Saturday 30 November 2013

midata – the service you can trust

midata had one of its "turns" recently.

There was a sudden rash of publicity.

Ctrl-Shift News published Midata Learnings on 20 November 2013. "Learnings" is the new word for lessons and a review of the research work done by the midata Innovation Lab (mIL) is full of them:
In her speech at the Showcase event, held at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, Jo Swinson discussed the notion of ‘affordances’ – how an item designed to do one thing can usually be used to do many other things too. You don’t just sit on chairs for example. You may stand on one in order to change a light bulb.
Then the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) announced the release of The midata innovation opportunity. One of the learnings from mIL, according to the Executive Summary, is that:
Initiatives like the midata Innovation Lab can greatly accelerate the development of new concepts and approaches by creating an environment where diverse stakeholders can collaborate, learn from each other and experiment.
What new concepts, you want to ask, but you already know the answer – affordances.

And then from Mount Olympus there was a pronouncement from Mydex.

You will remember that Mydex believes that midata is historically inevitable, that resistance is futile, and that resistance is anyway irrational – midata is good for us.

They've revealed this learning to us before and yesterday they repeated it in The role of the individual in "digital by default" public services:
In conclusion and in summary I hope I've made the case that the deliberate and conscious introduction of a measure of personal control over personal data in this information age is
  • inevitable, desirable and essential
  • feasible, and an immediate priority ...
  • immensely valuable to local public services ...
Some mysteries remain. How do you distinguish personal data from other data? In what way does the individual have control over his or her personal data?

But one thing is clear, according to Mydex. Beveridge got it wrong. His recipe for the welfare state omitted an essential ingredient – the personal data store (PDS).

And what do Mydex supply?

As luck would have it, PDSs – the missing link, "the key building block for this next stage is called Mydex".

Mydex believes that local authorities should connect with their parishioners via PDSs. That is no more than the historically inevitable correction of Beveridge. Moreover:
By connecting with them you have already fully equipped them for the GDS ID assurance process which will be required for next generation online public services rolling out within months.
Unmentioned by BIS (apart from a glancing reference on p.7 of their report bottom right), Mydex make it clear that midata is an essential part of the Government Digital Service's identity assurance programme, IDA:
Some people – thinking here for example Cabinet Office’s Government Digital Service – make doing it right seem easy, but these are rare and valuable people [as opposed to all the other common and worthless people].
IDA has been pronounced dead by some, including DMossEsq. Mydex believe that identity-assured public services will be rolled out "within months". We shall see, therefore, within months, who is right.

Mydex remind us that there are five so-called "identity providers" who have been appointed for the UK:
Along with the Post Office, Verizon, and Experian Mydex is one of five services contracted by GDS to provide ID assurance for digital by default public services.
Why can't they bring themselves to mention Digidentity, the fifth "identity provider"?

Bad blood between them?

Maybe.

Certainly relations with Experian, the credit referencing agency, can't be cordial. "Why would a Council connect to Mydex?", Mydex asks:
There are a host of practical reasons why local public services would connect to Mydex.

It’s easy to do. It’s a clean, standard API, easier that connecting to Facebook Connect or a credit agency’s data checking service, and without the downside of leeching data to third parties, contributing to the dubious economy of mechanically extracted aggregation of data about people you’re trying to serve, which sees them compared to bland archetypes and subjected to Kafkaesque scoring algorithms. Instead of all that the local authority can connect directly to real people [or at least to real PDSs], in all their diversity and complexity, with a single standard connection.
No-one wants to deal with a Kafkaesque leech.

And we don't have to, because when it comes to Mydex:
The end to end service is ISO27001 certified and tScheme compliant. Mydex is a founder member of the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and the Open Identity Exchange which GDS has entrusted with running government’s ID assurance pilots. The Mydex connection is available via GCloud.
Your attention may be drawn to the G-Cloud reference. Two historical inevitabilities in one. Not only the historical inevitability of PDSs but also the historical inevitability of cloud computing previously conveyed to us from another peak in the Olympus range, Stephen Fry.

Well spotted. But you have a little more work to do yet.

Take a look at the claim that Mydex is tScheme-compliant.

What does it mean?

tScheme is a standards body set up to measure trust. If we're going to have digital-by-default public services, we need to know who can be trusted. tScheme has established a way of measuring trust and keeps a list of those services that achieve the required standards. The latest list includes Experian. But not the Post Office, Verizon or Digidentity. And not Mydex.

IDA is an ecosystem with only one species surviving – Experian.

Not only have Mydex not been approved by tScheme. They haven't even applied for approval. We know that because tScheme keep a list of applicants. And there's only one name on it – Verizon.

And in that glancing reference in the BIS report, who's in charge of research and analysis for IDA at mIL? Mydex? No. Verizon. (Assisted, for no discernible reason, by the BBC.)

What you can lesson from all this is that trust is an affordance in short supply at IDA. Unsurprisingly, as IDA's dead. And midata with it.

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Updated 9.12.14

There was dear old William Heath, just over a year ago, please see above, predicting confidently that the "next generation" of on-line public services would be "rolling out within months" with "identity assurance" supplied by GDS, the Government Digital Service.

Completely wrong, of course.

What we've actually got is on-line public services without GDS's identity assurance – applying to register to vote, for example. Either that, or on-line public services that people can't avail themselves of because the identity assurance doesn't work. For example, how many farmers are going to fail to get their 2015 CAP payments because of GDS's obtuse GOV.UK Verify scheme?

Nothing daunted, Mr Heath continues to believe that he knows the laws of history. midata is historically inevitable, he told us 18 months ago, like some latter-day Marxist. And, never mind the incorrect predictions in the meantime, the latest edition of Old Heath's Almanack treats us to the five stages on the "high road" to the digitisation of public services, please see 5 stages of evolution in UK digital public services.

"Start with paper". That's the first stage, apparently. Then there's "computerise" and "start afresh". With paper? No. With another computer. Then there's the tricky ingredient in the recipe – "add identity". If only. But no, there's still no identity assurance (RIP).

That's four stages along the high road. And the fifth? You already know. It's inevitable, remember – midata.

Specifically, it's Mydex, Mr Heath's company, providing us all with "personal data stores" so that we can "plug in the individual".

According to Mr Heath, that third stage, start afresh, has "already produced audited savings of £200m, with a true figure surely nearer UK £1bn". Surely? You mean the auditors are wrong? By a factor of 5-to-1? He's just being frivolous, isn't he.

And for the fourth stage, add identity, he says "target savings might be £10bns in the lifetime of the next Parliament". What kind of a prediction is "might be"? Answer, a loose one – far too flabby a prediction for the high road. Tens of billions of pounds of frivolity.

And when you plug in the individual, what happens then? "Target savings might be the best part of £100bn over two Parliaments". Another "might be". Enough frivolity now to make a big dent in the national debt. Is this in addition to the £10 billion that Mr Heath has already promised us? It's not clear. A minor detail, no doubt, if you're the Nostradamus de nos jours.

There are an estimated four million people in this country at the moment too poor to eat properly.

Let them eat digitisation? After all, the UK is one of the five most digitised countries in the world. That's what the Cabinet Office say, and they're holding a two-day conference starting today to prove it, please see D5 London 2014: leading digital governments. Don't miss it. You can watch the conference being live-tweeted. Feast yourself.

Let them eat midata? Funnily enough, everyone at the high road branch of the food bank will be able to do just that from April Fool's Day next year: "price comparison website Gocompare is to launch a 'midata current account tool' from 1 April next year". Yum.

Tories seek to avert rift with Church of England over food bank report, it said in yesterday morning's Guardian. Silly old Church of England. Silly old Tories. People don't really want food. They want an "API economy". That's what Mr Heath says.

An API, of course, is an applications program interface, and who's going to give everyone an API economy?

None other than Mr Heath's Mydex Community Interest Company: "Mydex CIC could roll out 55m Personal Data Stores free to individuals today", and worth every penny.

midata – the service you can trust

midata had one of its "turns" recently.

There was a sudden rash of publicity.

Ctrl-Shift News published Midata Learnings on 20 November 2013. "Learnings" is the new word for lessons and a review of the research work done by the midata Innovation Lab (mIL) is full of them:
In her speech at the Showcase event, held at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, Jo Swinson discussed the notion of ‘affordances’ – how an item designed to do one thing can usually be used to do many other things too. You don’t just sit on chairs for example. You may stand on one in order to change a light bulb.
Then the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) announced the release of The midata innovation opportunity. One of the learnings from mIL, according to the Executive Summary, is that:
Initiatives like the midata Innovation Lab can greatly accelerate the development of new concepts and approaches by creating an environment where diverse stakeholders can collaborate, learn from each other and experiment.
What new concepts, you want to ask, but you already know the answer – affordances.

Friday 29 November 2013

GDS now Lane Foxless

Martha-now-Lady Lane Fox is the salesman who sold the government the revolutionary idea of digital-by-default and laid down the constitution of the Government Digital Service (GDS) to deliver it.

She is now stepping down from her rôle as the UK's Digital Champion.

Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, the executive director of GDS and revolutionary envoy, writes on the GDS blog, Thank you, Martha:
If you’re a regular reader of this blog then you’ll know how often we refer to Martha’s report. It’s impossible to understate its importance to GDS.
Does he mean that?

Or is he really trying to say that it's impossible to over-state the importance of her report?

----------

Update 13:18:

"understate" has now been changed to "overstate" on the GDS blog. There's a copy of the 29-11-2013 12:41 version here.

GDS now Lane Foxless

Martha-now-Lady Lane Fox is the salesman who sold the government the revolutionary idea of digital-by-default and laid down the constitution of the Government Digital Service (GDS) to deliver it.

She is now stepping down from her rôle as the UK's Digital Champion.

Wednesday 27 November 2013

Civil Service Awards 2013 – rarest bug

Whereas DMossEsq normally tries to entertain all his millions of readers at once, this post is highly technical and may only appeal to the computer programmers, book-keepers and legal draftsmen among you.

The only game in town, all attention recently has been on this year's Civil Service awards:
The Civil Service Awards, now in their eighth year, celebrate and promote innovation and creativity across government. They are a unique way of rewarding and thanking civil servants for outstanding achievements.
Awards have been made in 17 categories:
  • The Analysis and Use of Evidence Award
  • The Communication Award
  • The Employee Engagement and Skills Award
  • The Dame Lesley Strathie Award for Operational Excellence
  • The Growth Award
  • The Policy Award
  • The Project and Programme Management Award
  • The Procurement Award
  • The Innovative Delivery Award
  • The International Award
  • The Professional of the Year Award
  • The Leadership Award
  • Excellence in Civil Service Reform Award
  • Diversity & Equality Award
  • The Head of the Civil Service Award
  • PAC Award for Outstanding Value for Money
  • PAC Award for most Improved Government Body
Innovative delivery? Leadership? Excellence in Civil Service Reform? How many awards would the Government Digital Service win, we were all wondering?

None.

Perhaps with GDS's declared policy of "routing round" Whitehall, Whitehall has decided now to "route round" GDS?

Maybe the awards committee thought that GDS hadn't done anything for the past 12 months.

Who knows?

The awards link above is to the civilservice.gov.uk beta website and GDS still get their name in anyway because, bottom left, it says: "This site is provided by GDS. In comment sections we ask that you stick to our [sichouse rules. Where opinions or assumptions are expressed, these represent the views of the individual and not necessarily those of the government.".

GDS have their standard cookies warning message under the content, and a "Don't show this message again" button, bottom right.

Press the button and the cookies message should disappear, leaving the screen otherwise unchanged. The cookies message does, indeed, disappear but a completely different page of content is then displayed:
The Prime Minister joined us at the truly inspirational Civil Service Awards. We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate each and every winner. Hearing the stories behind each award was stirring and it brought home to us the tireless effort – both team and individual – that goes into delivering exceptional public services.
is replaced with
Nominations for the Civil Service Awards are now closed ... We received over 500 great examples of Civil Service excellence, thank you to everyone who took the time to nominate ...See whose [sic] made the shortlist at http://awards.civilserviceworld.com/civil-service-awards/shortlist
That's a bug.

Not only that, but the address has changed and if you go back to the old address the cookies message is still there despite the user telling it to go away.

That's a mistake. A mistake not made by any other professional expert web developer in the world. Probably. If only there had been an eighteenth category, a Rarest Bug category, GDS might have won an award after all.

Civil Service Awards 2013 – rarest bug

Whereas DMossEsq normally tries to entertain all his millions of readers at once, this post is highly technical and may only appeal to the computer programmers, book-keepers and legal draftsmen among you.

GDS and international relations

GDS, the Government Digital Service, is always written about as though it's a young organisation, practically new, but actually it's been around for long enough now to have missed deadlines, annoyed people, faced criticism and to have acquired all the other attributes of any mature organisation, including a nostalgic past.

They're a gregarious lot, GDS. They're always welcoming delegations from overseas or attending functions abroad.

And in the good old days they used to employ someone to stick pins in a map showing all the places they'd dealt with. Too sad, it's just a distant memory now, but like the holiday snaps in the attic, the faithful old map is still there on the web. They don't make 'em like that any more. You had to be there:

GDS visitors map
There was sometimes a bit of a write-up on these meetings on the GDS blog. After a trip to Estonia, for example, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken's postcard said: "We came to see how a small country of 1.3 million has developed a culture and system of Governance and public service provision using the Internet and transparency as core principles ... Whilst we met dozens of people at breakneck speed, many of whom we hope to see in the UK soon, over the next week I will be explaining the wider points we have uncovered which reflect directly on our challenge to make public services in the UK digital by default, and how the Estonian experience links to our core principles".

Estonia
You go to Estonia and what happens? You find that your core principles are linked.

Korea comes to you and what happens? According to Liam Maxwell, Her Majesty's Government's Chief Technology Officer: "As demonstrated in last month’s Conference on Cyberspace in Seoul, we have much in common with Korea, but we also have much to learn from each other. Yesterday’s signing commits both of our countries to creating digital public services that put the needs of the citizen first, and I'm excited that we’ll be working more closely together".

The list goes on. But you get the gist. There's no need to multiply the examples.

Korea
It's uncanny. Travel broadens the mind and makes people aware of their similarities, it reveals their shared experience and exposes their common interests which, in the case of Bulgaria, is "digital leaders".

When DMossEsq goes abroad what does he talk about? Digital services. Like you and, no doubt, like GDS. We know that without being told.

But GDS aren't like us. They're part of government. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) can use them to send messages discreetly to overseas administrations and those administrations, in turn, can communicate with the British government via GDS. A trip abroad is an opportunity. An opportunity for diplomacy.


Until recently we ordinary members of the public have had very little idea how this diplomacy business works. Now, thanks to the filming of ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken's speech to the Code for America conference, we at last have some insight.

Who knows what the US made of it, or the scores of other countries who have heard it through GDS, but the FCO's message to the audience in the first three minutes of the speech is that the UK government is out of date and needs to be re-designed in order to overcome the "delivery crisis" which it faces.

That's central government.

Around the five-minute mark, the message is that local government is no better.

All branches of the UK government are useless except GDS ("we are the show", 17'39") because they know how to "route round" (18'46", 20'17" onwards) the obstacles created by their colleagues and the useless consultants and contractors they retain, and if it wasn't for GDS's success with GOV.UK we'd be back to the riots we had in the summer of 2011 (21'08").

The clip below is taken from the last two minutes or so of the FCO message.

Democracy faces "profound pressures" (31'07"), picture of the riots again, governments face an existential threat (31'23"), they could become irrelevant (31'30"), people could "route round" them (31'33"), picture of the Reichstag (31'36"), GDS's website isn't there to enable government, it is government (32'00"), government redesigned for survival in the modern world, let them eat cake:


----------

Updated 25.8.15

Diplomatic to the end, Why are senior staff fleeing the Government Digital Service?:
"Diginomica ... has the full scoop on why senior staff are fleeing the organisation", says Mr du Preez, "Manzoni [Chief Executive of the UK Civil Service] just didn't get it" and "it would be useful to have someone running the civil service that understands why a platform approach makes sense for public services".

Perhaps Mr du Preez is right that Mr Manzoni is just too stupid to understand.

But just suppose that he's wrong. Maybe Mr Manzoni looked at GDS's record and correctly decided that behind the bluster too little has been achieved.

GDS promised to get rural payments working. Mike Bracken spent time every week on the system, praised it for its adoption of agile methods, asserted that it was going to be an early example of GaaP and vaingloriously predicted that the new system would change the UK's relationship with Europe.

In the event, despite his personal involvement in the project, the computer system has had to be withdrawn and farmers are using paper to make their claims.

If GDS can't even get rural payments up and running, Mr Manzoni may have thought, what use are they going to be helping HMRC with the ASPIRE contract on which the UK depends for raising £500 billion in tax every year? And what chance do they have of making GaaP a reality?

He may not be as dim as Mr du Preez suggests.

GDS and international relations

GDS, the Government Digital Service, is always written about as though it's a young organisation, practically new, but actually it's been around for long enough now to have missed deadlines, annoyed people, faced criticism and to have acquired all the other attributes of any mature organisation, including a nostalgic past.

They're a gregarious lot, GDS. They're always welcoming delegations from overseas or attending functions abroad.

Tuesday 26 November 2013

Only 10 more shopping days to the Autumn Statement 2013

5 December 2012, HM Treasury, Autumn Statement 2012, p.58, para.2.9:
The recently published Digital Efficiency Report sets out how departments could save approximately £1.2 billion over the remainder of the current spending review period by continuing to move their transactional services online and become ‘digital by default’.
We have tried to make sense of the alleged savings made by the Government Digital Service (GDS) and their digital-by-default project at least twice before – in The savings to be expected from digital-by-default – a clarification and Cutting costs/making savings, and GDS's fantasy strategy – and failed both times.

When the Chancellor made his Autumn Statement a year ago we were still expecting GDS's identity assurance system to be "fully operational" by March 2013. It wasn't, it still isn't and, without identity assurance, digital-by-default can't start. Her Majesty's Treasury will therefore have received none of the £1.2 billion they were hoping for yet.

Our budget deficit in the UK is around £120 billion and the national debt is heading towards £1,500 billion by the time of the 2015 general election. £1.2 billion of savings would be appreciated, of course, but it's not a big number against that background.

Material savings are supposed to be made by digital-by-default when take-up reaches 82% according to GDS's Digital Efficiency Report, p.11. And when will that be? 11 or 12 years after digital-by-default starts, according to the graph on p.20. And when will digital-by-default start? No-one knows.

In 10 days time the Chancellor will make this year's Autumn Statement.

He is unlikely to complain about the lack of progress made towards the promised £1.2 billion. That wouldn't be politic.

At the present rate of GDS's progress, he would be imprudent to rely on any savings from digital-by-default in this spending round.

Expect the subject not to be mentioned this year.

Only 10 more shopping days to the Autumn Statement 2013

5 December 2012, HM Treasury, Autumn Statement 2012, p.58, para.2.9:
The recently published Digital Efficiency Report sets out how departments could save approximately £1.2 billion over the remainder of the current spending review period by continuing to move their transactional services online and become ‘digital by default’.
We have tried to make sense of the alleged savings made by the Government Digital Service (GDS) and their digital-by-default project at least twice before – in The savings to be expected from digital-by-default – a clarification and Cutting costs/making savings, and GDS's fantasy strategy – and failed both times.

When the Chancellor made his Autumn Statement a year ago we were still expecting GDS's identity assurance system to be "fully operational" by March 2013. It wasn't, it still isn't and, without identity assurance, digital-by-default can't start. Her Majesty's Treasury will therefore have received none of the £1.2 billion they were hoping for yet.

Our budget deficit in the UK is around £120 billion and the national debt is heading towards £1,500 billion by the time of the 2015 general election. £1.2 billion of savings would be appreciated, of course, but it's not a big number against that background.

Material savings are supposed to be made by digital-by-default when take-up reaches 82% according to GDS's Digital Efficiency Report, p.11. And when will that be? 11 or 12 years after digital-by-default starts, according to the graph on p.20. And when will digital-by-default start? No-one knows.

Monday 25 November 2013

The technology tail shouldn't be allowed to wag the public service dog but that's just what it's doing, wagging it

A: Here's a clip which starts 10'50" into the astonishing speech about Redesigning Government made by ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken on 16 October 2013 at a conference in the US:


"Technology is a fourth-order question in government", he says. Only after the user needs and the policy needs and the operational needs have been determined should attention be paid to the technology needs, if any.

If we let technology determine public services, then "we are literally starting in the wrong place and guaranteeing failure". The proper question to ask is: "What technology may we need to provide the service?".
 
"One of the first battles you've got to fight", he says, "is putting technology in its place".

"Words are important, aren't they", he says. Yes. And the distinction he is making between "technology" and "digital" is unfathomable.

Never mind what the distinction is. For our purposes here, the important point he is making is that the design of public services shouldn't be determined by technology, that's the wrong way round and guarantees failure.

B: Rewind to 29 July 2011 and a post written by ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, Welcome to the Government Digital Service blog. The opening paragraph reads, in full:
We exist to make public services digital by default, and we are relentlessly focused on user needs.
Far from relentlessly focussing on user needs, digital-by-default ignores the needs of users who can't or won't use the web.

Digital-by-default is an example of policy being made on the basis of technology instead of user need and may therefore be, according to ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken's 16 October 2013 speech, a case of "literally starting in the wrong place and guaranteeing failure".

Technology has been allowed to dominate. It has become a first-order question and needs to be put back in its place – fourth.

C: Roll forward to 17 October 2012 and another post by ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, Why GOV.UK matters: A platform for a digital Government. It gets off to a rotten start. This is the opening sentence:
On Wednesday October 17th 2012, our new digital service www.gov.uk moved out of public beta development to replace the two main government websites, Directgov and Business Link.
Directgov and Business Link had not been replaced on 17 October 2012 and they still haven't been over a year later – see for example the Benefits adviser page on www.dwpe-services.direct.gov.uk or the Contracts finder page on online.contractsfinder.businesslink.gov.uk. Both supposed to have been replaced. Both still there.

It's hard to recover your credibility after a mistake like that.

It gets harder as the post proceeds:
GOV.UK has been designed with transparency, participation and simplicity at its core. It will always be based on open standards, and is unapologetically open source. This architecture ensures its integration into the growing ecosystem of the Internet. Inevitably, innovation will follow, driven from within and without. GOV.UK is not Government on the Internet, but of the Internet.
What is "GOV.UK is not Government on the Internet, but of the Internet" supposed to mean?

GOV.UK is not Government on the Internet. Nor is it Government of the Internet. Nor, for that matter, is it Government on the B1051 from Mountfitchet finally crossing the Internet just south of Alsa Wood.

For the simple reason that GOV.UK isn't government.

It's a website.

To confuse the two is to make an even bigger mistake than pretending that GOV.UK replaces two websites which manifestly haven't been replaced.

The technology tail shouldn't be allowed to wag the public service dog but that's just what it's doing, wagging it

A: Here's a clip which starts 10'50" into the astonishing speech about Redesigning Government made by ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken on 16 October 2013 at a conference in the US:


"Technology is a fourth-order question in government", he says. Only after the user needs and the policy needs and the operational needs have been determined should attention be paid to the technology needs, if any.

If we let technology determine public services, then "we are literally starting in the wrong place and guaranteeing failure". The proper question to ask is: "What technology may we need to provide the service?".
 
"One of the first battles you've got to fight", he says, "is putting technology in its place".

"Words are important, aren't they", he says. Yes. And the distinction he is making between "technology" and "digital" is unfathomable.

Saturday 23 November 2013

GDS & HMRC – what could possibly go wrong?

Tax Inspector Harry Callahan tried to warn them on 27 January 2013. Keep your hands off HMRC's manuals, he told GDS, if you know what's good for you.

This is all to do with GDS's single government domain project.

And the Government Digital Service – to give them their full name – seemed to heed Harry's advice.

Admittedly on 1 March 2013 ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, executive director of HMRC GDS, announced that GDS had "mapped over HMRC".

In terms of the single government domain project that should mean that GDS had transferred the content of http://www.hmrc.gov.uk to https://www.gov.uk and discontinued http://www.hmrc.gov.uk in the same way that http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk, for example, has been disappeared.

But luckily that turned out on inspection to be simply and flatly false. http://www.hmrc.gov.uk was still there and what's more it still is today.

Discretion had proved the better part of valour?

Not. As. Such.

An example taken from HMRC's manuals:

Capital allowances on plant and machinery

If you're in business you can claim tax allowances, also known as capital allowances, on certain purchases or investments that you make on business assets. You cannot directly deduct your expenditure on those assets when calculating your profits or losses, instead you can deduct a capital allowance. This applies whether you're self-employed and pay Income Tax or are a company or organisation that's liable for Corporation Tax.
Many common business assets such as office equipment, furniture and machines or tools, may be considered to be plant and machinery for capital allowance purposes, and expenditure on them might qualify for plant and machinery allowances.

This guide explains which types of assets might count as plant and machinery for capital allowance purposes, what capital allowances are available for them, and how to calculate and claim them.
This guide does not cover plant and machinery allowances relating to fixtures in buildings or structures, including certain integral features in buildings. For more information, see the guide 'Capital allowances relating to building and renovation'.
On this page:
----------

HMRC have taken a complicated chunk of statute and case law and made it as clear as possible to lawyers, tax advisors and their clients how HMRC inspectors will handle their case.

GDS can help HMRC?

Or is it the other way round?
While we were all in Italy, GDS launched a new project and a new blog to go with it – HMRC transition to GOV.UK.

The first post on that blog, 20 August 2013, says: "Over the next year we’ll be moving more than 100,000 pages of HMRC content to GOV.UK ...".

"We won’t be moving the HMRC online services that require you to login, e.g. when filing your tax return". Well of course they won't:
  • That's because GDS have failed to provide the identity assurance service they've been promising for years to replace the Government Gateway.
  • It may also be because HMRC would prefer to be able to carry on collecting tax.
"We also won’t be editing HMRC manuals and other content from the HMRC library". That's a relief. As tax people say. Given that a lot of people who know something about the subject work hard to get that content right.

No, they won't be editing the content, they'll be re-purposing it: "These [the manuals and the library] will move across to GOV.UK and will be repurposed into a format that is easier to search, easier to browse, easier to view and easier to print".

Why?

Why undertake this move and run the risk of breaking every link that holds the manuals together at the moment?

Apparently it's all to do with user needs as GDS primly informed us on 3 September 2013 in Putting user needs first.

No user who needs what was on http://www.hmrc.gov.uk to be moved to https://www.gov.uk has yet been identified.

Nevertheless, GDS will ...
... develop user stories like this one:

"As a homeowner, I plan to sell my house, and want to know if I will have to pay capital gains tax."

And this one:

"As a tax agent, I want to understand Principle [sic] Private Residence Relief, so that I can give my client the right advice."
"Whilst both these user stories relate to tax on property, the content required to satisfy these needs differs considerably in length and complexity." Really.

That's where GDS are starting from. Way up at the shallow end. And still out of their depth.

But they're agile, as they told us on 16 October 2013: "We communicate in an open forum, with daily stand-ups for 15 minutes every morning in front of our wall ... This is the continuously iterative process known as agile delivery".

Remember how, 10 paragraphs ago, GDS weren't going to do any editing?

On 29 October 2013 they published this:
Plain English is mandatory for all of GOV.UK. This means we don’t use formal or long words when easy or short ones will do. [Like saying "stand-up" instead of "meeting"? "Re-purpose" instead of "edit"? "Communicate in an open forum" instead of "chat"?]

For example, we normally talk about sending something ... rather than ‘submitting’ it ...

We've recently been working with HMRC on moving VAT content to the ‘mainstream‘ ... part of GOV.UK. In the first draft, we used the plain English ‘sending your VAT return’ across all of this content.

However, our HMRC colleagues felt very strongly [44 Magnum?] that we should change this back to ‘submit’ to match the terminology used on the HMRC website, as this is ‘used frequently and known by VAT businesses’.
GDS have graciously backed down over the use of "submitting" after finding some little-used principles in their design manual and drawing a graph.

It's not as though GDS don't have anything else to do. Or HMRC for that matter, they've got plenty of work. GDS bring nothing to the party. To repeat, why are GDS putting themselves through this fatuous work-simulation?

Their latest explanation, 22 November 2013, is this:
In her 2010 report that helped create GOV.UK, Martha Lane-Fox [sic] emphasised the need to open up government transactions and content so that they can be delivered easily by commercial organisations and charities. She wrote that GOV.UK should be:
a wholesaler, as well as the retail shop front for government services & content, by mandating the development and opening-up of Application Programme [sic] Interfaces (APls) to third parties.
Martha-now-Lady Lane Fox told them to. That's a reason. It's for the APIs.

GDS have issued – sorry, sent – the following invitation:
We would like to invite all tax publishers to attend a briefing on GOV.UK. There will be an opportunity for questions on the day and if there is a need we can arrange follow up meetings on a later date. The workshop will be held on Monday 9 December from 1.30pm to 3.30pm at Aviation House. If you would like to attend, please contact the HMRC transition team.
If you've ever wondered what an applications program interface to a tax manual could do for you, why not nip along to the briefing and insist on GDS showing you one?

 

GDS & HMRC – what could possibly go wrong?

Tax Inspector Harry Callahan tried to warn them on 27 January 2013. Keep your hands off HMRC's manuals, he told GDS, if you know what's good for you.

This is all to do with GDS's single government domain project.

And the Government Digital Service – to give them their full name – seemed to heed Harry's advice.

Admittedly on 1 March 2013 ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, executive director of HMRC GDS, announced that GDS had "mapped over HMRC".

In terms of the single government domain project that should mean that GDS had transferred the content of http://www.hmrc.gov.uk to https://www.gov.uk and discontinued http://www.hmrc.gov.uk in the same way that http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk, for example, has been disappeared.

But luckily that turned out on inspection to be simply and flatly false. http://www.hmrc.gov.uk was still there and what's more it still is today.

Discretion had proved the better part of valour?

Not. As. Such.

Thursday 21 November 2013

RIP IDA – HMRC

No need to say it, it goes without saying, it should be obvious to all but, just in case it isn't obvious to all, IDA is dead.

IDA is the Cabinet Office Identity Assurance programme. And it's dead.

----------

Digital by Default News, 15 November 2013, HMRC set to go digital:
Mark Dearnley, the new Chief Digital and Information Officer for HMRC, announced at the Ignite conference in London that HMRC will “become a fully accessible digital business.” ... He went on to say: “The multi-channel digital tax platform will have security at the heart of it. The new Government Identity Assurance Programme platform will be part of that".
But Mr Dearnley, there is no Government Identity Assurance Programme platform. And there isn't going to be. HMRC need an alternative.

RIP IDA – HMRC

No need to say it, it goes without saying, it should be obvious to all but, just in case it isn't obvious to all, IDA is dead.

IDA is the Cabinet Office Identity Assurance programme. And it's dead.

Wednesday 20 November 2013

Routing round Whitehall

Last year, you will remember, Tim O'Reilly and Jennifer Pahlka of Code for America (CfA) came over to the UK and kindly told our Government Digital Service (GDS) how marvellous they are. That was 12 November 2012.

In an act of reciprocal diplomacy, returning the compliment, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken went over to the US last month to speak at the CfA Summit 2013, 16 October 2013, so that he could tell them how marvellous GDS are.

The Americans have a lot to learn it seems.

At 32'46" long, the speech he gave – Redesigning Government – is astonishing, ranging as it does over big subjects, and even bigger subjects:
  • Government isn't big, says the man, not really big, not if you look at it. (Apart from the fact that the UK government's Total Managed Expenditure accounts for well over 40% of gross domestic product according to Her Majesty's Treasury, who could disagree?)
  • Government faces a "delivery crisis", he says, and risks becoming irrelevant. There would be riots in the streets but for GDS. (That's the implication.)
  • With all due humility, he says, we're the show, GDS is government. (Maybe it's a joke. But is it funny?)
  • On-line security is irrelevant, usability is all that counts. ("This is the BBC news. In an entirely predictable security breach yesterday, the banking details of everyone in the UK were stolen by a 14 year-old in Peoria. Luckily GDS's identity assurance system is very usable, so no harm done. In other news, a programmer at GDS who used Helvetica instead of Tahoma has been charged under the usability laws and remanded in custody for her own protection.")
  • Technology is a fourth-order priority, he says. Sort out the user requirements first, then the policy, then the operational needs, then and only then the technology, if necessary. (A good point, but an odd one from the executive director of GDS, whose job it is to implement digital-by-default – technology decision taken first, then everything else.)
  • Documenting your requirements is a waste of time. (Parliament, legislating away, writing down the law, wasting their time?)
  • Don't bother working out your strategy ... (In the special case of GDS, at least four professors agree.)
  • ... just deliver something. (Like an identity assurance system, for example? First promised for autumn 2012, there's still no sign of it.)
  • With reference to the ObamaCare website – big organisations are rubbish. (Apple? Google? eBay? Amazon? Facebook? Rubbish? And how about small organisations?)
  • Let them eat cake. (Seriously. He says that. And hang bunting from the ceiling and give everyone a sticker.)
If you want to be like GDS, concentrate on those jobs that only government can do. Like operating student loans, suggests ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken. But that doesn't require government. Any bank could do it. And will, just as soon as the student loan book is privatised.

Anyone trying to emulate GDS's success in government will encounter obstacles. Don't confront them. You'll lose. Instead, "route round" them, he says, without saying what that means in terms of accountability and openness, not to mention co-operation/team-playing with GDS's colleagues in Whitehall.

GDS's success? What success? He gives an example in the clip below (taken from the full speech, starting at 9'36"):


Listeners may be left with the impression that GDS's Identity Assurance Programme (IDAP) already provides proof of identity for 45 million users. It doesn't. IDAP doesn't exist.

"The first services run out with our tax system this month [October 2013]" – no IDAP services were made available to the public by Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) then, none such have been mentioned in GDS's subsequent weekly diaries or anywhere else and, despite all GDS's routing round, the transformation dashboard continues to show only one "exemplar" live – student loans, exemplar #6. The tax exemplars ##15 and 16 are still in beta. That statement about running out with our tax system is either false or meaningless.


"We're at the very early days yet", he says, having previously said "we're rolling this service out right now". Which is it?

"We have about eight or nine companies already providing identity to us". GDS have told us that they recently signed contracts with five companies. Not eight. Not nine, see Identity Assurance: First delivery contracts signed, 3 September 2013. The ID hub required has yet to be unveiled, let alone commissioned, so it's hard to see how these five/eight?/nine? so-called "identity providers" (IDPs) can provide anything to GDS or how 45 million people can provide anything to the IDPs. That statement about already having companies providing identities to GDS is either false or meaningless.

"We've changed 20 years of thinking about identity in the digital space in government". No. That thinking was changed when Whitehall finally admitted that their antediluvian plans for government-issued ID cards had failed – flaky biometrics, cards no use on-line. Back in 2010. At least. Probably earlier. Long before GDS existed.

That's just one minute out of the 32.

One minute of listeners being misled.

During the other 31, the claims to have made £500 million of savings (13'20") and £10 billion of savings (25'00") merit particular attention. Route round reality like GDS if you will, CfA, but remember – GOV.UK may have won all sorts of awards, it may be a work of art, but without identity assurance, that's all it is.

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Updated 21.11.13:

At around 25'00" into his speech, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken claims without support that the Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG) have saved about £10 billion of Whitehall costs and tells CfA that this figure represents about 4% of the UK's gross domestic product (GDP).

According to the latest figures from the UK's Office for National Statistics, GDP in the four quarters to 30 September 2013 was, in £billions – 376.5, 377.5, 380.2 and 382.8. That's £1.517 trillion in all.

Which means, if you look at the reliable facts, that £10 billion is about 0.6% of GDP and not 4%.

Updated 30.1.14:

In a speech to Whitehall's IT corps yesterday Rt Hon Francis Maude MP said:
Digitalising public services could save citizens, the Exchequer and businesses £1.2 billion over the course of this parliament, rising to an estimated £1.7 billion each year after 2015.
These are the same figures which have been mentioned ever since 6 December 2012 at least, over a year ago. It's strange how, in this agile world, they never change. And how they never add up to Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE's £10 billion.

Updated 18.8.14 #1

Back in October 2013, Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE told CfA that ERG had saved about £10 billion and that that represented about 4% of UK GDP. In fact, it represents only about 0.6%.

We have just hosted the Wikimania conference here in the UK, at the Barbican, and in his speech Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE claimed that ERG had saved about £14.3 billion last year and that that represents about 1% of GDP, please see 5'50"-6'10", including applause.

The arithmetic is getting better.

But where does the £14.3 billion figure come from?

Start with the Cabinet Office press release, Government unveils £14.3 billion of savings for 2013 to 2014. Click on the technical note link, and you get to Government savings in 2013 to 2014. Now click on End of year savings 2013 to 2014: technical note and turn to the breakdown of the £14.3 billion savings figure given on p.4.

The big ticket items are major projects (£2.479 billion), workforce reductions (£2.392 billion), pensions reform (£2.340 billion), and so on – nothing to do with the Government Digital Service (GDS).

The GDS savings, which is what you might think Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE is talking about in his Wikimania speech, amount to £0.210 billion = GDS controls savings and GDS wider savings (£0.091 billion) + GDS transformation (£0.119 billion).

For the avoidance of doubt, if the UK's GDP is about £1,517 billion, then GDS's contribution of £0.210 billion to the savings made last year amounts to about 0.0138% of GDP and not the quoted figure of 1%.

Updated 18.8.14 #2

Back in October 2013, Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE may accidentally have given CfA the impression that GDS were already providing identity assurance (IDA) to 45 million people in the UK. In fact, there was no IDA then and there still isn't now.

We have just hosted the Wikimania conference here in the UK, at the Barbican, and in his speech Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE said that GDS is currently rolling out IDA, please see 2'50"-3'20".

In what sense is it true that IDA is currently being rolled out?

They're currently looking for private sector "identity providers" to join the IDA scheme. They've got five providers signed up so far – Digidentity, Experian, Mydex, the Post Office and Verizon. They need more. The Open Identity Exchange and KPMG together arranged for GDS to present to about 150 companies.

At their presentation on 9 June 2014, IDA demonstrated the Post Office's suggested dialogue for issuing people with an on-line digital identity. It's not very convincing and if that's all the progress that's been made since 31 October 2011, any one of those 150 companies would be very brave to subscribe now.

It is in that sense that IDA is currently being rolled out.


Updated 1.10.15

The Code for America Summit 2013 was followed by the Code for America Summit 2014.

Ex-Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE ex-CDO ex-CDO, ex-Chief Executive of the Government Digital Service (GDS) and ex-Senior Responsible Owner of the pan-government identity assurance programme now known as "GOV.UK Verify (RIP)", didn't speak at the Code for America Summit 2014. Instead, his ex-deputy, Tom Loosemore, spoke.

Mr Loosemore took advantage of the occasion to repeat what Mr Bracken had said in 2013:



More
The last section of Mr Loosemore's talk between about 17'45" and 19'20" considered GDS's digital service which allows people in the UK to apply on-line to register to vote. We have about 45 million voters here. 1,114 people took the trouble to rate the service. That is 0.002% of voters.

They were apparently 92% satisfied with the service, whatever "satisfied" means. And that is an example, Mr Loosemore told the Summit, of the triumph that awaits the US if only it follows the lead of the UK.

Mr Loosemore also spoke at the Code for America Summit 2015. He was due to speak yesterday, about Government as a Platform (GaaP).

His talk is not available yet on YouTube. Everyone is recommended to seek it out and watch it as soon as it does become available.


Updated 9.10.15

Talking of Tom Loosemore's talk given to the Code for America Summit 2015, we said: "Everyone is recommended to seek it out and watch it as soon as it does become available".

Code for America put all the Summit 2015 videos up on their YouTube channel yesterday,

No Loosemore talk. We shall never be able to see him saying whatever he said.


Updated 1.12.15

"We shall never be able to see him", we said, back in October, "saying whatever he said". Wrong. It was published on YouTube six days later.


Updated 3.6.18

The new book, Digital transformation at scale: why the strategy is delivery, by Andrew Greenway, Ben Terrett, Mike Bracken and Tom Loosemore explains how to achieve digital transformation in government and in big business.

How do they know? What are their credentials? What do they know about public administration? What experience have they had of designing and maintaining population-scale systems?

Answer, GDS – the Government Digital Service. "Done", as it says on the cover of the book, rubber-stamped, digital transformation, they've done it at GDS. GDS is their credentials, so to speak.

Mike Bracken spoke at the Code for America Summit in October 2013, please see above. Tom Loosemore spoke at the 2014 and 2015 Summits, also please see above.

Not sure whether anyone from GDS attended the 2016 and 2017 Summits but, this year, Code for America Summit 2018, GDS was represented by Louise Downe, "Director of Design and Service Standards for the UK Government at the Government Digital Service (GDS)", who spoke on the subject of Getting From Here to There: A Sustainable Future for Public Services.

The Summit agenda says: "The U.K. Government Digital Service (GDS) was set up 6 years ago to help government work better for users. Since then, GDS has built, delivered and supported a huge amount - from ...".

Let's stop there for a moment. Clearly the text is about to list a selection of huge digital transformation achievements after six years of strategic delivery at scale. We're looking for the end-to-end re-engineering of crucial components in the national infrastructure.

Which examples would you choose?

No idea.

Which examples did GDS/Code for America choose?

Answer: "... GDS has built, delivered and supported a huge amount - from the single government website GOV.UK to new digital services for renewing passports or registering to vote".

That's it? Six years later, that's it?

We already had government websites long before GDS's GOV.UK. We could already apply on-line to renew our passports eight years before GDS was created and we could already apply on-line to register to vote.

Digital transformation? GDS wrote the book on it.