Friday 30 December 2011

GreenInk 4 – Private Eye blinks, misses a scoop

From: David Moss
Sent: 30 December 2011 10:39
To: 'strobes@private-eye.co.uk'
Subject: Brodie Clark

Sir

While the Eye joins in with the establishment rubbishing of Brodie Clark – in your case by quoting the ineffably smug Michael Mansfield – you ignore the improvised explosive device Mr Clark detonated when he gave evidence* to the Home Affairs Committee. The fingerprinting technology wished on UKBA is the least reliable identity/security check made at the border, Mr Clark said, it is the ninth and bottom priority and, if any check has to be suspended, it is "very sensible" to suspend the fingerprint check. It is presumably of no interest to you that the Home Office want to replace hundreds or even thousands of Border Force staff with a technology that might work in Hollywood films but certainly doesn't at Heathrow.

Yours
David Moss

* http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=9445&st=11:36:43, listen between 12:18 and 12:24.

GreenInk 4 – Private Eye blinks, misses a scoop

From: David Moss
Sent: 30 December 2011 10:39
To: 'strobes@private-eye.co.uk'
Subject: Brodie Clark

Sir

While the Eye joins in with the establishment rubbishing of Brodie Clark – in your case by quoting the ineffably smug Michael Mansfield – you ignore the improvised explosive device Mr Clark detonated when he gave evidence* to the Home Affairs Committee. The fingerprinting technology wished on UKBA is the least reliable identity/security check made at the border, Mr Clark said, it is the ninth and bottom priority and, if any check has to be suspended, it is "very sensible" to suspend the fingerprint check. It is presumably of no interest to you that the Home Office want to replace hundreds or even thousands of Border Force staff with a technology that might work in Hollywood films but certainly doesn't at Heathrow.

Yours
David Moss

* http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=9445&st=11:36:43, listen between 12:18 and 12:24.

Thursday 22 December 2011

GreenInk 3 – did Sir Gus O'Donnell abolish boom and bust?

Unpublished:
From: David Moss
Sent: 22 December 2011 10:23
To: 'dtletters@telegraph.co.uk'
Subject: Sir Gus O'Donnell, 21 December 2011 -- It’s risks, not rules, that must point the way

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8971893/Its-risks-not-rules-that-must-point-the-way.html

Sir

Sir Gus O'Donnell quite rightly alludes to his influence on Gordon Brown's decision for the UK not to join the Euro.

What other decisions did he influence?

Sir Gus co-edited two books with Ed Balls. One of them, in 2002, congratulated Gordon Brown and celebrated the end of boom and bust. The other, in 2003, congratulated Gordon Brown for providing opportunity to all.

Sir Gus, by then, had been our man at the IMF and the World Bank. He had been Director of the UK's macroeconomic policy and Head of the government economics service – every economist in HMG reported to him. He had been responsible for the UK's fiscal policy, international development and EMU. And he had become Permanent Secretary at HM Treasury. Gordon Brown had been none of these things.

Yours
David Moss

Refs:

1. Reforming Britain's Economic and Financial Policy: Towards Greater Economic Stability, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reforming-Britains-Economic-Financial-Policy/dp/0333966112/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317602734&sr=1-1

2. Microeconomic Reform in Britain: Delivering Opportunities for All, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microeconomic-Reform-Britain-Delivering-Opportunities/dp/1403912491/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317602189&sr=8-1

3. Whose bust is it anyway?, http://www.dmossesq.com/2011/10/whose-bust-is-it-anyway.html

GreenInk 3 – did Sir Gus O'Donnell abolish boom and bust?

Unpublished:
From: David Moss
Sent: 22 December 2011 10:23
To: 'dtletters@telegraph.co.uk'
Subject: Sir Gus O'Donnell, 21 December 2011 -- It’s risks, not rules, that must point the way

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8971893/Its-risks-not-rules-that-must-point-the-way.html

Sir

Sir Gus O'Donnell quite rightly alludes to his influence on Gordon Brown's decision for the UK not to join the Euro.

What other decisions did he influence?

Sir Gus co-edited two books with Ed Balls. One of them, in 2002, congratulated Gordon Brown and celebrated the end of boom and bust. The other, in 2003, congratulated Gordon Brown for providing opportunity to all.

Sir Gus, by then, had been our man at the IMF and the World Bank. He had been Director of the UK's macroeconomic policy and Head of the government economics service – every economist in HMG reported to him. He had been responsible for the UK's fiscal policy, international development and EMU. And he had become Permanent Secretary at HM Treasury. Gordon Brown had been none of these things.

Yours
David Moss

Refs:

1. Reforming Britain's Economic and Financial Policy: Towards Greater Economic Stability, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reforming-Britains-Economic-Financial-Policy/dp/0333966112/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317602734&sr=1-1

2. Microeconomic Reform in Britain: Delivering Opportunities for All, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microeconomic-Reform-Britain-Delivering-Opportunities/dp/1403912491/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317602189&sr=8-1

3. Whose bust is it anyway?, http://www.dmossesq.com/2011/10/whose-bust-is-it-anyway.html

Monday 19 December 2011

Festschrift: Sir Gus O'Donnell 3

GOD retires at the end of the year and the eulogies have started. We should be grateful according to the Times:
Prime ministers’ spouses these days, he thinks, require more official help. “They have some support. I suspect it probably should be a bit bigger ... we need to recognise that the role is a broader, more public role these days. The media pay more attention to them, what they’re wearing.”

So would he like a dress allowance for spouses for public events and more staff support? “It would be good to get the spouses together and it would be good for there to be cross-party agreement on this sort of thing.” He doesn’t want to prescribe whether they need a cook or hairdresser. “It’s one of those things you’d have to think quite carefully about. Different people might want to handle it in different ways.” And he doesn’t want their retinue to grow too large. “Keeping prime ministers grounded in the real world matters a lot.”
What a nice man. He thinks of everything. This new way of being generous with other people's money is his parting shot. A warm feeling to remember him by.

That's not how Sir Richard Mottram will remember Sir Gus. Sir Richard identifies seven problems which beset Whitehall:
  1. how to improve the efficiency of the civil service and the wider public service
  2. how the Cabinet Office can take charge of that improvement in efficiency
  3. how the centre (i.e. the Cabinet Office? Number 10? Not clear) can keep control of its satrapies, the various departments of state
  4. how the head of the home civil service can have any influence on the Prime Minister if he is not also Cabinet Secretary and permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office
  5. how to ensure cabinet government as opposed to Blair-style sofa government
  6. how to provide effective career planning/talent management for senior civil servants
  7. how to provide leadership for the civil service
Six of those problems – all except No.4 – were there before Sir Gus's arrival. He hasn't solved them. They're still there.

But at least the idea has been floated at last that the prime minister's spouse should have a hairdresser  or a cook paid for by the taxpayer.

Festschrift: Sir Gus O'Donnell 3

GOD retires at the end of the year and the eulogies have started. We should be grateful according to the Times:
Prime ministers’ spouses these days, he thinks, require more official help. “They have some support. I suspect it probably should be a bit bigger ... we need to recognise that the role is a broader, more public role these days. The media pay more attention to them, what they’re wearing.”

So would he like a dress allowance for spouses for public events and more staff support? “It would be good to get the spouses together and it would be good for there to be cross-party agreement on this sort of thing.” He doesn’t want to prescribe whether they need a cook or hairdresser. “It’s one of those things you’d have to think quite carefully about. Different people might want to handle it in different ways.” And he doesn’t want their retinue to grow too large. “Keeping prime ministers grounded in the real world matters a lot.”
What a nice man. He thinks of everything. This new way of being generous with other people's money is his parting shot. A warm feeling to remember him by.

That's not how Sir Richard Mottram will remember Sir Gus. Sir Richard identifies seven problems which beset Whitehall:
  1. how to improve the efficiency of the civil service and the wider public service
  2. how the Cabinet Office can take charge of that improvement in efficiency
  3. how the centre (i.e. the Cabinet Office? Number 10? Not clear) can keep control of its satrapies, the various departments of state
  4. how the head of the home civil service can have any influence on the Prime Minister if he is not also Cabinet Secretary and permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office
  5. how to ensure cabinet government as opposed to Blair-style sofa government
  6. how to provide effective career planning/talent management for senior civil servants
  7. how to provide leadership for the civil service
Six of those problems – all except No.4 – were there before Sir Gus's arrival. He hasn't solved them. They're still there.

But at least the idea has been floated at last that the prime minister's spouse should have a hairdresser  or a cook paid for by the taxpayer.

Festschrift: Sir Gus O'Donnell 2

GOD retires at the end of the year and the eulogies have started. We should be grateful according to the Times:
“There’s not a government that’s come in and said, ‘I want to increase child poverty’. They all want to save the planet. The ultimate goals are good, they just have different ways of going about them.” It sounds rather like Yes, Prime Minister with the civil servants running the show while politicians come and go. “No, we have this very clear view that we advise, they decide,” the Cabinet Secretary insists.
Officials advise, politicians decide? Is there anyone left on the planet who believes that?

We have a wide choice on this blog of examples of how officials have wasted money on NPfIT, FiReControl, ID cards, G-Cloud, midata, ePassports, C-Nomis and Libra, and how there seems to be nothing politicians can do about it.

Consider midata. BIS – the department of Business, Innovation and Skills – wants to spend our money on getting people to store all their personal data in PDSs, personal data stores. They get the minister, Ed Davey, to put his name to a BIS blog post. It is in that sense that the minister has decided. That's on 3 November 2011. The point of midata is that individuals will have control of their data once it's in a PDS. Several commenters ask the same question over the following few days – how? How will people be able to control what happens to their data?

46 days later, today, and there's still no answer. The minister hasn't responded. Either he doesn't know how to respond or he can't be bothered. He's obviously not in control.

His officials are. They have advised. They will proceed, without explaining themselves. And we will pay.

And that's the home civil service for you. The home civil service, of which Sir Gus O'Donnell has been the head for six years since 1 September 2005. Grateful?

Festschrift: Sir Gus O'Donnell 2

GOD retires at the end of the year and the eulogies have started. We should be grateful according to the Times:
“There’s not a government that’s come in and said, ‘I want to increase child poverty’. They all want to save the planet. The ultimate goals are good, they just have different ways of going about them.” It sounds rather like Yes, Prime Minister with the civil servants running the show while politicians come and go. “No, we have this very clear view that we advise, they decide,” the Cabinet Secretary insists.
Officials advise, politicians decide? Is there anyone left on the planet who believes that?

We have a wide choice on this blog of examples of how officials have wasted money on NPfIT, FiReControl, ID cards, G-Cloud, midata, ePassports, C-Nomis and Libra, and how there seems to be nothing politicians can do about it.

Consider midata. BIS – the department of Business, Innovation and Skills – wants to spend our money on getting people to store all their personal data in PDSs, personal data stores. They get the minister, Ed Davey, to put his name to a BIS blog post. It is in that sense that the minister has decided. That's on 3 November 2011. The point of midata is that individuals will have control of their data once it's in a PDS. Several commenters ask the same question over the following few days – how? How will people be able to control what happens to their data?

46 days later, today, and there's still no answer. The minister hasn't responded. Either he doesn't know how to respond or he can't be bothered. He's obviously not in control.

His officials are. They have advised. They will proceed, without explaining themselves. And we will pay.

And that's the home civil service for you. The home civil service, of which Sir Gus O'Donnell has been the head for six years since 1 September 2005. Grateful?

Festschrift: Sir Gus O'Donnell 1

GOD retires at the end of the year and the eulogies have started. We should be grateful according to the Times:
At times, the civil servants’ role is to save politicians from themselves. Sir Gus is proud to have been instrumental in stopping Britain joining the euro in 2003 when he was Permanent Secretary at the Treasury. “We did the biggest evidence-based piece of work I’ve ever done. My only regret now is we didn’t get it translated into Greek and send it across. There were a number of politicians who, out of a belief that the politics was the crucial part, wanted us to go in. Imagine what state we’d be in if we’d been in the euro.”
It could have been worse, yes, but just look at the state we are in. During the 10 years of plenty, 1997-2007, public spending went through the roof, much of it wasted, the planned budget deficit this year is £121 billion and the interest bill is £50 billion.

Is Sir Gus "proud to have been instrumental" in that success, too?

Festschrift: Sir Gus O'Donnell 1

GOD retires at the end of the year and the eulogies have started. We should be grateful according to the Times:
At times, the civil servants’ role is to save politicians from themselves. Sir Gus is proud to have been instrumental in stopping Britain joining the euro in 2003 when he was Permanent Secretary at the Treasury. “We did the biggest evidence-based piece of work I’ve ever done. My only regret now is we didn’t get it translated into Greek and send it across. There were a number of politicians who, out of a belief that the politics was the crucial part, wanted us to go in. Imagine what state we’d be in if we’d been in the euro.”
It could have been worse, yes, but just look at the state we are in. During the 10 years of plenty, 1997-2007, public spending went through the roof, much of it wasted, the planned budget deficit this year is £121 billion and the interest bill is £50 billion.

Is Sir Gus "proud to have been instrumental" in that success, too?

Congratulations to Lin Homer

Some misguided readers are under the impression that Lin Homer, the hero of The Adventures of Marsham Towers, is a fictional character.

Far from it, she has now been appointed Chief Executive of HM Revenue & Customs.

Our congratulations to Ms Homer.

Congratulations to Lin Homer

Some misguided readers are under the impression that Lin Homer, the hero of The Adventures of Marsham Towers, is a fictional character.

Far from it, she has now been appointed Chief Executive of HM Revenue & Customs.

Our congratulations to Ms Homer.

Friday 16 December 2011

The on the spot answer


This is the (draft and subject to change) answer to a comment posted by one Mr Reader:

Dear Mr Reader

Thank you for trying to put me on the spot. I’ve been trying to put myself on the spot for years. And failing.

Assuming that that continues, when the final enquiry report is in at the end of next month, the most likely outcome is that everyone’s reputation will be tarnished – Brodie Clark, Theresa May and Helen Ghosh – but the daily round will revert to its pre-4 November 2011 pattern, the usual dismal calm will prevail in the Dark Department, there will be no more sense of sudden explosions, nasty surprises and unexpected eruptions.

That’s the 98%+ likely scenario. A dirty taste in the mouth, business as usual re-established.

The outcome with the 2%- probability of happening?

Consider the following Economist article, Friday 11 May 2012:

Brodie Clark speaks quietly and at first no-one heard him say that fingerprint verification is the ninth and lowest priority security/identity check at the border, the least reliable check and the most sensible check to suspend when the disorderly queues in Arrivals begin to threaten safety.

Well everyone’s heard him now, thanks to the alliance between Theresa May, the UK’s Home Secretary, and Helen Ghosh, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. Their careers both shipped a lot of water in the days following 4 November 2011 and they were determined to find out why.

Clark was supposed to have endangered UK border security by suspending fingerprint checks. But May and Ghosh could find no evidence that fingerprint checks promote border security. There is none. So he hadn’t endangered anything.

True, he had arguably disobeyed his minister. She had specifically instructed that fingerprint checks were not to be relaxed for non-EEA nationals. But did that instruction refer exclusively to the new intelligence-led border security scheme being piloted? Was the suspension of fingerprint checks covered by the 2007 HOWI procedures?

Pure noise. The real question was: why did the Home Secretary instruct that fingerprint checks should not be suspended, given that they’re no use? Answer, because she had been told by her officials that the technology is reliable. Who told her that? And why?

As May and Ghosh looked deeper and deeper into the affair, the tangled web of today’s mass consumer biometrics industry began to unravel. First in the UK Border Agency, where IBM’s National Identity Assurance Service contract was cancelled. That took out Morpho at the same time. (Morpho is a subsidiary of France’s Safran Group, their answer to our BAE Systems.) And Computer Sciences Corporation and VFS Global.

The damage spread to the National Policing Improvement Agency, where they were using Morpho’s products for mobile fingerprinting by police patrols – not any more they’re not. And to the Identity & Passport Service, where they use Morpho for biometrics in ePassports. For the moment. And to DWP, who were going to use voice biometrics for their Universal Credit system, but can only be described now as tight-lipped about their plans.

Who advised the Home office on biometrics? They got internal advice from the Home Office Scientific Development Branch and external consultancy advice from PA Consulting. Not any more they don’t.

How did this fiasco persist, the Prime Minister wants to know, under the leadership of Lord O'Donnell, until last years head of the home civil service, and Sir David Normington, Dame Helen's predecessor? We await the answer with interest.

Projects that depend on these biometrics being reliable were being cancelled all over Whitehall. The taxpayer didn’t know whether to be furious about being deceived for so long by the Home Office or deliriously happy when the savings from all these cancelled projects over the next 10 years topped £20 billion.

This sort of news doesn’t respect borders. Safran Group were relying on Morpho for 20% of their turnover. Once the news had rowed across the channel, their turnover was down by 20%. Former President Sarkozy tried to blame the Anglo-Saxons but then turned on the European Commission, blaming their 2003 OSCIE specification for a pan-European biometric ID card. The European Commission blamed the US Department of Homeland Security and the DHS blamed NIST, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Which was too much for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in India, where they’re spending billions on Aadhaar, a biometrics-based identity management scheme for 1.2 billion people. At least they were.

And so the truth rolls on, bowling around the world, knocking over civil servants like ninepins wherever it fetches up. In China,  one day Dr Tieniu Tan was a research professor with dozens of successful spin-off companies and, next day, he wasn’t. In Pakistan, first Brigadier Saleem Ahmed Moeen (Retd) was Chairman of NADRA, then there was no NADRA and now the Brigadier really is retired.

And all because of a quietly-spoken Glaswegian, speaking quietly on 15 November 2011, giving evidence to the Home Affairs Committee. Listen to him here. The good bit starts at 12:18.

The on the spot answer


This is the (draft and subject to change) answer to a comment posted by one Mr Reader:

Dear Mr Reader

Thank you for trying to put me on the spot. I’ve been trying to put myself on the spot for years. And failing.

Assuming that that continues, when the final enquiry report is in at the end of next month, the most likely outcome is that everyone’s reputation will be tarnished – Brodie Clark, Theresa May and Helen Ghosh – but the daily round will revert to its pre-4 November 2011 pattern, the usual dismal calm will prevail in the Dark Department, there will be no more sense of sudden explosions, nasty surprises and unexpected eruptions.

That’s the 98%+ likely scenario. A dirty taste in the mouth, business as usual re-established.

Thursday 15 December 2011

Plus ça change – tax farming


Matthew xviii:17
And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the Church : but if he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a Publican.
Luke xviii:11
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this Publican.
Presumably schoolboys have been told for 400 years to stop giggling, the gospel-writers in the King James version were not suggesting that everyone who runs a pub is an extortioner or an adulterer, deaf to the church. Rather:
In antiquity, publicans (Latin publicanus (singular); publicani (plural)) were public contractors, in which role they often supplied the Roman legions and military, managed the collection of port duties, and oversaw public building projects. In addition, they served as tax collectors for the Republic (and later the Roman Empire), bidding on contracts (from the Senate in Rome) for the collection of various types of taxes.
In modern, accessible versions of the Bible, "publican" is replaced with "tax farmer". No doubt a whole new generation of giggling has arisen at the thought of fields being ploughed, planted with taxes, fertilised and harvested by men in muddy boots.

But that's because we proletarians don't know what "farming" means. It's all about farming out or outsourcing:
Farming is a technique of financial management, namely the process of commuting (changing), by its assignment by legal contract to a third party, a future uncertain revenue stream into fixed and certain periodic rents, in consideration for which commutation a discount in value received is suffered. It is most commonly used in the field of public finance where the state wishes to gain some certainty about its future taxation revenue for the purposes of medium-term budgetting of expenditure. The tax collection process requires considerable expenditure on administration and the yield is uncertain both as to amount and timing, as taxpayers delay or default on their assessed obligations, often the result of unforeseen external forces such as bad weather affecting harvests. Governments (the lessors) have thus frequently over history resorted to the services of an entrepreneurial financier (the tenant) to whom they lease or assign the right to collect and retain the whole of the tax revenue due to the state in return for his payment into the Treasury of fixed sums (rent) in exchange.
Tax farming stayed with us for a long time:
Systems of tax farming similar to the Roman model were used in Pharaonic Egypt, various medieval Western European countries, the Ottoman and Mughal empires, and in Qing Dynasty China. As states become stronger, buoyed up by revenues brought in by tax farming, the practice was discontinued in favour of centralized tax collection systems. In part this was because tax farming systems tended to rely on wealthy individuals outside the state machinery, gangs, and secret societies.
And so did the associated problems:
The key flaw in the tax farming system is the tension between the state, which seeks a long-term source of taxation revenue, and the tax farmers, who seek to make a profit on their investment in as short a time as possible. As a result tax-farmers often abuse the taxpayers in various ways, [causing] them to switch their economic activity from strategic long-term projects to short-term revenue generation. A common abuse by tax farmers is the undervaluation of goods received in lieu of taxes, allowing the tax-farmer to re-sell the goods to create a second profit source. Such abuses stifle economic growth by restricting the ability of the tradesman to reinvest in his business, thereby limiting the quantity of taxes generated over the long-term.
Tax farming continued well into the 18th century in France:
The Ferme générale ... was, in ancien régime France, essentially an outsourced customs and excise operation which collected duties on behalf of the king, under six-year contracts. The major tax collectors in that tax farming system were known as the fermiers généraux, which would be tax farmers-general in English.

In the 17th and 18th centuries fermiers généraux became immensely rich ...

Before the French Revolution, the public revenue was based largely on taxes known as:
  • the taille – direct land tax imposed on French peasant and non-noble households, based on how much land they held.
  • the taillon – a tax for military expenditure
  • the vingtième (one-twentieth) – based solely on revenues (5% of net earnings from land, property, commerce, industry and from official offices)
  • the gabelle – a system of salt taxes
  • the aides – national tariffs on various products (including wine and tobacco),
  • the douane – a local tariff on specialty products
  • the octroi – a local tariff levied on products entering towns
  • a local tariff levied on products sold at fairs
  • the "dîme" – a mandatory tithe to support the church (and so, not formally a tax) ...
The Ferme générale had its headquarters in Paris. It employed in its central offices nearly 700 people including two chaplains. Its local operations included up to 42 provincial offices and nearly 25,000 agents distributed in two branches of activity; that of the offices which checked, liquidated and charged the fees; that of the brigades which sought and suppressed smuggling with very severe punishments (such as hard labour or hanging).

The employees of the Ferme générale were not royal civil servants, but they acted in the name of the king and therefore benefitted from particular privileges and the protection of the law. The guards of the service of the brigades moreover had the right to bear weapons ...

The Ferme générale was thus one of the institutions of Ancien Régime which were most highly criticized during the French Revolution and were depicted as birds of prey and tyrants ... The Ferme générale was suppressed in 1790. The fermiers-générals paid the price at the scaffold: 28 former members of the consortium were guillotined on 8 May 1794, including the "father of chemistry" Antoine Lavoisier, whose laboratory experiments had been supported from his administration of the Ferme générale ...
This business of the tax farmers having their own army/gendarmerie was serious. They were a lively lot with a keen interest in enforcement. In December 1775, Voltaire negotiated a tax settlement between the tax farmers and the residents of his estate at Ferney (pp.427-31). As he wrote later to a friend, the night the deal was agreed:
... while the whole province was busy drinking, the gendarmes of the tax farmers, whose time runs out on 1 January, had orders to sabotage us. They marched about in groups of fifty, stopped all the vehicles, searched all the pockets, forced their way into all the houses and made every kind of damage there in the name of the king, and made the peasants buy them off with money. I cannot conceive why the people did not ring the tocsin against them in all the villages, and why they were not exterminated. It is very strange that the ferme générale, with only another fortnight left for them to keep their troops here in winter quarters, should have permitted or even encouraged them in such criminal excesses. The decent people were very wise and held back the ordinary folk, who wanted to throw themselves on these brigands, as if on mad wolves.
Good job they hadn't disagreed.

Considering what Matthew and Luke had to say about tax farmers, one wonders what the two chaplains made of it in the Paris HQ of the ferme générale.

What the author of the long quotation above makes of it is:
Le choix d'instaurer de telles délégations s'inscrit dans les courants politiques favorables au « moins d'État ».

Toutefois, on peut faire à l'affermage les mêmes reproches qu'à la ferme générale de l'Ancien Régime :
  • la collectivité publique se prive d'une ressource ;
  • le service rendu n'est pas toujours meilleur, sur le long terme ;
  • le coût peut être supérieur pour l'usager ou le contribuable, qui paie ses impôts plus la marge prélevée par le fermier général ;
  • le recouvrement des créances (des arriérés d'impôts) peut être fait brutalement par le fermier ;
  • se privant d'une ressource, la collectivité doit s'endetter, et affermer de nouveaux revenus pour obtenir de l'argent frais.
C'est ainsi qu'à la fin du xviiie siècle, l'État français était considérablement endetté ; des États comme le Maroc ont aussi fini par être colonisés de fait, et durent subir un protectorat, étant entrés dans un cercle vicieux d'endettement/affermage/diminution des ressources disponibles.

Inversement, l'affermage permet de combattre la bureaucratie. C'est faute d'une réforme administrative dans ce sens que l'Espagne de Philippe II a perdu toute sa richesse conquise en Amérique au profit de ses rivaux européens et que l'Empire austro-hongrois s'est écroulé en quelques mois.
En anglais, roughly: outsourcing appeals to people who want a smaller state; outsourcing suffers from a lot of the same problems as tax farming; Morocco, for example, got into a vicious circle of budget deficits and that's why it ended up to all intents and purposes being colonised; on the other hand, it was for lack of an outsourced revenue-raising system that Spain lost its American empire and the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed in a couple of months.

How times have changed.

Not.

Ireland, Greece and Italy have ended up to all intents and purposes being colonised, the Ancien Régime has been re-constituted with added Germany, tax farming is undertaken by the internal revenue services of each of the 28 members of the EU under the control of the ferme générale, the European Commission, which stands no nonsense from member states who cut up rough about paying their dues.

Plus ça change – tax farming


Matthew xviii:17
And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the Church : but if he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a Publican.
Luke xviii:11
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this Publican.
Presumably schoolboys have been told for 400 years to stop giggling, the gospel-writers in the King James version were not suggesting that everyone who runs a pub is an extortioner or an adulterer, deaf to the church. Rather:
In antiquity, publicans (Latin publicanus (singular); publicani (plural)) were public contractors, in which role they often supplied the Roman legions and military, managed the collection of port duties, and oversaw public building projects. In addition, they served as tax collectors for the Republic (and later the Roman Empire), bidding on contracts (from the Senate in Rome) for the collection of various types of taxes.

Brodie Clark's evidence 3

The Home office has launched three investigations into the Brodie Clark affair:
  • One by Dave Wood, ex-Metropolitan Police detective, currently the UKBA's head of enforcement and crime group. This is a two-week inquiry designed to discover to what extent checks were scaled down, and what the security implications might have been.
  • One by Mike Anderson, an ex-MI6 official, presently director general of the strategy, immigration and international group at the Home Office. This will investigate wider issues relating to the performance of UKBA.
  • It was announced on 5 November 2011 by Theresa May that an independent inquiry would also be undertaken, led by the Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, John Vine.
On 8 December 2011, the Home Affairs Committee released new testimony submitted to them by Mr Clark which includes this:
I remain concerned that the only independent inquiry into matters is that of the Home Affairs Select Committee. I took from some of the exchanges in evidence with others that the HASC shares some of my concern. The investigation by Mr Wood is unsafe as he is a participant. He was at the Board meeting referred to above and as the committee noted, Mr Vine is a witness.

Brodie Clark's evidence 3

The Home office has launched three investigations into the Brodie Clark affair:
  • One by Dave Wood, ex-Metropolitan Police detective, currently the UKBA's head of enforcement and crime group. This is a two-week inquiry designed to discover to what extent checks were scaled down, and what the security implications might have been.
  • One by Mike Anderson, an ex-MI6 official, presently director general of the strategy, immigration and international group at the Home Office. This will investigate wider issues relating to the performance of UKBA.
  • It was announced on 5 November 2011 by Theresa May that an independent inquiry would also be undertaken, led by the Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, John Vine.
On 8 December 2011, the Home Affairs Committee released new testimony submitted to them by Mr Clark which includes this:
I remain concerned that the only independent inquiry into matters is that of the Home Affairs Select Committee. I took from some of the exchanges in evidence with others that the HASC shares some of my concern. The investigation by Mr Wood is unsafe as he is a participant. He was at the Board meeting referred to above and as the committee noted, Mr Vine is a witness.

ChristmasList: Misfeasance in public office

It was Christmas day in the harem,
The eunuchs were standing round [that's us, the public, we're the eunuchs],
And hundreds of beautiful women [or, at least, £710 billion of our money]
Were stretched out on the ground,
When in strode the bold bad sultan [or mandarin, Sir Gus O'Donnell]
And stared at his marble halls [or Whitehall]:
"What do you want for Christmas, boys?"
And the eunuchs answered tidings of comfort and joy
[viz. charges of misfeasance in public office
being brought against various satraps
e.g. Sir David Nicholson, Chief Executive of the NHS]

ChristmasList: Misfeasance in public office

It was Christmas day in the harem,
The eunuchs were standing round [that's us, the public, we're the eunuchs],
And hundreds of beautiful women [or, at least, £710 billion of our money]
Were stretched out on the ground,
When in strode the bold bad sultan [or mandarin, Sir Gus O'Donnell]
And stared at his marble halls [or Whitehall]:
"What do you want for Christmas, boys?"
And the eunuchs answered tidings of comfort and joy
[viz. charges of misfeasance in public office
being brought against various satraps
e.g. Sir David Nicholson, Chief Executive of the NHS]

Monday 12 December 2011

Mobile phones – location tracking

Did everyone spot it?

The Killing, Series 2, Episode 7, 17'30".

Raben's father-in-law tells him Special Branch are following him. Raben instantly takes something out of his pocket, fiddles with it and puts it back.

He was taking the battery out of his mobile phone – the only way to be (fairly) sure that it isn't being used to locate/track him.

Him. Or anyone else. You, for example. Your mobile phone is a voluntarily worn electronic tag. Your mobile phone, and mine, is an electronic ID card.

Mobile phones – location tracking

Did everyone spot it?

The Killing, Series 2, Episode 7, 17'30".

Raben's father-in-law tells him Special Branch are following him. Raben instantly takes something out of his pocket, fiddles with it and puts it back.

He was taking the battery out of his mobile phone – the only way to be (fairly) sure that it isn't being used to locate/track him.

Him. Or anyone else. You, for example. Your mobile phone is a voluntarily worn electronic tag. Your mobile phone, and mine, is an electronic ID card.

Saturday 3 December 2011

The case for midata – the answer is a mooncalf

Ed Davey, Minister at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, is promoting the midata initiative. In this, he is guided by a management consultancy called Ctrl-Shift. Ctrl-Shift have recently issued a report which makes the business case for the investment of public money in midata.


An incomplete review of
The new personal data landscape
published in November 2011 by Ctrl-Shift
21 pages, price: £500

Ctrl-Shift is a management consultancy specialising in customer relationship management with an impressive list of clients including the UK government. This latest report of theirs predicts the rise of a new personal information management industry.

What's new about it?
  • For the first time, Ctrl-Shift say, organisations will give data back to their customers. The kind of organisations they have in mind are banks and energy companies and anyone else who signs up to the government's midata initiative.
  • For the first time, Ctrl-Shift say, people will be able to build a comprehensive picture of themselves and use it to make rational decisions.
  • In this, people will be assisted, for the first time, Ctrl-Shift say, by forums in which they can share their experience. 
Nothing new about this personal data landscape at all. It's the same personal data landscape we have always grazed in, and not a new "ecosystem", as Ctrl-Shift keep calling it. The banks have always provided us with statements and the energy companies have always provided us with a breakdown of the bill.

Ctrl-Shift advocate the value of placing all your personal data in a single database, a personal data store (PDS), and then curating it.

Curatorial skills come into their own in museums and art galleries where some gifted individuals can assemble and present a few objects in such a way as to inspire interest in the viewers and educate them. If you have no desire to educate your electricity supplier, then a PDS is probably not for you. And if you think that showing them your utility bills will inspire interest in the attractive person you met at a party last night, then you're mistaken.

"Curator" is the wrong word. "Archivist"? No. "Custodian" is better. There is a demand for custodians, organisations that would, for a fee, store your data and protect it, rather as a Swiss bank discreetly stores your money. Swiss banks are utterly reliable. They didn't create their reputation for reliability by announcing "we are reliable". They created it over the decades by demonstrating that, come what may, they would protect their clients' privacy. The need for trust is recognised by Ctrl-Shift. But they seem to think that trust can be created just like that, overnight. Wrong.

To Ctrl-Shift, unlike a Swiss bank, privacy is nothing more than an irritating constraint (p.17):
If organisations try to share customer data with each other they invade individuals’ privacy and risk breaching the Data Protection Act. The result is duplication, waste and missed opportunities.
What Ctrl-Shift seem to be promoting instead of privacy is Californian narcissism mixed with an unreconstructed hippy's enjoinder to let it all hang out and share it all with the commune/forum. Hippy communes are either terminally dull. Or terminally fascinating, see David Koresh and Jim Jones. Either way, to be avoided.

Which organisations do Ctrl-Shift recommend that people trust with their PDS?

In the UK, a company called Mydex (p.15).

Two of the founders of Mydex are William Heath and Alan Mitchell. Alan Mitchell is also the strategy director of Ctrl-Shift and William Heath is the non-executive director of Ctrl-Shift. These are two individuals who genuinely would be empowered by the adoption of midata. Unlike the rest of us. They have a vested interest. This interest is not declared in the Ctrl-Shift report. That undermines trust. So who would want to use Mydex as their custodian?

Ctrl-Shift repeat the claims made by Mydex that having a PDS puts the customer in control of his or her own data. It doesn't. It confers no more control over what happens to your personal data than the situation we have enjoyed for the past 5,000 years during which civilisation has flourished without PDSs.

Ctrl-Shift repeat the claims made by Mydex that having all your personal data in one pot will allow you to analyse yourself, learn things about yourself and make coherent, utilitarian choices as a result. The possibilities are limitless. On p.12 we find this example:
Tallyzoo, a service dedicated to self monitoring, allows users to measure anything from their caffeine intake to the number of times they cut their grass. Users collect data using a mobile device or website program which creates interactive flashbased graphs enabling them to spot trends and patterns in their consumption habits, work, health and fitness goals. Data is manipulated so that users can share statistics and compare the end results.
The impression is that Ctrl-Shift have somehow managed to preserve into adulthood a childlike fascination with technology so intense that they ignore the banality of its use – just how many people do they imagine want to see William Heath's coffee consumption statistics? (Do not assume that the answer is zero. He made this reviewer a very good cup of coffee once. But the number isn't going to be big enough to support Ctrl-Shift's multi-billion pound projections for the industry.)

Access to such data represents a ‘holy grail’ data to companies because it explains why people do what they do and predicts what they are going to do next.
Religiose piffle (p.14). Computers may have got more powerful over the years, which Ctrl-Shift find interesting, and data storage cheaper, but there have been no advances in the understanding of human psychology to match, and the ability to predict "what they are going to do next" is not available. What kind of organisation would make such a claim? And what kind of a person would believe it?

Where is the control shift, the quasi-eponymous subject of the Ctrl-Shift report?

There is no control shift in the provision of data by organisations to their customers. That's always taken place. The customers gain no new control over the fate of their data just by putting it in a PDS. The claim that Mydex-users are in control of their data is marketing person's hot air.

The answer is all to do with identity assurance (IdA).

Mydex is the reductio ad absurdum of the Cabinet Office's plans for IdA. Francis Maude and Ian Watmore want people to transact with the government over the web, and only over the web. For that, everyone needs an electronic identity, proving that each person is who he or she says they are.

Not just the Cabinet Office. The Department for Work and Pensions, too. DWP's plans for Universal Credit depend on IdA over the web.

All the verbiage about monitoring your grass cuttings is just that.

Mydex want to issue people with some sort of a token, unspecified in the Ctrl-Shift report, which allows people to log on to web-based services and transact. All web-based services. Accessed via one Mydex token. There's something megalomaniac about it. That's the control shift. You would become dependent on Mydex to transact over the web. That really would be a new landscape. On the web, your PDS would be you. Who trusts Mydex enough, or any other company, to make their existence dependent on that company? No-one sane. Or prudent. Or adult. Only a mooncalf.

The Ctrl-Shift report is one-sided, more like a sales document than a management consultant's dispassionate, objective, even-handed assessment. The downside of "life-logging" is not even mentioned, let alone investigated. The downside is obvious (but for anyone who can't work it out for themselves, ENISA kindly produced a report on it).

Mydex face established competition from the credit rating agencies. Set up in the late nineteenth century to support mail order selling, the credit rating agencies (the personal ones, not the Moody's and the S&Ps of this world, organisations like Experian, in which this reviewer holds 1,324 shares, interest declared) have a well-deserved reputation for the discreet concentration of personal data gathered from multiple sources into a single data store. Not that you'd know it from the Ctrl-Shift report. Mydex have nothing to offer that the credit rating agencies don't already have.

Mydex face established competition from Facebook. 800 million people worldwide already actively maintain their Facebook page, or PDS.

It's a brave try. If peculiar. But the ecosystem isn't going to support this new life form.

----------

Updated 17.6.14

Just to remind you: "The opportunities for organisations arising from a new personal information economy are game changing. Ctrl-Shift is the world’s leading market analyst and consulting business helping organisations to capitalise on these opportunities".

Back in November 2011 Ctrl-Shift told us in The new personal data landscape (p.14) that ...
Every individual has a vast and rich store of knowledge and information about themselves which, most of the time, sits unused in their heads ... Access to such data represents a ‘holy grail’ data to companies because it explains why people do what they do and predicts what they are going to do next ... In the emerging personal data ecosystem individuals will have the ability to both input this information into their own digital tools and services and to voluntarily share it with organisations in order to access more appropriate services and get things done.

Ctrl-Shift’s research finds that the market for these new streams of information could grow to be worth £20bn in the UK over the next ten years.
 ... and a factoid was born – the personal information management industry in the UK could one day be worth £20 billion, whether that's per annum or spread over 10 years it wasn't clear.

Yesterday this factoid was reborn when Ctrl-Shift told us in Personal Information Management Services - An Analysis Of An Emerging Market that:
The research estimates the potential size of the market for PIMS as £16.5bn or 1.2% of gross value added in the UK economy. This is an untapped market opportunity for those organisations able to adapt and respond to new demands for managing, using and sharing personal data.
£20 billion? £16½ billion? Who knows. What's £3½ billion between friends. This is an untapped market opportunity for those organisations able to adapt and respond to ever-moving goalposts and new demands for exploiting personal data.

Ctrl-Shift's research is tied to the Department for Business Innovation and Skills's midata initiative (RIP), to the Government Digital Service's identity assurance service (RIP) and to its sister company Mydex's personal data store business.

And what is the strategic objective of these mooncalf economics?

According to Mydex's CEO, no Mydex, no transactions:

Mydex at the centre of ... everything


The case for midata – the answer is a mooncalf

Ed Davey, Minister at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, is promoting the midata initiative. In this, he is guided by a management consultancy called Ctrl-Shift. Ctrl-Shift have recently issued a report which makes the business case for the investment of public money in midata.

Monday 28 November 2011

Managing the minister

There's a right way of doing these things. And a wrong way. Whitehall got it right in November 2008. And all wrong in November 2011.

2008 – the right way
November 2008. You remember. Gordon Brown is sub-Prime Minister and is busy saving the world. The economy is in meltdown and Sir Gus O'Donnell is Cabinet Secretary, Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office and Head of the home civil service, responsible for all senior appointments. Sir David Normington is Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. Bob Quick is Assistant Commissioner at the Met, Damian Green is Shadow Immigration Minister, Christopher Galley is chief Tory Mole at the Home Office, and Jacqui Smith is Home Secretary.

Information had been leaking from the Home Office for some time, allowing Damian Green to ask embarrassing questions in the House. How, for example, had 11,000 illegal immigrants been licensed by the Security Industry Authority to work as security guards?

Sir David discussed the matter with Sir Gus and between them they decided to call in the police. Why? According to the Independent, Sir Gus said it was because:
... when we started the inquiry the reason for it was we were worried certain information was getting out that was potentially very damaging to national security.

To have access to some other things that had come out in the newspapers, the kind of person (who) would have access to that material might also have access to some quite sensitive stuff ...
On 19 November 2008, Christopher Galley was arrested on suspicion of misappropriating some quite sensitive stuff and released on bail. He was subsequently charged with ... absolutely nothing.

Then, on 27 November 2008, Damian Green was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office and aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office.

He was detained for nine hours without a lawyer being present. His home was searched, his constituency office was searched and his House of Commons office was searched. His computers, and hard copy documents, were taken away.

How did Assistant Commissioner Quick's men get into the Palace of Westminster? By asking the Serjeant-at-Arms to let them in. Did they have a search warrant? No. What about Mr Speaker? He is Gatekeeper. Where was he? Good question. Was it the first time the Palace had been invaded in this way since 1642? Yes. Damian Green was subsequently charged with ... absolutely nothing.

As the BBC remind us:
Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer said there was a "high threshold before criminal proceedings can properly be brought", and that he had considered the "freedom of the press to publish information and ideas on matters of public interest". He said the information leaked was not secret information or information affecting national security and there was "insufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction against Mr Galley or Mr Green".
The Home Secretary knew nothing about these events in advance. Did she lose her rag when she found out? No.

She should have done – John Reid raps Jacqui Smith, as they put it in the Sun ...
HOME Secretary Jacqui Smith was left reeling yesterday by a vicious Commons attack over the Damian Green case by her predecessor John Reid.

Mr Reid said he was "surprised" she was not told cops were about to arrest a shadow minister.

He added: "I cannot think that if I had been told this had been done, after the event, I would have remained as placid as you have."
... but she didn't.

Arguably, Sir David went a bit far rubbing it in, when Jacqui Smith later resigned as Home Secretary. As reported on the civil service live network
The head of the Home Office has praised the secretary of state following her decision to stand down.

Permanent secretary Sir David Normington said Jacqui Smith had shown "exceptional leadership" during the her two year stint as home secretary ...

Sir David said Smith had allowed the department "to come out of our previous difficulties". The department was famously described as "not fit for purpose" by Smith's immediate predecessor, John Reid.

Smith had allowed staff to regain their confidence, Sir David said: "In private she was always challenging us to improve; in public she was always supportive. We could not really have asked for more."
Textbook. Sir David remained in control of his minister at all times. We could not really have asked for more.

2011 – the wrong way
Now roll forward three years.

Sir Gus O'Donnell is the only member of the 2008 cast still in the same job(s). He has appointed most of the members of the new cast.

On the other hand, there is no 2011 equivalent of Sir David Normington causing Sir Gus to come out into the limelight. The Head of the home civil service has remained publicly silent during an embarrassing spat in the home civil service.

John Vine is the Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency. Previously Chief Constable of Tayside Police, he is a safe pair of hands (SPOH).

Mr Vine goes to Heathrow for an inspection and interviews Brodie Clark, Head of the UK Border Force, and a SPOH.

Mr Vine is worried about the suspension of fingerprint checks and voices his concerns to Rob Whiteman, the Chief Executive of UKBA, recently appointed, presumably on the basis that he is a SPOH. Mr Whiteman offers Brodie Clark early retirement.

Dame Helen Ghosh, the successor to Sir David Normington at the Home Office, is the ultimate SPOH. She vetoes the early-retirement-with-a-bonus package and Brodie Clark is suspended.

Then the Home Secretary, Theresa May, herself no mean SPOH, goes off the deep end denouncing Brodie Clark. According to Rachel Sylvester in the Times, writing on 15 November 2011, clearly briefed by the Home Office:
She took the decision to do this, I am told, against the advice of Home Office civil servants, who thought it would be wiser to hold a swift internal inquiry and establish the full facts before suspending a senior member of staff.
So no doubt about it. Out of control. Butterfingers. How not to do it.

Updated 21 January 2014:
Richard Heaton is Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office.

Is he a Normington or a Ghosh?

His minister has just picked a fight with the Americans. Quite unnecessarily. Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude Decries 'Old Style' Obamacare Insurance Website.

More of a Ghosh, perhaps, than a Normington.

Managing the minister

There's a right way of doing these things. And a wrong way. Whitehall got it right in November 2008. And all wrong in November 2011.

2008 – the right way
November 2008. You remember. Gordon Brown is sub-Prime Minister and is busy saving the world. The economy is in meltdown and Sir Gus O'Donnell is Cabinet Secretary, Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office and Head of the home civil service, responsible for all senior appointments. Sir David Normington is Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. Bob Quick is Assistant Commissioner at the Met, Damian Green is Shadow Immigration Minister, Christopher Galley is chief Tory Mole at the Home Office, and Jacqui Smith is Home Secretary.

Information had been leaking from the Home Office for some time, allowing Damian Green to ask embarrassing questions in the House. How, for example, had 11,000 illegal immigrants been licensed by the Security Industry Authority to work as security guards?

Sunday 27 November 2011

PerishTheThought: the public interest 2

In view of the impending retirement of Sir Gus O'Donnell, Sir Richard Mottram conducted a review of Whitehall and identified seven abiding problems, problems which existed before the advent of Sir Gus and which persist still.

One of those problems is for the Cabinet Office to take control of the big departments of state, which currently operate as autonomous fiefdoms or over-powerful satrapies, way beyond the control of politicians and beyond the control even of Sir Gus:
... the coalition government has given increasing priority to improving the efficiency of the civil service and the wider public service under a Cabinet Office group ...
On 21 November 2011, Francis Maude, Cabinet Office minister, gave a speech on The Crown and suppliers: a new way of working. Mr Maude considers several ways in which Whitehall makes procurement too difficult. Among others, he lights on the use of management consultants:
... too often in the past we have defaulted into a comfort zone of hiring external consultants to run any kind of complex procurements. This has two effects.

It reduces the need and ability for public officials to develop the necessary skills. And it can happen that consultants being paid on day rates have no incentive to get procurements finished speedily, nor to drive simplicity.

Far too many procurements feature absurdly over-prescriptive requirements. We should be procuring on the basis of the outcomes and outputs we seek ...
This practice of hiring management consultants has been followed "too often" to be in the public interest. What's the minister going to do about it?
... we will ensure that in future we focus on outputs and outcomes. And we now forbid the use of consultants in central government procurements without my express agreement.
Forbid? Express agreement? Let's hope so. The minister is quite right. But will the other departments of state seek his permission to hire management consultants? And abide by his decision to forbid it? Can Maude make it stick?
Francis "Glendower" Maude:
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Sir Humphrey (shame it's not Percy) "Hotspur" Appleby:
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
That is the question.

----------
Hat tips: Tony Collins, W Shakespeare

PerishTheThought: the public interest 2

In view of the impending retirement of Sir Gus O'Donnell, Sir Richard Mottram conducted a review of Whitehall and identified seven abiding problems, problems which existed before the advent of Sir Gus and which persist still.

Saturday 26 November 2011

PerishTheThought: the public interest 1

Sir Gus O'Donnell, Cabinet Secretary, Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office and Head of the home civil service, gave evidence to the Public Administration Select Committee on 23 November 2011. No transcript available yet but, according to the Guardian:
The Freedom of Information act is a mistake, and is having a negative effect on governing, Britain's top civil servant said. Sir Gus O'Donnell told the Commons public administration select committee that it had stymied full and frank discussion of options by ministers and others in government. The 2001 act gives members of the public and journalists the right to ask for publication of official documents.

"The problem is, virtually everything [in such documents] is subject to a public interest test. If asked to give advice, I'd say I can't guarantee they can say without fear or favour if they disagree with something, and that information will remain private. Because there could be an FoI request.

"It's having a very negative impact on the freedom of policy discussions."
What possible interest could we the public have in how the unelected Sir Gus, or his unaccountable office, spends £710 billion of our money for us this year?

Whitehall often claim, as here in front of the Public Administration Select Committee, that they couldn't do their job properly if they had to operate in the open. They couldn't serve the public interest.

Whitehall do not operate in the open at the moment. Their deliberations go largely unreported. And yet, despite the putative benefit of this secrecy, when their performance is reported, mostly by the National Audit Office, after the event, all too often, it transpires that Whitehall aren't doing their job properly.

It transpires that, too often, Whitehall has become an irresponsible and unbusinesslike and undignified machine for transferring public money to a small group of management consultants, contractors and PFI financiers, against the public interest.

Pace Sir Gus, secrecy is not working. Sir Gus is wrong. The smug technocrat's insider view that Whitehall is currently doing a good job is untenable, mendacious, self-deception. Looking in from the outside, Whitehall seems regularly to be guilty of misfeasance in public office.

Openness might be part of the answer. Openness might help Whitehall to do its job properly. Openness might be in the public interest.

PerishTheThought: the public interest 1

Sir Gus O'Donnell, Cabinet Secretary, Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office and Head of the home civil service, gave evidence to the Public Administration Select Committee on 23 November 2011. No transcript available yet but, according to the Guardian:
The Freedom of Information act is a mistake, and is having a negative effect on governing, Britain's top civil servant said. Sir Gus O'Donnell told the Commons public administration select committee that it had stymied full and frank discussion of options by ministers and others in government. The 2001 act gives members of the public and journalists the right to ask for publication of official documents.

"The problem is, virtually everything [in such documents] is subject to a public interest test. If asked to give advice, I'd say I can't guarantee they can say without fear or favour if they disagree with something, and that information will remain private. Because there could be an FoI request.

"It's having a very negative impact on the freedom of policy discussions."
What possible interest could we the public have in how the unelected Sir Gus, or his unaccountable office, spends £710 billion of our money for us this year?

Thursday 24 November 2011

Your Money And How They Spend It – interim report

Episode 1 of this Nick Robinson programme went out last night. Let's wait until we've seen episode 2 before making a final judgement.

In the interim, there are a few questions:
  • Who is "they"? After watching Mr Robinson's programme, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was an unnamed politician who spent our money on a new regional network of control centres for the fire brigade. It wasn't. It was Dame Mavis McDonald and Sir Peter Housden who had control of the cheque book. They were somehow omitted from the tale.
  • Who gets "your money"? There was no mention of PA Consulting, who picked up £42 million for project management and no mention of Cassidian, who built the useless control centres.
  • And we weren't told "how" they spend it. The indefatigable Tony Collins has another story today about how public money is actually spent, Officials pay supplier invoices – then raise purchase orders, based on another report from the equally indefatigable Amyas Morse at the National Audit Office: "the Equality and Human Rights Commission, in up to 35% of cases, raises its purchase order after it gets the invoice from suppliers".
Explaining why this is the wrong way round would presumably have detracted from the agreeably chummy atmosphere of Mr Robinson's interviews with Alan Johnson et al. But it might have been a more helpful use of a whole hour of airtime.

Tony Collins has remembered another example of the scandalous insouciance with which our money is spent: "On the C-Nomis IT project for prisons, the National Offender Management Service paid £161m without keeping any record of what the payments were for".

There's a lot for him to fit into episode 2. Will Mr Robinson do his job?

Your Money And How They Spend It – interim report

Episode 1 of this Nick Robinson programme went out last night. Let's wait until we've seen episode 2 before making a final judgement.

In the interim, there are a few questions:
  • Who is "they"? After watching Mr Robinson's programme, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was an unnamed politician who spent our money on a new regional network of control centres for the fire brigade. It wasn't. It was Dame Mavis McDonald and Sir Peter Housden who had control of the cheque book. They were somehow omitted from the tale.
  • Who gets "your money"? There was no mention of PA Consulting, who picked up £42 million for project management and no mention of Cassidian, who built the useless control centres.
  • And we weren't told "how" they spend it. The indefatigable Tony Collins has another story today about how public money is actually spent, Officials pay supplier invoices – then raise purchase orders, based on another report from the equally indefatigable Amyas Morse at the National Audit Office: "the Equality and Human Rights Commission, in up to 35% of cases, raises its purchase order after it gets the invoice from suppliers".
Explaining why this is the wrong way round would presumably have detracted from the agreeably chummy atmosphere of Mr Robinson's interviews with Alan Johnson et al. But it might have been a more helpful use of a whole hour of airtime.

Tony Collins has remembered another example of the scandalous insouciance with which our money is spent: "On the C-Nomis IT project for prisons, the National Offender Management Service paid £161m without keeping any record of what the payments were for".

There's a lot for him to fit into episode 2. Will Mr Robinson do his job?

Wednesday 23 November 2011

Technology securing the border

Poor ... inefficient ... over-hyped ... real risk to the integrity of the control ... immature ... poor quality ... unreliable ... completely fails ... not joined up ... comical ... erroneous ... laughable ... these are just some of the words of praise heaped on the electronic face recognition gates used for passport control at Heathrow Airport, and on the eBorders scheme in general, in Nicola Stanbridge's eulogy broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning.



Hat tip: JGM

Technology securing the border

Poor ... inefficient ... over-hyped ... real risk to the integrity of the control ... immature ... poor quality ... unreliable ... completely fails ... not joined up ... comical ... erroneous ... laughable ... these are just some of the words of praise heaped on the electronic face recognition gates used for passport control at Heathrow Airport, and on the eBorders scheme in general, in Nicola Stanbridge's eulogy broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning.



Hat tip: JGM

Sunday 20 November 2011

Your Money And How They Spend It – BBC2 9pm 23 & 30 November

Could be worth a watch.

The programme is made by Nick Robinson, Political Editor at the BBC, who trailed it in the Telegraph.

Will Mr Robinson observe polite convention and pretend that politicians are responsible? He might. He says:
Keeping old hospitals open is popular ... So too is building expensive new developments in the regions. Take fire control centres, which it was promised would use the latest technology to track emergency vehicles by satellite to keep us all safer in the event not just of fire, but floods and terrorist attacks. Just one problem: the technology didn’t work. Eight centres are open but empty. Just one will be costing not far short of £100,000 a month for the next 24 years.
Does he really believe that FiReControl, the disastrous project he alludes to, was all John Prescott's fault and nothing to do with officials?

Or will Mr Robinson spread the blame a little wider and recommend more openness?
We can all hope, though, that once this crisis is over we will have learnt to have a more honest, more open, more realistic debate about your money and how they spend it. 

Your Money And How They Spend It – BBC2 9pm 23 & 30 November

Could be worth a watch.

The programme is made by Nick Robinson, Political Editor at the BBC, who trailed it in the Telegraph.

Will Mr Robinson observe polite convention and pretend that politicians are responsible? He might. He says:
Keeping old hospitals open is popular ... So too is building expensive new developments in the regions. Take fire control centres, which it was promised would use the latest technology to track emergency vehicles by satellite to keep us all safer in the event not just of fire, but floods and terrorist attacks. Just one problem: the technology didn’t work. Eight centres are open but empty. Just one will be costing not far short of £100,000 a month for the next 24 years.
Does he really believe that FiReControl, the disastrous project he alludes to, was all John Prescott's fault and nothing to do with officials?

Or will Mr Robinson spread the blame a little wider and recommend more openness?
We can all hope, though, that once this crisis is over we will have learnt to have a more honest, more open, more realistic debate about your money and how they spend it. 

WrinklesInTheMatrix: Boris Johnson 1

Telegraph, 21 October 2011:
Boris Johnson rebuked over use of dodgy statistics
Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has been rebuked by the head of Britain’s statistics watchdog for repeatedly using questionable figures to overstate his claims of cutting reoffending rates.

Sir Michael Scholar, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, which scrutinises all official figures, singled out some of Mr Johnson’s comments to the Home Affairs Select Committee last month ...
Guardian, 16 November 2011:
Boris Johnson says UK Statistics Authority chair is 'Labour stooge'
Boris Johnson has accused the chair of the UK Statistics Authority of being a "Labour stooge".

The London mayor's attack came after he was put on the rack over misleading statistics he had given to a Commons committee to highlight the success of an initiative to cut crime ...
Now here's a wrinkle – three of them, actually:
  • Statistics are pre-party political, they don't "know" about Labour and Conservative
  • If doctors used statistics the way politicians do, we'd all be dead
  • Sir Michael was Private Secretary to Margaret Thatcher 1981-83
Sir Michael is a Good Thing. Boris please note, Sir Michael says:
... having good statistics is like having clean water and clean air. It’s the fundamental material that we depend on for an honest political debate.