PRESS RELEASE: Is identity assurance fully operational in the UK today?

The following press release has been issued:-


PRESS RELEASE


Is identity assurance fully operational in the UK today?

1 March 2013


Six weeks ago, 16 January 2013, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published the details of a contract they had awarded in connection with Universal Credit.

There are 21 million claimants on DWP's services, they all have to be identified and the contract appoints eight official so-called "identity providers" for the UK. The description of the contract includes this:

In supporting the digital by default policy in general and the Government’s welfare reform agenda in particular, cabinet office have produced guidance for all major public service provider departments relating to the need for identity assurance of members of the public when accessing government services ... To support the rollout of universal credit and personal independence payments providers will be selected by June 2012 and systems will need to be fully operational from March 2013 [emphasis added].

That's today, 1 March 2013, and the question is, are these UK identity assurance systems now fully operational as stipulated?

If so, we live in something of a new world.

If not, we need to know if the identity assurance programme, like the ID cards scheme before it, is going to linger on for years and then be cancelled with nothing to show for the hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money spent on it.

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Notes to editors
1. Although it's nominally a DWP contract the organisation really in charge of UK identity assurance is the Government Digital Service (GDS), part of the Cabinet Office, please see Universal Credit and the December putsch: "The revised DWP OJEU notice is effectively an HMG-wide framework being delivered initially using DWP as the vehicle ... This approach ensures that, ultimately, HMG-wide Identity Assurance is supplied across central departments via a common procurement portal ... and governed by the Cabinet Office".

2. The UK's eight official so-called "identity providers" are: The Post Office, Cassidian, Digidentity, Experian, Ingeus, Mydex, PayPal and Verizon. C.f. The identity of the UK's eighth identity provider has now been provided, reluctantly.

3. Digital-by-default is normally described as the Whitehall policy to make all transactions with the government take place over the web, please see Amazon, Google, Facebook et al – the latter-day pied pipers of Hamelin. GDS's model for the UK is Estonia, please see Francis Maude seeks future in Estonia.

4. What digital-by-default involves is re-constructing Whitehall with power centralised in GDS, please see Martha Lane Fox – https://www.gov.uk/machiavelli and OBITUARY: Whitehall 1947-2012 and A Whitehall death foretold – soul control and Whitehall governance, and GDS's fantasy strategy.

5. Identity assurance is not limited to Universal Credit. Its proposed scope includes all transactions with the government ...

6. ... and the compilation of the electoral register, please see Identity assurance – shall we vote on it?.

7. ... and the compilation of the census, please see Alan Travis – Whitehall, the Guardian newspaper and Lord Leveson.

8. The Department for Business Innovation and Skills claim that consumers will be "empowered" if we adopt their midata plan and use Personal Data Stores, which are virtual ID cards stored on the web, in the cloud, please see Identity assurance. Only the future is certain – doom 4 and last (William Heath, Mydex, midata, BIS, GDS and ID cards) – which takes us into areas of transactions supposedly not involving the government.

9. According to its Whitehall advocates, digital-by-default is modern, fit for the 21st century, inevitable and energy-efficient, and will result in high quality, trusted public services. In fact it is a re-hash of Tony Blair's call in 2005 for joined up government which led to Whitehall's failed Transformational Government initiative. Transformational Government depended on ID cards (please see para.39(7), p.13) and digital-by-default depends on identity assurance.

10. According to its advocates, digital-by-default will save money. Given the history of Whitehall IT projects, that claim must evoke a certain scepticism, please see It's all John's fault.

11. If it does save money, GDS say that it will be by making public servants redundant, please see The savings to be expected from digital-by-default – a clarification. They promise a minimum of 40,000 redundancies, and many more if the constraints on data-sharing can be lifted. They propose in their Digital Efficiency Report that Whitehall should keep the savings rather than pass them back to the public.

It is important to discover whether identity assurance is, as promised, fully operational in the UK today.

"Fully operational" is defined in DWP's description of the contract and involves identity verification, credential management, identity correction services, identity authentication, the use of a standardised data description of identity, the inclusion of attributes like bank account details, the implementation of secure organisational procedures, support for a proper privacy model and a proper consent model, multi-channel delivery, geographical reach and demographic reach.

Tick all those boxes and perhaps we have fully operational identity assurance in the UK today. Otherwise, we haven't.

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About David Moss
David Moss has worked as an IT consultant since 1981. The past 9 years have been spent campaigning against the Home Office's plans to introduce government ID cards into the UK. It must now be admitted that the Home Office are much better at convincing people that these plans are a bad idea than anyone else, including David Moss.

Press contacts: David Moss, BCSL@blueyonder.co.uk

G-Cloud – time to call in the undertakers?

G-Cloud – time to call in the undertakers?

midata – a machine for turning personal data into open data

This is the story of a debate about midata hosted on Twitter by BIS, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills. Their version on the right. Another version on the left. One event. Two stories.

Professor Nigel Shadbolt is the chairman of BIS's midata programme, a story of personal/private data. He is also a director of the Open Data Institute, a story of open/public data.

Some people talk about the advisability of midata. Professor Shadbolt talks about how midata would work. Parallel tracks. Which will be a long time meeting.

midata – a machine for turning personal data into open data

This is the story of a debate about midata hosted on Twitter by BIS, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills. Their version on the right. Another version on the left. One event. Two stories.

Professor Nigel Shadbolt is the chairman of BIS's midata programme, a story of personal/private data. He is also a director of the Open Data Institute, a story of open/public data.

Some people talk about the advisability of midata. Professor Shadbolt talks about how midata would work. Parallel tracks. Which will be a long time meeting.

A Whitehall death foretold – soul control

No such thing as a ghost?

Wrong.

Scroll down to the blogroll on the right hand side of the screen and take a look at the first entry. 'BIS Blogs –  Building an Intellectual Property regime for the 21st Century', says this voice from the dead, as it has done ever since 21 December 2012, when the clock stopped.

BIS is the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and it is their website that has died – under the Government Digital Service (GDS) Single Government Domain project, BIS disappeared into GOV.UK.

GDS promised that the change would be smooth, all links to the old site would be re-directed so that the original content could still be seen. Baloney. Try clicking on the link down there in the blogroll and, instead of learning about 21st century intellectual property regimes, what you get is:

Sorry, the page you were looking for can’t be found. The page you were looking for does not exist in the UK Government Web Archive. Please check the URL you have entered or searched on. The information you are looking for may have existed in a different location. You may wish to search. You can find out more about the UK Government Web Archive or browse the collection from our homepage. The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU. Tel: +44 (0) 20 8876 3444. Contact us

BIS used to email their press releases directly to anyone who registered an interest. No more. That service is gone, along with the website and the blog. Now BIS speaks only through GOV.UK, which is managed, like 10 other government departments so far, by GDS, under just one brand, Inside Government.

Something has died. There was something wonky about the death and that's what the unquiet spirit stalking the blogroll is telling us.

Ms Jeni Tennison was trying to work out what that something wonky is nearly a year ago. It's a safe bet that we're going to hear a lot more about her and so, for the moment, let's just say that she was working as a consultant with GDS and on 10 March 2012 Ms Tennison wrote in her personal blog:

The Single Government Domain policy, indeed GDS itself, is about control. It is "we will do it for you", not "we will help you do it". It is about managing the output of institutions that might keep in check an overmighty State. It is anti-web and it is anti-democracy and I cannot remain quiet about it any longer.

It's worth reading her post and the 22 comments added in the following 26 hours or so. One parameter in the debate is the extent to which, looking at the web, the public is confused about the way government works. GOV.UK is supposed to reduce our putative confusion. Does it? Some commenters on the blog think that standardisation might actually increase public confusion.

The issue of public confusion is a long way from the main topic of debate proposed by Ms Tennison, viz. over-mighty states and anti-democracy. One commenter avoids being sidetracked and says:

Putting services online, creating new digital services, recreating organisations as online entities—approach or describe it how you will—this has always been seen by influential policymakers as a magic bullet to “transformation”. If, the argument goes, the future of information and interaction will be online, control that experience and you control the soul of really big, important things like public administration and democracy ... ... be aware that "single domain" and other talk of simplification is but the veneer on a far more fundamental project. Be honest about that, and you might just have a chance of making such change happen.

After a day of lively debate, someone had to step in and cool things down. Enter Tom Loosemore, Deputy Director of GDS:

I will admit that the frantic tenor of your post made me wonder for a moment as to whether we'd done the right thing in making this phase of the beta public ... And I'm afraid [you're] just plain wrong about GOV.UK being "about managing the output of institutions that might keep in check an overmighty State" ... You've jumped to an entirely wrong conclusion ... We will nurture the exceptions, but not at the cost of the level of confusion currently suffered by users. Or the £100m/year this chaos currently costs each and every one of us [sic].

GOV.UK is intended by the end of 2013 to incorporate not just the 24 big departments of state but also over 300 other public bodies many of which are meant to help to make government accountable. In her answer to Mr Loosemore, Ms Tennison makes the point that even if GOV.UK does (yet to be proved) save money, reduce public confusion and improve the user experience of transacting with the government, that's no justification for diluting accountability:

I am not frantic, but I am concerned that in a year it may be too late and I do not want to be wishing that I had said something sooner ... A view of government that does not give space for these differences [between departments] may be less confusing to users but it is hardly accurate or transparent or accountable ... ... shifting the balance so far towards the overt user requirements for department websites ... comes at the cost of losing something essential in our democracy ... ... innovation within the government web space and outside GDS has more or less ceased while everyone waits to see what GDS will do, and my impression is that people are in some way scared to question or discuss the GDS vision ... ... we do all need to be having this conversation rather than suppressing it.

A year later, Ms Tennison has moved on, Tom Loosemore hasn't and only the ghost of BIS remains.

A Whitehall death foretold – soul control

No such thing as a ghost?

Wrong.

Scroll down to the blogroll on the right hand side of the screen and take a look at the first entry. 'BIS Blogs –  Building an Intellectual Property regime for the 21st Century', says this voice from the dead, as it has done ever since 21 December 2012, when the clock stopped.

BIS is the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and it is their website that has died – under the Government Digital Service (GDS) Single Government Domain project, BIS disappeared into GOV.UK.

GDS promised that the change would be smooth, all links to the old site would be re-directed so that the original content could still be seen. Baloney. Try clicking on the link down there in the blogroll and, instead of learning about 21st century intellectual property regimes, what you get is:

Untitled 1

Delegation from the Bulgarian Gov't visited @gdsteam. V Interested in digital leaders. Thx @paul_clarke for the pic twitter.com/Abs_GDS/status… — Abs at GDS HMG (@Abs_GDS) February 21, 2013

Untitled 1

Delegation from the Bulgarian Gov't visited @gdsteam. V Interested in digital leaders. Thx @paul_clarke for the pic twitter.com/Abs_GDS/status… — Abs at GDS HMG (@Abs_GDS) February 21, 2013

Personality cult at GDS?

Excited about having the Swedish Insurance Agency visit GDS today, with Martha! #socialmedia and #digitalservices! twitter.com/Abs_GDS/status… — Abs at GDS HMG (@Abs_GDS) February 19, 2013

Martha Lane Fox watching over the Government Digital Service (GDS)!

Personality cult at GDS?

Excited about having the Swedish Insurance Agency visit GDS today, with Martha! #socialmedia and #digitalservices! twitter.com/Abs_GDS/status… — Abs at GDS HMG (@Abs_GDS) February 19, 2013

Martha Lane Fox watching over the Government Digital Service (GDS)!

Skyscape – would you invest £4 million? Thousands haven't.

There are other cloud computing suppliers than Skyscape.

Some of them comparatively well-established.

What is Whitehall doing?

How did the Cabinet Office and the Government Procurement Service

manage to give G-Cloud accreditation to Skyscape?
And how did the MOD, HMRC and GDS
decide that Skyscape is a safe home for our data?

Skyscape's first accounts appeared on the Companies House website today.

Is Mr Jeremy Robin Sanders still in ultimate control of the company?

Yes.

Except that it's become a bit indirect. He set up a company called Virtual Infrastructure Group Ltd (VIG) in June 2012. Then in October 2012 he transferred all his Skyscape shares into VIG. So VIG controls Skyscape. But Mr Sanders controls VIG.

How is Skyscape financed?

Not by equity, that's for sure. VIG has £180 £1,180 of ordinary shares and Skyscape has £1,000.

Mr Sanders lent some money to Skyscape and the balance outstanding at 31 March 2012 was £93,333. But that's not a lot to fund an operation meant to be able to support the Government Digital Service (GDS), HMRC and MOD contracts let to Skyscape. So what other money is there available?

Answer, in November 2012 – well after getting the GDS and HMRC contracts – a loan note financing exercise was launched. £12 million-worth on offer, of which £8 million-worth had been subscribed for by 7 February 2013, the date on which the Skyscape accounts were signed by Mr Sanders and the auditors, Grant Thornton.

Who are these subscribers/investors? We don't know.

What we do know is that, as set out in the Particulars of a mortgage or charge filed with Companies House on 14 November 2012, if Skyscape goes into receivership or administration or ..., then the noteholders get all the assets, which may include GDS's data (our data), HMRC's data (our data) and the MOD's data (our data).

And who's managing the loan notes? That's the other thing we know. Jeffrey Paul Thomas (15 active companies to his name and 45 inactive ones).

Who?

You remember Jeffrey. He's the man who once held some shares in Skyscape but transferred them to Jeremy. He's the man at ARK Continuity, the data centre specialist, with the Rt Hon The Baroness Manningham-Buller on board, funded by Real Estate Venture Capital Partners LLP (RevCap).

The business review in the Skyscape accounts makes it clear that Skyscape was set up explicitly as a speculative venture designed to exploit changes in UK government IT procurement, particularly G-Cloud, the move to cloud computing.

How's it going?

By 31 March 2012 Skyscape had sales of £44,416 which cost them £327,320 and they'd spent £956,965 on administration. There's no detailed P&L in the accounts, but there is a balance sheet showing negative net assets of £1,240,833.

A bit precarious. Just what you'd expect from a speculative venture. It might come right. You never know. Bit worrying that they couldn't get all the notes away, prospective investors not overly impressed.

Still, there's Whitehall in the background. They could make Skyscape a success. As long as Skyscape is well enough managed actually to cope with a lot of contracts.

And there's Cisco and VMware and EMC and QinetiQ in the background, the Skyscape Cloud Alliance. Skyscape is their Trojan horse. They'll extend their credit terms for a while yet but their patience won't be infinite.

G-Cloud, on which Skyscape largely depends – that's one of the Principal Risks And Uncertainties listed in the accounts – released some sales data last week. It's very early days yet. But between April and December 2012 G-Cloud sold just under £6 million of services. Emergn Ltd got 24% of those sales, BJSS 14% and Ninian 9%. 50 suppliers on the list, everyone else is an also-ran so far, including Skyscape with 2%.

Patience. Tested.

And remember. At some stage, G-Cloud may admit the big boys, Amazon and Google.

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(NB DMossEsq is absolutely not licensed to give investment advice.)

Skyscape – would you invest £4 million? Thousands haven't.

There are other cloud computing suppliers than Skyscape.

Some of them comparatively well-established.

What is Whitehall doing?

How did the Cabinet Office and the Government Procurement Service

manage to give G-Cloud accreditation to Skyscape?
And how did the MOD, HMRC and GDS
decide that Skyscape is a safe home for our data?

Skyscape's first accounts appeared on the Companies House website today.

Is Mr Jeremy Robin Sanders still in ultimate control of the company?

Yes.

Except that it's become a bit indirect. He set up a company called Virtual Infrastructure Group Ltd (VIG) in June 2012. Then in October 2012 he transferred all his Skyscape shares into VIG. So VIG controls Skyscape. But Mr Sanders controls VIG.

How is Skyscape financed?

Not by equity, that's for sure. VIG has £180 £1,180 of ordinary shares and Skyscape has £1,000.

2e2 – are there any lessons for the new skyscape of government computing?

2e2 Group Limited
Annual Report & Accounts 2011

• Established for over 10 years
• In the top 20 of UK Software and IT Services providers
• 2,000 employees with 1,200 technical consultants
• 17 offices in 5 countries
• Trusted IT advisor and partner to corporate and enterprise customers
• Agile and innovative approach
• Track record of delivering business benefits and reducing costs through transformational IT solutions
• High-level partnerships with the leading IT vendors
• Business-orientated approach and solutions design
• Named as the “Cloud expert” by the Financial Times
• Deep skills in data centre, unified communications, application consulting, cyber security, and managed services

2e2. What is it?

Let 2e2 speak for themselves:

2e2 is an ICT Lifecycle Services Provider; an agile, customer-focused provider of end-to-end next generation IT services.  The company creates innovative solutions that transform business processes, reduce infrastructure costs and enhance performance – 'creating business advantage' for its customers.  2e2 focuses on solutions and managed services for medium and large private and public sector organisations, delivered on premises, in the cloud, hosted, as a managed service or as a hybrid.  2e2 has worked with many companies within the telecommunications, media, healthcare, retail, transport, public, financial services and professional services sectors.

With glowing customer references from Linklaters, the London Borough of Newham, the London Borough of Waltham Forest, Menzies, Three, Bridgend County Borough Council, the Sussex Partmership NHS Foundation Trust, Allianz, Telefonica O2, McAfee, G4S and Orbit Housing, ...

2e2's annual accounts show a turnover of £396 million in 2011, a small loss of £11 million and net assets of £67 million, ...

all audited by Ernst & Young, who signed the accounts on 30 March 2012.

The accounts were submitted to Companies House (CH) on 24 September 2012 and the next entry on the CH website is 4 February 2013, Notice of Administrator's Appointment.

There's a big, strong board of directors – Graham Love (formerly chief executive of QinetiQ), Nick grossman (NCR), Frédéric Chauffier (énarque, Managing Partner of Duke Street), Simon Burt (KPMG), Matthew Collins (Morgan Grenfell, Merrill Lynch), Terry Burt (NCR), John Loveland (ICL, Wang, Nixdorf, Siemens), Mark McVeigh (NCR) ...

on 30 March 2012 the Directors' Report says that they have no reason not to use the going concern basis for the preparation of the accounts ...

Ernst & Young agree that the accounts give a true and fair view of the state of the undertaking ...

and next thing you know, they're in administration.

In short order, David Bicknell does a good summary of the problems faced as a result of 2e2's failure by five London NHS trusts responsible for the health of 1.27 million people ...

the G-Cloud team offers to help ...

Anthony Miller, managing partner at analyst house TechMarketView, says: "This is actually good news for 2e2’s beleaguered customers" (really?) ...

and Memset offers to help.

This is the hurly-burly of capitalism. It is a good thing.

Is there any sign, in 2e2's published accounts, of the problems to come?

That is, in case they ever publish any, what should we look out for in Skyscape's accounts?

2e2 – are there any lessons for the new skyscape of government computing?

2e2 Group Limited
Annual Report & Accounts 2011

• Established for over 10 years
• In the top 20 of UK Software and IT Services providers
• 2,000 employees with 1,200 technical consultants
• 17 offices in 5 countries
• Trusted IT advisor and partner to corporate and enterprise customers
• Agile and innovative approach
• Track record of delivering business benefits and reducing costs through transformational IT solutions
• High-level partnerships with the leading IT vendors
• Business-orientated approach and solutions design
• Named as the “Cloud expert” by the Financial Times
• Deep skills in data centre, unified communications, application consulting, cyber security, and managed services

2e2. What is it?

Let 2e2 speak for themselves:

2e2 is an ICT Lifecycle Services Provider; an agile, customer-focused provider of end-to-end next generation IT services.  The company creates innovative solutions that transform business processes, reduce infrastructure costs and enhance performance – 'creating business advantage' for its customers.  2e2 focuses on solutions and managed services for medium and large private and public sector organisations, delivered on premises, in the cloud, hosted, as a managed service or as a hybrid.  2e2 has worked with many companies within the telecommunications, media, healthcare, retail, transport, public, financial services and professional services sectors.

With glowing customer references from Linklaters, the London Borough of Newham, the London Borough of Waltham Forest, Menzies, Three, Bridgend County Borough Council, the Sussex Partmership NHS Foundation Trust, Allianz, Telefonica O2, McAfee, G4S and Orbit Housing, ...

2e2's annual accounts show a turnover of £396 million in 2011, a small loss of £11 million and net assets of £67 million, ...

all audited by Ernst & Young, who signed the accounts on 30 March 2012.

The accounts were submitted to Companies House (CH) on 24 September 2012 and the next entry on the CH website is 4 February 2013, Notice of Administrator's Appointment.

Andrew Dilnot and the cost of social control

Dilnot v., one mood only, imperative (imprecation) Don't! (esp. of hopeless Whitehall policy). Overtones of irrationality/stupidity/ignorance (q.v.), e.g. logically inconsistent arguments in support of hopeless Whitehall policy. Overtones of deceitfulness (q.v.), e.g. proponent of hopeless Whitehall policy is too intelligent not to realise that the supporting arguments are inconsistent. Normal usage – the attempt to promote/preserve honest political debate (q.v.) by a speaker who knows full well that the attempt is just as hopeless as the Whitehall policy. Example: "if you think the solution to excessive borrowing is to borrow more, Dilnot!".

Last seen around these parts Andrew Dilnot, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, told the BBC that his plan to cap social care costs at £35,000 was "not about protecting people's inheritances" but giving people "control over their lives at a time when they're vulnerable and need that control". Predictably enough, the legislation proposed to implement the cap does no such thing. It couldn't. If the state is paying the balance of your care costs over £35,000 then it's the state which is in control. Not you.

Needless to say, it is HM Treasury which will gain control. Them, and local Councils.

According to the Telegraph, Mr Dilnot has maintained his divorce from the natural use of English. Following the announcement of the new social care cost proposals ...

... he described the current system as a “complete disaster” and said the new measures would mean that “for the first time you don’t have to be terrified of the consequences of needing care”.

Readers are advised to carry on being terrified.

Andrew Dilnot and the cost of social control

Dilnot v., one mood only, imperative (imprecation) Don't! (esp. of hopeless Whitehall policy). Overtones of irrationality/stupidity/ignorance (q.v.), e.g. logically inconsistent arguments in support of hopeless Whitehall policy. Overtones of deceitfulness (q.v.), e.g. proponent of hopeless Whitehall policy is too intelligent not to realise that the supporting arguments are inconsistent. Normal usage – the attempt to promote/preserve honest political debate (q.v.) by a speaker who knows full well that the attempt is just as hopeless as the Whitehall policy. Example: "if you think the solution to excessive borrowing is to borrow more, Dilnot!".

Last seen around these parts Andrew Dilnot, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, told the BBC that his plan to cap social care costs at £35,000 was "not about protecting people's inheritances" but giving people "control over their lives at a time when they're vulnerable and need that control". Predictably enough, the legislation proposed to implement the cap does no such thing. It couldn't. If the state is paying the balance of your care costs over £35,000 then it's the state which is in control. Not you.

Needless to say, it is HM Treasury which will gain control. Them, and local Councils.

According to the Telegraph, Mr Dilnot has maintained his divorce from the natural use of English. Following the announcement of the new social care cost proposals ...

... he described the current system as a “complete disaster” and said the new measures would mean that “for the first time you don’t have to be terrified of the consequences of needing care”.

Readers are advised to carry on being terrified.

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?

----------

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.

----------

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.

----------

@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.

GDS and the new world

The previous post on this blog was written overnight, 22/23 January 2013, and published at 9:30 yesterday. The closing paragraphs read as follows:

GDS's new world Martha Lane Fox describes her digital-by-default project as a revolution. Those of us who were born yesterday will have no trouble believing that we are living in a new world. First we believed that UC would be fully operational in 37 days time. Then seamlessly we believed that the target is 400 days. And in 400 days time? What will GDS have us believe then?

Later that same day, 16:02, Computer Weekly published Kathleen Hall's article Interview: Cabinet Office chief operating officer Stephen Kelly.  The closing paragraph reads as follows:

“This world won’t automatically switch to the new world, which is why I want to elevate the CTO [chief technology officer] role – to strengthen our core direction of travel. The new world is where we are going and we are putting a lot of resource and focus behind that.”

Spooky?

Yes.

If we live in a new world, then the old rules no longer apply. The Constitution has to be torn up and the Executive has carte blanche to write a new one. Indeed, the Executive has a duty to write a new Constitution. A new Constitution suitable for the new world. The post-revolutionary world.

It really is carte blanche. The historical constraints on the Executive – the old Constitution – have been removed. The new world starts with no memory. We may as well have been born yesterday.

If we the public once agree that this is a new world, then we grant unconstrained freedom to the Executive to make up the new rules. Which seems like a good reason not to agree. And a good reason to hold to the manifest truth that, actually, we still live in the same world we woke up in yesterday and the day before.

An engraving of Robespierre
guillotining the executioner
after having guillotined
everyone else in France

Martha Lane Fox is a historian. Most revolutions – if you remember – lead to Terrors. She must know that. It's surprising that she should call for a "revolution" in Whitehall and in the governance of the UK, isn't it?

Surprising or not, Terrors are not good for people. Any doctor will tell you. To avoid Terrors, avoid revolutions. And to avoid revolutions, beware of politicians and anyone else declaring new worlds.

"new worlds", incidentally, is deliberately plural. If the Executive don't like the way things are going in the first new world they have declared, they can always declare a second new world and start again. And a third and a fourth etc ... Another old Constitution unwritten. Another new Constitution promulgated. Everything is different again. Except for one thing – the unconstrained power of the Executive.

Do you notice a pattern here? The new-world argument is a tool to conjure the oldest trick in the book.

----------

Most revolutions can clothe themselves in high-minded rhetoric.

Cromwell is the obvious winner in those stakes. Assisted by a monarch who claimed to rule by divine right, Cromwell was able to counter-claim that the revolution was his interpretation of the will of God, no less.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, never before has a revolution been launched for so inane a purpose as the desire to implement government by the web.

That said, even if the stated purpose is feeble, a revolution is still a revolution and power is transferred. In the case of the UK and Martha Lane Fox's rallying cry of "digital-by-default" – not a patch on the Marseillaise – power would be transferred to Google and Facebook and Amazon and PayPal.

Is there really a revolution in prospect? In which case this is a timely blog post.

Or is Martha Lane Fox simply using the word "revolution" loosely? In which case it will look over-blown.

There are some signs of real revolution. In Martha Lane Fox's world:

1. There are repeated calls to ignore or repeal the laws on data-sharing wherever they stand in the way of the brave new digital-by-default world. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office Minister, describes these constraints as "muddled myths".
2. There are repeated calls to locate all policy-making powers in the Government Digital Service (GDS).
3. All government news is to be published by GDS only, and not by the separate departments of state.
4. The identity of the separate departments of state is to be obliterated, on the web at least, so that the public will see just one face of government, GOV.UK.
5. And then, of course, there's the casual lying:

GDS say repeatedly that they don't want to create a national identity register (a "national, central scheme") while at the same time scheming to create just that, via Individual Electoral Registration, in the consolidated national electoral roll to be stored with the credit referencing agencies.

They say that they understand the dangers of keeping personal data on the web and the importance of privacy while at the same time inveigling us all into using Personal Data Stores – on the web, in the cloud, with strangers – and inveigling us all into opening up our personal data so that we stupid people can have rational decisions made for us by apps.

On paper at least, GDS are still promising to deliver identity assurance to support Universal Credit "by March 2013", 35 days away, when they know that they can't.

And so routinely on.

It'll all peter out. Probably. This is England, after all. The mother of parliaments. In the end, even dear old Cromwell gave up trying to interpret the will of God, couldn't think of any alternative, and reinstated the monarchy.

But just in case the petering out looks like taking too long a time, remember – resist all appeals to the putative new world. There isn't one. And if you feel your spine weakening, take out the following text and re-read it – it's an edited version of Gordon Brown's October 2007 speech supposedly on liberty:

... a new chapter in our country's story of liberty ... new issues of terrorism and security ... new frontiers in both our lives and our liberties ... new challenges ... new rights for the public expression of dissent ... new freedoms that guarantee the independence of non-governmental organisations ... new rights to access public information ... new rights against arbitrary intrusion ... new technology ... new rights to protect your private information ... new provision for independent judicial scrutiny and open parliamentary oversight ... Renewing for our time our commitment to freedom ... a new British constitutional settlement for our generation ... the new tests of our time ... we meet these tests not by abandoning principles of liberty but by giving them new life ... a new generation ... new challenges ... new measures ... the new rules ... the new rules ... New rules ... What is new about 21st century ideas of privacy ... new powers of access to information ... new opportunities to use biometrics ... the opportunities of new technology ... a new and imaginative approach to accountability ... new laptop computers ... new powers ... the new information age ... new threats to our security ... a new British Bill of Rights and Duties ... a new chapter in the British story of liberty ...

GDS and the new world

The previous post on this blog was written overnight, 22/23 January 2013, and published at 9:30 yesterday. The closing paragraphs read as follows:

GDS's new world Martha Lane Fox describes her digital-by-default project as a revolution. Those of us who were born yesterday will have no trouble believing that we are living in a new world. First we believed that UC would be fully operational in 37 days time. Then seamlessly we believed that the target is 400 days. And in 400 days time? What will GDS have us believe then?

Later that same day, 16:02, Computer Weekly published Kathleen Hall's article Interview: Cabinet Office chief operating officer Stephen Kelly.  The closing paragraph reads as follows:

“This world won’t automatically switch to the new world, which is why I want to elevate the CTO [chief technology officer] role – to strengthen our core direction of travel. The new world is where we are going and we are putting a lot of resource and focus behind that.”

Spooky?