad, inclusive approach to the notion of e-Business/digital business, and the papers are likely to be grouped under the following preliminary headings/sections.  Please also let me know if you feel any important topics (e.g. mobile business) are missing from the list.

1.       Introduction

2.       The Notion of E-Business

3.       The E-Business Environment

4.       Emerging strategies and business models for e-Business

5.       Organisational Innovations for e-Business and Emerging Forms of Organisations

6.       Digital Technologies (e-Business Technologies)

7.       E-Business in different sectors and domains

8.       Emerging opportunities and challenges for e-Business

9.       Digital business innovations for grand societal challenges

1.      Others

Thank you in advance for your contributions and hopefully this bookset will make it easier for academics, students and other readers in the future to get a full understanding of e-Business/digital business and related issues.  In return for your contributions, I will share the final list of selected papers before the bookset is published.   Please send your recommendations directly to me at feng.li.1@city.ac.uk

Ancient IT makes a banking meltdown inevitable

A KPMG report warned last year that the next systemic shock to UK banking could come from an as yet unforeseen event, such as a massive payment outage or a cyber attack. Since the IT systems in most banks are complex and some essential parts of these systems are very old, a system outage is almost inevitable. The IT systems that hold up our every financial move are a disaster waiting to happen.   

The full blog at - 
https://theconversation.com/ancient-it-makes-a-banking-meltdown-inevitable-21866