Sunday 17 March 2013

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:
"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.

Thursday 14 March 2013

GDS's misplaced faith and the governance of Whitehall

Today we announced some small but important changes in governance. The detail is here but the upshot is: we won’t have a cross-government Chief Information Officer (CIO) any more, nor a Head of Profession for Information and Communications Technology (ICT). We are moving responsibility for these capabilities to the Government Digital Service and we are closing some cross-government boards in various technology areas and reviewing the rest in order to make sure we are set up as efficiently as possible.
Thus ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken writing today in a post on the Government Digital Service (GDS) blog, Of the web, not on the web. He's the executive director of GDS and the senior responsible officer owner for the pan-government identity assurance programme (IDAP, failed).

Take a look at the quotation above:
  • We won't have either a cross-government CIO or a head of the ICT profession any more, he says. False, because he goes on to say that responsibility for these capabilities is moving to GDS. So we will have a cross-government CIO and a head of the ICT profession and they will both be GDS.
  • Some cross-government technology boards are already being closed down, he says, and the future of others is being reviewed. GDS looks like having more and more of the field to itself, the competition is being wiped out.
  • These changes in governance are described by the ex-Guardian man as small. Clearly false. Healthy plurality is dwindling. More and more power is being centralised in GDS. That is a big change.
It's unfortunate timing, given that the death of IDAP was announced on the same day, RIP – "the challenge now is not about information technology, but about designing, developing and delivering great, user-centred digital services", a challenge which GDS could not rise to.

Alarm bells may ring. Is GDS the right place to centralise power?

They may ring even harder when you read this:
... the people and organisations with which we work must be imbued by the culture and ethos of the web generation.

... we have to put digital leaders and Chief Operating Officers (COOs) in the driving seat across government.

... we are not just on the web, but of the web. And our culture and governance must reflect that.
This quasi-religious worship of the web is a recurring theme. Think back to 17 October 2012 when the ex-Guardian man published Why GOV.UK matters: A platform for a digital Government including his meaningless bon mot:
GOV.UK is not Government on the Internet, but of the Internet.
GOV.UK is neither government on the internet nor government of the internet. GOV.UK is a website. And nothing more.

This GDS religion/culture/ethos with its digital leader apostles and its veneration of Lady Lane Fox has already failed. Despite the blessing given by Tim O'Reilly, it has failed to provide the identity assurance service that was needed to support digital by default.

Since that was its only job we had better look elsewhere for salvation.

GDS's misplaced faith and the governance of Whitehall

Today we announced some small but important changes in governance. The detail is here but the upshot is: we won’t have a cross-government Chief Information Officer (CIO) any more, nor a Head of Profession for Information and Communications Technology (ICT). We are moving responsibility for these capabilities to the Government Digital Service and we are closing some cross-government boards in various technology areas and reviewing the rest in order to make sure we are set up as efficiently as possible.
Thus ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken writing today in a post on the Government Digital Service (GDS) blog, Of the web, not on the web. He's the executive director of GDS and the senior responsible officer owner for the pan-government identity assurance programme (IDAP, failed).

GDS's Identity Assurance Programme goes up in smoke

Computer Weekly, 14 March 2013:
IDA services put on ice for Universal Credit delivery
Only the other day there we were, weren't we, asking if the Government Digital Service's pan-government Identity Assurance service is up and running yet. They had promised that it would be "fully operational" for 21 million Department for Work and Pensions claimants "by March 2013".

Well now, thanks to Computer Weekly, we know the answer.
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 ...
GDS talked a good game once. Is there any hope now for IDA?

No. Judging by this 12 March 2013 post on their blog, Identity Alphas, GDS are innocents abroad in the world of identity management.

"Where did it all go wrong?" You may well ask.

GDS's Identity Assurance Programme goes up in smoke

Computer Weekly, 14 March 2013:
IDA services put on ice for Universal Credit delivery
Only the other day there we were, weren't we, asking if the Government Digital Service's pan-government Identity Assurance service is up and running yet. They had promised that it would be "fully operational" for 21 million Department for Work and Pensions claimants "by March 2013".

Well now, thanks to Computer Weekly, we know the answer.
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 ...
GDS talked a good game once. Is there any hope now for IDA?

No. Judging by this 12 March 2013 post on their blog, Identity Alphas, GDS are innocents abroad in the world of identity management.

"Where did it all go wrong?" You may well ask.

Tuesday 12 March 2013

The Identity & Passport Service, biometrics and your money

Roll up, roll up
and watch a collection of goldfish
set light to a £15 million pile of notes
and reduce it to ashes.

The Identity & Passport Service (IPS) is an executive agency of the Home Office.

IPS were meant to issue us all with ID cards.

ID cards were meant to solve all our problems. Terrorism, crime, border control, you name it, think of a problem, ID cards would solve it.

And they were meant to make our lives easier. With ID cards, so it was said, it would be easier to open a bank account, easier to get a job, easier to prove your right to state benefits, easier to travel domestically and abroad, you name it, think of any transaction, ID cards would make it easier.

The UK ID card scheme had unstinting political support from July 2002 onwards from two prime ministers (Blair and Brown), five home secretaries (Blunkett, Clarke, Reid, Smith, Johnson) and the whole of Whitehall. The scheme had unstinting assistance from the best management consultants and contractors. Asked at one stage whether the budget had been exceeded, the Home Office said no, it couldn't be, there wasn't a budget. The media were largely in favour and, to start with, so were the public.

And yet it failed. By December 2010 when the Identity Cards Act 2006 was repealed, IPS had to admit that there was nothing to show for £292 million of public expenditure. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The effect of complete failure on IPS was traumatic:
When a laboratory rat presses button B and gets an electric shock, he stops pressing button B. Not so the goldfish of IPS. Each time they swim round the bowl it comes as a surprise to them, oh look, there's a castle.

The distinguishing feature of IPS's ID card scheme was biometrics. Biometrics would allow people to be identified uniquely. Biometrics would allow people to have their identity verified. The scheme depended on biometrics being reliable. They're not. That's one reason why it failed.

You'd think they'd learn. But no. Here they come round the bowl again and what's this? A castle? No. Face recognition biometrics. Just what we need.

Hat tip to Toby Stevens, IPS today issued an invitation to tender (ITT) for a face recognition system:
II.1.5) Short description of the contract or purchase(s)
The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) requires a Facial Recognition System (FRS) to help determine an applicants entitlement to and eligibility for a British Passport.
The Authority intends to deliver capability to undertake Biometric Verification and Biometric Identification (including searching against a second instance referred to as a watchlist (WL)) checks on all passport
applications.
The architecture will comprise a Facial Recognition Engine, and a Facial Recognition Workflow capability which includes business rules, management information, audit and a data interface from an existing application system.
The solution will use existing IPS biographic and biometric information as part of the FR checks, with appropriate data stored with each check ...
They're offering a five-year contract worth between £6 million and £15 million to the lucky winners. Excluding VAT.

The ITT stipulates a number of throughput conditions that have to be met, e.g. the face recognition system has to be able to:
o Return a result from a Biometric Verification in under 10 seconds on 99.5% of searches.
o Return a result from a Biometric Identification search under 60 seconds on 99.5% of searches.
o Return a result from a Biometric Verification (WL) search in under 20 seconds on 99.5% of searches.
but there is no stated requirement for the system to be reliable. Which is lucky for the contractors. Because all the published tests of mass consumer face recognition suggest that IPS would be better off tossing a coin than using this flaky technology.

What IPS do insist on in the ITT is:
the capability to adjust the threshold for matching based on business drivers e.g. demand levels.
If IPS have a lot of staff on one day, then they might turn the dial up and make it a bit harder for your face to match the photograph stored on their register. If on the other hand there's a bit of a staff shortage, then they can turn the dial down and just let everyone match. Which rather gives the lie, doesn't it, to the suggestion that this charade has got anything to do with your identity, which doesn't vary with demand levels.

Most likely, IPS will lay off a lot of staff and then, like the UK Border Agency, re-recruit them when they re-discover that the technology that was meant to replace them doesn't work.

Lessons learnt? None. Roll up, roll up and watch a collection of goldfish set light to a £15 million pile of notes and reduce it to ashes.

The Identity & Passport Service, biometrics and your money

Roll up, roll up
and watch a collection of goldfish
set light to a £15 million pile of notes
and reduce it to ashes.

The Identity & Passport Service (IPS) is an executive agency of the Home Office.

IPS were meant to issue us all with ID cards.

ID cards were meant to solve all our problems. Terrorism, crime, border control, you name it, think of a problem, ID cards would solve it.

And they were meant to make our lives easier. With ID cards, so it was said, it would be easier to open a bank account, easier to get a job, easier to prove your right to state benefits, easier to travel domestically and abroad, you name it, think of any transaction, ID cards would make it easier.

The UK ID card scheme had unstinting political support from July 2002 onwards from two prime ministers (Blair and Brown), five home secretaries (Blunkett, Clarke, Reid, Smith, Johnson) and the whole of Whitehall. The scheme had unstinting assistance from the best management consultants and contractors. Asked at one stage whether the budget had been exceeded, the Home Office said no, it couldn't be, there wasn't a budget. The media were largely in favour and, to start with, so were the public.

And yet it failed. By December 2010 when the Identity Cards Act 2006 was repealed, IPS had to admit that there was nothing to show for £292 million of public expenditure. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Universal Credit – a tricky confinement

Universal Credit – a tricky confinement