Stafford Hospital, Unite and Sir David Nicholson

Some readers may remember Sir David Nicholson KCB CBE, Chief Executive of the English National Health Service and Chief Executive of the NHS Commissioning Board:

DMossEsq must confess to a certain horrified admiration for Sir David. Never met him but he comes across as an old bruiser, a survivor, a winner, he's taken on all comers including the Prime Minister and he remains the undefeated commie, the Lonsdale Belt-holder of Whitehall.

He obviously inspires similar awe in Charlotte Jee, stalwart of the Guardian's Government Computing supplement:

Great profile of powerful, plain-spoken & -seemingly- indestructable NHS chief Sir David Nicholson by @patrickjbutler guardian.co.uk/society/2013/f… — Charlotte Jee (@charlottejee) February 4, 2013

Now that the report into the inhuman degradation at Stafford Hospital has been published, she may think differently.

Not so the charming Mary Riddell in the Telegraph:

But not everyone has quite such a strong stomach. Campaigner Julie Bailey has called on Sir David to resign. (And Andy Burnham. And Peter Carter.) Ms Bailey is joined by Rachael Maskell, the health officer of the Unite union, who says:

Sir David Nicholson, who has thrown down the so-called Nicholson challenge of £20bn cuts, is not the person to lead the NHS into the world of patient-focused care ... The words ‘buck’, ‘stopping’ and ‘here’ have a certain resonance.

Is this the end?

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Added (22:40):

The boss must go. NHS staff must step up
by Phil Hammond
The Times, 6 February 2013

Sir David Nicholson, the chief executive of the NHS, was in 2005 the head of the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority, the body supposedly responsible for supervising standards at Stafford Hospital. He should step down, a view privately shared by some on the new NHS Commissioning Board and many of the NHS staff I’ve spoken to. But only brave relatives such as Julie Bailey, from Cure the NHS, will join me in public.

Added 7.2.13:

• Union calls for Nicholson's resignation
• David Cameron apologises for Mid Staffs scandal after damning report
• Raft of apologies in wake of Mid Staffs
• 1,200 deaths, a damning report on 'failings at every level' and 290 recommendations for reform. Now families of the Stafford Hospital victims and union chiefs call for the head of the NHS to resign

Added: 14.2.13:

Head of NHS ignored warnings that patients were in danger, alleges whistleblower Sir David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS, was allegedly warned four years ago that patients were at risk at United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust by its former chief excecutive Gary Walker ... Mr Walker last night said he raised concerns with Sir David in 2009 but his warnings were ignored. He told the Daily Mail: "I want David Nicholson to be held to account. I warned him that this was going to happen. I warned him that Lincolnshire was going to become the next Mid Staffordshire. He didn’t investigate those concerns, and now look what’s happened." He claimed Sir David was "not interested in patient safety" and said he should resign to end the "culture of fear" he had installed in the NHS ... managers at the trust had been told their "careers rested on delivering the targets" and so were neglecting the care of patients ...

Added 15.2.13:

On last night's This Week, Michael Portillo was asked by Andrew Neil for his moment of the week and responded as follows:

Stafford Hospital, Unite and Sir David Nicholson

Some readers may remember Sir David Nicholson KCB CBE, Chief Executive of the English National Health Service and Chief Executive of the NHS Commissioning Board:

DMossEsq must confess to a certain horrified admiration for Sir David. Never met him but he comes across as an old bruiser, a survivor, a winner, he's taken on all comers including the Prime Minister and he remains the undefeated commie, the Lonsdale Belt-holder of Whitehall.

He obviously inspires similar awe in Charlotte Jee, stalwart of the Guardian's Government Computing supplement:

Great profile of powerful, plain-spoken & -seemingly- indestructable NHS chief Sir David Nicholson by @patrickjbutler guardian.co.uk/society/2013/f… — Charlotte Jee (@charlottejee) February 4, 2013

Now that the report into the inhuman degradation at Stafford Hospital has been published, she may think differently.

Not so the charming Mary Riddell in the Telegraph:

Douglas Carswell – where will power end up?

Douglas Carswell's latest book, The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy, diagnoses several problems with the way we are governed in the UK and prescribes a single remedy – the web.

Mr Carswell is talking about politics. Which means he's talking about power.

Politics will end at about the time the sun burns out.

Mr Carswell foresees not the end of politics but the transfer of power, from today's government, to the public, via the web.

There are already several powerful forces fighting for domination of the web. The public are not among them.

It is at least possible that power will be transferred to some cocktail of these rival forces and that we the public will simply find ourselves with different rulers, and not necessarily better off.

Mr Carswell does not explain how the transfer of power from today's government to the public could take place.

Everyone recognises that there is something exceptional about the web. Everyone, including Whitehall.

And unlike Mr Carswell, Whitehall do have a plan.

Martha 'digital by default' Lane Fox CBE, 14 October 2010:

Revolution not Evolution

Make Directgov [= the Transformation cluster/GOV.UK] the government front end for all departments' transactional online services to citizens and businesses, with the teeth to mandate cross government solutions, set standards and force departments to improve citizens' experience of key transactions.

Change the model of government online publishing, by putting a new central team in Cabinet Office in absolute control of the overall user experience across all digital channels ...

Appoint a new CEO for Digital in the Cabinet Office with absolute authority over the user experience across all government online services (websites and APls) and the power to direct all government online spending.

I strongly suggest that the core Directgov team concentrates on service quality and that it should be the "citizens' champion with sharp teeth" for transactional service delivery.

Directgov should own the citizen experience of digital public services and be tasked with driving a 'service culture' across government which could, for example, challenge any policy and practice that undermines good service design.

It seems to me that the time is now to use the Internet to shift the lead in the design of services from the policy and legal teams to the end users.

Directgov 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.

A new central commissioning team should take responsibility for the overall user experience on the government web estate, and should commission content from departmental experts. This content should then be published to a single Government website with a consistently excellent user experience.

Ultimately, departments should stop publishing to their own websites, and instead produce only content commissioned by this central commissioning team.

Ultimately it makes sense to the user for all Government digital services to reside under a single brand ...

... leadership on the digital communications and services agenda in the centre is too fragmented. I recommend that all digital teams in the Cabinet Office - including Digital Delivery, Digital Engagement and Directgov - are brought together under a new CEO for Digital.

This person should have the controls and powers to gain absolute authority over the user experience across all government online services ... and the power to direct all government online spend.

The CEO for Digital should also have the controls and powers to direct set and enforce standards across government departments ...

They want to make public services digital by default. That is, they want public services to be delivered over the web and, to the greatest extent possible, only over the web.

They have set up the Government Digital Service (GDS). The chairman of the GDS advisory board is Martha Lane Fox, the Prime Minister's digital champion. She wrote the terms of reference for GDS and, in theory:

GDS is to have control of all government spending on IT. Central government departments and their agencies are meant to yield that financial control to GDS.

All public services will be delivered through one website, https://www.gov.uk (GOV.UK for short). This process has started. The Ministry of Defence, for example, no longer has its own website – the old http://www.mod.uk has been replaced by https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ ministry-of-defence, part of GOV.UK. By the end of 2013, there will be no departmental websites left, they will all have given up their distinctive identity and been subsumed by GOV.UK.

Central government departments will only be able to publish through GOV.UK. Among other things that means that GDS will be responsible for publishing all government news.

GDS is to have a veto over departmental policy. If GDS feel that a particular policy would impair the user experience of GOV.UK, then that policy will be sent back to the department, who will have to think again. (So far, "user experience" is undefined.)

GDS's Government Digital Strategy provides for a network of so-called "digital leaders", individuals installed in each of the departments to advise on and enforce GDS's will.

GDS's Digital Efficiency Report estimates savings of about £1.8 billion a year thanks to digital-by-default. These savings will be gained by making about 40,000 public servants redundant. There is no question of handing these savings back to the public – the money is to be retained by Whitehall.

In aid of the Individual Electoral Registration Bill (IER), the idea is to cross-reference the records of several departments of state to try to create a complete and accurate electoral roll. That cross-referencing (or "data-sharing") is currently illegal according to the IER impact assessment. But GDS is to have a veto over legal constraints just as much as policy of which it disapproves and Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office Minister and GDS's political boss, describes these constraints as nothing more than "muddled myths". Once these muddled myths are removed, GDS estimate that "savings" and redundancies among public servants will be much higher.

In order to provide public services over the web, the public must be identified – Whitehall need to know they are paying benefits, for example, to the right people. GDS are responsible for the pan-government Identity Assurance programme (IDAP), which will see us all furnished with electronic IDs. GDS have appointed eight contractors to be the UK's so-called "identity providers". If you want to claim the department for Work and Pensions's Universal Credit, by default you will need one or more electronic IDs from these identity providers. Without that, you run the risk of being excluded by default. The same applies to any individual – or company – who needs to transact with government for any purpose.

Supposedly in order to make the economy grow, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS), with the assistance of the Behavioural Insights Team, are promoting an initiative called "midata". The idea is that we should all use a personal data store (PDS) which records our identity and our transaction data (purchases, health records, employment records, educational attainment, travel history, ...). The PDS would be maintained on the web, in the cloud, with a so-called "trusted third party". Only one "trusted" third party is ever named, and that is Mydex, one of GDS's eight identity providers.

Individuals and companies have had a fairly secure way to do business with the government for the past ten years or so – the UK Government Gateway. GDS propose to dispense with the Gateway and replace it with some sort of hub system, linking the public, the identity providers and the public service providers and using protocols designed by or approved by an organisation no-one in the UK has ever heard of, the Open Identity Exchange (OIX). The Gateway is hard to use. The idea is that the OIX hub should be as easy to use as Facebook, say, or Google or Amazon or Twitter or PayPal or ... It seems likely that the difficulty of using the Gateway is precisely what lends it its relative security. And that Facebook, Google, etc ... are easy to use precisely because their security is weak.

GDS propose to host GOV.UK "in the cloud". That is, the website will be stored on a third party's servers at a third party's data centre and operated by a third party's staff. Cloud computing is a recipe for losing control of your data. (In this case, our data.)

...

Mr Carswell has no plan for how power could be transferred from the government to the public via the web. Whitehall does have a plan. But it's a plan that will ensure that control remains with the Executive at the centre. Same tool, but the opposite result from Mr Carswell's preferred reintroduction of localism and the city-state.

GDS ignore the risk of identity theft posed by storing our personal data on the web. They ignore the human need for privacy. They have no experience of public administration. All they have is a reverence for the web.

The web is a powerful and virtuous tool in the right hands. In the wrong hands, it remains powerful.

It is a mistake to revere the web. If you need any further confirmation, read Al Gore: US democracy has been hacked in the Guardian yesterday. Al Gore? The prosecution rests its case.

Douglas Carswell – where will power end up?

Douglas Carswell's latest book, The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy, diagnoses several problems with the way we are governed in the UK and prescribes a single remedy – the web.

Mr Carswell is talking about politics. Which means he's talking about power.

Politics will end at about the time the sun burns out.

Mr Carswell foresees not the end of politics but the transfer of power, from today's government, to the public, via the web.

There are already several powerful forces fighting for domination of the web. The public are not among them.

It is at least possible that power will be transferred to some cocktail of these rival forces and that we the public will simply find ourselves with different rulers, and not necessarily better off.

Mr Carswell does not explain how the transfer of power from today's government to the public could take place.

Everyone recognises that there is something exceptional about the web. Everyone, including Whitehall.

And unlike Mr Carswell, Whitehall do have a plan.

Skyscape loose ends – still loose

• Skyscape are late submitting their first statutory accounts to Companies House

• There are more reasons to believe that HMG will lose control of our data once it is hosted in the cloud on Skyscape's servers

• It looks as if GOV.UK is still not being hosted by Skyscape

----------

Skyscape's non-existent track record

Source: Companies House, 30 January 2013

Skyscape Cloud Services Ltd were due to submit their first set of accounts to Companies House by 31 December 2012 and, so far, they're a month late.

How did the Government Procurement Service (GPS) and the G-Cloud team determine that it is safe to offer Skyscape's services on the Cloudstore?

What were the Government Digital Service (GDS) going on when they chose Skyscape to host GOV.UK, the soon-to-be-single face of government on the web?

How did HMRC decide to entrust its local office data to Skyscape?

No answers. It remains baffling that all this responsibility for public administration should be put on a one-man company.

And now it transpires that the MOD are relying on Skyscape, too.

Losing control of our data
Does the following snippet give you confidence in Skyscape?

ScienceLogic streamlines IT management for Skyscape Cloud Services Date: 24 Jan 2013 Skyscape Cloud Services, “the easy to adopt, easy to use, and easy to leave” Assured Cloud Services Company, has selected and deployed the ScienceLogic™ Inc. IT infrastructure management platform to optimize IT operations and rapidly automate processes in their large-scale, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings. Skyscape is a supplier to the UK government through the G-Cloud Framework initiative, helping deliver a highly-scalable, secure community cloud for the provision of public services. The innovative service provider is using the robust ScienceLogic platform to simplify the complexities of providing mission-critical cloud services to multiple government organizations including GOV.UK and the Ministry of Defence. “We needed to take a more proactive, cost-effective approach to managing our government customer IT cloud resources,” said Peter Rossi, Head of Orchestration & Automation at Skyscape ...

It shouldn't.

ScienceLogic is a US company based in Reston, VA.

So what?

Once HMG put our data in the cloud, it passes beyond their jurisdiction. What happened to Megaupload.com could happen to us, too. The FBI impounded all the data on Megaupload's servers and no-one has been able to get their data back since.

According to Megaupload's lawyers, the prosecution's case amounts to saying that you lose your property rights if you store data in the cloud – if you'd wanted to retain those rights, so goes the argument, you wouldn't have used the cloud.

The FBI have the powers of the USA PATRIOT Act available to them and of the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Amendments Act (FISA).

The USA PATRIOT Act powers can be exercised wherever in the world the cloud data is stored and, as they say on the G-Cloud website, "public cloud is often non-geographically specific" – HMG often won't know where our data is. Location doesn't matter to the FBI. All that matters is that a US-registered company should be involved or any other company with a substantial business in the US.

Skyscape were already known to be involved with EMC, QinetiQ, VMware and Cisco. Then they emphasised the involvement of EMC with the release of a promotional film, Skyscape Cloud Services – Storage as a Service on EMC Atmos. EMC is a US company based in Hopkinton, MA. And now their Head of Orchestration has added ScienceLogic to the list.

FISA was recently "renewed", please see U.S. Spy Law Authorizes Mass Surveillance of European Citizens.

The reasons why the FBI might be interested to take a look at our data are manifold. It was suspected copyright infringement in the case of Megaupload. In our case, it might be that or anything else. Now that the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) has come into force, they might for example just want to see if there are any US citizens or companies or trusts in the UK evading US tax.

And that's the US, the kindred country we know and trust. HMG will have even less control over our data in other jurisdictions.

Where is GOV.UK?
Back in October 2012, GDS announced that GOV.UK would be hosted on Skyscape.

30 January 2013

This came as news to its then current host, a cloud services company called Akamai. Has GOV.UK moved to Skyscape now? It doesn't look like it. It looks as though it's still hosted with Akamai.

What's going on? Was the GDS announcement about Skyscape nonsense? Who knows. GDS don't answer questions. Four months after Skyscape came into public view, we're none the wiser.

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Added 31.1.13:
US authorities can spy on the iCloud without a warrant

Skyscape loose ends – still loose

• Skyscape are late submitting their first statutory accounts to Companies House

• There are more reasons to believe that HMG will lose control of our data once it is hosted in the cloud on Skyscape's servers

• It looks as if GOV.UK is still not being hosted by Skyscape

----------

Skyscape's non-existent track record

Source: Companies House, 30 January 2013

Skyscape Cloud Services Ltd were due to submit their first set of accounts to Companies House by 31 December 2012 and, so far, they're a month late.

How did the Government Procurement Service (GPS) and the G-Cloud team determine that it is safe to offer Skyscape's services on the Cloudstore?

What were the Government Digital Service (GDS) going on when they chose Skyscape to host GOV.UK, the soon-to-be-single face of government on the web?

How did HMRC decide to entrust its local office data to Skyscape?

BIS – redundant situation vacant

Reprinted below is the job description of a post currently being advertised by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS).

Not a bad job really. You get between £40,000 and £55,000, you don't need a medical, there's no Criminal Records Bureau check and you start at Grade 7, the bottom rung of the senior civil service.

There is one issue you might bear in mind before sending in your application.

"We are a busy team of digital specialists responsible for managing the Department’s online presence, including our website and social media", says the job description, and "this will mean identifying our online influencers and forging relationships, creating digital content and opportunities for online engagement, and helping to develop the way BIS uses the web".

The issue is this. BIS don't have a website. Not any more. http://www.bis.gov.uk has been consigned to history, it is no more than a fond memory, time has been called, on the web at least, on the venerable Board of Trade, né 1621.

BIS has now been swallowed up in GOV.UK, its identity erased, along with the Attorney General's Office and five other ministerial departments. The department no longer publishes its own information and no longer issues its own press releases. That is all handled now by the Government Digital Service, prop. ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, under the Constitutional eye of Martha Lane Fox.

It's not a reason not to apply of course – if anything, this turn of events makes the job a lot easier. But you should be forewarned.

Head of Digital Outreach Communications Directorate

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is making a difference by supporting sustained growth and higher skills across the economy. Everything that BIS does – investing in skills, making markets more dynamic, promoting trade, boosting innovation and helping people start and grow a business – is about growth. We are a busy team of digital specialists responsible for managing the Department’s online presence, including our website and social media. We create digital content: blog posts, video, audio and social reporting, but we want to go much, much further than that. We want to listen to, and engage with, our audiences using the digital channels they prefer. And we want to work with the online communities who help our audiences. We’re looking for a head of digital outreach to drive this work forward. This will mean identifying our online influencers and forging relationships, creating digital content and opportunities for online engagement, and helping to develop the way BIS uses the web. You will have an online profile, be comfortable as the face of digital outreach for BIS and have useful online contacts and knowledge to draw upon. You will have some really interesting examples of online communities that you have set up or helped to facilitate. We are looking for a practitioner: someone who is hands-on with digital and focused on delivering activity that helps our audiences. Experience within the science, business, skills or education communities is a definite bonus. We like to contribute to digital communications across Government, so you will be expected to network with peers in other departments and help raise the bar for digital communications in the public sector. If you have the experience and drive to help us deliver outstanding digital outreach, send a covering letter and CV to tim.lloyd@bis.gsi.gov.uk Closing date: February 8, 2012 Reports to: Head of Digital Communications Responsible for: SIO Digital News Editor SIO Digital Engagement Manager Main responsibilities: • establish a strategic approach to digital outreach for departmental consultations, announcements and marketing campaigns – intervening early in projects where digital can add most value to policymaking or behaviour change • ensure that we are using the most appropriate channels for our audiences • build a body of evidence and best practice to support the digital tools and channels that we use • commission and create effective digital content, working closely with the team’s Digital News Editor and Digital Engagement Manager • manage long-term relationships with online communities and influencers • help moderate online discussion and answer questions • evaluate the impact of digital outreach projects • build capability for digital outreach within the digital team and across BIS • share in open innovation as part of the team: writing up tools and approaches, meeting colleagues from BIS family, OGDs and beyond, speaking at events etc. • be a credible voice for digital within BIS

BIS – redundant situation vacant

Reprinted below is the job description of a post currently being advertised by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS).

Not a bad job really. You get between £40,000 and £55,000, you don't need a medical, there's no Criminal Records Bureau check and you start at Grade 7, the bottom rung of the senior civil service.

There is one issue you might bear in mind before sending in your application.

"We are a busy team of digital specialists responsible for managing the Department’s online presence, including our website and social media", says the job description, and "this will mean identifying our online influencers and forging relationships, creating digital content and opportunities for online engagement, and helping to develop the way BIS uses the web".

The issue is this. BIS don't have a website. Not any more. http://www.bis.gov.uk has been consigned to history, it is no more than a fond memory, time has been called, on the web at least, on the venerable Board of Trade, né 1621.

Inspector Harry Callahan's advice to GDS

"What's that?", said the punk, pointing at the books in Harry's arms.

This ... punk ... is the UK tax code. The longest and most complicated tax code in the world.

Tolley's Yellow Tax Handbook 2012-13 alone ... you're lookin' at maybe 15,000 pages. This year's Finance Act, last year's and every year's before. Not just the legislation but the tax tribunal decisions and the case law. UK case law and international. And the double tax treaties.

The inspectors have to apply the tax code. To companies and trusts and partnerships and individuals. A good tax inspector knows his or her limitations. They use manuals, manuals to tell 'em what to do, manuals to explain what they've done, manuals those companies and trusts and partnerships and individuals can consult, too, if they wanna. If they're tough.

They're all on the web ... punk. The Beer Guidance Manual, the Gold Manual (VAT), all the way to the Youth Clubs Guidance Manual.

You won a award, punk, for pretty websites. That's good. You think you gotta contribution to make to these here web manuals. HMRC raise about £550 billion a year from them. You think you're gonna add to that? Or maybe bring down the whole house of cards if you mess up? Suits me.

You wanna change those manuals by even one comma when you incorporate them into GOV.UK? Do you feel lucky? Go ahead ... punk ... make my day.

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@gdsteam This is the nation's blood supply. Beware. Forget aesthetics. Take advice from all publishers and users. Consider making no change. — David Moss (@DMossEsq) January 25, 2013

Inspector Harry Callahan's advice to GDS

"What's that?", said the punk, pointing at the books in Harry's arms.

This ... punk ... is the UK tax code. The longest and most complicated tax code in the world.