Wednesday 18 November 2015

Ear tags for goats and the case of the missing platform

One week to go before the Chancellor's Autumn Statement and we know just two things about Government as a Platform (GaaP):
And that's it. There are four platforms, according to GDS. And no others.

Or are there? Are there some other platforms knocking around which GDS for some reason fails to mention?

Take a look at the Government Gateway.

And take a look at the screen shot below which lists the six public services DMossEsq is enrolled in via the Government Gateway and the 62 others he could be enrolled in (including the Sheep and Goats Ear Tag Allocation System for Animal ID Manufacturers).

Through this one gateway, we can all transact with many UK government departments including DEFRA, DVLA, DWP, HMRC, and so on. The Government Gateway is a platform. Individuals can use it and so can organisations. We've been able to use it for the past 15 years. HMRC relies on the Government Gateway to collect PAYE and National Insurance and VAT and Corporation Tax. And the UK relies on HMRC collecting that revenue to pay for public services.

And yet if you poke around GDS's performance platform, there's no sign of it. The Government Gateway isn't mentioned. How many accounts are there? No idea. How many transactions have been completed to date? No idea. What is the value of those transactions? No idea. How much does the Government Gateway cost? No idea.

The Government Gateway has been starved of funds for years. It's amazing that it still works. The UK depends on it. But all GDS want to talk about is their four home-grown platforms, two of which aren't live. They've framed their bids to the Chancellor in terms of those four platforms. And they may thereby have misled the Chancellor by excluding the Government Gateway from their briefing.

What the well dressed ram about town is wearing this season
When HM Treasury come to consider GDS's bids, they may want to know why GDS have spent the past four years not maintaining the Government Gateway. Why have GDS instead spent four years on not producing GOV.UK Verify (RIP), an identity assurance system that has trouble registering people, can't register companies or partnerships or trusts, and is nowhere near putting ear tags on the UK's sheep and goats?

  • DMossEsq has several Government Gateway accounts.
  • Listed below are the six public services he is enrolled in via just one of those accounts ...
  • ... and the 62 other public services, some of which he may well be enrolled in via other accounts.
----------

Updated 19.11.15

The Government Digital Service (GDS) took the decision very early in its young life to get rid of the Government Gateway, which they still haven't done, and to replace it with a new identity assurance system, which they also still haven't done.

4 November 2011, and ex-Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE ex-CDO ex-CDO, ex-executive director of GDS and ex-senior responsible owner of the identity assurance scheme now known as "GOV.UK Verify (RIP)", publishes Establishing trust in digital services:
... a lot has moved on in the dozen years since Government Gateway was developed and we have a lot of work to do to develop solutions that work for users in the many contexts that they'll need them.
Ten days later, 14 November 2011, and someone posted a comment on the GDS blog post with two questions for Mr Bracken:
Presumably you want to build a brand new replacement [for the Government Gateway]. But why? Isn't that wasteful? That’s question 2.
It's not as though he wasn't warned. Quickly. Four years ago. And several times since. Once, 16 October 2012, we even drew a map, to help. But question 2 has never been answered.

Mr Bracken has gone, the Government Gateway platform is still there working for users in 68 of the contexts in which they need it, GOV.UK Verify (RIP) still isn't, and it has no replacement senior responsible owner.


Updated 20.11.15

The current state of the art of UK Government as a Platform according to the Government Digital Service (GDS)  is shown in this table and, less easily readable, below.

GOV.UK Verify (RIP) gets a lot of publicity but is still in test mode and faces all the well-rehearsed problems including a low level of identity assurance. The performance platform and the digital marketplace are also still in test mode, the transformation platform has sunk and the payments platform doesn't exist at all.

That leaves the publishing platform, GOV.UK, as the only live platform created by GDS and several other live platforms that GDS never mention including the all-important Government Gateway:

UK government platforms – the state of the art according to GDS
.
Platform Purpose Status* Mentioned by GDS ID #
.
GOV.UK Publishing Live Frequently, normally in the context of being "award-winning". 1
GOV.UK Verify (RIP) Identity assurance, for transacting with government and for use by private sector entrepreneurial apps Public beta Frequently and, so they say, openly, in order to build trust. 2
Performance Performance measurement of public services Public beta Rarely, but please see for example Telling stories with data: the Performance Platform as a tool for digital engagement. 3
Pay Payments (unidirectional, from people to government) Alpha With growing frequency, please see GDS to handle Govt payments? What could possibly go wrong?. 4
Government Gateway Transacting with government Live Sparingly and only ever to criticise despite the fact that the Government Gateway must by now in its 15-year life have been instrumental in raising several trillion pounds in tax to fund public services. 5
DirectGov Transacting with government Live Frequently mentioned in the past, normally in the context of having been replaced by GOV.UK. It hasn't been replaced by GOV.UK, that claim is false, try applying for a blue badge for example, you'll find yourself on https://bluebadge.direct.gov.uk/directgovapply.html. The false claim that DirectGov has been replaced by GOV.UK has now, after several years, been removed from the GOV.UK home page. 6
BusinessLink Transacting with government Live Frequently mentioned in the past, normally in the context of having been replaced by GOV.UK. It hasn't been replaced by GOV.UK, that claim is false, try registering as an employer offering a job on the Universal Jobmatch service, you'll find yourself on DirectGov's http://jobvacancies.businesslink.gov.uk/account/dwp/RegistrationRequest.aspx. The false claim that BusinessLink has been replaced by GOV.UK has now, after several years, been removed from the GOV.UK home page. 7
Transformation Transforming government Dead Frequently mentioned in the past, subsequently archived, after which the GDS director of transformation transferred to Methods Digital, a consultancy providing services to government. The Methods Group, of which Methods Digital is a member, "came up with the concept for NHS Jobs which was the first national ‘open’ web platform for public sector services in the UK, and has saved the NHS over £1Billion". GDS sometimes float the idea of a pan-government prison-visiting platform. But they never mention the NHS Jobs platform. 8
AdServer Serve relevant advertisements to people while they're transacting with government or afterwards None Never. But. The attempt to identify cross-government platform services pre-dates GDS's birth in 2011. The G-Digital Programme, for example, conducted a survey and published their findings in January 2010. They produced a list of Business Services (please see p.9), candidates to be shared across government, including for example an email alerts service, case management, complaints-handling and ... an ad server. That's one of the platforms the respondents to the survey wanted even if GDS don't mention it. C.f. Verizon, one of GDS's "identity providers" for GOV.UK Verify (RIP), quoted on AdExchanger.com: "Ultimately, we don’t see ourselves as a data provider; we see ourselves as an ad platform that helps brands and consumers connect". 9, 10, ...
.
Please see GDS's Service design phases. *

With regard to DirectGov and BusinessLink, this is what the GOV.UK home page looked like two years ago on 11 November 2013:


Zoom in, and this is what you saw:


That false claim to have replaced DirectGov and BusinessLink has now at last been removed from the GOV.UK home page. It wasn't true two years ago and it still isn't true now.


Updated 24.11.15 1

The alert reader will have spotted that there is a reference to the Digital Marketplace in the 20 November 2015 update above but that the Digital Marketplace doesn't appear in the accompanying table.

How did this happen?

Clearly DMossEsq forgot about the Digital Marketplace until the last minute before publication and inserted a quick reference into the text even though it was too late to update the accompanying table. Not good, but there is some excuse – GDS themselves tend to forget about the Digital Marketplace and that failure is catching.

Take for example this blog post by ex-Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE ex-CDO ex-CDO, ex-executive director of GDS and ex-senior responsible owner of the pan-government identity assurance programme now known as "GOV.UK Verify (RIP)", Government as a Platform: the next phase of digital transformation.

He remembers to mention GOV.UK and GOV.UK Verify (RIP). He omits to mention the Digital Marketplace.

Which is odd, because the Digital Marketplace (previously known as "G-Cloud") is actually live, unlike GOV.UK Verify (RIP), and it's even quite successful.

Although not as successful as its current boss Tony Singleton OBE claims:

Spot the 2,433% rise

"Astronomical growth"? "Rise of 2,433%"?

It is tempting to describe that figure as misleading. If a public company calculated its turnover growth to date the way Mr Singleton does and printed the result in its accounts, it would be caned. And any investment manager claiming to have achieved a return calculated that way would be fined ...


Updated 24.11.15 2

... which brings us to the question of analytics.

The Digital Marketplace/G-Cloud is used by central and local government to buy digital services. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the government procurement of digital services was growing astronomically and had risen by 2,433% he would be the butt of excoriating derision.

Measuring the performance of the executive branch of government is the subject of Whitehall Monitor 2015, recently published by the Institute for Government (IfG). The data used in these measurements needs to be "complete, consistent and accurate", the IfG say, it needs to amount to information, i.e. it needs to say something meaningful and help us to understand what is happening, and it needs to be usable as evidence, i.e. we should be able to base executive decisions on this data.

Measuring the performance of the executive branch of government is, in other words, a serious matter. How serious are GDS in their post Telling stories with data: the Performance Platform as a tool for digital engagement which appears on their Digital Engagement blog?

The rubric of GDS's Digital Engagement blog says: "On this blog we share how we use digital channels to engage with users ...; plus a candid view of what’s worked for us and what hasn't".

Is that true?

DEFRA's digital rural payments system collapsed. Farmers are having to use a manual system to apply for their basic payments. Digital engagement failed. Does the blog provide "a candid view of what’s worked for us and what hasn't"? Not a bit of it. The GDS/DEFRA débâcle isn't mentioned. And yet the blog post says "at GDS we want our communications to be open, agile and user focussed. Transparent communication builds trust with users".

It also says: "Sometimes we publish statistics that can lead to a bad news story. We have to, that’s just another aspect of being transparent". It would have been transparent to discuss the DEFRA system. But GDS haven't. And public trust is impugned as a result.

"The Performance Platform is really helpful ... as on it you’ll find a lot of data about GOV.UK services. It’s a tool that allows us to communicate the progress of public service development with greater transparency, as the service dashboards provide a clear record of the life of a service."

Really? There is no dashboard for the the Government Gateway, www.gateway.gov.uk. Nor for the Digital Marketplace, https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk. "The Performance Platform makes public the data we have about how services are working. It can be a fantastic starting point for reports, presentations, and blog content" – but not for stories about the Government Gateway or the Digital Marketplace.

"Reporters can get overview of the digital transformation work that’s underway from a reliable source, at any time". Can they? The Performance Platform says that the identity assurance platform GOV.UK Verify (RIP) is being used by 8 public services whereas the GOV.UK Verify (RIP) team say it is being used by 13. Which source is reliable?

"Sometimes there will be a situation where the statistics are not enough by themselves. You still need to figure out what story best goes with those facts."

That's true.

Look at the VAT dashboard. There are about 5 million "transactions per quarter". Does that mean that HMRC receive about 5 million VAT returns per quarter? Yes. But there's a wrinkle. The Performance Platform includes new VAT registrations in that figure of 5 million – "Data for declaration form submissions, amended submissions and registrations". Why confuse these two categories? Why not be transparent, reduce confusion and have two separate informative dials on the dashboard, one for VAT returns submitted and one for VAT registrations?

3 November 2015
The Minister for Cabinet Office Matt Hancock spoke about data-driven government at the Open Data Institute (ODI) summit

The digital platforms we’re building, led by the brilliant GDS, will depend on strong data foundations.
Or look at the GOV.UK Verify (RIP) dashboard. There have been 757,000 verifications (or "authentications") since inception. That figure comprises 185,000 "basic accounts", 314,000 "verified accounts" and 257,000 "sign-ins".

The platform is mixing up registrations and verifications. 499,000 user IDs have been registered (185,000 + 314,000). But the GOV.UK Verify (RIP) team have stopped talking about "registrations". Possibly because that word implies that there is a register. They refer instead to "verifying your identity for the first time". But registration is different from the subsequent use of your on-line ID to claim a redundancy payment, for example, and the two should have separate dials on the dashboard.

Claiming a redundancy is one of the "government services" the dashboard claims that GOV.UK Verify (RIP) can be used for. It also lists "rural payments". But there is no digital rural payments system, see above.

"Basic accounts" are by definition accounts that haven't been verified. Why are they being mixed up with "verified accounts"?

Do the 257,000 "sign-ins" include people signing in with a basic account? We don't know. The Performance Platform doesn't tell us.

In the week to 22 November 2015 the "authentication creation success rate" was 67%. Does creating a basic, unverified account count as a success?

In the same week, the "authentication success rate" was 77% but the "authentication completion rate" was only 28%:
  • How is a journalist supposed to use this dashboard to tell a meaningful story?
  • Would the IfG consider that this data amounts to information?
  • How could an official make a policy proposal based on this data?
  • And how on earth is a minister supposed to make a decision?
The Performance Platform has been open for business since April 2014. It's supposed to provide a new operating model for government. They may call it a "platform". But as platforms go it seems awful unsteady.

Ear tags for goats and the case of the missing platform

One week to go before the Chancellor's Autumn Statement and we know just two things about Government as a Platform (GaaP):
And that's it. There are four platforms, according to GDS. And no others.

Or are there? Are there some other platforms knocking around which GDS for some reason fails to mention?

Thursday 12 November 2015

Warwickshire and the missing attribute – progress

It is just over a month since we last reported on blue badges.

For anyone who doesn't know, the UK Blue Badge Scheme "provides a range of parking and other motoring concessions for people who are registered blind or have severe mobility problems".

Tthere has been an agile flurry of blue badge digital activity in the last 24 hours. @helenolsen wants you to know that Warwickshire are working on an attribute exchange hub for blue badge applications. So do @ukalocaldigital, @UKAuthority, @LDgovUK and @localdirectgov.

Their common source is an article on the UKAuthority.com website:
Warwickshire works on attributes hub

Project with GDS focuses on more flexible approach to identity assurance

Warwickshire County Council is taking the lead on a project to develop a hub for the exchange of attributes connected to people’s identities.

Although the project is still at an early prototype stage, the council hopes it could complement GOV.UK Verify [RIP] in providing a model for all the public sector to use in proving someone’s eligibility for specific services with the minimum exchange of data ...
Warwickshire County Council have worked on GOV.UK Verify (RIP) with the Government Digital Service before. It didn't go well.

GOV.UK Verify (RIP) was still known as "IDA" at the time, Identity Assurance. And the Open Identity Exchange (OIX) reported on the Warwickshire experience. OIX are GDS's business partner and they said:
  • It was hard to match people's names and addresses.
  • There were "shortcomings in the user journey".
  • It was hard to get the level of identity assurance up from 1 (self-certification) to 2 (evidence satisfactory in a civil court) let alone the level 3 required for a criminal court.
  • Registration was a "convoluted process".
  • Users couldn't understand why their identity was being verified by private sector companies instead of the government, ...
The private sector companies involved in the Warwickshire test included three of GDS's "identity providers" – Mydex, PayPal and Verizon.

PayPal were the last of the eight "identity providers" to sign up to GDS's first framework agreement for GOV.UK Verify (RIP). No reason has ever been given why it took longer to sign them up than the other seven nor why PayPal abandoned GOV.UK Verify (RIP) after the Warwickshire test.

But they did. PayPal pulled out. No reason given. Cassidian and Ingeus had pulled out before PayPal. No reason given. And Mydex, who had always been the most voluble proponents of GOV.UK Verify (RIP), never delivered a service. No reason given.

Thus it is that GDS's corps of private sector company "identity providers" is currently down from eight members to four – Experian, Digidentity, the Post Office and Verizon. Membership should soon rise, though, to nine. Under their second framework agreement, GDS are adding five more "identity providers", including PayPal, who clearly have some trouble making up their mind about GOV.UK Verify (RIP).

The OIX report about the shortcomings of the GOV.UK Verify (RIP) user journey was published in May 2014 and was co-authored by one Ian Litton.

By October 2014, Mr Litton – Strategy, Programme and Information Manager, Warwickshire County Council – was more sanguine:
  • Writing in UKAuthority.com, please see Attribute Exchange Discovery Project, he now identified a "wow factor" when people saw, in a test, how easy it could be to apply on-line for a blue badge compared with the current postal application process.
  • People were no longer baffled by the private sector being involved in providing them with a GOV.UK Verify (RIP) identity.
  • The user journey had become limpidly clear to the vulnerable 60+ applicants.
  • There were no problems matching people's names and addresses as recorded by the "identity providers" on the one hand, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on the other and the Department for Transport (DfT) on the third.
  • The level of identity assurance was adequate for DWP to confirm that an applicant was disabled and for DfT to issue a blue badge.
This is attribute exchange in action. Or rather it would be if the users had been connected to DWP and DfT. But they weren't, "we built proof of concept screens". The research results bulleted above including the "wow factor" are based on the users' reaction to a mock-up of the putative blue badge application service.

Being disabled is an "attribute" in the language of GOV.UK Verify (RIP) and, once that attribute is confirmed by DWP, DfT should be confident enough to issue a blue badge. DWP, in turn, should be confident enough that they're dealing with the right person on-line thanks to the applicant being registered with GDS's GOV.UK Verify (RIP).

Would DWP, DfT and GDS be right to feel sufficiently confident in the level of identity assurance offered for this attribute exchange?

OIX think not. They warn that the "identity providers" are having trouble reaching level of assurance 2 (civil court). And, surely anomalous, baffling in fact, GDS are currently working hard on producing "basic" GOV.UK Verify (RIP) accounts, unverified accounts, self-certification, with the lowly level of assurance 1.

GOV.UK Verify (RIP) may become a hub of verified unverified accounts but Mr Litton was optimistic enough a year ago to announce that:
Warwickshire and GDS are now working on an Alpha project with two of the identity providers, Verizon and Mydex, to deliver a working prototype of attribute exchange.
And he was still smiling optimistically in yesterday's UKAuthority.com article which is where we came in, please see above, Warwickshire works on attributes hub.

How far have Warwickshire progressed beyond their "proof of concept screens"? The "Alpha project" announced by Mr Litton a year ago is "still at an early prototype stage" a year later.

Are Mydex still involved? Are Warwickshire relying on personal data stores (PDSs) to support attribute exchange? There are problems with PDSs. Security. Control. Convenience. Irrelevance. PDSs could be slowing down progress on attribute exchange.

It's difficult to get identity assurance working. More difficult than Russell Davies thought a year ago when he said: "Government thinks it's really complex, but digitally it's about the complexity of a medium-sized dating site". Also known as @undermanager, Mr Davies was GDS's director of strategy at the time. He's gone now.

There doesn't seem to be any progress for @helenolsen, @ukalocaldigital, @UKAuthority, @LDgovUK and @localdirectgov to enthuse about. It looks more as though last year's article on attribute exchange has merely been reprinted.

"We’re trying to engage with the private sector to show how it can work for them", says Mr Litton in yesterday's article. Good luck with that. The first attribute the private sector are going to look for is how it works for local government. And as far as we know it still doesn't.

----------

Updated 29.3.16

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) runs a Local Digital campaign.

Most government is local government. Local authorities do the work. Local authorities man the front line. It's local authorities who deliver services, in the main, not central government.

Local Digital aims to improve local government through the use of IT.

Fair enough.

But why are they looking to central government for their lead? They're looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

They had a Local Digital boondoggle on 16 March 2016.

First the head of policy and departmental engagement from the Government Digital Service (GDS) explained to the assembled delegates how to solve problems by using buzzwords. That was central government.

Then Ian Litton spoke on the subject of Developing a local role for [GOV.UK Verify (RIP)]. He's local government ...

... and he's been working with four central government satrapies – GDS, DWP, DfT and DCLG – for 2½ years to try to get blue badges working, please see above.

2½ years and the poor man still only has a prototype.

Local government has nothing useful to learn from GDS. Turn the telescope round. It's GDS who need to learn from local government.


Updated 1.5.16

Hard to believe, but the Government Digital Service (GDS) continue to tour the country lecturing local government about identity management:
Second GOV.UK Verify [RIP] workshop for local authorities
by Louis Stockwell | Apr 28, 2016 | Identity and Attribute exchange | 0 comments

24 representatives from 18 councils attended the second GDS GOV.UK Verify [RIP] workshop for local authorities on 19th April 2016, hosted in Warwick ...
It is dutiful of local government to put up with these sessions, and polite of course, but do they really have the time to spare?

It's a problem – local government needs identity management. Local government in many cases has a selection of solutions in operation. Local government is best placed to work out its own solutions.

As of Friday 29 April 2016 it has become more obvious than perhaps it was before that GDS have nothing to offer local government.


Updated 15.7.16

"Today we held the first of 2 discovery days to examine how local authority taxi licensing, concessionary travel and parking permit services might be improved using GOV.UK Verify [RIP] and Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) services ... this is the first opportunity we’ve had to bring together more than 40 colleagues from 27 local authorities across the country". That's what the Government Digital Service say about their latest GOV.UK Verify (RIP) boondoggle.

GDS also said:
Lessons from an authority that’s done it all before
.
Participants heard from Ian Litton from Warwickshire County Council.
.
"Real time attribute exchange builds trust, increases transparency, and reduces the complexity of services for users and for service providers."
.
Ian worked on a project with the Open Identity Exchange looking at attribute exchange as a common way to transform multiple services.
The casual reader, on seeing that Warwickshire County Council has done it all before – where "it" takes the values real time attribute exchange and trust and transparency and reduction of complexity – might rashly conclude that Warwickshire County Council has done it all before.

It hasn't.

Warwickshire County Council and Ian Litton and the Open Identity Exchange are the first to tell you that they were only using prototypes: "During the course of this project we built prototypes of the Blue Badge and Residential Parking Bay services and tested these with citizens" (p.3).

Knocking up a prototype is nothing like having a real service available. It does not amount to having "done it all before" and it is confusing to suggest that it does.

GDS will no doubt wish to clear up this unfortunate confusion at the first opportunity.

Warwickshire and the missing attribute – progress

It is just over a month since we last reported on blue badges.

For anyone who doesn't know, the UK Blue Badge Scheme "provides a range of parking and other motoring concessions for people who are registered blind or have severe mobility problems".

Tthere has been an agile flurry of blue badge digital activity in the last 24 hours. @helenolsen wants you to know that Warwickshire are working on an attribute exchange hub for blue badge applications. So do @ukalocaldigital, @UKAuthority, @LDgovUK and @localdirectgov.

Their common source is an article on the UKAuthority.com website:
Warwickshire works on attributes hub

Project with GDS focuses on more flexible approach to identity assurance

Warwickshire County Council is taking the lead on a project to develop a hub for the exchange of attributes connected to people’s identities.

Although the project is still at an early prototype stage, the council hopes it could complement GOV.UK Verify [RIP] in providing a model for all the public sector to use in proving someone’s eligibility for specific services with the minimum exchange of data ...
Warwickshire County Council have worked on GOV.UK Verify (RIP) with the Government Digital Service before. It didn't go well.

Sunday 8 November 2015

WrinklesInTheMatrix: Mark Thompson 1

Earlier wrinkles:
14 October 2011Francis Maude
14 October 2011Oliver Letwin
14 October 2011Ian Watmore
14 November 2011Mike Bracken
Mark Thompson believes that 1½ million public servants could be laid off and £35.5 billion could be saved as a result, if only the UK civil service followed the example of Spotify, eBay, Airbnb, Rightmove, Uber and Amazon.

Any number of people believe the same thing. Douglas Carswell MP, for example, the UK Member of Parliament who wrote The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy, reviewed here in February 2013.

Even HMRC may believe it. Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs are trying to break their giant ASPIRE contract into lots of little ones which is part of the Mark Thompson prescription. ASPIRE is unwieldy and ponderous. And expensive. Replace it with a lot of nimbler and more innovative contracts, and the result might be more efficient and cheaper. The question is, how do you get from ponderous to nimble?

HMRC have hired Bain & Company, the management consultants, to answer that question. Mr Thompson thinks that it's management consultants who got HMRC into the ASPIRE mess in the first place.

He may be right to be pessimistic about Bain's assignment. But if Mr Thompson had specified how to achieve his £35.5 billion of projected savings, then HMRC wouldn't have had to call in Bain.

Mr Thompson rejects that criticism, ruefully asserting that HMRC and others don't listen to people like him. You may get the impression of Mr Thompson as a lone thinker coming up with great ideas that Whitehall are too hoity-toity to listen to, a powerless Mr Thompson signalling to distant central government departments while trying to stay afloat in a sea of pathos.

But, there's a wrinkle.

Mr Thompson is a "University Senior Lecturer in Information Systems" at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School and according to his profile on their website:
Mark has 22 years of information and systems and change management experience and is currently Strategy Director & Co-owner, Methods Group, where he has created two thriving startups since 2011 (Methods Advisory and Methods Digital). He is a member of the National Audit Office's Digital Advisory Panel, and was until recently a Main Board Member, Intellect UK (now TechUK), and is also a member of the CBI 21st Century Public Services Task and Finish Group. Prior to Methods, Mark was a Change Management Consultant at Accenture.

Mark is acknowledged within the public domain as one of architects of Open Innovation thinking within the UK public sector. In 2007-8 he was a senior adviser to UK Shadow Cabinet under George Osborne, for whom he delivered an influential report proposing widespread adoption of open standards in government IT that has since become policy, helping to create a sea-change in the way the government approaches and uses technology. Mark was credited by Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude as having laid the foundation for the government's current technology procurement strategy and has subsequently authored, co-authored, or significantly influenced a series of white papers, policy documents, and a parliamentary report. Such papers include a think-tank document, Better for Less with Liam Maxwell, which formed the strategy for Cabinet Office's Efficiently and Reform Group, a journal article that has been widely shared in government, the Government IT Strategy and Strategic Implementation Plan.

Mark is a regularly invited industry and government speaker, and is pioneering these ideas in practice through London-based Methods Group, where he is delivering radical, often disruptive transformation with over 15 pathfinding government organisations. He has appeared in digital panels at both Labour and Conservative Party conferences - as well as critiquing some of the early policy developments for the coming manifesto period.

Mark is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Visiting Professor at Surrey Business School.
Far from helpless, he is keen to make it clear in his profile how much he has the ear of the very most senior members of the executive.

Then. And now. Only the other day, the Cabinet Office Minister appointed Mr Thompson to a "Steering Group of digital and data visionaries" who will guide the UK's move to "data-driven government".

Is it really the case that HMRC won't listen to Mr Thompson?

His company, Methods, lists the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office among its clients, who presumably pay to listen to him. The National Audit Office listen to him, as do the CBI and TechUK. George Osborne, Francis Maude and Liam Maxwell listen to him. That gets him HM Treasury and the Cabinet Office plus maybe the Department for Business Innovation and Skills. His students at the Judge Business School and the Surrey Business School must listen to him. Etc ...

No. More likely, HMRC listened to Mr Thompson advocating his Airbnb idea for Whitehall, there was a gap where there should be a clear plan and they decided they'd better get Bain in to make sense of it.

WrinklesInTheMatrix: Mark Thompson 1

Earlier wrinkles:
14 October 2011Francis Maude
14 October 2011Oliver Letwin
14 October 2011Ian Watmore
14 November 2011Mike Bracken
Mark Thompson believes that 1½ million public servants could be laid off and £35.5 billion could be saved as a result, if only the UK civil service followed the example of Spotify, eBay, Airbnb, Rightmove, Uber and Amazon.

Any number of people believe the same thing. Douglas Carswell MP, for example, the UK Member of Parliament who wrote The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy, reviewed here in February 2013.

Even HMRC may believe it. Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs are trying to break their giant ASPIRE contract into lots of little ones which is part of the Mark Thompson prescription. ASPIRE is unwieldy and ponderous. And expensive. Replace it with a lot of nimbler and more innovative contracts, and the result might be more efficient and cheaper. The question is, how do you get from ponderous to nimble?

HMRC have hired Bain & Company, the management consultants, to answer that question. Mr Thompson thinks that it's management consultants who got HMRC into the ASPIRE mess in the first place.

He may be right to be pessimistic about Bain's assignment. But if Mr Thompson had specified how to achieve his £35.5 billion of projected savings, then HMRC wouldn't have had to call in Bain.

Mr Thompson rejects that criticism, ruefully asserting that HMRC and others don't listen to people like him. You may get the impression of Mr Thompson as a lone thinker coming up with great ideas that Whitehall are too hoity-toity to listen to, a powerless Mr Thompson signalling to distant central government departments while trying to stay afloat in a sea of pathos.

But, there's a wrinkle.

Thursday 5 November 2015

Does my register look canonical in this?

Cast your mind back seven months to 27 March 2015 and an interview given to TechRepublic magazine's Alex Howard by ex-Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken ex-CDO ex-CDO CBE, ex-executive director of the Government Digital Service (GDS) and ex-senior responsible owner of the pan-government identity assurance programme now known as "GOV.UK Verify (RIP)".

Mr Bracken was the government's chief data officer at the time, that's one of his CDOs, and Mr Howard was trying to find out what a CDO does.

A CDO has to solve problems, Mr Bracken told him. Problems like multiple lists of the same things: "In the absence of standards, we have allowed a growing number of competing registers of data. There are literally multiple lists of the same things".

And the solution? These registers must become canonical: "We need to make decisions about what registers and data are canonical, and we need to work out some basics, like what an open address format should look like [?]".

Once our registers are canonical, as you know, the economy will grow like topsy and public services will become efficient and trusted and green. But before that could happen Mr Bracken left Whitehall and now it's all eyes on Paul Downey, a Technical Architect at GDS.

Mr Downey makes the link between Government as a Platform (GaaP) and canonical registers. Public services rest on shared platforms, he says. And shared platforms rest on canonical registers, which are, in Mr Downey's words, "authoritative lists you can trust".

We've got a few platforms, according to GDS. The award-winning GOV.UK, for example, is the government's publishing platform. GOV.UK Verify (RIP) is the government's identity assurance platform. There's a government performance platform with 801 dashboards all blaring numbers at you that may or may not measure the performance of public services. And even as we speak a government payments platform is taking its first tottering steps from discovery to alpha.

So we've got some platforms, but what about registers, and are they canonical?

3 November 2015
The Minister for Cabinet Office Matt Hancock spoke about data-driven government at the Open Data Institute (ODI) summit

The digital platforms we’re building, led by the brilliant GDS, will depend on strong data foundations.
This is important. Data-driven government depends on the answer. At least that's what Matt Hancock says. And he's the Cabinet Office Minister.

Let's see if we can get ourselves a data-driven answer by turning first to GDS's latest and sixth lack of progress report on GOV.UK Verify (RIP), Government services using GOV.UK Verify [RIP] - November 2015 update.

Table 1 shows the digital government services currently using GOV.UK Verify (RIP). All 13 of them. Is that an "authoritative list you can trust"?

You'd hope so, but the list includes DEFRA's digital claim rural payments service and that doesn't exist. DEFRA and GDS between them couldn't make it work and UK farmers are now using a manual system to claim their Common Agricultural Policy payments. The list also includes HMRC's digital marriage allowance transfer service and people were having trouble using that service because they couldn't register with GOV.UK Verify (RIP).

So is the authoritative number of government digital services using GOV.UK Verify (RIP) 13 or 12 or 11?

One sure-fire way to find out is to check the performance platform for GOV.UK Verify (RIP). If Mr Downey is to be believed, that platform must depend on an authoritative canonical register you can trust.

Take a look. Under "government services", the GOV.UK Verify (RIP) dashboard includes all the services which use it. All 8 of them. Including DEFRA's claim rural payments service. So maybe that should be 7. Either way, it's not 13 or 12 or 11. It's not authoritative. And it doesn't inspire trust. It may be a register. But it's not canonical. And if Mr Hancock is pinning his hopes for data-driven government on "the brilliant GDS" who are responsible for this unfortunate state of inequalities, then he's in a minority of one, and falling.

Does my register look canonical in this?

Cast your mind back seven months to 27 March 2015 and an interview given to TechRepublic magazine's Alex Howard by ex-Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken ex-CDO ex-CDO CBE, ex-executive director of the Government Digital Service (GDS) and ex-senior responsible owner of the pan-government identity assurance programme now known as "GOV.UK Verify (RIP)".

Mr Bracken was the government's chief data officer at the time, that's one of his CDOs, and Mr Howard was trying to find out what a CDO does.

Friday 16 October 2015

Manzoni: reform and the efficiency of the Civil Service

Apparently yesterday was the third birthday of the Government Digital Service's award-winning GOV.UK, the public face of UK government on-line.

While Steve Uriah Foreshew was cheering on the remainder of the depleted crew, John Manzoni was speaking to Reform about "reform and the efficiency of the Civil Service".

Mr Manzoni is Chief Executive of the civil service and he and Matt Hancock, Cabinet Office Minister, have entertained us before with their views on GDS.

"In the Government’s Major Projects portfolio there are 150 major projects worth £400 billion", Mr Manzoni told Reform, "everything from building aircraft carriers, to engineering new digital services like Verify, to protect citizens identity online". Aircraft carriers, yes, they appear in the Major Projects Authority's 2014-15 report. But GOV.UK Verify (RIP) doesn't.

Mr Manzoni will have cheered up the oarspersons in the GDS lifeboat with "GOV.UK is the model and the vehicle for what we need to do. It has brought nearly 1,900 websites into a single portal, saving significant amounts of money each year". If they ever make landfall, there's more to do – "this is just the start".

What more is there to do?

As the Chief Executive surveys his dominions, what is his top priority for action?

"Digital technology lets us share and join up. So, why, for example, would we duplicate effort and expense, by having numerous different ways for citizens to make payments to government online? Why have departments developing their own systems – when by working to a common goal we could have one – helping users by helping ourselves".

"Numerous"? How many different payment systems are there in the civil service? How much money would be saved by having just one? Who is competent to design that one, single payments system? Mr Manzoni didn't bore Reform with any details by way of an answer.

All he told them was that "this is how Government Digital Service is leading the digital transformation of government – government as a platform – cheaper, simpler, smarter". Oh dear.

Manzoni: reform and the efficiency of the Civil Service

Apparently yesterday was the third birthday of the Government Digital Service's award-winning GOV.UK, the public face of UK government on-line.

While Steve Uriah Foreshew was cheering on the remainder of the depleted crew, John Manzoni was speaking to Reform about "reform and the efficiency of the Civil Service".

Mr Manzoni is Chief Executive of the civil service and he and Matt Hancock, Cabinet Office Minister, have entertained us before with their views on GDS.

"In the Government’s Major Projects portfolio there are 150 major projects worth £400 billion", Mr Manzoni told Reform, "everything from building aircraft carriers, to engineering new digital services like Verify, to protect citizens identity online". Aircraft carriers, yes, they appear in the Major Projects Authority's 2014-15 report. But GOV.UK Verify (RIP) doesn't.

Mr Manzoni will have cheered up the oarspersons in the GDS lifeboat with "GOV.UK is the model and the vehicle for what we need to do. It has brought nearly 1,900 websites into a single portal, saving significant amounts of money each year". If they ever make landfall, there's more to do – "this is just the start".

What more is there to do?

Thursday 8 October 2015

GDS, blue badgeholders

There was a cri de cœur the other day on the Government Digital Service (GDS) Twitter feed.

We've been here before. The national Blue Badge Scheme, you will remember, "provides a range of parking and other motoring concessions for people who are registered blind or have severe mobility problems". And clearly the on-line application system had given Ms Haworth a hard time.

GDS never tackled Blue Badge. It isn't one of the 25 exemplars included in their grandly titled "government transformation" programme.

Blue Badge is still a Directgov application, on https://bluebadge.direct.gov.uk/directgovapply.html and we've been here before as well. GDS claimed for years that GOV.UK, the award-winning public face of the UK government on-line, had replaced both Directgov and Business Link.


That claim was false for years and it still is, as Ms Haworth among others can testify.

But there has been progress – the misleading claim to have replaced Directgov and Business Link has now at last been removed from GOV.UK's home page.

As it happens, Ms Haworth is the Group Director of Transformation and Delivery at Torus, a company that focuses on "jobs, health, transport links, digital connectivity and housing" in the UK's North West. She may wonder, as may you, why Blue Badge wasn't one of the transformation exemplars.

We don't know the answer but there is an interview in Computer Weekly with Mike Beaven, the sometime director of transformation at GDS. "Critics pointed to several services as being little more than a new web front end on a pre-existing system", says Computer Weekly, "but Beaven defends the exemplars".

Previously he has claimed that "the programme's ended ... we're only just beginning". That was when GDS had to admit that they hadn't managed to deploy all 25 exemplars.

Now he tells Computer Weekly that the question how many exemplars GDS did deploy is irrelevant: "Whether you launch one or 25, it doesn't matter". Oh yes it does.

Mr Beaven has gone now. Like the GOV.UK claim to have replaced Directgov and Business Link.

Computer Weekly say of him that: "His role at GDS was primarily about liaising with the departments responsible for those transactions and generating the sort of collaborative approach that GDS now wants to be seen as its raison d’etre".

Now? GDS now wants liaising and collaborating to be seen as its raison d'être? What was its raison d'être before, you may ask?

Good question.

And when Public Servant of the Year ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken CBE CDO CDO, executive director of GDS and senior responsible owner of the pan-government identity assurance programme now known as "GOV.UK Verify (RIP)", spoke at the October 2013 Code for America Summit he made the answer limpidly clear.

UK public administration is stuck in the 1950s, he told the Americans and anyone else listening, Whitehall is useless, so is UK local government, so are the people behind President Obama's healthcare system, only GDS understand what's needed in today's world and if they're not given their head there'll be riots in the streets.

This vigorous criticism may be undermined in your eyes by the fact that, unlike his targets, Mr Bracken has no experience of government. Nothing daunted, he repeated the message a year later, announcing that "traditional policy-making is largely broken".

Neither liaison nor collaboration was ever on the menu and now he, too, like Mike Beaven and the GOV.UK claim to have replaced Directgov and Business Link, is gone.

Gone where?

God will not be mocked – Mr Bracken has become chief digital officer at The Co-operative Group.

Richard Pope (see valedictory tweet above) is also leaving GDS. We don't know where he's going but we do know where he comes from – 6+ years with mySociety. Which is where Mr Bracken comes from, too, as he told the Code for America Summit in October 2013. And where Tom Loosemore comes from, as he told the Code for America Summit in October 2014.

Who is Tom Loosemore? He's the deputy director of GDS. At least he was. But now, like Richard Pope and Mr Bracken and Mr Beaven and the claim that GOV.UK replaces Directgov and Business Link, he's gone.

Also gone are Russell Davies (strategy director), Ben Terrett (design director) and Leisa Reichelt (head of user research).

People come and go in any organisation. It's only noteworthy when, as in this case, it's the positions at the top which are cleared out and there has duly been a plethora of "whither GDS?" articles and blog posts here, for example, here, here and here. Not to mention here.

The man left holding the parcel, the new executive director of GDS, is one Steven Stephen Foreshew-Cain. It's open season for giving the poor man advice. What would you suggest?

When GDS say something, it must be true. For example:
  • We can't have the public face of government on-line telling us that Directgov and Business Link have been replaced when they manifestly haven't been.
  • We can't have the executive director of GDS giving the impression in public or in private that GDS's government transformation work has made savings equivalent to 4% of UK GDP, as Mr Bracken did at the Code for America Summit in October 2013, ...
  • ... nor that GDS have got 45 million people up and running with on-line identity assurance. It wasn't true then, it still isn't and it never will be, GOV.UK Verify RIP.
  • GDS have got to stop promising that GOV.UK Verify is "secure". They know it isn't and so does everyone else. The same applies to personal data stores.
  • The pretence that agile development is a silver bullet must be dropped ...
  • ... as must the Pied Piper of Hamelin pretence that it is wise, prudent, responsible or green to lose control of our data and our applications by sticking them in the cloud.
  • The claim that GDS is guided entirely by "user needs" has got to be dropped as long as it conflicts, which it always will, with GDS's senior claim that public administration should be "digital by default", by which they seem to mean mandatory that public administration should be on-line and on-line only and the Devil take the hindmost.
The claim that Government as a Platform could save £30 billion a year based on making a laughable analogy between running the UK and running a community nursing scheme has got to be volubly disowned.

GDS have got to clarify their position on data-sharing. There's big data, open data, public data and personal data. GDS say that people own their personal information and that people should have control over how it is used and by whom. They don't say what they mean by "own" here, they provide no "control" and their every action promotes incontinent data-sharing and relies on it. There's a circle for Mr Foreshew-Cain to square.
    And Mike Beaven is right. GDS have to liaise and collaborate with their colleagues in government, not least because it's those colleagues and not GDS who take the rap when something goes wrong, like the ignominious collapse of DEFRA's Basic Payment Scheme. Power without responsibility? GDS will get nowhere and they have got nowhere by pretending childishly that everyone else is stupid and that no-one else understands the biblical import of Amazon, Facebook, Apple, eBay and the internet.

    There's a lot of work for Mr Foreshew-Cain to do ...

    ... which, Ms Haworth may legitimately point out, leaves us still with the Blue Badge problem.

    HMRC have always been the leaders in digital transformation and they always will be. Why? Because they raise money for the government.

    DWP (work and pensions), the NHS (health) and the Department for Education will always be the laggards. Why? Because, unlike Amazon, Facebook, Apple and eBay, they spend government money.

    So does the Blue Badge scheme. It costs money. Cynical prediction:
    • Blue Badge application forms will consequently always be made as hard as possible to complete, ...
    • ... it will always be made as hard as possible to prove that your mother qualifies for a Blue Badge.
    • Applying for a Blue Badge will not be included in any successor to GDS's 25 exemplars programme.
    • And if you think you or your mother can get any help from GDS's assisted digital initiative, just take a look – assisted digital keeps starting and starting again but not assisting.
    ----------

    Updated 9.10.15

    Enough already

    The suggestion is made above that GDS should turn over a new leaf.

    Has anyone read Government as a platform for the rest of us on the GDS blog?

    If that post is to be believed:
    Services will be quicker, easier, and cheaper to create ... With these shared components doing all the hard work behind the scenes, service teams can focus solely on building what their service needs to do ... Another component is data ... we’ve put together design patterns and a development toolkit ... When it's so simple to create services, you can create them as experiments. They can be almost disposable ... Platforms stimulate markets, and markets drive innovation ... If we create platforms based on open standards and interoperability, we automatically create competition and drive innovation ... Services can change as policy and circumstances change ... So when policy changes, or when circumstances force change to happen, it can. Quickly, without fuss ... Everything’s built on standards and designed to interconnect ... Services are closer to policy intent ... That’s what Government as a Platform means. That’s why it matters ...
    But no-one level-headed is going to believe it.

    Components/objects/classes were marketed as the solution to software engineering back in the 1980s, 30 years ago. The benefits promised breathlessly by over-enthusiastic salesmen didn't arrive and there's no reason to believe that they will arrive now with the simple addition of the word "platform".

    You'd have to have been born yesterday.

    You'd have to be soft in the head.

    "Show, don't tell" – that's one of GDS's mottos. We've had the telling for decades from GDS and its predecessors. And for decades we haven't been shown.

    Enough already.

    Time for GDS to turn over a new leaf.



    Updated 10.10.15 #1

    The suggestion is made above that GDS should turn over a new leaf.

    "GDS have got to clarify their position on data-sharing", we said.

    In Government as a platform for the rest of us GDS tell us that:
    Right now, government data is stored in many different ways, frequently duplicated and hard to keep up-to-date. All those problems make it hard to put to good use. We have bad data, not good data.

    When we start building platforms, data becomes another shared component in the system. Standards ensure it is accessible by other components. It is maintained and curated by departmental teams who understand it best. Users are given control over their personal data, so they can choose which services can see it and when.
    It's never quite clear what GDS mean by a "platform" but it is clear that, whatever they mean, platforms entail massive data-sharing which, GDS somehow believe, gives users control over their personal information.

    Is it the users who would have control over their own personal information in GDS's new world?

    Or is it this mythical band of all-wise "departmental teams who understand it best"?

    GDS's bubbly prose, all excited with the novelty and energetic certainty of "platforms", seems to have at its heart the relatively dreary and antique busted flush nostrum first articulated by Douglas Jay in 1937:

    "the gentleman in Whitehall
    really does know better
    what is good for people
    than the people know themselves"


    GDS. Must try harder.


    Updated 10.10.15 #2

    The suggestion is made above that GDS should turn over a new leaf.

    "GDS have got to clarify their position on data-sharing", we said.

    In Government as a platform for the rest of us GDS tell us that:
    Platforms stimulate markets, and markets drive innovation ... Government’s current siloed approach stifles innovation, and leads to various problems ... If we create platforms based on open standards and interoperability, we automatically create competition and drive innovation. That means more providers and lower costs.
    GDS claim that platforms automatically drive innovation. Is that true? Who says? How do they know?

    There is a cadre of open data enthusiasts including Francis-now-Lord Maude of JFDI, David Gauke MP, Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Dr Kieron O'Hara, Stephan Shakespeare and Tim Kelsey (now transported to Australia). According to them, it's open data that stimulates innovation, not platforms.

    They can't both be right, GDS and the open data cadre. They could both be wrong. What do they know about innovation?

    Professor Sir Nigel and Dr O'Hara say in their book The spy in the coffee machine – the end of privacy as we know it that: "sharing information across government databases will dramatically increase governmental powers – otherwise the UK government wouldn't have proposed it" (p.95). That doesn't seem to have anything to do with promoting innovation.

    Never mind the half-baked and contradictory reasoning, whatever the true motive, some people want us to make all our personal information public and they don't mind inverting the British Constitution to have their way.

    Time was when personal information submitted to the UK government was treated by default as confidential. Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), for example, is governed by the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005 (CRCA):
    CRCA prohibits the disclosure of information held by HMRC in connection with its functions except in limited circumstances set out in legislation. This prohibition applies to all information held by HMRC in connection with its functions and reflects the importance placed on 'taxpayer confidentiality’ by Parliament when the department was created. There is additional protection for information that relates to an individual or legal entity whose identity is specified in the disclosure or can be deduced from it (‘identifying information’), in the form of a criminal sanction for unlawful disclosure.
    We could depend on it.

    Not now.

    Not any more – at their 2013 Summit at Lough Erne, the G8 issued this Declaration:
    We, the G8, agree that open data are an untapped resource with huge potential to encourage the building of stronger, more interconnected societies that better meet the needs of our citizens and allow innovation and prosperity to flourish ... the UK helped secure the G8’s Open Data Charter, which presumes that the data held by Governments will be publicly available unless there is good reason to withhold it.
    One minute the disclosure of information is prohibited except in limited circumstances set out in legislation. Next minute it's publicly available unless there is good reason to withhold it.

    What's that?

    That's a Constitution being stood on its head, that's what that is, with the thoughtless assistance of GDS. Time to turn over a new leaf.


    Updated 12.10.15

    The suggestion is made above that GDS should turn over a new leaf.

    According to GDS: "If we create platforms based on open standards and interoperability, we automatically create competition and drive innovation".

    Could we have an example, please?

    Yes:
    For example: look at GOV.UK Verify [RIP], which is stimulating the identity services market. It is setting standards, aggregating demand across government and government services, building a whole new market for identity services in the UK. New identity services are springing up and moving from 'clever idea' to 'commercial product' very quickly.
    Clever ideas and commercial products
    Not a very good example, though. "New identity services are springing up and moving from 'clever idea' to 'commercial product' very quickly"? How quickly?

    GOV.UK Verify (RIP) is GDS's putative identity assurance platform. What with all this competition that platforms are supposed to create and all this innovation that is supposed to be driven you might think that there are scores of clever ideas that have already become commercial products.

    Not just scores. Maybe hundreds of them.

    But not a single clever idea based on GOV.UK Verify (RIP) is named. Let alone a commercial product. Ask GDS to name 10 of them. Or five. Maybe they can and they just forgot to mention them. Or maybe they can't and they've confused wishful thinking with reality.

    Aggregating demand across government
    What's all this about "aggregating demand across government and government services"?

    We are familiar with the problems people face today trying to use GOV.UK Verify (RIP) to transfer marriage allowance between spouses/civil partners. Many of them can't get GOV.UK Verify (RIP) to "provide" them with an "identity". Which means they can't get their marriage allowance transferred. Not on-line, at least. Which is embarrassing HMRC.

    Transferring your marriage allowance is a statutory right. GOV.UK Verify (RIP) is coming between people and their rights.

    HMRC's comment? "It’s not our IT system; it’s the Cabinet Office’s".

    GDS call that "aggregating demand". They might more properly call it "failing to satisfy demand".

    Your invitation to the Identity Summit held last Thursday, 8 October 2015, may have been lost in the post. DMossEsq's invitation certainly was. Luckily there is a report in Computer Weekly magazine ...

    ... according to which the NHS looked at GOV.UK Verify (RIP) and rejected it. They don't like the use made of the "identity providers" in GDS's framework. Unless they, the NHS, themselves become an "identity provider". The "identity providers" can't do the identity assurance job they've been appointed to do. The NHS could do it or, to put it another way, the NHS don't need GOV.UK Verify (RIP).

    Once again, what GDS call "aggregating demand" might more properly be called "failing to satisfy demand". Using GOV.UK Verify (RIP) as an example of the guaranteed benefits of platforms is looking less and less like a wise choice.

    And it gets less wise still ...

    Basic accounts
    ... because next day, 9 October 2015, Janet Hughes published Basic identity accounts trial - an update on the identity assurance blog.

    Ms Hughes is the director of the identity assurance programme and she tells us that GDS and the "identity providers" are currently working hard on providing "basic" accounts. A "basic" account is a non-verified account. It's there for people like the marriage allowance transfer claimants above who can't get past GOV.UK Verify (RIP).

    Is this a clever idea? To an outsider that might look like a lot of hard work going into a new GOV.UK Can't Verify (RIP) service. Or it might just look like the end of the road.

    Levels of assurance
    GDS is "setting standards", if you remember.

    What standards?

    Consider. GOV.UK Verify (RIP), on those occasions when it works, verifies your identity. So they say. But how confident can a public authority like HMRC be that you are who you say you are? The answer is, according to GDS, that there are different levels of assurance. One standard that GDS have set, among others, is for the different levels of assurance.

    LoA3 (level of assurance 3), for example, means that the "identity provider" has evidence good enough for a criminal court that you are who you say you are. LoA2 is good enough for a civil court. LoA1 is just self-certification and is of little value to anyone.

    No-one has yet reached LoA3 with GOV.UK Verify (RIP) and, according to OIX, they haven't reached LoA2 either.

    OIX is the Open Identity Exchange and they're GDS's business partner in identity assurance. They say that the current "identity providers" can't do their identity assurance job. GOV.UK Verify (RIP) needs the banks on board. Adding the banks "would help [to] achieve the required standards against the 5 elements of identity assurance at level of assurance 2", please see The use of bank data for identity verification, p.11.

    Misleading the public
    GDS remind us that despite these problems Ms Hughes tried to enthuse 200 entrepreneurs at the Follow the Entrepreneur conference held on 4 September 2015. GOV.UK Verify (RIP) with its sub-LoA2 identities rejected by the NHS and causing embarrassment to HMRC not to mention frustration to the civilian population is the perfect platform on which these entrepreneurs can convert "clever ideas" into "commercial products". That is presumably the GDS pitch.

    And a surprising pitch it must seem not only to the entrepreneurs but also to the aforementioned civilians who have so far been led to believe that GOV.UK Verify (RIP) is only meant to allow them to transact with government – "GOV.UK Verify [RIP] is the new way to prove who you are online, so you can use government services like viewing your driving licence or filing your tax".

    Not having been prepared for it, the public may be a little upset to discover that it's also meant to provide a platform for "commercial products". They may feel that they have been misled.

    Couldn't GDS have chosen a better example to demonstrate the merits of platforms?

    Presumably not.

    Time to turn over a new leaf.


    Updated 19.10.15

    The suggestion is made above that GDS should turn over a new leaf.

    It doesn't seem to be happening.

    To mark the third birthday of the award-winning GOV.UK, the public face of the UK government on-line, the Government Digital Service (GDS) tweeted a lot of brightly-coloured numbers:


    There are 60 million of us in the UK, every one of us has some sort of interaction with the government and GOV.UK is pretty well the only show in town. Is 909,309,367 a lot of views? How many views should there be? Is this a case of the more the better? Perhaps there shouldn't need to be so many views – are we perhaps looking at failure? God knows what these numbers are meant to demonstrate. DMossEsq wanted to know, too:


    No answer, of course.

    But then New Zealand came on the line.

    New Zealand, you should know, have actually got on-line identity assurance up and running, unlike some people we could mention, no names no pack drill GOV.UK Verify (RIP). And they were impressed:


    Why? Why were they impressed? What had impressed them about the brightly-coloured numbers? What did New Zealand think these numbers demonstrate? DMossEsq asked and, unlike dealing with GDS, back came the answer:


    GDS used to house the UK government's chief data officer. They're supposed to be helping the Office for National Statistics (ONS) with the collection and presentation of UK metrics. And they've managed to mislead the public authority of New Zealand into believing that there have been 909 million logins to GOV.UK Verify (RIP).

    A quick perusal of the GOV.UK Verify (RIP) dashboard will leave you, too, confused. There seem to have been 0.725 million "authentications" to date including 0.185 million from "basic" accounts. "Basic" accounts are accounts which GOV.UK Verify (RIP) couldn't verify. "Authentications" seems to be the sum of the number of accounts created and the number of sign-ins.

    Whatever it does mean, it doesn't mean 909 million logins and New Zealand have now changed the object of their congratulations:


    Good luck to the ONS.

    Time for GDS to turn over a new leaf.


    Updated 3.11.15

    The suggestion is made above that GDS should turn over a new leaf.

    Sad, but it doesn't seem to be happening, Steve Foreshew isn't getting a grip.

    GDS's identity assurance service, GOV.UK Verify (RIP), is meant to verify people's identity. Thus the name, "GOV.UK Verify (RIP)". Faced with their inability to reach level of assurance 2 – verification acceptable to the civil courts – what have GDS done?

    Answer, they've introduced so-called "basic" GOV.UK Verify (RIP) accounts, level 1 accounts, self-certification, unverified accounts on which neither Whitehall departments nor private sector entrepreneurs can rely.

    Not only that, they've reduced the number of pieces of evidence required to verify identity from three to two, thereby diluting the assurance. And, the last refuge of the scoundrel, they've introduced face recognition biometrics into the verification process, "you can take a photo of yourself instead of answering questions based on credit history".

    Mr Foreshew may also like to take a look at the progress reports which his GDS colleagues publish on GOV.UK Verify (RIP):
    • The sixth progress report was published yesterday and maintains the tradition of moving all the deadlines forward several months from the previous report without achieving any progress in between.
    • It also continues to include in the list the digital services to which GOV.UK Verify (RIP) is connected (see Table 1) digital services which don't exist (DEFRA/Claim rural payments) and digital services to which GOV.UK Verify (RIP) is not connected (HMRC/Marriage allowance).
    Time for GDS to turn over a new leaf.