midata – still waving, still drowning

The following article was published in Digital by Default News (DbyDN) on 21 August 2014:

Initiative to explore how citizens can be empowered with their own data Five organisations have come together to run a three-month feasibility study to explore how to empower citizens with their own data. The miData Studio initiative is a collaboration between Ctrl-Shift and Milton Keynes Council, the Cabinet Office, Open University and Connected Digital Economy Catapult. The project aims to create an open, collaborative environment where citizens, the council and developers explore how empowering citizens with their own information can enable better services, better quality of life and efficiency in the delivery of public services. The project will develop exemplar use cases that deliver benefit to the council and citizens and the local economy more generally. The project will look for new ways for citizens to gain control of their information, exploring how they can give controlled access to trusted service providers for the services they want or need. It will also act as a pilot for the Cabinet Office’s identity assurance scheme in a local authority context. This overarching project aim is to empower citizens with their own data in a way they can trust. The project will create a space for learning about working with citizens’ data, building a safe environment to try things out and study what works and what doesn’t work. Crucially the project aims to understand how to do this in such a way that individuals are in control of their data.

It was 3 November 2011 when Ed Davey first announced midata:

Today’s announcement marks the first time globally there has been such a Government-backed initiative to empower individuals with so much control over the use of their own data.

Little did we expect then that it would be the best part of three years before anyone started to "explore" how midata might work. But only now, if DbyDN are to be believed, is a "feasibility study" being launched.

In fact, not mentioned by DbyDN, Craig Belsham introduced us to the midata Innovation Lab (mIL) on 2 May 2013. Over the following few months mIL produced five deeply discouraging prototype apps.

Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt gamely claimed that these five viruses apps would allow us to "get to the future more quickly" and Mr Belsham posted What we learnt from the midata Innovation Lab on 28 November 2013 but mIL has never been heard from again.

Now we have the "miData Studio" instead. And what is the planned output from their feasibility study? Working services? No. Just some "exemplar use cases" – the miData Studio could take even longer to get to the future than mIL.

There will be five "collaborators" in the miData Studio according to DbyDN – "Ctrl-Shift and Milton Keynes Council, the Cabinet Office, Open University and Connected Digital Economy Catapult".

Or should that be six? "The project aims to create an open, collaborative environment where citizens, the council and developers explore how empowering citizens with their own information can enable ...". It looks as though "citizens" also will need to be collaborators.

Or should it be 11? "The project ... will also act as a pilot for the Cabinet Office’s [non-existent] identity assurance scheme  in a local authority context". How can the studio deliver its exemplar use cases if the identity assurance scheme's five surviving "identity providers" aren't collaborating.

And however many collaborators there are, will the identity assurance scheme (RIP) prove any more successful in Milton Keynes than it did in Warwickshire?

It's all very well for DbyDN to say that the miData Studio will explore how citizens "can give controlled access [to their personal data] to trusted service providers" but how is anyone going to overcome Chris Chant's objection that trust is just not on the menu?

"Truth, not trust". That's Mr Chant's watchword. The pursuit of trust is a "doomed strategy".

Do any of the collaborators in the miData Studio have it in their gift to grant citizens control over their personal data? How? "Trust frameworks", as Ctrl-Shift tell us, are like unicorns. They don't exist. There's no way to enforce the rules. Control isn't on the menu any more than trust is. Or empowerment.

What are the prospective investors in the Cabinet Office's identity assurance scheme supposed to make of this project? They thought they were being invited to invest in a service that already exists.

It's only a 225-word article that DbyDN published but it raises a lot of questions.

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Updated 29.12.14

Still waving, Mydex published Nine ways the personal data store can transform public services on 23 December 2014. Their contention is that, when it comes to "local authorities and public sector organisations", Mydex:

1) Delivers massive cost savings 2) Increases data quality 3) Enables joined up services and streamlined customer journeys 4) Supports more personalised services 5) Enables citizens to get things done online 6) Reduces risk and ensures compliance 7) Builds trust 8) Supports operations such as identity assurance 9) Saves time, offers convenience and increases satisfaction

Really?

These may well be some of the presents local authorities and public sector organisations would ask Father Christmas for. But is Mydex Father Christmas? Are these presents in Mydex's gift? Who believes that? Why?

And who believes Mydex's claim at the bottom of the page? Remember Sony:

Mydex provides the individual with a hyper-secure storage area to enable them to manage their personal data, including text, numbers, images, video, certificates and sound. No-one but the individual can access or see the data.

Updated 30.12.14

Wikipedia:

Walter Mitty is a fictional character in James Thurber's short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", first published in The New Yorker on March 18, 1939, and in book form in My World and Welcome to It in 1942. Thurber loosely based the character on his friend, Walter Mithoff. It was made into a film in 1947 ... Mitty is a meek, mild man with a vivid fantasy life: in a few dozen paragraphs he imagines himself a wartime pilot, an emergency-room surgeon, and a devil-may-care killer. The character's name has come into more general use to refer to an ineffectual dreamer, appearing in several dictionaries. The American Heritage Dictionary defines a Walter Mitty as "an ordinary, often ineffectual person who indulges in fantastic daydreams of personal triumphs". The most famous of Thurber's inept male protagonists ...

ElReg:

European data law: UK.gov TRASHES 'unambiguous consent' plans The UK government has raised objections to current EU proposals that would require businesses seeking to rely on "consent" as the lawful basis for processing personal data to ensure that that consent has been unambiguously given "for one or more specific purposes". It said those proposals are "unjustified" and called on EU law makers to instead turn to the definition of consent under existing EU data protection rules instead for setting the legal standard businesses would need to achieve for consent under the draft new General Data Protection Regulation ...

The ElReg article is written by Out-Law.com, an outlet of the firm of lawyers Pinsent Masons, who follow this sort of thing and provide expert commentary.

In brief, the EU's 1995 Data Protection Directive is due to be replaced with a much-debated General Data Protection Regulation:

• Should consent for your personal data to be processed be given unambiguously or is that unjustified as the UK government apparently argue? Is it adequate for that consent to be unambiguous or should it be explicit? Under what conditions can data be processed without consent? Is it lawful to create profiles of individuals from their personal data? How can you be said to freely give your informed consent if you actually have no alternative?
• Assuming the 28 members can agree the answers to these questions, and about 3,000 more, how should they set about enforcing the regulation within the EU? And what about the rest of the world – what do the EU do if Russia, say, pays not a blind bit of notice?

As ElReg/Out-Law.com/Pinsent Masons say:

The European Parliament agreed on its version of the Regulation earlier this year and is waiting for the Council to reach its own consensus on the reforms before trialogue discussions on a final version of the text, which would also involve the European Commission, can be opened.

It's a trialogue (?) between the European Council of Ministers, the European Parliament and the European Commission.

That excludes other people.

DMossEsq, for example.

If DMossEsq offers you total control over your personal data, you can safely ignore the offer as having been made by some sad Walter Mittyish character subject to delusions of grandeur.

As it happens, DMossEsq is making no such offer. He recognises that it's not in his gift. But there are other people out there with a "vivid fantasy life". Remember – the power lies with the EU, and not with Walter Mitty.

midata – still waving, still drowning

The following article was published in Digital by Default News (DbyDN) on 21 August 2014:

Initiative to explore how citizens can be empowered with their own data Five organisations have come together to run a three-month feasibility study to explore how to empower citizens with their own data. The miData Studio initiative is a collaboration between Ctrl-Shift and Milton Keynes Council, the Cabinet Office, Open University and Connected Digital Economy Catapult. The project aims to create an open, collaborative environment where citizens, the council and developers explore how empowering citizens with their own information can enable better services, better quality of life and efficiency in the delivery of public services. The project will develop exemplar use cases that deliver benefit to the council and citizens and the local economy more generally. The project will look for new ways for citizens to gain control of their information, exploring how they can give controlled access to trusted service providers for the services they want or need. It will also act as a pilot for the Cabinet Office’s identity assurance scheme in a local authority context. This overarching project aim is to empower citizens with their own data in a way they can trust. The project will create a space for learning about working with citizens’ data, building a safe environment to try things out and study what works and what doesn’t work. Crucially the project aims to understand how to do this in such a way that individuals are in control of their data.

It was 3 November 2011 when Ed Davey first announced midata:

Today’s announcement marks the first time globally there has been such a Government-backed initiative to empower individuals with so much control over the use of their own data.

Little did we expect then that it would be the best part of three years before anyone started to "explore" how midata might work. But only now, if DbyDN are to be believed, is a "feasibility study" being launched.

RIP IDA

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.

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Updated 18 December 2013:

Identity assurance team to expand for 2014 launch The pan-government identity assurance programme is hoping to hire up to five people in January in preparation for the launch of its first live services early next year ... An official working on the programme recently explained that they are hoping for new providers to join next year, in particular to support level three assurance for more sensitive data.

Bit late – IDA was due to go live in the autumn of 2012.

Over a year later and they still haven't got the right staff.

And now they've discovered they've got the wrong suppliers (that is, the wrong so-called "identity providers").

Dead.

RIP IDA

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.

GDS – this is getting embarrassing

GDS, the Government Digital Service.

Remember the pan-government identity assurance system that was promised for autumn 2012, then March 2013 and which still doesn't exist?

Remember the assisted digital project that keeps starting, stumbling and starting again?

Remember the four professors' frosty report on GDS's government digital strategy?

Remember the other frosty report, this one by the Electoral Commission?

Remember the fifth professor's warning about the need to use formal methods (para.13) to produce quality software systems?

Remember the CloudStore being unavailable for four days?

They've only been and gone and done it again:

"This site will be unavailable from 6pm (GMT) Friday 8 November due to required maintenance" – 75 hours later, it's still down and we get this post on the G-Cloud blog:

CloudStore update: Posted on November 11, 2013 by Raphaelle Heaf — No Comments ↓ Sorry that the CloudStore is not available right now. Current CloudStore status On Friday, we were carrying out updates to the records and the search indexes, and noticed that this had affected some of the search queries which were not always returning all of the relevant services. It’s important that no-one is at a disadvantage and we've decided to take the site down until this is fixed to ensure everyone is being treated fairly. Working on a fix Right now we’re working on a fix to get things up and running again as soon as possible. We’re keen to ensure that this issue are resolved and to make the user experience better as we keep iterating and making improvements. If you need help If you have an urgent procurement, we can help. Please email enquiries@gcloud.cabinet-office.gov.uk and we’ll aim to respond to you as soon as possible.

GDS are supposed to be using open source software. You'd expect open source software to have been used at thousands of sites worldwide and to have conducted billions of searches. There shouldn't be any major bugs left in it. People make mistakes with search queries.  "select * from table1" when they mean "select * from table2". That kind of thing. It doesn't take 75 hours to fix.

The Guardian called GDS "an elite team of digital experts". Will the Cabinet agree with that description? Or the Americans? What are the Koreans going to make of it? Or the Estonians? Or Chris Chant?

GDS run the digital leaders network, a cadre of IT people who are supposed to mould Whitehall to the Cabinet Office's wishes. What kind of an example to Whitehall is this latest CloudStore outage?

As Philip Virgo was asking only the other day, Should G-Cloud and the GDS be taken seriously as contenders to run Universal Credit?. What temptation is there left for DWP to adopt GDS's agile methods?

Talking of which, agile principle #7: "Working software is the primary measure of progress".

Not to mention principle ##1 and 3 "Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software" and "Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale".

Tomorrow is Tuesday. Tuesday is when GDS publish their weekly diary. The diary is usually fairly anodyne. But tomorrow? The first signs of a GDS re-launch?

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Update 12.11.13:

• The Law Society Gazette announced yesterday that the Supreme Court has entered into a new contract in the hope of cutting its IT costs. Was the new service procured through G-Cloud? No.
• CloudStore is back, says the post on the G-Cloud blog, but the search facility still isn't working so it's not entirely back.
• It doesn't matter so much, sub specie aeternitatis, if the CloudStore's doors are shut for several days at a time. Contrarywise, if the ID hub proposed for GDS's Identity Assurance Programme goes down, the digital-by-default UK will seize up, Estonia-style – luckily, there is still no sign of GDS providing identity assurance to the nation.
• Earlier, Digital By Default News magazine announced the winners of their Digital Leaders 50 awards, given to "leaders and organisations who demonstrate a pioneering and sustainable approach to digital transformation". GDS came top. The BBC came second and Francis Maude came third.
• No GDS this week diary yet.

Update 15.11.13:

CloudStore is back. That's what the G_Cloud team told us three days ago. And again two days ago. But is it?

@G_Cloud_UK Any idea when the supplier section will open again so we can update services? Ta. — enCircle Solutions (@encircleltd) November 15, 2013

GDS – this is getting embarrassing

GDS, the Government Digital Service.

Remember the pan-government identity assurance system that was promised for autumn 2012, then March 2013 and which still doesn't exist?

Remember the assisted digital project that keeps starting, stumbling and starting again?

Remember the four professors' frosty report on GDS's government digital strategy?

Remember the other frosty report, this one by the Electoral Commission?

Remember the fifth professor's warning about the need to use formal methods (para.13) to produce quality software systems?

Remember the CloudStore being unavailable for four days?

They've only been and gone and done it again:

Next week's news

Just to remind you, some time over the next 168 hours, as promised, we shall see the first ever fruits of the Government Digital Service's identity assurance programme. We shall all be able to amend our tax codes through an on-line connection to HMRC.

Extraordinary, but they won't have the field to themselves.

Remember midata, the latter-day South Sea Bubble being blown by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills? They've been "fanning the flames of innovation" round at the midata Innovation Lab and some time over the next 168 hours we are promised a glimpse of the fruits of their labours, too.

At last, new apps to empower us and improve our lifestyles and make the economy grow.

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There's not a single mooncalf left in the world who believes that these apps will be free, is there?

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Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that the DMossEsq blog is right and that there is no such thing as a secure website.

Then it would be a mistake for any supplier to try to sell you a service on that basis – the secure website sales pitch undermines trust in any supplier using it. At least two of GDS's "identity providers" do just that. Mydex and Verizon both promise you security. That's a mistake. There are no unicorns for them to deliver.

Better, surely, to say that every effort will be made to keep your personal data secure, but security can't be guaranteed.

We have a sad new example of the problem. Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service. It should be made clear that Experian didn't mean to sell consumer data to ID thieves and that they're co-operating fully with the police investigations. But it happened.

Experian, like Mydex and Verizon, are UK "identity providers", on whom GDS's identity assurance programme depends.

---

The best you can hope for is that security breaches will be kept to an affordable minimum. How do you achieve that? Answer, you make the supplier of the on-line service responsible for losses.

How have the UK retail banks managed so well to maintain public trust in on-line banking? By paying – when you are defrauded, the banks have to compensate you.

That works (para.6).

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Next week's news

Just to remind you, some time over the next 168 hours, as promised, we shall see the first ever fruits of the Government Digital Service's identity assurance programme. We shall all be able to amend our tax codes through an on-line connection to HMRC.

Extraordinary, but they won't have the field to themselves.

Remember midata, the latter-day South Sea Bubble being blown by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills? They've been "fanning the flames of innovation" round at the midata Innovation Lab and some time over the next 168 hours we are promised a glimpse of the fruits of their labours, too.

At last, new apps to empower us and improve our lifestyles and make the economy grow.

---

Digital-by-default – an eternal mystery?

In connection with the enquiry into digital-by-default, Rt Hon Francis Maude MP, Cabinet Office minister and Postmaster General, gave evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee on Monday 17 June 2013:



There were many questions about digital-by-default before he gave his evidence – please see for example Digital-by-default, an open letter to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.

And having given his evidence now?

They remain unanswered.

Digital-by-default – an eternal mystery?

In connection with the enquiry into digital-by-default, Rt Hon Francis Maude MP, Cabinet Office minister and Postmaster General, gave evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee on Monday 17 June 2013:



There were many questions about digital-by-default before he gave his evidence – please see for example Digital-by-default, an open letter to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.

And having given his evidence now?

Tomorrow – the distributed self

After the collapse in 2010 of the Home Office's ID cards scheme, the NIS (National Identity Service), Whitehall claimed to have learned the lesson.

The 20 September 2010 meeting for Whitehall and its suppliers made it clear that the whole idea of the NIS is now anathema and the Home Office are outcasts, whose contagious touch must be kept away from the new idea – identity assurance.

At the centre of the old NIS lay the National Identity Register, the NIR, a single database with one record per person enrolled into the scheme. At least, that was the plan. It never happened.

Talking to the Information Commissioner's Conference on 6 March 2012 about the new scheme, IDAP, the Identity Assurance Programme, Francis Maude, Cabinet Officer minister, said: "at no point does information need be held on the same server to be correlated".

No NIR. IDAP in the clear?

No.

It's a conjuring trick.

More fully, what Mr Maude said was:

... the technology has moved on and so can we. There is now an option to share data momentarily allowing us to check for matches – with no Big Brother database in sight ... In a world of dispersed data sets, we can bring fragments together instantaneously and momentarily to corroborate – without ever creating a central database ... It’s about bringing together the data at a point in time - to provide the necessary confidence - and then disaggregating it again. At no point does information need be held on the same server to be correlated ...

The NIS was meant to rely on a single, central database. It's not clear but Mr Maude's plan for IDAP may be to use several distributed databases. There is nothing new about distributed databases, the technology for which "moved on" 30 years ago, in the 1980s.

Distributed databases may be geographically and physically separate. But they constitute one logical database, supporting data-matching just as well as the centralised model.

Or perhaps Mr Maude's plan is to use a Google-type program in the middle of IDAP to search far-flung, disparate databases. Again, nothing new about that.

Either way, distributed databases or Google, same effect. Same problem. There's still an NIR. Lesson not learned.

Mr Maude likes to use the term "data-linking" to distinguish IDAP from the "data-sharing" planned for the NIS. There is no distinction. IDAP threatens the same loss of privacy as the NIS.

IDAP is subject to the same law enunciated by Neil Fisher of Unisys back on 31 October 2011:

Any project with "identity" in the name is doomed to failure.

You know that's true. IDAP was meant to be "fully operational" by March 2013. It wasn't and it still isn't – despite what the Guardian call the "elite" team responsible for it at GDS, the Government Digital Service.

Keep your ears open tomorrow for Mr Maude the Conjuror's announcement about the new design principles for identity assurance.

When you hear him promise secure storage of your data in the cloud, remember, there is no such thing.

When he asserts that the suppliers are trusted third parties, ask yourself, who says they're trusted? Trust has to be earned. That takes years. It can't be granted by fiat.

When he claims that there is an "ecosystem" of private sector "identity providers" competing for your custom, just check, how many of them really are private sector companies. The Post Office? Mydex? They rely largely on central and local government contracts and on their influence over government policy.

These "identity providers" haven't adapted slowly, generation by generation, and survived a hostile nature that kills off all but the fittest. They don't exist in an ecosystem. IDAP is more like intelligent design. Or even creationism:

• It's not an ecosystem.
• The "identity providers" aren't all competitive private sector companies.
• It's up to you to judge whether the suppliers are to be trusted and it could take years before you have enough evidence to reach a verdict.
• As the media tell us every day, there's no such thing as a secure website. There are hackers out there against whom even the US military seem to be defenceless.
• And then there's the NSA, the US National Security Agency, with PRISM and Boundless Informant, not to mention access to your mobile phone usage.

There will be three upturned cups on the table. Identity. Efficiency. And trust. Mr Maude will pop privacy under one cup and dextrously swirl them all around. After the beguiling patter and the colourful handkerchiefs, which cup contains privacy?

You know the answer to that one.

Tomorrow – the distributed self

After the collapse in 2010 of the Home Office's ID cards scheme, the NIS (National Identity Service), Whitehall claimed to have learned the lesson.

The 20 September 2010 meeting for Whitehall and its suppliers made it clear that the whole idea of the NIS is now anathema and the Home Office are outcasts, whose contagious touch must be kept away from the new idea – identity assurance.

At the centre of the old NIS lay the National Identity Register, the NIR, a single database with one record per person enrolled into the scheme. At least, that was the plan. It never happened.

Talking to the Information Commissioner's Conference on 6 March 2012 about the new scheme, IDAP, the Identity Assurance Programme, Francis Maude, Cabinet Officer minister, said: "at no point does information need be held on the same server to be correlated".

No NIR. IDAP in the clear?

No.

It's a conjuring trick.

GDS PR blitz

10 June 2013, the BBC Radio 4 world news programme World At One (WATO) carries a 5-minute report (27'32"-32'55") by Jon Manel on GDS, the Government Digital Service.

11 June 2013, WATO carries another 8 minutes (24'58"-32'55") of Mr Manel's report on GDS.

12 June 2013, Mr Manel publishes Inside the UK Government Digital Service on the BBC website.

13 June 2013, the Guardian publish a 6'50" video by Jemima Kiss, Gov.uk: how geeks opened up government featuring ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken (executive director, GDS), ex-BBC man Tom Loosemore (deputy director, GDS) and ex-Morgan Stanley man Francis Maude, their political boss (Cabinet Office minister).

What are GDS trying to tell us?

Listen, read, watch and what you learn is that GDS's staff are young, everyone dresses informally and each team has a fluffy mascot:

There is an inflatable guitar - a red one. You cannot fail to miss [notice?] the bunting. And then there are the mascots. "For us, the Platform Team, it's an otter. His name is Jerry," one woman explains pointing to a brown and white soft toy with a rather sad expression on its face ... As for the young civil servants in the GDS headquarters, some of them seem to have an almost evangelical spirit about them.

Some people will find the evangelical spirit which moves GDS charming. Others won't.

The idea is to model public administration on successful web companies, as ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken tells us in the Guardian video. But do Google and Facebook, for example, provide the right model?

The idea is to promote openness in government. GDS's single government domain project, GOV.UK, and their Identity Assurance Programme (IDAP) are major projects. But the Major Projects Authority verdicts on GOV.UK and IDAP have not been published.

An elite team of digital experts has sparked a radical shake-up in the way the government does its business. Some of the UK's best designers and developers are working on building a new single website for all government departments – gov.uk – but their influence has gone much further.

That's the rubric under the 13 June video on the Guardian website.

Pace Jemima Kiss, at least four professors are unconvinced that the team – or at least the Government Digital Strategy – is elite. And Dr Martyn Thomas, visiting professor at the universities of Oxford and Bristol, makes a fifth unconvinced professor – he told the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee that it's impossible to measure the quality of software systems developed with GDS's so-called "agile" methods.

The idea is to avoid the spectacularly poor value for money of some government IT contracts. An unimpeachable objective.

But how will GDS achieve it?

To be told, as we are in the Guardian video, that GDS are trying to improve the search algorithm on GOV.UK is no answer.

So-called "open systems" aren't the answer either, according to the four professors.

Will the "oligopoly" – as Jon Manel calls them – of government contractors fall in with GDS's plans for shorter contracts? Why should they? There's no need to while the big departments of state continue, as they do, to sign long contracts.

Is it the case that GDS's "influence has gone much further", as the Guardian claim? Francis Maude ends the Guardian video saying that there is enormous demand in Whitehall for GDS's services. Is there?

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spend about £200 billion a year. When Jon Manel asks about DWP's Universal Credit (UC) initiative in the 11 June WATO report, the otherwise jocular ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken becomes guarded, "not that close to it", he says (31'29"), a response which Mr Manel glosses as "not our fault, guv".

GDS hijacked IDAP from DWP and then promised to have it "fully operational" for UC by March 2013. It wasn't and it still isn't. Leaving UC high and dry.

"Not that close to it"? Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken is the senior responsible officer owner for government-wide identity assurance and there's no getting away from it.

The Department of Health spend about £120 billion a year. What are GDS doing about their computer systems? Or the systems at the Department for Education? And what are we to make of BBC money man Paul Lewis's warning on Twitter yesterday:

"We're moving http://t.co/JRcgtJ5eR5 specialist content on to GOV.UK." And 'repurposing' it. Be afraid, lawyers, be v afraid — Paul Lewis (@paullewismoney) June 13, 2013

Apart from GDS, the only government body we hear from in this PR campaign is HMRC, in the 11 June WATO report. The clamorous demand is muted – Lin Homer, chief executive, describes GDS as "bumptious" but adds that there's nothing wrong with that.

She can afford to be kind. GDS haven't laid a glove on her £8 billion ASPIRE contract. Or on her website, www.hmrc.gov.uk, which GDS falsely claim to have incorporated into GOV.UK.

Meanwhile, GDS have some involvement with the plan to make us all enrol on-line on the new electoral register to be used for the 2015 general election. Why don't the BBC and the Guardian tell us anything about that major project?

What about GDS's involvement with the Department for Business Innovation and Skills midata project? And the related Shakespeare Review? What about their new-found responsibility for G-Cloud? What are GDS's plans for the Government Gateway? And what do GDS have to say about cybersecurity?

MPs are worried about digital-by-default – something else the BBC and the Guardian don't mention. Something like 16 million people in the UK will not be able to use the proposed web-based, digital-by-default public services which GDS are meant to deliver. They launched the assisted digital project on 28 July 2011 to try to solve the problem. And in today's weekly GDS diary, 14 June 2013, what does ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken tell us?

Also this week  GOV.UK won two D&AD awards for our content design and the Assisted Digital team had their first market engagement event with suppliers.

Nearly two years after the starting pistol was fired, they had their first meeting with suppliers?

It's early days, you may say, GDS can't be expected to have achieved much yet. Maybe. But in that case the PR is premature. Francis Maude is up in front of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee on Monday to give evidence on digital-by-default. Let's see what that adds to the campaign.

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Update 17.11.13:

15 November 2013: Government Digital Service: the best startup in Europe we can't invest in

So what is it that GDS knows that every chairman and chief executive of a FTSE100 should know?

And what is it that every chairman and chief executive of a FTSE100 knows that GDS should know?

GDS PR blitz

10 June 2013, the BBC Radio 4 world news programme World At One (WATO) carries a 5-minute report (27'32"-32'55") by Jon Manel on GDS, the Government Digital Service.

11 June 2013, WATO carries another 8 minutes (24'58"-32'55") of Mr Manel's report on GDS.

12 June 2013, Mr Manel publishes Inside the UK Government Digital Service on the BBC website.

13 June 2013, the Guardian publish a 6'50" video by Jemima Kiss, Gov.uk: how geeks opened up government featuring ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken (executive director, GDS), ex-BBC man Tom Loosemore (deputy director, GDS) and ex-Morgan Stanley man Francis Maude, their political boss (Cabinet Office minister).

What are GDS trying to tell us?

GDS? Who?

Whitehall has a pitiful record when it comes to investing public money. Think of the National Programme for IT, the NHS black hole into which £6 billion of our money disappeared without trace. Or possibly £12 billion. No-one seems to be sure.

Mindful of which, we now have something called the Major Projects Authority (MPA), a Whitehall unit which keeps tabs on where the money's going and how likely we are to see any return. The MPA issues red-amber-green verdicts on our investments. Green is good news. Red means kiss goodbye to the money.

These verdicts have been kept secret until now but following lobbying, not least by Tony Collins, in the spirit of open government, the MPA have recently published their verdicts on 191 major government projects with a combined lifetime value of £353.7 billion.

The verdicts are categorised by department. Looking at the Cabinet Office projects:

• We see for example that the Electoral Registration Transformation Programme gets an amber light.
  – An old friend on this blog, this is the programme which seeks to compile a national identity register, which is the opposite of the Coalition government's stated policy.
  – It seeks to ensure that the register is complete and accurate by illegally matching electoral records against National Insurance Number records, among others. N [please see update below]
  – The data-matching pilots were a complete failure – in one ward in Ceredigion, only 18% of electoral records could be matched (Table C1, p.31).
  – There will nevertheless be a value-for-money illegal national data-matching exercise carried out this summer and apparently a new electoral register in time for the next general election. N [please see update below]
  – Lifetime budget: £218 million. MPA verdict? Amber.
• We see also that another old friend, G-Cloud, gets an amber/red signal.
  – Strange. Only the other day, G-Cloud won an award, the prestigious public cloud project of the year award.
  – Cloud computing, remember, is the quickest way of losing control of our data yet discovered.
  – It's not as though there's a lack of customers for G-Cloud – public bodies are pretty well being ordered to use it, through the Cloud First policy. It's unlikely that the project can fail for lack of take-up, so why the amber/red?
  – Any sign of a lack of spending on G-Cloud, and the programme director, Denise McDonagh, can simply buy something herself as she happens to be IT Director at the Home Office and disposes of a considerable budget. Only the other day (it may have been the same other day), she did just that and bumped up the sales figures by handing Skyscape the £1.5 million contract to host the heir to the Criminal Records Bureau.
  – That's Skyscape, the one-man band that barely existed a year ago but somehow beat the long-established competition in a completely fair selection process.
  – Lifetime budget, according to the MPA: £0.58 million. MPA verdict? Amber/red.
• Which brings us to our oldest friend, the Government Digital Service (GDS).
  – They've got their award-winning GOV.UK project. 24 ministerial departments have been pointlessly and only partially transferred to GOV.UK and several hundred other government bodies are yet to be pointlessly and only partially transferred.
  – They're working on Individual Electoral Registration. Illegally. See above. N [please see update below]
  – They promised to have identity assurance fully operational by March 2013 for 21 million benefit claimants and failed. That leaves DWP's Universal Credit flailing and ditto the BIS midata nonsense.
  – We have eight "identity providers" in the UK with nothing to do as a result.
  – GDS's digital-by-default plan is holed below the waterline (fatally according to four professors) not least because millions of us Brits have never used the web.
  – On 28 July 2011, GDS promised to sort this out with their assisted digital sticking plaster. The best part of two years later, on 23 May 2013, they finally got round to starting to chat about the problem.
  – 56 members of parliament have signed an early day motion to debate digital-by-default.
  – GDS are also meant to replace the cumbersome-but-functional Government Gateway at some point, although what with, they've never said.
  – The mandarins keep expressing their support for GDS, Lord knows why.
  – But what about the MPA verdict, you ask? There isn't one. There just isn't one. None of these GDS projects is major? Or maybe GDS doesn't exist? Or the MPA ran out of colours? One way and another, if you're looking for openness, hard cheese.

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Updated 29 May 2013 12:35
N Data-matching was illegal. With the passing of the Electoral Registration and Administration Act on 31 January 2013, it is assumed to be no longer illegal. The suggestion that it is illegal is now presumably false and misleading. Please see SCOOP? IER, sackcloth, ashes and Rip Van Winkle.

Updated 28.5.14

The other day, the MPA, the Major projects Authority, published their second report, for 2013-14.

Projects don't come much more major than GDS's mission to transform the UK government. GDS (the Government Digital Service) are the show, they tell us, the only solution to the delivery crisis and if it wasn't for them there'd be riots in the streets.

In the interests of openness, what is the MPA's verdict on GDS? How are GDS getting on? Red? Surely not. Amber? Green? That's more like it.

Sadly, no. There's not a mention of GDS. HS2, yes. GDS, no.

GDS? Who?

Whitehall has a pitiful record when it comes to investing public money. Think of the National Programme for IT, the NHS black hole into which £6 billion of our money disappeared without trace. Or possibly £12 billion. No-one seems to be sure.

Mindful of which, we now have something called the Major Projects Authority (MPA), a Whitehall unit which keeps tabs on where the money's going and how likely we are to see any return. The MPA issues red-amber-green verdicts on our investments. Green is good news. Red means kiss goodbye to the money.

GDS, the NAO, the BBC, parliament and DWP – five questions

The National Audit Office (NAO) have released a new report, Digital Britain 2: Putting users at the heart of government’s digital services, examining the Government Digital Service (GDS) plans for digital-by-default. The report's conclusions concentrate on the problems faced by people who can't or won't use on-line public services.

The same problem was examined the day before yesterday by Mark Easton, the BBC's home affairs editor.

And 52 members of parliament have put their name to an early day motion to debate the problem.

Meanwhile the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), who were depending on digital-by-default for the introduction of Universal Credit, have published not one but two documents confirming that benefits will continue to rely on face-to-face meetings, telephone calls and letters in the post – the very opposite of digital-by-default – please see Local Support Services Framework and Universal Credit – Your claim journey.

GDS have responded to the NAO report with a post on their blog today:

Overall, this report is a really positive sign we’re moving in the right direction. But it’s also a helpful reminder of the work we still need to do to support those who are less able to use online services.

The NAO report has some ("really positive"?) comments to make on the putative savings we can look forward to from digital-by-default:

1.5 The GDS has also highlighted the possible savings from switching to digital channels. As the strategy states, central government provides more than 650 public services – which cost between £6 billion and £9 billion in 2011-12, according to GDS. The GDS has estimated total potential annual savings of £1.7 billion to £1.8 billion if all these services were operated through digital channels. More than 300 of these services have no digital channel. The savings estimate does not include the costs that may be required to create or redesign digital services. However, it also does not take into account the government’s new approach to becoming digital, set out in its strategy, which could lead to greater savings being achieved more quickly. The GDS states that the average cost of a central government digital transaction can be almost 20 times lower than by phone and 50 times lower than face-to-face. 1.6 We have not audited the estimated savings in the Government Digital Strategy, nor have we audited how government will redesign and develop its new digital services. Our future audits will evaluate the value for money of digital services as the GDS and departments work together to move more than 650 services online.

The report also mentions (without being "really positive") the need for identity assurance. Someone posted a comment on the GDS blog:
28/03/2013

dmossesq # Please Note: Your comment is awaiting moderation. The NAO report is available at http://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/10123-001-Digital-Britain-2-Book.pdf Under the heading “Trust”, the report includes the following: QUOTE 4.9 To use online public services people need to be able to trust the government with the information they provide online. The Government Digital Strategy recognises that users of public services often find it hard to register for online services, and that it needs to offer a more straightforward, secure way to allow users to identify themselves online while preserving their privacy. Therefore there is an Identity Assurance Programme [IDAP] under way in GDS and we were told that this is to develop a framework to enable federated identity assurance to be adopted across government services. 4.10 The government also told us that this will involve creating a simple, trusted and secure new way for people and businesses to access government services, which will provide assurance to government that the right person is accessing their own personal information. UNQUOTE Without IDAP, there is no digital-by-default. DWP were led to believe that IDAP would be “fully operational” for up to 21 million claimants of Universal Credit “from March 2013″, https://online.contractsfinder.businesslink.gov.uk/Common/View%20Notice.aspx?NoticeId=797279 Here we are in March 2013. And the question the NAO almost ask is, where is IDAP? 28/03/2013

That comment has now been moderated. Has it been published? No. It's been deleted.

Tomorrow should see the publication of ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken's video diary, This week at GDS.

He's the executive director of GDS and the senior responsible officer owner for the pan-government identity assurance programme. Will he comment on:

1. the NAO report?
2. the BBC report?
3. the early day motion in parliament?
4. DWP being stranded without IDAP?
5. the deliberations of the permanent secretaries who met at GDS's offices yesterday to consider digital-by-default?

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Added 16:48:

Following publication of the post above, DMossEsq brought it to the attention of GDS. The comment which had previously been deleted from their blog has now been published by GDS. Also, this week's edition of This week at GDS has been published, a day early, perhaps because of the bank holiday. No response to questions 2., 3. and 4. above. A passing mention of 5. and a promise to consider 1. in next week's edition.

GDS, the NAO, the BBC, parliament and DWP – five questions

The National Audit Office (NAO) have released a new report, Digital Britain 2: Putting users at the heart of government’s digital services, examining the Government Digital Service (GDS) plans for digital-by-default. The report's conclusions concentrate on the problems faced by people who can't or won't use on-line public services.

The same problem was examined the day before yesterday by Mark Easton, the BBC's home affairs editor.

And 52 members of parliament have put their name to an early day motion to debate the problem.

Meanwhile the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), who were depending on digital-by-default for the introduction of Universal Credit, have published not one but two documents confirming that benefits will continue to rely on face-to-face meetings, telephone calls and letters in the post – the very opposite of digital-by-default – please see Local Support Services Framework and Universal Credit – Your claim journey.

GDS have responded to the NAO report with a post on their blog today:

Overall, this report is a really positive sign we’re moving in the right direction. But it’s also a helpful reminder of the work we still need to do to support those who are less able to use online services.

GDS falls at the first fence (Software Engineering 101)

Like any religion, digital-by-default needs manuals for its adherents to follow and the lead story in the Government Digital Service (GDS) broadcast on 15 March 2013 is the publication of one such manual, the Digital by Default Service Standard:


To embrace digital-by-default is to see government as the design of so many services and the question is what makes a service a good service, what is the definition here of "excellence"? This is the question to which ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken addresses himself in the clip above and the gospel answer is given in the service standard manual.

There are four stages apparently through which you must progress in the development of a digital-by-default service:

• Discovery
• Alpha
• Beta
• Live

"The discovery phase is your chance to gain an understanding of what the users of the service need ...", it says in the manual ...

which reveals further that "This information is found through: workshops ... simple mock ups ... paper prototypes ... [and] plenty of whiteboard diagrams" ...

and that "A small team will be required, consisting of your stakeholders and any core team members that have been identified, including the service manager. The phase should not take longer than a week. At the end of the phase a decision should be made whether to proceed to the alpha phase".

Click on the "small team" link above and a message is displayed saying "This web page is not available". For the moment, we can't be sure just how small a team is required. No religion is complete without its mysteries.

Still, if you click on the other links, you can follow the steps yourself from the discovery phase all the way through to the fully operational live phase, when a service is released to the users that is so excellent that they will immediately want to use it in preference to any rival – "Build services so good that people prefer to use them", as they say at GDS, that's their motto.

As we know, for GDS, "the people and organisations with which we work must be imbued by the culture and ethos of the web generation ... we are not just on the web, but of the web. And our culture and governance must reflect that". That is the central article of the digital-by-default faith.

And who better to lead in its practice than GDS themselves? Who better to exemplify its efficacy?

Exemplify?

Consider for example the identity and assurance programme (IDAP, or sometimes just plain IDA), a service which was promised to be "fully operational" for 21 million DWP claimants "by March 2013".

Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, chief executive of GDS, is the senior responsible officer owner for this pan-government digital-by-default service (a fact which he modestly fails to mention in his weekly broadcasts). We may safely assume that a small team spent a week discovering the users' requirements and then proceeded to the alpha phase.

Actually we don't have to assume that, we know it – Identity Alphas was published on the GDS blog on 12 March 2013. A bit late, perhaps, given that IDAP was meant to be fully operational already, but remember, digital-by-default is ... agile.

And the acid test, do "people prefer to use" GDS's IDAP?

No. They don't:

IDA services put on ice for Universal Credit delivery No mention was made of the use of IDA in the DWP's Local Support Services Framework ... Instead, the paper referenced the issuing of PIN numbers to users for their online accounts ...

Oh God.

#Fail.

Back to the whiteboard.

GDS falls at the first fence (Software Engineering 101)

Like any religion, digital-by-default needs manuals for its adherents to follow and the lead story in the Government Digital Service (GDS) broadcast on 15 March 2013 is the publication of one such manual, the Digital by Default Service Standard:


To embrace digital-by-default is to see government as the design of so many services and the question is what makes a service a good service, what is the definition here of "excellence"? This is the question to which ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken addresses himself in the clip above and the gospel answer is given in the service standard manual.