Friday 3 May 2013

GOV.UK – not the 9 o'clock news

Simpler, clearer, faster – that's GOV.UK's shoutline.

GOV.UK is the new "single government domain" produced by the Government Digital Service and it recently won the Design of the Year award:
Design of the Year jury member Griff Rhys Jones said GOV.UK "was a clear winner".
Great 1980s satirist that he is, Mr Rhys Jones hasn't lost his touch.

----------

Updated 2 September 2013
GOV.UK wins the only 2013 D&AD award in the newly-created "Writing for Websites and Digital Design" category.

Updated: 15 November 2013
Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken/GDS comes top of the Digital Leaders 50 awards given to those "who demonstrate a pioneering and sustainable approach to digital transformation". The BBC come second and Francis Maude third.

No examples of sustainable digital transformation are given but CloudStore has been unavailable for eight of the 14 days leading up to the awards' being announced on 12 November 2013.

Updated 15 November 2013:
Back in May, G-Cloud won the Public Cloud Project of the Year Datacentre Solutions Award 2013. Few people noticed ...

... but one wag did (@LazBlazter), and retweeted the following on 9 November 2013, just after CloudStore's October outage, on day #2 of the November outage:

Updated 8 December 2013:
Only one way to go from here, two weeks at the top, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken tumbles to sixth position in the Computer Weekly UKtech50 awards, "our definitive list of the movers and shakers in UK IT".

No.1 now is Liam Maxwell, chief technology officer, HM Government.

And what did ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken tell us about technology in his speech to Code for America? "Technology is a fourth-order question in government", he said. 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 said, "is putting technology in its place".

Clearly the awards panel disagree.

Updated 21 January 2014:
In Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude Decries 'Old Style' Obamacare Insurance Website, published in the Huffington Post, 9 January 2014, Mr Maude makes the uncontentious claim that the US government is useless at IT, unlike the UK government, which has GOV.UK and IDA. At one point we read:
Noting the success of the gov.uk site, a portal that brings the government billions in revenue from countries such as New Zealand that have paid for the source code, Maude said ...
Is this true, does anyone know? Have New Zealand or anyone else paid billions to use the GOV.UK source code?

Updated 26 January 2014:

2013 GovFresh Awards winners
by Luke Fretwell / January 21, 2014, 6:00 am:
Updated 18.6.14

Since we last looked (15 November 2013) the Digital Leaders 50 awards have become the Digital Leaders 100 awards – twice as good.

All change?

No. Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE, executive director of GDS and senior responsible owner of the identity assurance programme (RIP), is still top:


Not only that but the Skyscape express rolls on ...


... as does the Martha-now-Lady Lane Fox revolution:



Updated 10.9.14

The awards just keep coming in.

One breathless encomium ...


... after another ...


... and another ...


... and another ...


... and another:


Sometimes even Anna and Katie and Rachael and Emer and Alexandra must get tired. At which point there's a praise-generating engine in GOV.UK's armoury that takes over:


But today, new heights were scaled, when an awards body contacted GDS and begged them to apply so that they can be given an award:


What next?

Can GDS write an app that generates GOV.UK award-awarders?


Updated 31.10.14

Still the praise keeps coming in – is there no end to it?






Updated 4.12.14

Now Computer Weekly have published UKtech50 2014 - The most influential people in UK IT and the first question must be "where have Skyscape come"? You will remember that Digital by Default News rated Skyscape the number 1 digital leader in the Industry category back in June. Six months later, and Computer Weekly ... don't mention Skyscape.

Still, we know from Simon Wardley that:


Close.

But no award for accuracy.

Actually they came fourth and fifth, not third and fourth, if you care to look.

Liam Maxwell, the government's chief technology officer who comes in at number 4, is "attempting to break the stranglehold of the oligopoly of large companies that have dominated government IT". That's what Computer Weekly say.

How's that going?


In its first 2½ years of existence, G-Cloud, the government cloud project, has placed 53.2% of £346 million = £184 million of business with SMEs (half of which goes to Skyscape alone, according to Skyscape).

£184 million. £0.184 billion. Spread over 2½ years. And how much does the government spend on IT every year? About £20 billion? Some way to go before Mr Maxwell can expect to come third.

Which brings us to fifth, Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE CDO, executive director of the Government Digital Service and senior responsible owner of the pan-government identity assurance programme (RIP). As Computer Weekly say: "Bracken is the figurehead for a cultural change in how public services are delivered in a digital world".

And how's that going?

As every fule kno, you can't have digital-by-default public services unless you can identify your parishioners. That requires identity assurance.

GDS are several years late starting a small beta test of their offering. The users are finding it hard. No alternative, non-digital registration system is provided. And GDS are breaking their own rules.

Meanwhile, they are providing us with re-written front ends to services we already had, but with no identity assurance, and without re-designing the services first. Culture change? Hardly. The promise of government transformation is not being delivered.

Gavin Patterson, the Chief Executive Officer of BT, came sixth. When Westminster and Whitehall realise in several hundred billion pounds' time that, in digital-by-default, they are chasing a will o' the wisp, Mr Patterson may expect to move up at least one place.


Updated 28.1.15

It's not all prizes. GDS receive the odd brickbat, too. For example, Mr Craddock isn't entirely smitten:


But there's still a lot of breathless fan mail like this coming in:


And recently, the Prime Minister of Australia joined Suzanne:
ESTABLISHMENT OF A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OFFICE

The Commonwealth Government will establish a Digital Transformation Office (DTO) within the Department of Communications so that government services can be delivered digitally from start to finish and better serve the needs of citizens and businesses ...

The DTO will use technology to make services simpler, clearer and faster for Australian families and businesses.
"Simpler, clearer, faster" is, of course, the motto of GDS's GOV.UK.

It's high praise indeed when even the level-headed Australians find you worthy of imitation. "Simpler, clearer, Australia", as Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE CDO rather amusingly said.

And it's not just the Australians. The Americans, too. Look what came out of the White House on 16 January 2015:
U.S.-U.K. Digital Government Partnership

Today, we are building on a long history of innovation and collaboration on digital technologies with the United Kingdom.  The President and Prime Minister Cameron just announced a commitment to strengthen and expand the ongoing digital partnership between our two countries.  Both countries have made real progress in working to improve how our governments use digital services to better serve citizens and businesses, and to build a stronger digital economy.  We will expand our already existing collaborations in these areas ...

In 2011, the United Kingdom created the Government Digital Service (GDS), a centralized group of digital experts who have vastly improved citizen experiences when using government digital services. This team has worked to make public services digital by default, simpler, less costly, and faster to use ...

The United Kingdom developed a comprehensive Digital Strategy ... This strategy, once fully implemented, will save taxpayers in the United Kingdom £2.7 billion per year.
Again, this is high praise indeed.

Positively intoxicating.

So much so that it's as well for Australia and the US to check the record.

Has UK government been transformed by GDS? Has UK Citizen experience of government digital services been vastly improved? Are UK public services digital by default? Is the UK's Government Digital Strategy feasible? When will it be fully implemented? And how sure is anyone that it will save £2.7 billion p.a. (previous estimates include 1.2, 1.7 and 1.8 billion pounds)?

Are the claims made for the efficacy of GDS reliable? Or do they, like the emperor's new clothes, evaporate on inspection? Which is it?

GDS's idea of UK public services becoming digital by default depends on identity assurance. Central government departments and local authorities have to be sure that you are who you say you are when you log on.

The executive director of GDS is also the senior responsible owner of the pan-government identity assurance project and the project is late. Several years late.  He gave a talk in the US on 16 October 2013. Here's a 1'15" clip:


He claimed that GDS have eight or nine "identity providers". They have one. Experian.

He claimed that the first identity assurance services would start later in October 2013 with HMRC (the UK's IRS). The planned test did not take place. No explanation. No acknowledgement.

He claimed that identity assurance would support 45 million users. A year later on 30 October 2014 they had 741 users in a private beta test, please see Slide #14.

"I just can't get enough of gov.uk's awesome @gdsteam"?
Posted by David Moss at 10:46 0 comments

GOV.UK – not the 9 o'clock news

Simpler, clearer, faster – that's GOV.UK's shoutline.

GOV.UK is the new "single government domain" produced by the Government Digital Service and it recently won the Design of the Year award:
Design of the Year jury member Griff Rhys Jones said GOV.UK "was a clear winner".
Great 1980s satirist that he is, Mr Rhys Jones hasn't lost his touch.

----------

Updated 2 September 2013
GOV.UK wins the only 2013 D&AD award in the newly-created "Writing for Websites and Digital Design" category.

Updated: 15 November 2013
Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken/GDS comes top of the Digital Leaders 50 awards given to those "who demonstrate a pioneering and sustainable approach to digital transformation". The BBC come second and Francis Maude third.

No examples of sustainable digital transformation are given but CloudStore has been unavailable for eight of the 14 days leading up to the awards' being announced on 12 November 2013.

Updated 15 November 2013:
Back in May, G-Cloud won the Public Cloud Project of the Year Datacentre Solutions Award 2013. Few people noticed ...

... but one wag did (@LazBlazter), and retweeted the following on 9 November 2013, just after CloudStore's October outage, on day #2 of the November outage:

Updated 8 December 2013:
Only one way to go from here, two weeks at the top, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken tumbles to sixth position in the Computer Weekly UKtech50 awards, "our definitive list of the movers and shakers in UK IT".

No.1 now is Liam Maxwell, chief technology officer, HM Government.

And what did ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken tell us about technology in his speech to Code for America? "Technology is a fourth-order question in government", he said. 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 said, "is putting technology in its place".

Clearly the awards panel disagree.

Updated 21 January 2014:
In Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude Decries 'Old Style' Obamacare Insurance Website, published in the Huffington Post, 9 January 2014, Mr Maude makes the uncontentious claim that the US government is useless at IT, unlike the UK government, which has GOV.UK and IDA. At one point we read:
Noting the success of the gov.uk site, a portal that brings the government billions in revenue from countries such as New Zealand that have paid for the source code, Maude said ...
Is this true, does anyone know? Have New Zealand or anyone else paid billions to use the GOV.UK source code?

Updated 26 January 2014:

2013 GovFresh Awards winners
by Luke Fretwell / January 21, 2014, 6:00 am:
Updated 18.6.14

Since we last looked (15 November 2013) the Digital Leaders 50 awards have become the Digital Leaders 100 awards – twice as good.

All change?

No. Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE, executive director of GDS and senior responsible owner of the identity assurance programme (RIP), is still top:

Not only that but the Skyscape express rolls on ...

... as does the Martha-now-Lady Lane Fox revolution:


Updated 10.9.14

The awards just keep coming in.

One breathless encomium ...

... after another ...

... and another ...

... and another ...

... and another:

Sometimes even Anna and Katie and Rachael and Emer and Alexandra must get tired. At which point there's a praise-generating engine in GOV.UK's armoury that takes over:

But today, new heights were scaled, when an awards body contacted GDS and begged them to apply so that they can be given an award:

What next?

Can GDS write an app that generates GOV.UK award-awarders?


Updated 31.10.14

Still the praise keeps coming in – is there no end to it?





Updated 4.12.14

Now Computer Weekly have published UKtech50 2014 - The most influential people in UK IT and the first question must be "where have Skyscape come"? You will remember that Digital by Default News rated Skyscape the number 1 digital leader in the Industry category back in June. Six months later, and Computer Weekly ... don't mention Skyscape.

Still, we know from Simon Wardley that:

Close.

But no award for accuracy.

Actually they came fourth and fifth, not third and fourth, if you care to look.

Liam Maxwell, the government's chief technology officer who comes in at number 4, is "attempting to break the stranglehold of the oligopoly of large companies that have dominated government IT". That's what Computer Weekly say.

How's that going?

In its first 2½ years of existence, G-Cloud, the government cloud project, has placed 53.2% of £346 million = £184 million of business with SMEs (half of which goes to Skyscape alone, according to Skyscape).

£184 million. £0.184 billion. Spread over 2½ years. And how much does the government spend on IT every year? About £20 billion? Some way to go before Mr Maxwell can expect to come third.

Which brings us to fifth, Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE CDO, executive director of the Government Digital Service and senior responsible owner of the pan-government identity assurance programme (RIP). As Computer Weekly say: "Bracken is the figurehead for a cultural change in how public services are delivered in a digital world".

And how's that going?

As every fule kno, you can't have digital-by-default public services unless you can identify your parishioners. That requires identity assurance.

GDS are several years late starting a small beta test of their offering. The users are finding it hard. No alternative, non-digital registration system is provided. And GDS are breaking their own rules.

Meanwhile, they are providing us with re-written front ends to services we already had, but with no identity assurance, and without re-designing the services first. Culture change? Hardly. The promise of government transformation is not being delivered.

Gavin Patterson, the Chief Executive Officer of BT, came sixth. When Westminster and Whitehall realise in several hundred billion pounds' time that, in digital-by-default, they are chasing a will o' the wisp, Mr Patterson may expect to move up at least one place.


Updated 28.1.15

It's not all prizes. GDS receive the odd brickbat, too. For example, Mr Craddock isn't entirely smitten:

But there's still a lot of breathless fan mail like this coming in:

And recently, the Prime Minister of Australia joined Suzanne:
ESTABLISHMENT OF A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OFFICE

The Commonwealth Government will establish a Digital Transformation Office (DTO) within the Department of Communications so that government services can be delivered digitally from start to finish and better serve the needs of citizens and businesses ...

The DTO will use technology to make services simpler, clearer and faster for Australian families and businesses.
"Simpler, clearer, faster" is, of course, the motto of GDS's GOV.UK.

It's high praise indeed when even the level-headed Australians find you worthy of imitation. "Simpler, clearer, Australia", as Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE CDO rather amusingly said.

And it's not just the Australians. The Americans, too. Look what came out of the White House on 16 January 2015:
U.S.-U.K. Digital Government Partnership

Today, we are building on a long history of innovation and collaboration on digital technologies with the United Kingdom.  The President and Prime Minister Cameron just announced a commitment to strengthen and expand the ongoing digital partnership between our two countries.  Both countries have made real progress in working to improve how our governments use digital services to better serve citizens and businesses, and to build a stronger digital economy.  We will expand our already existing collaborations in these areas ...

In 2011, the United Kingdom created the Government Digital Service (GDS), a centralized group of digital experts who have vastly improved citizen experiences when using government digital services. This team has worked to make public services digital by default, simpler, less costly, and faster to use ...

The United Kingdom developed a comprehensive Digital Strategy ... This strategy, once fully implemented, will save taxpayers in the United Kingdom £2.7 billion per year.
Again, this is high praise indeed.

Positively intoxicating.

So much so that it's as well for Australia and the US to check the record.

Has UK government been transformed by GDS? Has UK Citizen experience of government digital services been vastly improved? Are UK public services digital by default? Is the UK's Government Digital Strategy feasible? When will it be fully implemented? And how sure is anyone that it will save £2.7 billion p.a. (previous estimates include 1.2, 1.7 and 1.8 billion pounds)?

Are the claims made for the efficacy of GDS reliable? Or do they, like the emperor's new clothes, evaporate on inspection? Which is it?

GDS's idea of UK public services becoming digital by default depends on identity assurance. Central government departments and local authorities have to be sure that you are who you say you are when you log on.

The executive director of GDS is also the senior responsible owner of the pan-government identity assurance project and the project is late. Several years late.  He gave a talk in the US on 16 October 2013. Here's a 1'15" clip:


He claimed that GDS have eight or nine "identity providers". They have one. Experian.

He claimed that the first identity assurance services would start later in October 2013 with HMRC (the UK's IRS). The planned test did not take place. No explanation. No acknowledgement.

He claimed that identity assurance would support 45 million users. A year later on 30 October 2014 they had 741 users in a private beta test, please see Slide #14.

"I just can't get enough of gov.uk's awesome @gdsteam"?
Posted by David Moss at 10:46 1 comments

From AP to Yodlee via miiCard

Trust: miiCard foresees a new world
in which you can "grant access to your spouse ...
with a simple touch on a screen"

AP Twitter hack causes panic on Wall Street and sends Dow plunging

Wall Street collided with social media on Tuesday, when a false tweet from a trusted news organization sent the US stock market into freefall.

The 143-point fall in the Dow Jones industrial average came after hackers sent a message from the Twitter feed of the Associated Press, saying the White House had been hit by two explosions and that Barack Obama was injured. The fake tweet, which was immediately corrected by Associated Press employees, caused a sensation on Twitter and in the stock market ...
That was the Guardian, last week, 23 April 2013. Very unpleasant.

Traders are paid to respond quickly and they did – "the market recovered within a few minutes".

That time, the hackers caused a few minutes of panic. Next time it will be a few seconds. People are beginning to understand that hacking is very hard to protect against. And that information has to be checked before we decide that it's a fact. Even if it appears to come from a trusted source like AP. Because it may not be them operating the AP Twitter feed, it may be hackers, as it was in this case.

Six days later, a lot slower than the traders, enter the marketing men:
TRUST BREAKDOWN - WHY WE NEED TO OWN OUR ONLINE IDENTITIES

Posted on April 29th 2013
By: James Varga

... People, businesses, and governments need to be more proactive about creating and then managing trust online so that we can both prevent things like this from happening, and also turn on the possibility for a new future where completely new products and services are available online because we can trust one another. Imagine being able to access your medical records online, grant access to your spouse, and then send them to another doctor for a second opinion – all with a simple touch on a screen. It can happen if we build the trust frameworks necessary to both secure and manage those identities involved ...
It's not as though the individual sentences make much sense in the copy above but you get the drift.

It may help to tell you that Mr Varga is the chief executive officer of miiCard, a company which claims to provide "the only way to prove you are who you say you are purely online". (Apart from all the other companies making the same claim, you will no doubt wish to add.)

You know what's coming:
Our own identity service is working closely with the White House driven initiative in the US, efforts in the UK, and a number of private coalitions – including The Respect Network – to help accelerate this process and deliver online trust today. But to be effective, this will also take a commitment by users and businesses and organizations to embrace the concept and make it standard practice. Only when everyone commits to owning their online identity, can we truly build trust online and eliminate the possibility of fraud, hacks, or even more dire scenarios.
"Eliminate the possibility of fraud, hacks, or even more dire scenarios" – eliminate?

That's a tall order. Even James McCormick, who was sent down for 10 years yesterday, might have trouble pitching that line.

Before you subscribe to the miiCard service in the hope of eliminating fraud, hacks or even more dire consequences from your life, do take a look at the terms and conditions. "We will use reasonable endeavours to provide alerts in a timely manner with accurate information", they say at clause 9, very good of them, "however, we neither guarantee the delivery nor the accuracy of the content of any alert". Oh.

And then they start shouting:
THE CONTENT AND ALL SERVICES AND PRODUCTS ASSOCIATED WITH THE SERVICE OR PROVIDED THROUGH THE SERVICE ARE PROVIDED TO YOU ON AN “AS-IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” BASIS. WE MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO THE CONTENT OR OPERATION OF THE SERVICE. YOU EXPRESSLY AGREE THAT YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK.
and they go on:
WE MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS, WARRANTIES OR GUARANTEES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, REGARDING THE ACCURACY, RELIABILITY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENT OF THE SERVICE, AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTIES OF NON-INFRINGEMENT OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. WE MAKE NO REPRESENTATION, WARRANTY OR GUARANTEE THAT THE CONTENT THAT MAY BE AVAILABLE THROUGH THE SERVICE IS FREE OF INFECTION FROM ANY VIRUSES ...
and on:
WE SHALL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE OR LIABLE TO YOU OR TO ANY THIRD PARTY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, WARRANTY, DELICT OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE) OR OTHERWISE, FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, LIQUIDATED DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF PROFIT, REVENUE OR BUSINESS, ARISING IN WHOLE OR IN PART FROM YOUR ACCESS TO THE SERVICE ...
The Ts and Cs don't sound nearly as confident as Mr Varga's article, do they. In fact, there's a bit of a "trust breakdown" in the proceedings now, and it only gets worse if you move on to read the miiCard documents on:
  • security – to subscribe to miiCard you have to store your bank account details with Yodlee, a company you may or may not have heard of.
  • and privacy – miiCard promise to keep your data confidential unless they can't.
The problem was a few minutes of consternation on the stock markets. The proposed solution involves giving your bank account details to some total strangers. It's not obvious that the antenna is connected.
Posted by David Moss at 02:34 0 comments

From AP to Yodlee via miiCard

Trust: miiCard foresees a new world
in which you can "grant access to your spouse ...
with a simple touch on a screen"

AP Twitter hack causes panic on Wall Street and sends Dow plunging

Wall Street collided with social media on Tuesday, when a false tweet from a trusted news organization sent the US stock market into freefall.

The 143-point fall in the Dow Jones industrial average came after hackers sent a message from the Twitter feed of the Associated Press, saying the White House had been hit by two explosions and that Barack Obama was injured. The fake tweet, which was immediately corrected by Associated Press employees, caused a sensation on Twitter and in the stock market ...
That was the Guardian, last week, 23 April 2013. Very unpleasant.

more ►
Posted by David Moss at 02:34 2 comments

Saturday 27 April 2013

The "democratic panacea" – elections and the McCormick spectrum

The parable of James McCormick involved, if you remember, turning $20 toys into £27,000 security devices. As reported by the Telegraph, we are meant to believe that Mr McCormick "fooled police forces, the military and governments around the world into buying fake bomb-detection kits".

Really?

Have you ever tried to fool "police forces, the military and governments around the world"?

How stupid do you think they are in Iraq, Kenya, Egypt, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, China, South Africa, Mexico, the UN/Lebanon, Belgium and Georgia?

Energetic man that he is, these are all countries where Mr McCormick is said to have operated and the chances are that his magic only works if the officials in all those countries want to be fooled.

Or to put it another way, "state procurement has always been a favourite method of corrupt enrichment". That's the way Michela Wrong puts it, writing in last week's Spectator, about the recent elections in Kenya.

Ms Wrong is the experienced Africa hand who has spotted another case like McCormick's of officials promising the solution-at-a-stroke to a raft of problems by the judicious use of technology. "I suddenly realised I was watching a fad hitting its stride: the techno-election as democratic panacea", she says.

What she has identified is the advent in Kenya, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Zambia, Malawi, Rwanda, Senegal, Somaliland and Ghana (with Mali, Togo and maybe Zimbabwe to follow) of the biometric registration of electors, electronic voting, telecommunications and automated counting, all in the name of modern democracy.

After the Kenyan election, Ms Wrong says, "EU and Commonwealth election monitors hailed the system as a marvel of its kind, an advance certain to be rolled out across the rest of Africa and possibly Europe, too. The enthusiasm was baffling, because almost none of it worked".

No more dead people voting, no more vote-early-and-vote-often. Now elections can be clean and accurate, and the result incontestable. That's the theory. So goes the sales pitch.

But in the event, the mooncalf monitors are wrong. Their verdict is nothing but wishful thinking. Thumb prints, Ms Wrong tells us, couldn't be recognised by the biometric equipment, batteries ran out on laptops, the server doing all the counting crashed and there was no backup.

The techno-election may promise a clean electoral register, one-man-one-vote and real-time counting. But that misses the point. Ms Wrong quotes Jonathan Bhalla from the Africa Research Institute think tank: "In Sierra Leone, for example, most rigging isn’t done by over-voting, it’s done by sending thugs round to scare voters away. So having a clean register doesn’t make a huge difference".

That may be true today. But tomorrow?

Young men assuming that they have a traditional job for life as a thug may be disappointed.

Fixing a techno-election may soon be more to do with cracking the digital security systems, injecting ghost voters into the register with what look like authentic biometrics and an authentic biography and, most important, an authentic-looking vote. Either that, or it may simply involve eavesdropping – changing votes after they've been cast but before they're counted.

The techno-election isn't magic. It won't definitely turn a crooked polity into a fair democracy. It may simply automate the corruption, gentrify it, make it more efficient and, in the process, take jobs away from large numbers of healthy and aggressive young men and give them to a few weedy mathematicians, cryptographers  and telecommunications engineers instead.

You can follow the story of biometrics in Africa and elsewhere on PlanetBiometrics.com where each contract signed is diligently recorded. Kenya alone gets 180 mentions there. Take a look. Then decide. What do you think? Where does the techno-election lie on the McCormick spectrum? Is it magic? Or science.

And just to go back to where we started – are the strongmen who hold techno-elections fools? No. The inordinately expensive computer systems required tend to be paid for, in Africa at least, out of development aid money.

----------

Added 29 April 2013
Highly recommended:
The Daily Nation, 16 March 2013
The many questions IEBC needs to clear with Kenyans over elections
(IEBC = Kenya's Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission)

Posted by David Moss at 08:00 0 comments

The "democratic panacea" – elections and the McCormick spectrum

The parable of James McCormick involved, if you remember, turning $20 toys into £27,000 security devices. As reported by the Telegraph, we are meant to believe that Mr McCormick "fooled police forces, the military and governments around the world into buying fake bomb-detection kits".

Really?

Have you ever tried to fool "police forces, the military and governments around the world"?

How stupid do you think they are in Iraq, Kenya, Egypt, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, China, South Africa, Mexico, the UN/Lebanon, Belgium and Georgia?

more ►
Posted by David Moss at 08:00 3 comments

Thursday 25 April 2013

Public administration and the McCormick spectrum

Golf
Hooked on golf, PG Wodehouse did a good line in self-deprecating jokes about the English.

We are eternally stuck in the mud, he said, ill-equipped, unimaginative and lacking the spirituality required to understand the concept of hell except by our experience of the caniptions – "the least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows".


Gopher The Amazing Golf Ball Finder MKT0001782988  
It's not just the English. The frustrations of golf are suffered worldwide and it is surely in the tradition of Wodehouse's wry humour that eBay and Amazon among others, categorised as toys and collectables and novelties, sell "the perfect gift for the golfer who has everything", the Gopher, "the amazing golf ball finder", yours for about $20, complete with "instructional video", "eliminates the frustration of lost balls", "quick and easy to operate. Now its easy to find hidden golf balls! In deep rough or brush... Behind hazards, even under water! NO BATTERIES NEEDED!".

McCormick
"A businessman who put thousands of lives at risk and fooled police forces, the military and governments around the world into buying fake bomb-detection kits for millions of pounds is facing jail after being found guilty of fraud." That's what it says in the Telegraph of 23 April 2013, "millionaire James McCormick, 57, sold the useless devices, based on novelty golf-ball finders worth less than £13, for as much as £27,000 each to customers including the Iraqi government, the United Nations, Kenyan police, Hong Kong prison service, the Egyptian army, Thailand's border control and Saudi Arabia".

Mr McCormick is estimated to have made £50 million by claiming that "his devices could detect minuscule traces of explosives, class A drugs, ivory and human beings at a distance of up to 1km at ground level and from a plane flying 5km high".

Shades of PG Wodehouse, the sales pitch seems to have been, stick the right card in the slot and you can detect anything – "the Iraqi police also bought the machines, as well as officials in Niger and Georgia, who asked for a special card to detect Georgian currency".

Cause and effect
The radio news on 23 April here in England was full of harrowing testimony from the victims of terrorist bombs. Lost limbs. Lost relatives. Lost futures.

Was Mr McCormick convicted of planting bombs? No. The courts found him guilty on three counts of fraud. He will be sentenced on 2 May.

Unofficially, the media found him guilty of selling false hope. The hope that people could avoid being blown to pieces thanks to a device that detects explosives.

He isn't alone in that crime. Just for good measure, the Telegraph tell us that "the devices came with an antenna that was not connected to anything" – officials at the "United Nations, Kenyan police, Hong Kong prison service, the Egyptian army, Thailand's border control and Saudi Arabia" must have connived in this spectacularly profitable deception.

Spectrum
Most products and services on the market are sold on the basis of a mixture of hope and technological efficacy.

Mr McCormick's explosive-detectors and the accompanying training sessions relied purely on hope. That's one end of the spectrum. Call it the "magic" end. Increase the level of efficacy just a bit and perhaps you find cures for baldness, anti-wrinkle creams and breath-fresheners.

Way up at the other end of the scale, almost pure technology, the "science" end, next to no hope required, you find ... what? We can all think of a few examples.

The MMR jab?

Anti-inflammatory drugs? (Every now and again DMossEsq wanders around London in excruciating pain because he over-produces calcium, which acts like grit in his joints. That's what the magicians tell him, pointing at large lumps of weapons grade calcium on the X-ray of his hips. His doctor hands over a couple of 50mg Diclofenac tablets. Result – pain-free walking for several years. The product just works. Full stop.)

For an ill-equipped stuck-in-the-mud Englishman, there's something of the parable about the McCormick story. Whenever the public (the public anywhere) are confronted by civil servants (officials) offering a patent remedy for a clutch of disparate ills, they should take care to determine where on the McCormick spectrum this remedy falls.

Biometrics
In October 2006, officials at the Identity & Passport Service (IPS), an executive agency of the UK Home Office, published a report, Identity Cards Act 2006 – first Section 37 report to Parliament about the likely costs of the ID Cards Scheme. The suggestion in that report was that illegal immigration, illegal working, sex offences, false asylum claims, terrorism, identity fraud and inefficient public services could all be "cured" by the judicious application of biometrics.

Magic? Or science?

Or somewhere in between?

The Home Office tested three biometrics in a large-scale trial in 2004:
  1. Face recognition failed about half the time. You might as well toss an unbiased coin.
  2. Flat print fingerprinting failed about 20 percent of the time. Useless – Heathrow airport can't send 20 percent of the passengers on Jumbo jets home again all day every day.
  3. And about 10 percent of the able-bodied participants in the trial couldn't record their iris scans in the first place. That figure rose to 39 percent for the disabled participants. Useless – the secretary of state for work and pensions can't tell 10 percent of the able-bodied workforce and 39% of the disabled workforce that they have no legal right to work in the UK.
In July 2006, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published their report Identity Card Technologies: Scientific Advice, Risk and Evidence:
  • IPS told the Committee that the maximum acceptable failure rate of flat print fingerprinting is 1 percent. Any higher than that, and the technology would be no use for the ID cards scheme, see para.18 in the report.
  • The Committee pointed out that the 2004 trial results suggested a failure rate closer to 20 percent.
  • Afflicted by some form of tulipmania, IPS claimed that the trial wasn't really a trial and proceeded with flat print fingerprinting technology anyway, against all the evidence, until the ID cards scheme was cancelled in December 2010.
  • The tulipmania persists. The Home Office still run an expensive Immigration and Asylum Biometric System (IABS). And just last month IPS issued an invitation to tender for face recognition systems.
While he was still permanent secretary at the Home Office, Sir David Normington caused two of his officials – Brodie Clark and Lin Homer – to tell DMossEsq that face recognition was being deployed at UK airports following successful trials conducted at Manchester Airport. When the Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency published the report on his May 2010 inspection of Manchester Airport he said that he could find no evidence of any attempt to assess the reliability of face recognition.

Three world-class scientists published a paper on biometrics in October 2010, Fundamental issues in biometric performance testing: A modern statistical and philosophical framework for uncertainty assessment. Regularly asked by the US and UK governments for their advice, in their informed opinion, the discipline of biometrics is "out of statistical control".

Is the biometrics antenna connected to anything? Where does biometrics lie on the McCormick spectrum?

----------

Updated 31 August 2013
Mr McCormick, it turns out, faced competition from one Gary Bolton:
20 August 2013: Man who sold fake bomb detectors jailed for seven years
Posted by David Moss at 12:11 0 comments

Public administration and the McCormick spectrum

Golf
Hooked on golf, PG Wodehouse did a good line in self-deprecating jokes about the English.

We are eternally stuck in the mud, he said, ill-equipped, unimaginative and lacking the spirituality required to understand the concept of hell except by our experience of the caniptions – "the least thing upset him on the links. He missed short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows".


Gopher The Amazing Golf Ball Finder MKT0001782988  
It's not just the English. The frustrations of golf are suffered worldwide and it is surely in the tradition of Wodehouse's wry humour that eBay and Amazon among others, categorised as toys and collectables and novelties, sell "the perfect gift for the golfer who has everything", the Gopher, "the amazing golf ball finder", yours for about $20, complete with "instructional video", "eliminates the frustration of lost balls", "quick and easy to operate. Now its easy to find hidden golf balls! In deep rough or brush... Behind hazards, even under water! NO BATTERIES NEEDED!".

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Posted by David Moss at 12:11 0 comments

Tuesday 23 April 2013

GDS are drowning. Time to launch the lifeboats

17 April 2013, Welcoming DWP to GOV.UK:
Today we welcome the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to GOV.UK.

DWP is the 21st department to move to the Inside Government section of GOV.UK. It has joined Inside Government with almost 900 publications, 9 new policies, a host of case studies, and detailed guidance on Universal Credit and workplace pensions.
That's what it says on the Government Digital Service (GDS) blog. What does it mean?

GDS are meant to be creating a single government domain. Taking DWP as an example, all of their web content should now appear under https://www.gov.uk (known as "GOV.UK"), and their old website, http://www.dwp.gov.uk, should have disappeared.

When GDS welcome DWP to GOV.UK does that mean that http://www.dwp.gov.uk has disappeared?

One way to find out. Do a test.

This test is suggested by last week's Private Eye, #1338.

Go to DWP's State Pension if you retire abroad page. That's on GOV.UK alright. Under You’ve only worked in the UK click on online and you are taken to an http://www.dwp.gov.uk page. That shouldn't exist any more – like HMRC, DWP has been only partially welcomed to GOV.UK, the rest of it is still in its old principal primary residence.

Take a look at that DWP page.
This service doesn’t work with some modern browsers and operating systems. Tell me more
We are considering how best to provide this service in future.
You may want to claim in another way.
So much for public services becoming digital by default. It is GDS's job to make it possible for people to claim on-line:
  • To do that, GDS want to replace the Government Gateway with something better. They may want to but they haven't.
  • They have also promised to provide identity assurance services so that applicants can be identified. They may have promised to but they haven't.
GDS have left DWP no alternative but to tell claimants that "you may want to claim in another way".

Click on the Tell me more link on the DWP page above. You are greeted with:
What do I need?

This page explains:
  • what software you need to use this service
  • how to print your transaction
  • how the service uses cookies.
If you use Jaws or Supernova screen readers, we apologise for any problems you may experience. You may wish to claim in another way.

Operating systems and browsers
The service does not work properly with Macs or other Unix-based systems even though you may be able to input information.
You are likely to have problems if you use Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9 and 10, Windows Vista or a smartphone. Clearing temporary internet files may help but you may wish to claim in another way.

There is also a high risk that if you use browsers not listed below, including Chrome, Safari or Firefox, the service will not display all the questions you need to answer. This is likely to prevent you from successfully completing or submitting the form. You may wish to claim in another way.

What the service was designed to work with
The service was designed to work with the following operating systems and browsers. Many of these are no longer available.
Microsoft Windows 98:
  • Internet Explorer versions 5.0.1, 5.5 and 6.0
  • Netscape 7.2
Microsoft Windows ME
  • Internet Explorer version 5.5 and 6.0
  • Netscape 7.2
[and so it goes on ...]
GDS have a project called "assisted digital" which is meant to help people unfamiliar with the web to use it to communicate with the government. What are these people to make of the page above?

What is anyone to make of it?

As far as the Government Gateway is concerned, someone has designed an alternative and Mr Toby Stevens has kindly provided a recent progress report, Real Time Identity?. The alternative gateway depends on identity assurance services (IDA), which GDS have failed to provide, and on a number of communications hubs:
In the IDA model, the government provides a number of ‘federation hubs’, which provide the data-matching, anonymisation and audit services to support interaction between a market of identity providers (IDPs) and the government departments that will consume identity information.
If communication between claimants and government departments is to be anonymous, it's hard to see how transactions can be audited. If, on the other hand, transactions can be audited, then how can communication be anonymous?

Mr Stevens, it should be said, is not responsible for this dilemma, he is merely reporting it.

While this dilemma of GDS's persists there is nothing the UK's eight so-called "identity providers" (IDPs) can do. They only have an 18-month exclusive contract. Their time is running out. Soon they could face competition from the banks and the phone companies and Google and Facebook and Twitter and ... with nothing to show for all their efforts to date.

And while DWP and the IDPs are suffering this frustration what are GDS doing?

Apart from publishing self-congratulatory blog posts about partially re-writing websites, GDS are working on individual electoral registration (IER).

They have been retained to see if the electoral register can be made more complete and accurate by cross-referencing it to DWP's national insurance number (NINO) database.

Why?

You would expect that job to be given to a university or to one of the credit referencing agencies or maybe to one of the management consultancies. GDS are website designers. They have no special expertise in data-matching.

Nor do GDS have the time. They've got work to do on identity assurance and the Government gateway and assisted digital. They don't have time to work on IER as well.

What's more, this cross-referencing is illegal.

And further, the IER pilot studies GDS have taken part in demonstrate that, legal or not, cross-referencing isn't going to help.

The exercise is matching no more than 72% of the people on the electoral register to the people on the NINO database. That's even worse than the Identity & Passport Service achieved with biometrics. It's a waste of time. Someone should call a halt now. But, no, GDS are due to conduct an illegal, pointless and nationwide IER cross-referencing exercise this summer.

The National Audit Office has noticed the problem and so has Parliament – an early day motion has been put down to debate digital-by-default. Someone in the upper echelons of the civil service must have noticed these deficiencies. Some ministers may even have noticed – GDS are drowning. Time to launch the lifeboats and bring them back to shore and to safety.

Leave a gift in your will

Posted by David Moss at 01:47 0 comments

GDS are drowning. Time to launch the lifeboats

17 April 2013, Welcoming DWP to GOV.UK:
Today we welcome the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to GOV.UK.

DWP is the 21st department to move to the Inside Government section of GOV.UK. It has joined Inside Government with almost 900 publications, 9 new policies, a host of case studies, and detailed guidance on Universal Credit and workplace pensions.
That's what it says on the Government Digital Service (GDS) blog. What does it mean?

GDS are meant to be creating a single government domain. Taking DWP as an example, all of their web content should now appear under https://www.gov.uk (known as "GOV.UK"), and their old website, http://www.dwp.gov.uk, should have disappeared.

When GDS welcome DWP to GOV.UK does that mean that http://www.dwp.gov.uk has disappeared?

One way to find out. Do a test.

more ►
Posted by David Moss at 01:47 0 comments