16 Apr 2008

No 10 asks more of the right questions…

ls it just me or are there straws in the wind here? DoH asks about Patient Opinion. Downing Street asks about user centric ID. Tom Watson launches a Power of information task force. Now look what I hear from No10:

We recommend a closer look at the emergence of Google Health and MS Healthvault* because - if they work - these initiatives might be trusted more than our plans for the NHS/government-controlled centralised health record. Such a development would certainly be disruptive.

Indeed. Always good to look out at the real world from the ivory tower.

[Background/reminder: The Ideal Government principles are
- use quick wins (ie pinch other people’s good stuff when it crops up; don’t commission your own mega system from scratch)
- co-create, ie allow the online e-services we need to come about through participation and shared activity, choices and feedback
- dig deeper to build that foundation of trust, ie dont fob everyone off with what a Mori poll says you can get away with but work out in some depth what systems people will feel happy about having trusted once they’re seriously tested in anger.

Using personal, secure, user-controlled health records makes sense on all these fronts (as we established in a memorable EDS/Microsoft two-day workshop six years ago).]

Wibbi - as well as adopting Wibbies as policy - government adopted the IdealGov principles as policy?
And Wibbi No. 10 continues to ask about VRM, Higgins, U-Prove and Cameron’s laws and their implications for the IPS/government controlled ID System. After all, if they don’t adopt them the danger is that the Scots will. And they’ll then have all the credit and the bragging rights for years to come. And won’t they just go on about it…

* Two services which put the citizen in control of their own health information: see this earlier post and this.

Posted by Ruth Kennedy on 16/04/08 at 1:57pm
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15 Apr 2008

ID: Genealogy of a Biometrics Company

ID card bidders jostle for position
A host of companies, including the big IT services companies such as CSC, IBM, EDS, Accenture, BT and Fujitsu Services, are expected to bid for contracts to build the £1bn biometric identity card system.

These systems integrators are being asked to put together consortia of biometrics companies that can deliver every part of the programme, from initially storing people’s fingerprint and facial details to manufacturing the cards and managing the database of biometric information.

The biometrics companies that expected to play a key role include Sagem of France, Nec of Japan, LG of South Korea, Dermalog of Germany as well as US companies L-1 Identity Solutions, Motorola, Cogent and Cross Match ...

Siemens Business Services, which works with the Identity and Passport Service on biometric passports, is thought to be in a strong position to win work with the ID cards scheme. Similarly, L-1 Identity Solutions, which provides technology for e-passports, is thought to be in pole position ...

Financial Times, Maija Palmer, 3 August 2007

If IPS keep to their timetable, contracts will soon be awarded for suppliers to the NIS. Who are these suppliers?

This is the family history of just one of the biometrics companies listed by the FT. There is a test at the end.

Once upon a time, there was a company called Visionics Corp. Visionics specialised in biometrics based on facial geometry. Their product, FaceIt, could compare the image of someone’s face, caught on camera, with a database of stored images, at the rate of four million per minute, and identify that person whether or not he or she had grown a beard, started to wear glasses, gone bald, been photographed at an angle in poor light, etc ... At least, that’s what it said on the Visionics website.

The Visionics website is no longer available.

According to The Times, whereas Visionics claimed 99.3% accuracy, when it was tested independently FaceIt actually managed to identify people only 51% of the time. That was in November 2003. A year earlier, the New Scientist reported the experience of Palm Beach International Airport in Florida when they tried to use FaceIt to clear recognised staff through security. It worked 47% of the time. The airport would have done better to toss a coin.

The same New Scientist article records also that, back in 1998, FaceIt was used in the London Borough of Newham to match images of people, caught by CCTV cameras in the street, to a database of known villains. FaceIt drove crime off the streets of Newham, it said on the now defunct Visionics website. That’s not how the New Scientist tells it: “the police admitted to The Guardian newspaper that the Newham system had never even matched the face of a person on the street to a photo in its database of known offenders, let alone led to an arrest”.

What with one thing and another, Visionics Corp. disappeared into Identix, Inc., a biometrics company specialising in fingerprinting. And when Atos Origin organised the consortium to conduct the UKPS biometrics enrolment trial in 2004, guess who they chose to supply the facial geometry and fingerprinting systems.

This time, FaceIt failed 31% of the time, with able-bodied participants in the trial, and 52% of the time with disabled participants, i.e. it was wrong more often than it was right. And the Identix fingerprinting system failed 19% of the time with the able-bodied and 20% with the disabled.

The UKPS (now IPS) trial tested not only facial geometry and fingerprinting biometrics, but also iris scanning. 10% of able-bodied participants could not even register their iris scan in the first place, using the system supplied by Iridian, let alone be subsequently matched/identified. For the disabled, that figure rose to 39%. In a national identity scheme based on iris scans, these people wouldn’t even exist, they would have no electronic identity.

In December 2005, DVLA appointed Viisage, another facial geometry biometrics specialist, to conduct a trial to see if their collection of photographs could be used to automate driver identification. The answer seems to be no and nothing came of it.

Except that Viisage then merged with Identix, Inc., to form ... L-1 Identity Solutions, Inc.. And L-1 Identity Solutions, Inc. subsequently completed the family when it bought ... Iridian.

With its vital statistics of 51-47-31-52-19-20-10-39, L-1 Identity Solutions, Inc. is described by the FT as being in “pole position” to win the biometrics contract for the National Identity Scheme, a scheme on which the nation’s security could one day depend.

And they all lived biometrically ever after.

Question: why did the Prime Minister say, as he did on 17 January 2008, that biometrics “will make it possible to securely link an individual to a unique identity”?

Posted by David Moss on 15/04/08 at 11:27pm
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13 Apr 2008

ID: bid risk and the vulnerability of IPS

According to an August 2007 article in the FT, contracts will be awarded for suppliers to the NIS this Spring. Now. But will any suppliers bid? After all:

• The NIS may turn out to be a smaller system than suppliers expected and there may be less money to make out of it as a result. Crosby has ruled that the high volume of transactions that go through the banks and the big retailers are not on the menu. There is no reason for suppliers to expect the NIS to be involved in DWP benefit claims nor in the health service nor education. Scotland may refuse to use the NIS, and Wales, too. Its advocates always claim that the NIS will be used to prove everyone’s right to work in the UK but IPS failed to provide the ID checking service they promised. And it may be that, far from everyone aged 16 and over, only certain sections of the population will be fingerprinted.

• The timescales are stretching. Far from starting at the end of 2009, as previously planned, the NIS will not start to be rolled out in earnest now until 2012. And given IPS’s track record, suppliers would be well advised to allow for more delays.

• As the economy dips, people will want more assurance that their stealth tax money is being well spent. Hard to provide that assurance, when a number of prospective suppliers have already pulled out of the bidding, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee are just as unimpressed with IPS’s plans as Crosby and the biometrics on which the NIS depends are unreliable.

• There are alternatives to the NIS. Identity assurance could be provided by the banks and/or the mobile phone companies and/or the utility companies and/or the credit referencing agencies. The NIS could become irrelevant. These other systems could be more effective and could come on-stream earlier than IPS’s 15-year timetable – a surprisingly relaxed timetable, given that we’re talking here about the UK’s response to crime and terrorism.

• Suppliers to the NIS would be victims of the lack of trust in the government identified by Crosby – they would be tarred with the same brush.

• IPS is not some unstoppable behemoth with a mandate to monitor everyone in the UK. On the contrary, it is a supplicant, in sales talks with prospective customers, and it hasn’t closed a single deal yet.

• Suppliers will be dependent on IPS and IPS are vulnerable. They are dependent on Labour and Labour treat the NIS like a political football. If the Lib Dems or the Conservatives come to power, the NIS will be cancelled, as its equivalent was in Australia, and suppliers cannot expect to be bailed out.

So now how sensible does it look for a supplier to invest in this project? Which sensible chief executive would commit the funds? Why? What return is sensibly to be expected? What price risk?

(This article is the summary of a longer paper on the subject, ‘A risk assessment for prospective suppliers to the UK NIS’, which first saw the light of day on IdealGovernment.com in November 2007.)

Posted by David Moss on 13/04/08 at 2:37pm
Categories · "What do we want?" · Foundation of Trust · Identity · Save Time and Money · Government Procurement
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11 Apr 2008

Trust, Personalisation and Dingle Dell Corner

Permanent Secretary at Large Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom writes

I thought I’d share with you this delightful cutting from our departmental news letter I found stapled to a sick-note in my intray today.
The 2007 fast-streamer intake had an exciting induction day in Kent with the Departmental Trust & Personalisation group. The day is designed to make them think about Personalisation and its role in delivering departmental strategy, and also about Trust.

Highlight of the day was the opportunity to meet and interact with senior leaders from Cabinet Office Personalisation Strategy Board including Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom who took part in a Q&A session.

Delegates also took part in Trust-building workshops. The choice was between freediving with the Red Arrows or riding pillion round Brands Hatch circuit with former world superbike champion Carl Fogarty.

Support for the day was very positive. One fast-stream participant said: “The chance to meet senior leaders, especially Sir Bonar, helped me understand what is possible in the Department if we focus fully on aspects such as Trust and also Personalisation.” Two others reported that the session had been “quite useful to very useful”.

Leadership is all about showing to the younger intake the sort of positions to which they can aspire. In some ways it’s an easy part of my job. One just shows up, gladhands, and converses a little. But in a deeper and more profound sense, one embodies what is possible in a Civil Service career if people attend diligently to what is important, such as Trust and indeed Personalisation.

And that, one feels, is a significant part of what leadership is about.

In closing I’ll mention that we sent a box of chocolates with the Department’s sincerest wishes for a full and fast-stream recovery to Sophie Ramsbotham who was making tremendous progress until Dingle Dell Corner. Her experience reminds us all vividly that, as much as one Trusts, one should never entirely let go.

Posted by Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom GCMG KCVO on 11/04/08 at 9:23pm
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Is this “security & society index” the right start point for creating ideal e-enabled government?

Thanks to my good mate JJ I’ve been invited to an interesting-looking session in Berlin looking at “security & society”. I’m looking forward to it, and wondering what sort of homework to do. Our hosts have sent over some facts to get us thinking. It’s worked. They’ve got me thinking. Whaddyerreckon?

Security and Society Index
The below is a cross-section of statistics to provide context for some of the key issues on the topic of security.

Personal Security
Closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in public places in the U.K.: 5 million
Average number of times a Briton is filmed on CCTV in one day: 300
Crime reduction in UK credited to CCTV: 5%
Americans using the same password for most online accounts: 63%
Average number of people with access to a patient’s records during a hospitalization: 150
Computers that are daily controlled by malicious bots: 40%
Unique samples of malicious software discovered in 2007: 5 million
Increase in number of unique samples of malicious software over 2006: 5X
Average time before an unprotected online computer becomes infected with a virus: 20 minutes
Hours of victim’s personal time required to reclaim stolen identity: 600

Commercial Security
Personal-data records compromised by security breaches last year: 162 million
Total arrests made in conjunction with these security breaches: 19
Cost to companies per compromised record last year: $197
Estimated cost of all compromised records last year: $32 billion
Size of the worldwide security software market in 2007: $9.1 billion
Growth rate of security costs over IT budgets: 3X
Total losses worldwide due to phishing attacks last year: $3 billion
Estimated cyber crime market size: $100 billion
Global mobile operators hit by mobile device infections last year: 83%
IT executives who do not monitor their databases for suspicious activity: 40%
Organizations worldwide that have separate information security departments: 27%
Cost of corporate espionage to the world’s 1,000 largest companies: $45 billion
Corporate security breaches perpetrated by employees or contractors: 70%

Societal Security
Number of people crossing national borders every second: 25
Average Foreign Direct Investment loss due to increase risk of terrorism: $16 billion
Potential economic impact per 100,000 persons of a bioterrorist attack: $26.2 billion
Cost to vaccinate 100,000 people against such attack: $16.3 million
Total costs per 100,000 lives caused by all natural disasters worldwide in 2003: $22 billion
Annual number of people given terrorist risk-assessment scores by the USA’s Automated
Targeting System: 431 million
Accuracy of Automated Targeting System: 99.9%
Annual number of false alarms by Automated Targeting System: 431,000
Reduction of Middle East & South Asia’s Internet capacity due to damaged undersea cable: 70%
Duration of YouTube.com’s global outage due to interference by Pakistani government: 2 hours

What I want to take to Berlin is a good set of facts but above all the right frame of mind to have a constructive discussion about the ideal way to get to secure e-enabled society. There’s more to it than I can yet see here.

Unfold and continue reading...

There’s a load more as well:

Security & Society - Reading Resources
Excerpts and links to relevant articles

Security: Power to the People
By: John Robb, Fast Company: March 2006 Issue 103, © 2007 Mansueto Ventures LLC. All rights reserved.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/103/essay-security.html

The next decade holds mind-bending promise for businesses. Globalization is prying open vast new markets.
Technology is plowing ahead, fueling--and transforming--entire industries, creating services we never
thought possible. Clever people worldwide are capitalizing every which way. But because globalization and
technology are morally neutral forces, they can also drive change of a different sort. In short, despite the
aura of limitless possibility, our lives are evolving in ways we can control only if we recognize the new
landscape. It’s time to take an unblinking look. We have entered the age of the faceless, agile enemy.

From London to Madrid and Nigeria to Russia, stateless terrorist groups have emerged to score blow after
blow against us. Driven by cultural fragmentation, schooled in the most sophisticated technologies, and
fueled by transnational crime, these groups are forcing corporations and individuals to develop new ways of
defending themselves. The end result of this struggle will be a new, more resilient approach to national
security, one built not around the state but around private citizens and companies. That new system will
change how we live and work--for the better, in many ways--but the road getting there may seem long at
times.

“The Hallmarks of a Totalitarian State”
By Josh Ward, Der Spiegel, March 27 2008
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,541025,00.html

Germany’s high court has declared laws enabling British-style total surveillance of drivers illegal. Privacy
advocates and commentators applaud the ruling, but they ask if the court is trying to stop the laws from
snowballing into a police state—or just water them down.

Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court declared Tuesday that laws allowing police to indiscriminately scan
license plates using electronic surveillance devices and match them against databases kept by law
enforcement and state officials were unconstitutional—at least if strict provisions weren’t placed on the
practice.

This decision is the second large privacy decision handed down by the court in recent days. Less than two
weeks ago, the court ruled that spying on personal computers and online activity violates the right to privacy
and was therefore, in most cases, unconstitutional.

This has done nothing less than establish a new “fundamental right” for the 21st century, according to
German observers.

Strategies against Industrial Espionage – Manager Lounge in Munich
By Renate Lüdke, manager-magazin.de, February 5 2008
http://www.manager-magazin.de/koepfe/karriere/0,2828,533148,00.html

German companies suffer from losses of over eight billion Euro each year through industrial espionage.
Approximately half of all German companies, especially small and medium businesses, have been affected
by data theft in the past two years. “Germany as world champion for high-tech export is highly eligible for
industrial espionage,” warns security expert and EU consultant Felix Juhl in the context of this year’s first
local manager lounge in Munich.

Defending oneself against espionage is difficult, but not impossible. First, it has to be detected, however,
which is not always that simple. It often only becomes obvious when original and plagiarized product clash at
trade fairs; or if the copied product fails – such as medication with life-threatening components or faulty
technology in cars.

A good prevention strategy is paramount. Firewall, antivirus programs and PIN-secured printers are a good
start. But one should also know that printers can save up to five gigabytes of data, shredders can have
integrated scanners, meeting rooms can be wiretapped from as far as 70 meters, and there are giveaways
which are made to spy on you.

Aggressors Enter through the Data Cable
By Thorsten Riedl, Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 27 2008

Viruses, worms, Trojans, armies of remote-control computers for mail attacks: The criminals’ creativity is
boundless. And according to experts, they attack business computers more often than ever in order to make
money. They blackmail companies by threatening to shut down data services or internet sites or they steal
information electronically. Especially mid-market companies, who do not have sufficient IT-specialists, lack
awareness for such risks. Therefore, it is important to sensitize all employees.

While the programming of virus programs used to be a boasting of technical skills – often amongst youths –
the tools are much more intricate now and the goal is to make money. Many cases where money was lost
never become public because people are scared that this will have more negative effects. But every now and
then, there are big cases such as when Russian hackers shut down the internet sites of several Estonian
institutions for several days, for example the biggest bank of the country.

Apparently, one third of all betting agencies pays protection money because otherwise, their websites are
bombarded with inane inquiries which make the companies’ computers crash. Thus, customers cannot get in
contact with the system and the companies’ existence is endangered.

Interview with Udo Helmbrecht, President, German Federal Office for Security in Information Technology:
The German Federal Office for Security in Information Technology advises small and medium businesses
(SMBs) to make sure that their data is secured adequately, both physically and technically. Many SMBs are
not aware that their know-how in industries such as defence, electronics, optics, aerospace, energy,
environment or automotive makes them a prime target for attacks, especially from Asia and emerging
markets.

It has become easier than ever to spy on companies. While data had to be copied and smuggled out of the
company in former times, it can now be carried out on a little USB-stick. Plus, people are not aware that e-
mails are about as safe as postcards if they are not encrypted. Therefore, it is important that companies,
especially SMBs, become aware of the fact that IT-security is top priority.

Your World. . . Hacked
By: Stephanie Overby, CIO Magazine October, 2007 Copyright 2008 IDG Communications
http://www.cio.com.au/index.php/id;1084457046;fp;4;fpid;51238

As your business becomes more collaborative and global, the risks to your company’s trade secrets rise
proportionally. Fortunately, there are new strategies to protect the data that allows you to compete.

Most IT organizations approach the risk to IP the way they approach all IT security: focusing on the corporate
perimeter and developing security tactics and policies from the system level up. Instead, CIOs must take a
top-down approach. What’s required today is a counterintelligence mind-set that assumes someone,
somewhere, wants your data, along with multiple layers of defense to thwart would-be cyberspies and
respond when (not if) they get through your defenses.

In today’s global economy, the number of insiders within any organization has increased dramatically if you
count external partners among them. “Organizations now have to deal with employees connecting from
home offices, the local Starbucks and shady hotels,” says John Bumgarner, research director for security
technology at the US Cyber Consequences Unit. “They also have to deal with business partners and
customers having access to their networks via VPNs, dial-up connections and Web portals, any of which can
be used to compromise the organization’s resources.”

The vast majority of IP loss incidents are simple errors: posting information to externally facing Web sites
wrongly assumed to be protected or including confidential information in a reply to an e-mail that includes
external recipients. The most successful hacks, says Bumgarner, occur because attackers get lucky,
stumbling across vulnerability while scanning thousands of IP addresses. But the most dangerous attacks
are deliberate.

Without a clear idea about which IP assets most need protecting, CIOs may put their security dollars in the
wrong places. But as with cybercrime generally, perimeter defense goes only so far. Companies need a
cyberdefense strategy that is multilayered with different types of protection at each layer.

One strategy, called “defense in depth”, derives from the military technique for slowing down rather than
trying to stop the advance of an adversary. The model applies when the question is not if, but when, hackers
will break in. “If you reinforce one area, [attackers] will look to another,” says James Lewis, director and
senior fellow with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “The job is to reduce the chance that
they’ll be able to get in.”

Learning to Live with Big Brother
From The Economist print edition, Sep. 27 2007, Copyright © 2008 The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9867324

Look at the new technologies for collecting personal information, and the dangers of abuse.

These days, data about people’s whereabouts, purchases, behavior and personal lives are gathered, stored
and shared on a scale that no dictator of the old school ever thought possible. Most of the time, there is
nothing obviously malign about this. Governments say they need to gather data to ward off terrorism or
protect public health; corporations say they do it to deliver goods and services more efficiently. But the
ubiquity of electronic data-gathering and processing—and above all, its acceptance by the public—is still
astonishing, even compared with a decade ago. Nor is it confined to one region or political system.

Across the rich and not-so-rich world, electronic devices are already being used to keep tabs on ordinary
citizens as never before. Closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) with infra-red night vision peer down at
citizens from street corners, and in banks, airports and shopping malls. Every time someone clicks on a web
page, makes a phone call, uses a credit card, or checks in with a microchipped pass at work, that person
leaves a data trail that can later be tracked. Every day, billions of bits of such personal data are stored, sifted,
analyzed, cross-referenced with other information and, in many cases, used to build up profiles to predict
possible future behavior. Sometimes this information is collected by governments; mostly it is gathered by
companies, though in many cases they are obliged to make it available to law-enforcement agencies and
other state bodies when asked.

What does seem to worry people is the sheer volume of information now being kept on them and the degree
to which it is being made accessible to an ever wider group of individuals and agencies. The government is
now developing the world’s first national children’s database for every child under 18. The National Health
Service database, already the biggest of its kind in Europe, will eventually hold the medical records of all
53m people in England and Wales.

Even more controversial is Britain’s National Identity Register, due to hold up to 49 different items on
everyone living in the country. From 2009, everybody is to be issued with a “smart” biometric ID card, linked
to the national register, which will be required for access to public services such as doctors’ surgeries,
unemployment offices, libraries and the like—leaving a new, readily traceable, electronic data-trail.

As a series of leaks in the past few years has shown, no data are ever really secure. Laptops containing
sensitive data are stolen from cars, backup tapes go missing in transit and hackers can break into databases,
even the Pentagon’s. Then there are “insider attacks”, in which people abuse the access they enjoy through
their jobs. National Health Service workers in Britain were recently reported to have peeked at the intimate
medical details of an unnamed celebrity. All of this can lead to invasions of privacy and identity theft. As the
Surveillance Studies Network concludes in its recent report on the “surveillance society”, drawn up for
Britain’s information commissioner, Richard Thomas, “The jury is out on whether privacy regulation...is not
ineffective in the face of novel threats.”

The Spy in Your Pocket
By Kristina Dell, Time Magazine, March 19, 2006, Copyright 2008 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1174705,00.html

The embrace of mobile phones has far outpaced efforts to keep what we do with them private. That has
cleared the way for a cottage industry devoted to exploiting phone numbers, calling records and even the
locations of unsuspecting subscribers for profit. A second business segment is developing applications like
anonymous traffic monitoring and employee tracking. It’s not just the con artists who are a worry. Every new
mobile-phone technology, even a useful, perfectly legal one, comes with unintended privacy concerns.

Most mobile phones are powerful tracking devices, with globalpositioning systems (GPS) inside. Companies
combine GPS data with information about users to create practical applications. One technology allows
rental-car companies to track their cars with GPS. For about $26 a month per employee, a boss can se up a
“geofence” to track how workers use company-issued cell phones or even if they go home early.

AirSage, for example, gets data from wireless carriers to monitor drivers’ cell-phone signals and map them
over road grids. That lets it see exactly where gridlock is forming and quickly alert drivers to delays and
alternative routes. The data it gets from carriers are aggregated from many users and scrambled, so no one
can track an individual phone.

Younger Workers and Data Security
By James E. Gaskin, Network World, March 13, 2008
http://www.linuxworld.com/columnists/2008/031008gaskin.html

Smart phones, portable music players and social network addiction make for happy Millennials, but sad
security officers. There are almost as many Millennials - born between 1980 and 2000 - as there are Baby
Boomers. Call them the Internet Generation, Echo Boomers or whippersnappers, there’s a bunch of them
now hitting the job market.

Fortune Magazine called the Millennials “the most high-maintenance, but also most high-performing
workforce in the history of the world.” And they’re driving big companies with strict security guidelines crazy
with their demands to use Facebook and Instant Messaging, download any new program they see on the
Web, and sneer at anything not Web-enabled.

It’s one thing to have products that help you stop an employee from copying data to her iPod (and Symantec
does), but another to mesh old-line security people with young “let’s all share everything and talk about it on
MySpace” employees.

Inside the Global Hacking Service Economy
By Scott Berinato, CSO Online, September 2007
http://www.cio.com/article/135500/

This article details the new criminal “service” model for hacking has developed across the globe, full-fledged
e-commerce operations that are slick and accessible, with comprehensive product offerings and a strong
customer focus.

Climate Change ‘Threatens’ European Security
By Tony Barber, Financial Times, March 11 2008
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2b4df7fe-eef5-11dc-97ec-0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=70662e7c-3027-11da-ba9f-
00000e2511c8.html

Climate change poses serious security risks for the European Union, ranging from sharper competition for
global energy resources to the arrival of numerous “environmental migrants”, warns a report prepared for an
EU summit.

The report is the EU’s first in-depth study of the impact of global warming on the bloc’s foreign and security
policies. It identifies several regions where climate change appears all too likely to threaten the EU’s security
or damage its political and economic interests.

“The multilateral system is at risk if the international community fails to address the threats. Climate change
impacts will fuel the politics of resentment between those most responsible for climate change and those
most affected by it ... and drive political tension nationally and internationally,” the report warns.

National Threat Assessment
By: Michael Evans, Defense Editor, The Times, March 20, 2008, © Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3587101.ece

The full gamut of dangers facing Britain, from terrorist plots to disasters caused by climate change, is to be
spelt out by the Government in the form of an annual national threat register, Gordon Brown announced.
A new-style civil defense network, modeled on the Second World War air-raid wardens – “but without the
uniforms” – is also to be set up. Members of the public can join it to help local authorities and emergency
services at a time of national crisis.

As he announced a national security strategy, the Prime Minister made it clear that he wanted the public to
be more involved and better informed about the threats facing this country over the next ten to twenty years.

Robert Hannigan, the Prime Minister’s intelligence and security adviser, confirmed that as part of the
attempts to be more open about security threats, the heads of MI6, MI5 and GCHQ would soon be required
to give evidence in public to MPs. They will appear before the parliamentary Intelligence and Security
Committee (ISC).

The Cabinet Office White Paper emphasized that the overarching aim of the security strategy was to enable
“people to go about their daily lives freely and with confidence”, and with a “reasonable assurance of safety”.

Wrap up...

Posted by William Heath on 11/04/08 at 1:33pm
Categories · "What do we want?" · Foundation of Trust
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Return-to-work freelancer gets unceremoniously flamed in The Reg

El Reg invited me to do my first piece of frelance journalism for several years - an article about Microsoft’s acquisition of Stefan Brands’ U-Prove work. I was never a brilliant journalist and I’m a bit rusty; the piece was longwinded and late. The Reg’s readers give pretty short shrift to most things anyway.

In the dozen or so comments, readers are offended by the suggestion that Jacqui Smith the Home Secretary is a pretty smart woman. Anonymous Coward retorts, for example

Her utterances in post have been utterly without personality; and her entire career would fit better with the theory she’s an energetic loyalist slogger not an imaginitive thinker.

Eponymous Cowherd takes a similar view.

The fact is that few politicians would score that well in a test on tech issues which the average Reg reader would sail through. But they’re called on to apply themselves more or less to every issue Parliament debates or that their constituents come up with. They’re ultimate generalists. I can’t produce Jacqui Smith’s examn results to defend my remarks but I stand by the sentiment that you dont get to be Britain’s first woman Home Secretary without being a smart woman. Furthermore, we won’t get the chance to put to her how important these developments in Internet security and privacy are if we approach her in a dismissive and insulting way. We’ve got to the stage where the intelligent generalist needs to understand the importance of privacy-enhancing technologies in general and minimum disclosure tokens in particular. We need to think carefully how to engage in that conversation.

Meanwhile jubtastic1 and others haul me up, with some justification, for not explaining Dr Brands limited disclosure credentials very clearly. On rereading the article I think that’s a fair cop. Sorry! It’s not insulting to anyone to say 99.9% of us will never understand the maths of Stefan’s solutions - I have a maths A-level and I couldn’t even name the symbols in many of his equations let alone prove whether they add up correctly to something to which I can entrust my personal details online.

Stefan did patiently explain U-Prove to me in a new and different way with analogies based on soap bars with shapes stamped underneath. The problem, as I said, is that he’s solved an emerging problem which, though serious and real, has no simple analogy in the tangible world. Nor does his solution have an analogy in the visible and tangible world; a number of its benefits are counterintuitive.

I guess his video animations are a helpful explanation to which I should have linked earlier. But I have to make it clear again to those who want to _really_ understand his work I’m not the man who can help. I dont _really_ understand it. Anyway, it’s not me that matters, and the world’s cyptographers are not the only ones who matter. Jacqui Smith matters. Ollie Letwin understood it when a FIPR colleague and I explained it to him a few years ago (and a half-hour meeting lasted 90 minutes). The challenge is: how can we ensure the importance of this is put to the Home Secretary? How can it be done in a way that is persuasive?

Posted by William Heath on 11/04/08 at 11:57am
Categories · "What do we want?" · Foundation of Trust · Political engagement
Comments (2) Permalink

10 Apr 2008

Steady progress by the forces of sanity

No2ID pulled off a major coup with its mayoral hustings. Ken didnt show up and was branded a coward by the-man-whom-Ministers-are forbidden-from-calling-Boris, who promised to cut his ID card and “sprinkle it on my cornflakes”. Details from BBC below.

And CAAT has won a High Court ruling that the Government acted unlawfully when it curtailed a corruption investigation into BAE Systems’ Al Yamamah arms deals with Saudi Arabia.

Unfold and continue reading...

Posted by William Heath on 10/04/08 at 5:29pm
Categories · "What do we want?" · Foundation of Trust · Identity
Comments (0) Permalink

09 Apr 2008

Can the ICS avoid the classic largescale IT project design problems?

DCSF recently published a summary of an evaluation of the Integrated Children’s System (ICS), which raises a number of significant issues for the continued and successful implementation of the scheme by local authorities. The research, carried out by York University and funded by the department draws attention to:

Unfold and continue reading...

• The unanticipated scale of organisational change which the implementation of a complex system such as ICS brought about.
• Difficulties in system commissioning and contracting by local authorities - a long-standing issue between local authorities and suppliers which was magnified by the size and scope of the ICS.
It highlights the need for greater cooperation between users in managing IT contracts to ensure that what is delivered is fit for purpose and maximises the benefits of having electronic social care records.
• The need for improvements in social work training to ensure that qualified workers are knowledgeable about the research and conceptual base of the ICS, and are enabled to develop their analytical skills.
• The challenge of reflecting the involvement and voices of the children and families themselves within an electronic system.
• The need for greater support for social workers to use the system appropriately with disabled children and, more particularly, to manage the challenge of assessing children who may be at different developmental stages for different dimensions of their lives.

Supporting and in places improving or intervening in the lives of children living in complicated and at times dysfunctional family settings is enormously skilled work. To make a positive contribution to keeping children safe and well, it seems obvious that an electronic record system must support and promote the authoritative but sensitive, nuanced best practice of social work and other professions - not provide a technocratic, un-feeling underpinning infrastructure. It is therefore concerning that the research uncovered disagreement about

whether the quality of social work practice has been promoted by the system, particularly in relation to direct work with children and their families and carers.

How those experiencing public services FEEL is critical to judging ‘success’ - especially in social care. So alarm bells should ring when research indicates some social workers felt strongly that the documents produced using the system, such as the care plans, were not suitable for sharing with service users: being considered to be too long, the language within them inappropriate and complex, and the information within them too dense to be shared. Some social workers complained that the use of the system obscured information about the family context and resulted in the loss of the ‘stories’ of children’s lives. And critically,

some social workers in the study perceived that they spent more time on record keeping in the office and less time working directly with children and families.

In the full research report, one interviewee said it took 10 times as long to do a care plan under ICS, which meant they were being taken away from the “real social work” of interacting with children and families. (Intriguingly, in the sole piece of emboldened text, the DCSF summary highlights that

In none of the cases examined, however, was data entry social workers’ predominant activity.

Thank goodness for that!

Community Care and El Reg both pick up the story and highlight the fact that the department’s summary downplays or loses some of the more negative elements of the evaluation. Community Care notes that the full research piece highlights complaints by social workers that the ICS was promoting form-driven social work that could threaten the profession’s values and good practice:

Researchers concluded that the system, based on a series of tick-box forms, was not tailored to individual children, and failed to ask important questions of some children while asking others that were irrelevant, resulting in “bland analyses”. The report said: “The process was felt to diminish analysis and risk assessment. There were particular concerns about risk because it was unclear where the information would be located.”

Despite a clear softening of messages, it seems to me that there’s plenty in the DCSF’s own summary for the implementation teams to work on, if they really want to get the ICS right and avoid the classic technical, social and behavioural problems which have best large IT implementations in the recent past. It’s worrying therefore that The Register quotes the department dismissing the research completely:

because “the research does not provide a sound basis on which to judge the potential value of the ICS”.

WIBBI we look back in 3 years and can see the ICS was an exemplar of excellence (listening, responding, testing, adjusting), and not a repeat of the problems designed into the CSA IT system.

Wrap up...

Posted by Ruth Kennedy on 09/04/08 at 8:17am
Categories · "What do we want?" · Design: user-oriented · Foundation of Trust
Comments (2) Permalink

08 Apr 2008

ID: outstanding questions on The Benighted Scheme

I dont really get this. An eyewitness made a contempory note of Meg Hillier telling the Home Affairs Select cttee

The National Identity Register, essentially, will be a secure database; ...hack-proof, not connected to the Internet...not be accessible online; any links with any other agency will be down encrypted links.

I understand the officials present were passing notes to try to get her back on message. What appears in the official record is is

The National Identity Register, essentially, will be a secure database; it will not be accessible online; any links with any other agency will
be down encrypted links.

Why ws that toned down? If it’s not accessible online what is the use of it? Will people have to send CDs to each other? But if it is linked live to other agencies isnt that online?

Also, now we’re procuring the damn thing, do we know what will be on the card? Do we know how people authenticate the card, and what they can check?

I suspect it’s too much to try to get answers to all these questions. What would be really great is if we could get a list of all the outstanding questions about how the Benighted Scheme is supposed to work. Vey glad of any help and thoughts. Delighted to get contributions and clarifications form our loyal readers inside IPS.

Posted by William Heath on 08/04/08 at 1:55pm
Categories · "What do we want?" · Foundation of Trust · Identity
Comments (8) Permalink

06 Apr 2008

Coming soon, it seems: petitions in da House

Oh wow. Prompted by those headline-seekers at #10 a Commons Committee has decided to open up the House to the idea of e-petitions, arguing (with some logic) that it is to Parliament we should be petitioning - not to the PM - and that our MPs ought to be involved in the process (see earlier post here).

The Procedures Committee has just released its report with the pros and cons, and recommending their preferred option here including a way we can petition to www.parliament.uk and have three Westminster Hall debates a year (ie not full-on debates in the Chamber, but well worth having and often of pretty good quality I gather).Procedures Committee chair Greg Knight MP says in the press release (full text below)

“Historically and constitutionally the House of Commons is the place to which petitions should properly be presented. It is time for the House to reclaim that role in the internet age.”

They point out that the e-petitions service has seen #10 get petitions at levels the House has not seen since the end of the C19th (which would have been the slave trade abolitionists I guess)

So - what should we petition on for those first three Westminster Hall debates? I reckon

1. We ask Parliament to create and endorse a long-term plan to reduce our economic dependence on the arms trade
2. ....and for evidence-based raionalisation of our drug laws with the aim of reducing the harm done to society and
3. ...and for some sort of legal ownership of our own data including biometrics with criminal sanctions for abuse

Whaddyerreckon?

Unfold and continue reading...

Procedure Committee
Select Committee Press Release
House of Commons London SW1P 3JA

Media enquiries Liz Parratt 07917 488978

Embargoed: not to be published in any form before 00.01 am Sunday 6 April 2008

‘> Commons should have e-petitions> ‘> say MPs

The House of Commons Procedure Committee today publishes a report on e-Petitions, proposing a scheme which would:

* Enable e-petitions to be submitted via www.parliament.uk;
* Retain the direct involvement of constituency MPs in the petitions procedure;
* Lead to three Westminster Hall debates based on petitions every year.

A four month inquiry by the Committee concluded that e-petitioning offers a simple, effective and transparent way for the public to tell MPs about what matters to them and to indicate levels of support for their concerns. The Committee> ‘> s proposed scheme would provide petitioners with advice and support and with a route to follow up the petition after its presentation > -> as well as improving engagement and transparency.

Experience elsewhere, particularly on the 10 Downing Street website, has demonstrated high levels of public interest and engagement. In its first year of operation the Downing Street site received some 29,000 petitions and 5.5 million signatures. The House of Commons has not experienced a comparable volume since the late nineteenth century.

Chairman Greg Knight MP said:

“Historically and constitutionally the House of Commons is the place to which petitions should properly be presented. It is time for the House to reclaim that role in the internet age.”

The Committee also considered the possible risks, including trivial or > ‘> mischievous> ‘> petitions; costs; implications for MPs> ‘> workload, and the consequences of failure.

The report concludes that if e-petitioning is to attract the widest possible range of users, it will need to be able to adapt and respond to their expectations, and to cope with potentially high and unpredictable levels of demand: the introduction of e-petitioning in itself will raise expectations and the House will need to show that it is willing and able to respond.

Greg Knight continued:

“> We are not aware of any other existing scheme of comparable scale and ambition. It has the potential to open up the House> ‘> s proceedings in new and to some extent unpredictable ways.> “>

The Committee> ‘> s recommendations are likely to be debated by the House of Commons this summer.

/ends

NOTE FOR EDITORS:
The Procedure Committee considers the practice and procedure of the House in the conduct of public business. The Committee was nominated on 13 July 2005. Mr Greg Knight became Chairman of the Committee on 9 November 2005.

1 Government view: in The Governance of Britain, the Government stated that it believed that the House of Commons should have > ‘> up to date procedures for considering petitions> ‘> and that > ‘> people should be able to petition the House of Commons with as much ease as they should be able to petition the Prime Minister.> ‘> (Cm 7170, para 151 and 161). In its response to the Committee> ‘> s previous report the Government repeated its support for an e-petitions system (Cm 7193, para 3).

2 History: the petitioning of the House of Commons has a long history stretching back at least to the late middle ages.

Originally petitions were overwhelmingly requests for the redress of personal grievances.
Petitions requesting changes in general legislation or public policy first came to prominence in the early years of the seventeenth century.

Radical politicians such as John Wilkes used them for purposes of national agitation in the second half of the eighteenth century and it is from that time the modern form of public petition may be said to date. >

The early years of the nineteenth century saw a dramatic increase in the numbers of petitions presented to the House of Commons. In the five years ending in 1805, 1,026 were presented > -> a figure broadly comparable with the numbers we experience today some two hundred years later. In the five years ending in 1831, however, 24,492 were presented. Many of these petitions related to the need for parliamentary reform and in particular to the passage of what has become known as the Great Reform Act of 1832.

The petitions presented in support of that Act were the first example of what became a series of major campaigns fought during the nineteenth century in which mass petitions to the House of Commons played a significant part. In 1843, 33,898 petitions were received, the largest number ever in a single session.

The history of petitions in the twentieth century was broadly one of decline. Since the 1912 > -> 13 parliamentary session (when nearly 10,000 petitions were presented against the Established Church (Wales) Bill) the number of petitions presented in a single session exceeded one thousand only once (in 1988 > -> 89, where many were in favour of legislation to protect the human embryo). Nonetheless petitions with very large numbers of signatures continued to be presented either from organisations (motoring organisations petitioned against motor taxation in 1927 and for the restoration of the basic petrol ration in 1948) or on major issues of political controversy (eg for the prohibition of atomic weapons in 1950 > -> 51).

3 Details of the Committee> ‘> s preferred option:

* E-petitions can be submitted via www.parliament.uk;
* If they comply with the House> ‘> s rules, the petitioner> ‘> s constituency MP will be asked to act as facilitator;
* The e-petition is then posted on the parliamentary website for a set period. Others may add their names to it;
* At the end of the period, it is closed. Members will be able to indicate support for it.
* It is then presented to the house, either electronically or on the floor;
* Petitioners and signatories may opt in to receive updates on the progress of the e-petition and/or up to two emails from their constituency MP;
* E-petitions will then be printed in Hansard and sent to select committees and may be considered by them;
* The Government will normally be expected to reply within two months of presentation;
* On three occasions each year, certain e-petitions will be debated by the House of Commons in Westminster Hall.

FURTHER INFORMATION:
Media Enquiries: Liz Parratt 07917 488978 parrattl@parliament.uk
Specific Committee Information: Tel 020 7219 3318, email: proccom@parliament.uk
Committee Website: http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/procedure_committee.cfm
Watch committees and parliamentary debates online: www.parliamentlive.tv
Publications / Reports / Reference Material: Copies of all select committee reports are available from the Parliamentary Bookshop (12 Bridge St, Westminster, 020 7219 3890) or the Stationery Office (0845 7023474). Committee reports, press releases, evidence transcripts, Bills; research papers, a directory of MPs, plus Hansard (from 8am daily) and much more, can be found on www.parliament.uk

FURTHER INFORMATION:

1. Committee Membership is as follows:

Rt Hon Greg Knight MP (Con, Yorkshire East) (Chairman)

Ms Celia Barlow MP (Lab, Hove)
Mr Christopher Chope (Con, Christchurch)
Ms Katy Clark MP (Lab, North Ayrshire & Arran)
Mr Roger Gale MP (Con, North Thanet)
Andrew Gwynne MP (Lab, Denton & Reddish)
John Hemming MP (LibDem, Birmingham, Yardley)
Mr Eric Illsley MP (Lab, Barnsley Central) Mrs Siân C. James MP (Lab, Swansea East)>
Rosemary McKenna CBE MP (Lab, Cumbernauld,
Kilsyth & Kirkintilloch East)
Mrs Linda Riordan MP (Lab, Halifax)
Sir Robert Smith MP (LibDem, West Aberdeenshire &
Kincardine)
Mr Rob Wilson MP (Con, Reading East)

Wrap up...

Posted by William Heath on 06/04/08 at 9:15pm
Categories · Political engagement
Comments (1) Permalink

04 Apr 2008

Good dinner with bad memes

I can’t reveal the identity or affiliation of any participant at the tasty and interesting dinner I attended last night. I believe (under the revised Rule) I can say it was at the House of Lords. I can definitely say there are some very dodgy memes flying around.

One is the notion that we can decline to “buy into” the European legislative framework and case law behind the UK’s data protection act and data sharing plans. The European Convention on Human Rights and Data Protection directive have legal force here. We can’t just dismiss them as Euro-constiutional claptrap, insufficiently pragmatic for us Brits (any more than I can say I think our laws on tax or whatever aren’t quite right and that I don’t really “buy into them").

Another is a distinct, probably unintended but seriously wrong elitist vibe which suggests it’s intolerable for the media to intrude into the lives of those who run the country, therefore the top 5% need extreme protection from revelations about their private lives. But when conversation turns to hoi polloi people are spoken of as immigrant tax-dodging scroungers of social services and healthcare. Our national situation is one requiring monolithic ID management and a toxic soup of data sharing. Facing the national problems we do a general loss of privacy isn’t a great price to pay.

People who desperately need a giro cheque will give away any amount of personal information to feed the kids. That’s why they need every bit as much statutory and practical privacy protection as anyone else. We’re all in this together. Just as we’re equal in the eyes of the law so too the systems we create must be good enough for one and all of us in how they protect our personal data and leave us in control of our own lives.

By all means put casual service-sector workers in businesses with 125% staff turnover (Rentokil, apparently) on 50% emergency tax rates while the employers and the system works out who they are, and that they haven’t claimed their allowances already.

The other weird meme is this self-repairing bubble of mutual self-congratulation. Reasonable people tell you in all seriousness that everything is fine and that Whitehall generally and the CIO profession in particular is doing a great job. The same people will reel off a list of dire specific shortcomings, whether it’s procurement processes, large government web sites, political interference, Transformational Government, Connecting for Health, DirectGov search. But as fast as they acknowledge specific shortcomings, the bubble of self-belief self-heals. I can’t work that one out. Surely there are some mistaken assumptions underlying this?

Posted by William Heath on 04/04/08 at 10:00pm
Categories · "What do we want?" · Foundation of Trust · Data nitwittery · "Transformational Government"
Comments (1) Permalink

The individual as a business; the citizen as Ministry

Check this out from Alan Mitchell’s “right side up” buyer-centric commerce forum:

The individual as a business

There is a simple question at the heart of person-centric commerce: whose profitability are we trying to improve? In our current organisation-centric world, there is only one answer to this question: the organisation. But now there is another answer: the individual.

Today, big businesses employ armies of advisors, consultants and agents to help them achieve their goals and act on their behalf. They reward these advisors, consultants and agents to the extent and degree that they help the business achieve what it wants to achieve: improved performance, increased profitability etc.

Right Side Up businesses and services bring the same approach to individuals. Individuals pay them to help them achieve their goals more efficiently and more effectively and to act on their behalf – to help them improve their performance and increase their profitability *.

This talk about ‘personal profitability’ is not just metaphorical, it’s literal too. The Right Side Up service addresses each individual as a legitimate business in its own right, because it recognises that individuals do all the things businesses do.

* Of course, one of the big differences between big organisations and individuals is that individuals define ‘performance’ and ‘profitability’ in many different ways. ‘Profit’ may be emotional rather than financial, for example.

Like any business, the individual:

* sets strategies to achieve goal, sources inputs, processes them into outputs or desired outcomes etc.

* has to manage many different departments or functions: my home, my health, my money, my transport, my communications etc. Naturally, the individual wants to run these departments better.

* manages many processes to do this: set goals, make plans, set priorities, make decisions, conduct exchanges and transactions, do work, coordinate activities, oversee logistics, administer things, keep records, and so on.

* invests assets such as time, money, energy and attention in managing these departments and processes – and naturally seeks the best possible return on these investments.

Right Side Up services bring professional expertise and specially designed infrastructure to help individuals improve their performance and profitability on all these fronts. Organisations that view and treat individuals as customers of their particular organisation, buying particular products and services, simply cannot ‘see’ this potential.

That’s a fantastic statement of the sort of “corrective” thinking we need to apply to Transformational Government to make it work and to make public services that are respectful of human dignity.

Posted by William Heath on 04/04/08 at 12:34pm
Categories · "What do we want?" · Wibbipedia/MindtheGap · Design: Co-creation · Foundation of Trust
Comments (0) Permalink

03 Apr 2008

Patient Opinion: you can’t fool a good SRO

Picked up by the IdealGov concealed microphones at a recent CIO meeting, spoken (it would seem) by the senior responsible officer for spending £25m a year of taxpayers’ money on NHS Choices

“You should see this other site...”

Quite right. NHS Choices’ “voice” function promises to be more expensive and less well moderated than the existing and simple-to-use Patient Opinion. But most serious of all, it won’t be independent at all. The idea is we voluntarily voice our feedback via NHS Choices into a crown copyright publi-private partnership, so future secretaries of state can use our data to make politicised editorials and some outfit like Dr Fosters can mine it as intellectual property. Je pense pas; non, noooooon, non! Geklauten Daten? Nein Danke!

Wibbi: we applied all three core IdealGov principles in one go here. We score a quick win, we use a process of co-creation, and dig deep to build gov 2.0 on a foundation of trust. All we have to do is use the money we’re going to waste on some arm-manufacturing contractor writing a £multi-million Transport-Direct/DirectGov/BusinessLink type EU-rules procured NHS Choices/Voices clunketerium web site. Instead we could use a fifth the money to promote and roll out the creative-commons and not-for-profit Patient Opinion faster. At the very least we could remove the “planning blight” NHS Chioices/Voices casts on Patient Opinion, which works nationally already with simple clean design, exemplary tagging, moderation and flexible feedback options.

JFDDI! Desist! The senior officials know it makes sense. I think the Minister in charge is Dawn Primarolo (not Ben Bradshaw. Or Alan Johnson is top dog at health.) Gordon - have a word would you? [Thought: perhaps we could install an IdealGov-branded Middlesboro’-style talking CCTV camera in #10, so we can keep an eye on the PM and also offer him some top tips at convenient moments 24/7]

Posted by William Heath on 03/04/08 at 10:57pm
Categories · "What do we want?" · Design: Co-creation · Foundation of Trust · Save Time and Money · Power of Information
Comments (0) Permalink

Biometric Bus Pass Arrives, but not as ID

My new “biometric” bus pass card finally arrived this morning – complete with a 16 page book of confusing rules which basically says that the rules are very complicated so we should always “ask the driver” whether our cards are valid for each particular journey!

For example, it seems that we can travel from the hospital in the next county before 09:30 or after 23:00; but not from the closer hospital in our county town! With a “companion” we can apparently travel to/from a much more distant specialist hospital; something we apparently cannot do alone!

In spite of the expense of this new scheme, this new card is little use as ID: Unlike the previous bus pass, this one has no space for the user’s signature (the back is covered with yet more rules). Also, the “passport grade” photo they demanded will often not look like the user – eg. No spectacles etc.

Surprisingly, in this era of “social inclusion” there are two types and colours of card – although both have exactly the same benefits: The “elderly” have a wide red stripe and the “disabled” have an orange stripe.

Wibbis:
1. New initiatives occasionally made life simpler!
2. Officialdom was not so keen on inventing new rules.
3. Some thought had been given to producing a multi-purpose card.

Posted by Richard S on 03/04/08 at 1:36pm
Categories · "What do we want?" · Foundation of Trust · Identity
Comments (5) Permalink

02 Apr 2008

Government rebranding disease spreads to URLs

It’s all very well Cab-in-a-Toffice renaming itself Dburr or Deafferer rebranding as Office of the deputy Prime Minister’s ego. What’s a few new brass plates and a corporate redesign between taxpayers? But this sort of thing is wholly unnecessary:

Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:49:46 +0100
From: Adam Bahadoor
To: varioussubjectsdetained@hermajestyspleasure.com
Subject: Government News Network
Message-ID: <47F372DA.363A.00C8.0@coi.gsi.gov.uk>

Dear Detainee

I am writing to you from the Central Office of Information News Distribution Service.

On 1 April 2008 the Government News Network (GNN) and the News Distribution Service (NDS) will become part of COIs News and PR Group. The look and branding of this site have therefore changed, although the services remain the same.

From 1 April 2008 the link - http://www.gnn.gov.uk will no longer exists. You will be re-directed to our new page on http://nds.coi.gov.uk . This will have affect eventually to subscriber of your RSS feed, unless you make the necessary changes.

Happy to discuss further

Adam

Adam Bahadoor
Business Development Manager
News Distribution Service
Hercules House
Hercules Road
London
SE1 7DU

Email: adam.bahadoor[at]gnn.gsi.gov.uk

But Adam...but...but...but

As Sir Bonar would say: “Desist, whippersnappers! And give us back our streams of data!”

WIBBI people thought about the URLs that they wanted people to use…

Unfold and continue reading...

Posted by William Heath on 02/04/08 at 1:53pm
Categories · "What do we want?" · Power of Information
Comments (2) Permalink

Page 2 of 94 pages < 1 2 3 4 > Last »

Ideal Government

Let's say what we want from e-enabled government. Let's observe government first-hand. Let's say "Wouldn't It Be Better If" (WIBBI). Become an ethnographer of bureaucracy today! It beats getting frustrated with public services.

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16 Apr 2008

No 10 asks more of the right questions…

15 Apr 2008

ID: Genealogy of a Biometrics Company

13 Apr 2008

ID: bid risk and the vulnerability of IPS

11 Apr 2008

Trust, Personalisation and Dingle Dell Corner

Is this “security & society index” the right start point for creating ideal e-enabled government?

Return-to-work freelancer gets unceremoniously flamed in The Reg

10 Apr 2008

Steady progress by the forces of sanity

09 Apr 2008

Can the ICS avoid the classic largescale IT project design problems?

08 Apr 2008

ID: outstanding questions on The Benighted Scheme

06 Apr 2008

Coming soon, it seems: petitions in da House

04 Apr 2008

Good dinner with bad memes

The individual as a business; the citizen as Ministry

03 Apr 2008

Patient Opinion: you can’t fool a good SRO

Biometric Bus Pass Arrives, but not as ID

02 Apr 2008

Government rebranding disease spreads to URLs

Ideal Government

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16 Apr 2008

No 10 asks more of the right questions…

15 Apr 2008

ID: Genealogy of a Biometrics Company

13 Apr 2008

ID: bid risk and the vulnerability of IPS

11 Apr 2008

Trust, Personalisation and Dingle Dell Corner

Is this “security & society index” the right start point for creating ideal e-enabled government?

Return-to-work freelancer gets unceremoniously flamed in The Reg

10 Apr 2008

Steady progress by the forces of sanity

09 Apr 2008

Can the ICS avoid the classic largescale IT project design problems?

08 Apr 2008

ID: outstanding questions on The Benighted Scheme

06 Apr 2008

Coming soon, it seems: petitions in da House

04 Apr 2008

Good dinner with bad memes

The individual as a business; the citizen as Ministry

03 Apr 2008

Patient Opinion: you can’t fool a good SRO

Biometric Bus Pass Arrives, but not as ID

02 Apr 2008

Government rebranding disease spreads to URLs

Ideal Government

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