WARP News (March 2005)

Welcome to the fourth release of the WARP Toolbox (March 2005), if you wish to view previous news from the Toolbox visit News archive. The following news items provide an update on the progress of the WARP programme:

• There are now eight WARPs who have signed up to the WARP Code of Practice and have been approved by NISCC. These include three in Local Government, a Genealogy WARP within the voluntary sector, a Security Consultants WARP, a Home User WARP, a WARP for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and a WARP for the Police Forces - see the WARP Register for details.

• This release 4 of the Toolbox has been scheduled to coincide with the first official WARPs Forum entitled 'Serious about WARPs'. This was held on the 18 March 2005 in Central London involving existing WARP providers and operators, as well as those in the process of setting up WARPs or seriously thinking about doing so. Details of the proceedings will be published here in the near future.

• We have introduced a search facility into the Toolbox, especially for regular users. We will also be amending the Toolbox more frequently in future, and indicating what has changed. In the meantime, do check this section regularly.

• At the instigation of Kent Connects, who run the SKWARP, we entered the competition for the Government Computing BT awards for innovation 2005 (Partnership category). It has just been announced that the WARP partnership between NISCC and Kent Connects has been shortlisted for the award, ahead of more than 100 other projects.

• WARPs are now firmly taking on an international dimension, with serious interest in the Netherlands, Ireland and the US. More details will be released soon.

What's new in the Toolbox

The main changes to this Toolbox release are as follows:

• There is now a search facility at the top of every page in the WARP Toolbox. This search facility enables users to search the WARP Toolbox and together with the Sitemap, navigate the site more easily. At the moment this uses an external search engine Picosearch but tests have showed it works well, the only downside is a small amount of discreet advertising. In the future it will be replaced by an internal search engine..

• The WARP registration section has been updated to include a new WARP registration application form, which removes the need for a separate evaluation checklist. This is now the only form that needs to be completed and submitted to NISCC. The case study sample application has also been updated to be consistent with the new form. A registration amendment form has been added which provides the facility to change registration details without the need to complete the whole registration form.

• The Software & Infrastructure FWA software and Software download sections have been updated to include the Filtered Warnings Application (FWA) BETA V4.0 Installation and Readme guides. Also included is help to set-up the peer to peer sharing facility between WARPs who are running the FWA. For those wishing to customise the format of a notification, a guide has been provided to help create a notification definition. An example notification folder has been included together with a movie file showing how this can be installed on an FWA system.

• A new set of movie files have been included showing how FWA BETA V4.0 functions. These replace those for FWA V3.1. These can be accessed via the Service provision or the Software download sections.

• A WARP Communication plan has been included in the Marketing section of the Toolbox.

• A list of sources to help WARPs choose the best Advisories has been included in html format on the Filtered Warnings page, to enable easy access to the urls.
  

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