Pertinent Art

Art that speaks to our condition...books, plays, films, TV, painting, sculpture or whatever that helps us understand the brave new world of cheap efficient and effective serices, or illustrate what it is to maintain human dignity in the face of mechanical state services administered by rule-based machines.

01 Mar 2008

Onion TV: Diebold accidentally leaks results of 2008 US elections early

The latest Diebold gaffe has leaked the results of the 2008 US Presidential elections early, says Onion TV.


Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Verily, the Onion goes from strength to strength. The production values are fab. And is the main presenter a machinima character, or “treated” live actor? I can’t decide.

 

12 Feb 2008

Dance of the intellectual pygmies: a pledge

Readers of long standing may recall that some years ago those derided by forces of darkness as “intellectual pygmies” had occasion to dance at the resignation of David Blunkett. Then we danced again when Charles Clarke got axed.

We didn’t dislike them. These were happy occasions, not triumphalist or partisan. We don’t hate anyone. It’s just that we think a centralised government monopoly on biometric ID is a bad policy which has been dishonestly promoted. To paraphrase the IPS slogan, we love everyone and want everyone treated with respect. Let’s keep it that way.

It’s just possible we may have the chance to dance again soon. Rumours of deep rumblings about the future of this policy reach IdealGov’s idyllic HQ. Can it be possible that the money has talked, and that the bullsh*t of years will have to walk? Now, it’s not our job to report on rumours or gossip. But I do hereby solemnly pledge:

If or when the ID Scheme is cancelled, and assuming that the forces of reason such as No2ID throw the mother of all parties to celebrate, then I William Heath (being of relatively sound mind but frankly not generally known as an exuberant dancer) will execute, Peter-Crouch-like, a short, specially created “dance of the intellectual pygmies” in celebration. Furthermore, I shall invite - to their complete astonishment - my friend Phil Booth and Chris Pounder (whom I admire but know less well) to join me on stage in performing this specially created dance.

Great. Now I’m excited. Can someone brief me please on where we’re got to?

 

05 Feb 2008

Obama “Yes we can” instantly set to music

Look what Will-i-am (what a cool name, like a William version of Sam-i-am from Green Eggs and Ham) from the Black-Eyed Peas did with Barack Obama’s losing speech at New Hampshire, now spreading via Youtube:

Wow. Warning to politically-minded British pop stars: Do not try this with the great clunking fist, or indeed with any of them. It won’t work. Obama has a special lyrical content.

 

24 Jan 2008

The chemistry of Governmentium

T sends me this chemists’ joke…

 

04 Dec 2007

Pertinent art gets the nod from the cognoscenti

We love pertinent art, ie art which describes our relationship with the state. And look: State Britain - a classic piece of pertinent art based on the Brian Haw protest - has just won some arty farty prize! Hurrah!

The reason we need pertinent art in the benighted world of government IT is that the things that are going wrong (from HMRC discs via ID Systems, eCAF and eBorders to Connecting for Health) go deeper than technical or managerial nitwittery. Like climate change, it’s firmly in the category of “spiritual crisis”. We’re beholden to the wrong beliefs (money, efficiency, centralisation) and we’ve got the wrong principles ("personalised" services that treat people like ciphers, rules based discrimination, citizen-centric which means citizen focussed in the manner of a laser guided bomb). Where is the love, as Donny and Roberta used to sing? We don’t know what we want, or why we’re doing what we’re doing.

Artists can express this. They can express anything.

Matey here expresses our visceral frustration that democracy has taken us to war. War is one of those far-from-ideal things governments get up to. They pretend it’s all grown-up and necessary and “if only you knew what we knew”. In fact we all know it does more to destroy human happiness than anything else, it’s very expensive, and doesn’t create the climate of listening and respect in which justice can start to be done and peace prevail. It’s great for BAE of course, and Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and a zillion others. But their view should not prevail.

WIBBI the military-industrial complex was required by law to publish a 30-50 year plan to switch entirely to peaceful technologies? WIBBI we had the deeper conversation, prompted by artists and people like Beardie we need to have to get our transformation to an e-enabld society right?

 

18 Nov 2007

Halo Britain

The new reality in Britain seems to have Waterloo Station morphing into a scene from an insanely violent computer game.

We wanted a succinct vision of an ideal e-enabled future...looks like the exercise of state power on our streets will look increasingly like something out of Halo.

 

09 Nov 2007

And from our special correspondent….

Initiatives such as ContactPoint and eCAF to improve sharing of social care information continue to provoke controversy. In light of the fears that surround the use of technology in the public sector, one of our favourite think tanks* today suggests that we should be looking ‘backwards not forwards’ (sorry Tony), for a solution.

The obvious answer is to keep social care records in Latin.

This is already a proven approach. Traditionally doctors wrote prescriptions in Latin, with the advantage that only trained professionals could understand what they meant. The doctor and the pharmacist knew what medication the patient was using, but for the bulk of the population (including the patients themselves) the prescription was pretty meaningless. Exactly the same benefits would apply to latin social care records. Professionals could communicate with each other, but with the exception of lawyers, archaeologists, and priests, few members of the public would be able to understand what they were saying. And if you can’t trust lawyers and priests, who can you trust?

Sadly, the use of latin in prescriptions has largely been overtaken by modern medication and 21st century technology. Today only a few standard abbreviations remain in use. But the solution worked well for about 600 years. We doubt whether eCAFS and ContactPoint will prove as durable.

Of course there will be some objections to this idea. For example, it would involve teaching latin to at least 250,000 social workers (five times the combination of 35,000 family doctors and 16,000 community pharmacists). But this is just a temporary problem. Faced with a limited range of career options there are already 16,000 pupils who obtain a classics GCSE each year (30,000 study social sciences at the same stage). With a wider range of caring professions open to them, the supply of candidates with a GCSE pass would surely increase. In the meantime, we estimate that 250,000 existing social workers could be taught latin for just £1.7bn. This represents just 6% of the annual cost of social services. If the programme was spread over three years it would add a mere 2% to the budget. At first glance, this may look like a large amount of money. It is, we admit, more than 40 times the £40m cost of Contactpoint, but on the other hand it is only a quarter of the cost of the NHS National Programme for IT. Surely a small price to pay for privacy.

In 600 years time, with their privacy intact, a grateful public will have forgotten about the initial cost - or so the argument goes.

So while some may accuse us of being luddites, we commend social care records in latin as the obvious way forward for a durable, and secure solution, that avoids technology risk.

Or I THINK that’s what they said...?

.

 

05 Jul 2007

I work on the Identity Card System for the UK Government…

Leafing around for some other stuff I came across this striking No2ID ad. I hadnt seen it in the press.

It makes a powerful point. And it is a bit spooky. Does the model come from the ugly agency? He’s certainly not very appealing: smug, geeky in a bad way, sinister hairdo and weird beard. Does the ad incite racial hatred? He looks Semitic or Middle Eastern of some sort. Let’s file it under pertinent art (which is fair enough) and see what happens. But it wouldn’t be as effective if the model were Joanna Lumley, would it? So it must be playing to stereotypes. But doesnt everything? Ooh, I’m all in a quandary now…

 

18 Jun 2007

Directionless strikes again

A conversation on the exemplary Jeremy Gould’s site observes that

direct.gov.uk has a long way to go before being useful.

I couldn’t agree more. My search for my old boss, Jeremy Heywood, newly appointed from his sojourn at Morgan Stanley to the post of (the incoming) PM’s senior adviser on domestic policy and strategy, revealed a very helpful set of links from Google, and, well, you will need to look for yourselves at what Directgov found for me…
 

14 Jun 2007

ThePublicOffice: morning-after reflections on the Sensational Experience

It’s publicly official! We’ve had a sensational ideal government walk-thru experience. Ruth and I have been a bit preoccupied creating it and therefore perhaps a little quiet on this blog. Forgive us, but I hope you’ll agree the efforts were not in vain.

Inpsired by our dear friends at the NCC and with the support of Cable & Wireless, EDS and Nortel on behalf of the new Innovative Communications Alliance we engaged the LikePeopleDo team at Central St Martins College of Art & Design. They created ThePublicOffice, a space where we can all work together to redesign public services around the needs of users. It responds to the challenge earlier this year by Sir Gus O’Donnell that

ʻWe need more innovative ways of conveying to public service leaders that transformation is all about the customerʼ

Nick Leon at Naked Eye did some exemplary ethnography for us, just looking at public services through the eyes of people when they really need them. You can see the stories the five families shared on ThePublicOffice web site.

ThePublicOffice ran a series of workshops over 12 and 13th June amidst the vibrant din of GCExpo, Smart Healthcare and Procurement Solutions shows at Earls Court. And guess what? It works! Hurrah.

Click the image to see Shirley, Andrew, Victoria and Jeremy’s story

 

12 May 2007

Pertinent ID art - and let’s dance

The fun-loving and smarter-than-you-think No2ID campaign has quietly been building up a gallery of Pertinent Art

They’re saying that Jack Straw is lined up for Home Secretary and may axe ID cards (Telegraph, Guardian etc). Are they just teasing us? Or should we be rehearsing the Dance of the Intellectual Pygmies (previously seen here and here

 

10 May 2007

Is this Dilbert’s answer to the civil servant blogging problem?

Dilbert comic strip

 

17 Apr 2007

Pertinent art of the evil bunny

From Gapingvoid:

 

16 Apr 2007

Walter Ferguson’s government IT calypso

Andy Kershaw plays the Costa Rican Walter Ferguson’s eminently pertinent government IT calypso, with the catchy chorus:

Computer tell them this
computer tell them that
and the officials they hall agree
Computer tell them the devil knows what and they take the pension from me

That’s a shoe-in for the next office party I reckon. Walter warns us

If you are a computer, keep away from me.

They are, he assures us, wicked talking parrots.

 

31 Mar 2007

Even Dr Who cant make the hospital IT work

Remember the flatulent Slitheen with their exploding ID cards and massive weapons of destruction ready to go off in 45 seconds? Now Dr Who storms back with some more top government IT pertinent art.

The “Royal Hope Hospital” (essentially St Thomas’s) gets transported to the moon inside a sealed bubble by the Judoon (space-rhinceroses police who operate very much like ID registration officials). They scare everyone witless, rudely scan foreheads to ensure they are human and then clear off leaving all to die of suffocation and a massive magnetic overdose.

To start to solve the mystery the Doctor has to identify a mystery patient. But even his fabulous sonic screwdriver can’t make the hospital IT work.

Where do they get their plotlines grin ?

No prizes for guessing which of these three is the ID registration officer

 
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BLOGS etc
 Bruce Schneier
Jeff Jonas, IBM
Jerry Fishenden
Headshift
Ian Brown
Kim Cameron, MS
Matthew Somerville
Public strategist
Richard Allan
Robin Wilton, Sun
Sam Smith
Stefan Brands, Credentica
Toby Stevens, EPG
Whitehall Webby
Will Davies

CRITICAL FRIENDS
 Action on Rights for Children
Big Opt-Out
FIPR
Light blue touchpaper
NHS23
No2ID
Perfect e-democracy
Spy blog
Verified Voting

PERTINENT ART
ACLU privacy pizza
Very model of a notional identity
Swizz of the cards
Handelsman: NSA wiretaps
Handelsman: US spying
Wearcam
Googlezon
Three dead trolls
Stefanos Pantagis

ESSENTIALS
Cluetrain Manifesto
RAE Dilemmas of Privacy
NCC Playlist for public services
Sousveillance
Stefan Brands' book summary
Ross Anderson book

Engelbart Mother of all demos
OTHER ID/SECURITY
 ID theft spy
Planet Identity
Pledgebank for refuseniks
Home Office ID cards
Credentica
Ann Cavoukian, Ontario


MYSOCIETY & SAM'S STUFF
 MySociety/
They work for you
Fax your MP
DirectionlessGov
Comment on This

...and the original
Stand ID card campaign
PUBLIC SERVANT BLOGS
 David Milliband
Read my day
Lynne Featherstone MP
David Copperfield - police
Roy Taylor, Kingston
ReadmyDay
Bill Sticker - parking
Ealing Magistrate
Cllr Andrew Brown
Reynolds/Ambulance

MAPS MASHUPS WE LIKED...
 Plymouth Schools
Ben's UK speed cameras
5-day weather forecast
House sale prices
g-Traffic info
Place-O-Pedia

For Google maps mashups see
 Googlemapsmania blog

ADVISERS, NGOs
 Advice now
Advice Services Alliance
Advice UK
Citizens' Advice


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