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)

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?

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

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!".

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

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.

Thursday 18 April 2013

Joined up government – national identity register rejected, and will be compiled this summer

What was it Mr Maude said? Oh yes:
We want people to be able to interact with government online, for example, in applying for benefits or a disabled parking permit, in a way that is quick, easy and secure. To do this we need to give them a way of proving their identity online, but only if they choose to. This would be done without a national, central scheme.
That was back in April 2012 when he was angry with the Guardian for misrepresenting him:
This is not a question of increasing the volume of data-sharing that takes place across government, but ensuring an appropriate framework is in place so that government can deliver more effective, joined-up and personalised public services, through effective data-linking.
There it is. Government policy:
  • No single, central, national identity register.
  • No increase in data-sharing between government departments.
  • Effective data-linking, on the other hand, is a good thing because it will allow people to identify themselves on-line when transacting with the government.
Here we are now a year later and what do we find?

We find the Cabinet Office paper Simplifying the transition to Individual Electoral Registration (hat tip: Owen Boswarva).

Individual electoral registration is designed to make sure that the data held on the electoral register is accurate and up to date and it is designed to make sure that all eligible electors and only eligible electors are registered.

We've come across this before in Identity assurance – shall we vote on it?. Individual electoral registration is being championed by Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister. He wants to continue the practice of creating a single, national electoral/identity register:
13. ... The full register is already made available under current legislation to a number of government organisations for official purposes ... In addition the full register is also supplied to credit reference agencies ...
And he wants to tidy up the data on the register by sharing data between Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and DWP and other government departments. That is illegal according to the impact assessment report on individual electoral registration:
Key assumptions/sensitivities/risks: Data matching – national rollout would require primary legislation.
But he wants to proceed anyway and in this simplifying-the-transition document, the Cabinet Office say (para.3.3):
In summer 2013 every Local Authority in England, Wales and the Scottish Valuation Joint Boards will participate in a Confirmation Dry Run. This will provide the opportunity for each ERO to complete a fully IT enabled dry-run of the confirmation process and obtain indicative match results for their area. This information can then be used to assist in the planning and allocation of resources for the transition.
"Match results"? What's that? It involves comparing the electoral register with the Department for Work and Pensions national insurance number database and (para.2.5):
Where they had the capacity to do so, a number of pilot areas also opted to use locally held data sets (for example Council Tax data or Housing Benefit data) to conduct supplementary data matching.
and (para.3.3):
Comparisons of ward level match rates and data from the 2011 England and Wales Census provide further support ...
There has been no primary legislation to legalise this increased national data-sharing. It is proceeding against the law and against Mr Maude's stated policy. And it will produce a single, central database which, Mr Maude said last year, is anathema.

Who is responsible for testing data-matching for individual electoral registration?

You can bet that the Home Office's Identity & Passport Service (IPS) are involved. They hold all the passport data and their chief executive doubles as the Registrar General of England and Wales.

As it happens, you lose your bet (para.2.3). IPS are still persona non grata:
This process was carried out by the Government Digital Service (GDS) for the purposes of the pilot, using criteria developed by the Cabinet Office in conjunction with ...
What do you make of all that?

Joined up government – national identity register rejected, and will be compiled this summer

What was it Mr Maude said? Oh yes:
We want people to be able to interact with government online, for example, in applying for benefits or a disabled parking permit, in a way that is quick, easy and secure. To do this we need to give them a way of proving their identity online, but only if they choose to. This would be done without a national, central scheme.
That was back in April 2012 when he was angry with the Guardian for misrepresenting him:
This is not a question of increasing the volume of data-sharing that takes place across government, but ensuring an appropriate framework is in place so that government can deliver more effective, joined-up and personalised public services, through effective data-linking.
There it is. Government policy:
  • No single, central, national identity register.
  • No increase in data-sharing between government departments.
  • Effective data-linking, on the other hand, is a good thing because it will allow people to identify themselves on-line when transacting with the government.
Here we are now a year later and what do we find?

Tuesday 16 April 2013

GDS: not governance as we know it

Still no progress on identity assurance, but the Government Digital Service (GDS) have now published From the centre and here to help.

GDS have produced the Government Service Design Manual and the question is, how can they enforce these standards across Whitehall and local government?

That governance question is tackled by ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, executive director of GDS and senior responsible officer owner for the pan-government Identity Assurance programme (IDAP). He abjures the old-style "dead hand of bureaucratic overkill". (Who doesn't?) He recommends instead a more collaborative form of governance, "help from the centre".

How does that work? What will GDS do if a department of state ignores the new Government Service Design Manual?

The matter is raised in a comment on his blog post (submitted too late to be published today). We look forward to the answer:
dmossesq #

Please Note: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

When Martha Lane Fox wrote the Constitution for GDS and said that “[GDS] SWAT teams … should be given a remit to support and challenge departments and agencies … We must give these SWAT teams the necessary support to challenge any policy and legal barriers which stop services being designed around user needs” never had support sounded so minatory. The department’s policy displeases GDS? Support it out of the way! What GDS want is illegal? Challenge the law until it complies with the users’ needs and, if there’s any doubt what those needs are, let GDS decide.

It was hard to believe at the time – 14 October 2012 – that this constitution would be adopted but, wrong, it now has the support of Sir Jeremy Heywood, Sir Bob Kerslake and Minister of State, Francis Maude.

According to the post above: “… ‘Governance’ is a top-down term. Monthly meetings, forests of paper, dozens of steering boards and the natural exclusivity, which comes with managers of large budgets making decisions for all – these are all indicators of a hierarchical approach”. That sounds a bit old-fashioned, perhaps.

These days: “The centre of government’s digital estate needs to free up departments and agencies to deliver; it needs to provide support, link up a sometimes divided community and help bottom-up, user-focused services to develop. Setting standards and managing them have their place, but this manual is designed to free up government from the dead hand of bureaucratic overkill. This browser-based service will accelerate decision making and remove the need for many boards and unwieldy processes. As our digital services become primarily digital, the tools and governance we use should reflect that”. Governance now is more about freeing up and support and linking up and helping.

But hang on a minute. What does a modern, supportive GDS do if a department departs from the published standards? If they just ignore this derogation, that’s not governance at all. If, on the other [hand], GDS remonstrates with the department and finally imposes its will, how is that different from the old-fashioned “dead hand of bureaucratic overkill”?

It may help to take an example. GDS wants digital-by-default. DWP have elected for the opposite when it comes to Universal Credit. They’re planning for face-to-face meetings, telephone calls and letters in the post.

There’s a little test of the new governance model. Are GDS going to support DWP until UC becomes digital-by-default? Or are they going to stand by and watch while DWP ignore them?

16/04/2013
----------

29 April 2013

A response to the comment above has now (29.4.13 09:52) been published on the GDS blog. See what you make of it.

GDS: not governance as we know it

Still no progress on identity assurance, but the Government Digital Service (GDS) have now published From the centre and here to help.

GDS have produced the Government Service Design Manual and the question is, how can they enforce these standards across Whitehall and local government?

That governance question is tackled by ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, executive director of GDS and senior responsible officer owner for the pan-government Identity Assurance programme (IDAP). He abjures the old-style "dead hand of bureaucratic overkill". (Who doesn't?) He recommends instead a more collaborative form of governance, "help from the centre".

How does that work? What will GDS do if a department of state ignores the new Government Service Design Manual?

Monday 1 April 2013

Cloud computing – away with the fairies

We all know that the present arrangements for government computing in the UK can't go on. We're in the pan fat.

Instead, we should adopt cloud computing. That would solve the problem, say many commentators. They're well-meaning, no doubt. But wouldn't cloud computing simply move us into the fire?

It certainly looks like it. Cloud computing is meant to be a sort of utility – you get rid of the overheads and only pay for what you use. It sounds eminently sensible until you remember what's happening to your utility bills right now – they're going through the roof.

But that wouldn't happen with cloud computing, say the well-meaners. The G-Cloud people in Whitehall, for example, claim to believe that the suppliers of cloud services want nothing more than to cut their prices and increase the quality of service.

Amazon, for example. They're the biggest suppliers of cloud in the world. They wouldn't put their prices up. Would they?

They just did. Amazon's fees hike for third-party traders provokes fury:
'Marketplace' traders in UK and major European markets to be hit by fee hikes of up to 70% after Easter, following similar rises in US ...

Amazon is facing a revolt from small traders as the internet retailer – which describes itself as "Earth's most customer-centric" company – plans to impose a wave of fee rises on third parties who use its network to sell consumer electronics, automotive parts and other goods in the UK and across Europe ...

The fee increases – which in some cases amount to as much as 70% – have left traders furious, although none are prepared to go on the record because they are concerned about how Amazon will respond.

Cloud computing – away with the fairies

We all know that the present arrangements for government computing in the UK can't go on. We're in the pan fat.

Instead, we should adopt cloud computing. That would solve the problem, say many commentators. They're well-meaning, no doubt. But wouldn't cloud computing simply move us into the fire?

It certainly looks like it. Cloud computing is meant to be a sort of utility – you get rid of the overheads and only pay for what you use. It sounds eminently sensible until you remember what's happening to your utility bills right now – they're going through the roof.

But that wouldn't happen with cloud computing, say the well-meaners. The G-Cloud people in Whitehall, for example, claim to believe that the suppliers of cloud services want nothing more than to cut their prices and increase the quality of service.

Amazon, for example. They're the biggest suppliers of cloud in the world. They wouldn't put their prices up. Would they?

Martin Sorrell: if you don’t eat your children, someone else will

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph a few weeks back, Mr Sorrell explained quite openly what he means when he says that Business must embrace this digital revolution:
How can legacy businesses keep their traditional, profitable operations going, while the new digital upstarts bite into their businesses? It’s the old cannibalisation argument – if you don’t eat your children, someone else will.
He makes two points. One about data ...
We are increasingly embracing the application of technology to our business, along with big data, which means we are Maths Men as well as Mad Men ... the application of technology and big data have become areas of competitive differentiation ... the new and more complex sources of data, which these new media bring, mean that measurement of effectiveness and return on investment has become more achievable – although media fragmentation has made it more complex ... Big data – which to me means the collection of all sources of data (ours and our competitors’) and deployment on dashboards in real time – is for the first time a real possibility.
... and one about clients:
... our target customer is no longer just the chief executive officer and chief marketing officer but, increasingly, the chief information officer or chief technology officer, along with the chief procurement officer and chief financial officer.
Mr Sorrell's companies, remember, are the true users of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, et al –  together, the latter-day Pied Pipers of Hamelin.

You don't spend a farthing on using Google, Facebook and the others. Whereas Mr Sorrell's companies spend £46 billion a year with the Pied Pipers. They count. You don't.

To make sure that the money is spent wisely, the Mad Men need data. Lots of it. Remember that, when you read about the Department for Business Innovation and Skills's midata initiative. BIS may say that you will be in control of your own data. With £46 billion at stake, forget it.

The personal data to be stored by midata is indistinguishable in Whitehall's eyes from the government/public data to be mined for the UK's big data applications. You know that. That's why the same man is in charge of both projects – Professor Nigel Shadbolt.

Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, chief executive of the Government Digital Service (GDS), has recently announced changes in the governance of Whitehall, promoting CIOs (chief information officers) as the main ideas men for new digital services. When Mr Sorrell's men come knocking, they will be warmly welcomed. £46 billion buys you a lot of welcome.

It also buys you a lot of space. And GDS's GOV.UK has a lot of space. Take a look. All that lovely space down the left- and right-hand sides of the web page is just begging for advertisements.

And it buys you a lot of eyeballs. And with public services becoming digital-by-default, GDS can offer up to 60 million pairs.

It's a dish cooked in Heaven. Willing buyer, willing seller, everybody's happy. Everybody that counts, at least.

Feeling peckish, anyone?

Martin Sorrell: if you don’t eat your children, someone else will

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph a few weeks back, Mr Sorrell explained quite openly what he means when he says that Business must embrace this digital revolution:
How can legacy businesses keep their traditional, profitable operations going, while the new digital upstarts bite into their businesses? It’s the old cannibalisation argument – if you don’t eat your children, someone else will.

Google and The Economist

... what sort of a twerp would agree?

Google Reader is a service that was offered by Google which has now been discontinued. Or as the Economist put it on 21 March 2013:
GOOGLE is killing Google Reader ... Google Reader has been mourned over, angrily at times, ...
"Killing"? "Mourned"? "Angrily"? A bit melodramatic, surely. But not as melodramatic as one Google Reader murder report quoted in the Economist article:
Google is in the process of abandoning its mission. Google's stated mission is to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. RSS is a way that a small number of us organize our information. Google no longer cares. It seems what they care about is mass-markets...
"Abandoning its mission"? "Google no longer cares"? Any minute now, you sense, someone is going to accuse Google of not understanding them, before stamping their foot, walking out and slamming the door behind them, their lip quivering with helpless indignation at the unfairness of Google's behaviour.

There is no justification for this indignation, as the writer acknowledges:
[Google] hasn't done this because we're its customers, it's worth remembering. We aren't; we're the products Google sells to its customers, the advertisers.
But that doesn't stop him or her from moaning ...
Google has asked us to build our lives around it: to use its e-mail system (which, for many of us, is truly indispensible), its search engines, its maps, its calendars, its cloud-based apps and storage services, its video- and photo-hosting services, and on and on and on.
... and impotently threatening Google ...
Yanking away services beloved by early adopters almost guarantees that critical masses can't be obtained: not, at any rate, without the provision of an incentive or commitment mechanism to protect the would-be users from the risk of losing a vital service ... in the long run that's a problem for Google.
... before finally turning back to Nanny:
Once they [network externalities which have been ignored] concern large swathes of economic output and the cognitive activity of millions of people, it is difficult to keep the government out ... I find myself thinking again of the brave new world of the industrial city ... the history of modern urbanisation is littered with examples of privately provided goods and services that became the domain of the government once everyone realised that this new life and new us couldn't work without them.
The Economist used once to be rational to the point of ruthlessness. It is the duty of a company to discontinue services that don't make a profit, the Economist would then have said, that's the only way to keep the business honest.

It's not Google's duty to "protect the would-be users from the risk of losing a vital service", Google Reader isn't a vital service, what on earth is the writer doing describing it as "beloved", Google hasn't asked anyone to build their lives around its services and, even if Google did ask, what sort of a twerp would agree?

Google isn't abandoning its mission. It's pursuing it. With precisely the rigorous logic that seems now to have deserted the Economist.

Time was when the Economist's mission was to bully the world into behaving rationally. Now they just want to quiver with self-pity. Which they call "rearranging our mental architecture".

That narcissism is a problem. Google and a few other companies (the latter-day Pied Pipers of Hamelin) exercise considerable and growing power:
What Google has actually done is create a powerful infrastructure. The shape of that infrastructure influences everything that goes online. And it influences the allocation of mental resources of everyone who interacts with the online world ...

That's a lot of power to put in the hands of a company that now seems interested, mostly, in identifying core mass-market services it can use to maximise its return on investment.
Some people see the web as the key to transforming government in the 21st century – the old Economist could have helped to temper that uncritical, star-struck naïvety.

In the UK, the Government Digital Service work every day to transfer power from the government to the Pied Pipers – the old Economist could have restrained the projected embrace of web-enabled totalitarianism.

As it is, all they can do is bleat about the death of Google Reader:
The bottom line is that the more we all participate in this world, the more we come to depend on it.

Google and The Economist

... what sort of a twerp would agree?

Google Reader is a service that was offered by Google which has now been discontinued. Or as the Economist put it on 21 March 2013:
GOOGLE is killing Google Reader ... Google Reader has been mourned over, angrily at times, ...
"Killing"? "Mourned"? "Angrily"? A bit melodramatic, surely. But not as melodramatic as one Google Reader murder report quoted in the Economist article:
Google is in the process of abandoning its mission. Google's stated mission is to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. RSS is a way that a small number of us organize our information. Google no longer cares. It seems what they care about is mass-markets...
"Abandoning its mission"? "Google no longer cares"? Any minute now, you sense, someone is going to accuse Google of not understanding them, before stamping their foot, walking out and slamming the door behind them, their lip quivering with helpless indignation at the unfairness of Google's behaviour.