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?

21 million prospective Universal Credit claimants, 40,000+ ex-public servants, 400 days and GDS

From spring 2013
It is the Government Digital Service's dream to make all public services digital by default. To make that happy dream come true they need identity assurance – each UK parishioner needs his or her own electronic ID.

• 20 April 2011:
... To someone's dyspeptic eye, IDA looks like a non-starter, another elaborate and expensive plan which turns out to be fantasy, doomed to failure when it confronts reality. The timetable for IDA was presented and described as not over-ambitious. That is perfectly accurate. The timetable is not over-ambitious. It looks more like the psychedelic product of a prolonged session on hallucinogenic drugs. Far from being merely over-ambitious, it is quite simply impossible.

• 22 September 2012, Universal Credit and the December putsch:
... The revised notice was published on 1 March 2012 and the service has to be operational from the Spring of 2013? Barely a year later? Only six months after the contracts are awarded? 21 million claimants? Millions of whom have never used the web? Operational? Countrywide? ... It's a tall order.

• 25 September 2012, Identity assurance – the clock is ticking, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken's chickens are coming home to roost:
... That's six months time if we measure to the start of next spring, or nine months if we measure to the end. Either way, DWP's Universal Credit (UC) scheme has to be up and running by October 2013 and UC depends on identity assurance as Lord Freud, the welfare reform minister, has emphasised – no identity assurance, no UC.

• 6 November 2012, Identity assurance – shall we vote on it?:
... That's what it says in the draft legislation. Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken was meant to announce who would be the UK's so-called "identity providers" by 30 September 2012. We're still waiting ... He'd better hurry up. He's promised to have an identity assurance service "operational" for 21 million Universal Credit claimants by Spring 2013.

• 26 November 2012, Identity assurance – one under the eight:
More to the point, there are 21 million prospective claimants for Universal Credit in the UK. Identity assurance is meant to be operational by the Spring of 2013 for all 21 million of them. The chances of that happening are now nil. GDS's failure is extending the imprisonment in the poverty trap of millions of claimants who could be released by Universal Credit. Putting the wrong people in charge of identity assurance has miserable social consequences.

• 10 December 2012, Universal Credit – GDS's part in its downfall:
... That wouldn't be feasible, not now, December 2012, not even if the details of IDAP had all been worked out but they haven't been ("we now have a group of suppliers with whom we can work out the practical issues"). Why hasn't it already been done? How much longer will it take?

• 11 December 2012, GDS's identity assurance story continues to unravel:
... GDS went on in their blog post of last March to refer to the procurement of identity assurance services, needed by DWP for their Universal Credit initiative: "The initial DWP services will be required to provide identity assurance for approximately 21 000 000 claimants ... To support the rollout of universal credit and personal independence payments, identity assurance suppliers will be selected in summer 2012 and systems will need to be fully operational from spring 2013" ... Question – how did GDS come up with that timetable?

• 18 January 2013, #2 of many lessons about GDS and the external digital thought-leaders:
... it's impossible. Would you trust an organisation that promises the impossible?

And so was born GDS's Identity Assurance Programme (IDAP) [29.12.17: currently known as "GOV.UK Verify (RIP)"] which they have repeatedly promised would be "fully operational from spring 2013".

In the first instance, GDS need to provide identity assurance for the new Universal Credit (UC) system which is designed to rescue people from welfare dependency by making work pay. It's UC that needs identity assurance to be fully operational from spring 2013 and that's what GDS have promised.

From March 2013
Eight so-called "identity providers" have been appointed to turn IDAP into reality. The documentation on the IDAP contracts was published the other day, 16 January 2013, and includes this:

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.

"... fully operational from March 2013" – 37 days away.

That deadline has seemed impossible for years, since at least 20 April 2011 (please see opposite), before GDS existed, but they (GDS) have never sought in public to change it and, even now with only 37 days to go, there may be up to 21 million prospective universal credit claimants out there who assume that the deadline will be met.

It won't. It can't be.

April 2014
In his 22 January 2013 Computer Weekly blog the engaging Toby Stevens reports on the current state of IDAP and says:

And when does all this happen? We would expect to see the first pilots in October this year, with more widespread use kicking off in April 2014.

Fully operational from March 2013? No. October 2013. But that's just "trials". So not fully operational. Maybe more like April 2014. And maybe not.

Has anyone told Iain Duncan Smith that GDS have delayed his beacon policy by at least a year? Presumably not as he keeps telling Parliament that UC's going swimmingly. Has anyone told the press? Or the prospective claimants of UC?

No.

GDS have kept quiet about it.

Cui bono?
Instead, they have diverted us with scores of blog posts about how important the users are – excluding benefit claimants, presumably – and how the users' needs are GDS's only guide and only concern.

They trumpet the success of their single government domain project – "This website replaces Directgov [and] Business Link", it says on the home page of GOV.UK. Manifestly false. The IDAP documentation quoted from above, for example, is on businesslink.gov.uk.

They proudly announce that they will make a minimum of 40,000 public servants redundant thereby saving the government – but not the public – up to £1.8 billion p.a.

Cheekily, in view of UC, GDS claim to believe that they are dedicated to "delivery".

And on 21 January 2013, they held a jamboree, The future is here, attended by 300 civil servants to celebrate themselves and to announce vaingloriously that they would transform government in 400 days.

Who is this all for?

It's clearly not for the users. It's not for the 21 million prospective UC claimants. And it's not for the 40,000+ ex-public servants.

That's alright then
The executive director of GDS and senior responsible officer owner for IDAP is ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken. And on his website he modestly quotes these words of Martha Lane Fox's:

It is a rare individual that can take a bunch of ideas and turn them into a reality in any environment but particularly in government. Mike is doing just that for me and it has been a privilege to watch.

Ms Lane Fox was interviewed at the heady, revivalist, the-future-is-here jamboree by a Computer Weekly journalist, Kathleen Hall, who finishes her article with this:

Although Lane Fox has been digital champion for four years, she has no immediate plans to step down. “I think you have to be constantly appraising yourself as to whether yours is the best voice – or whether you are becoming a bit like white noise, and not doing a good as job as you could be. But at the minute I’m still having a great time,” she said.

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?

21 million prospective Universal Credit claimants, 40,000+ ex-public servants, 400 days and GDS

From spring 2013
It is the Government Digital Service's dream to make all public services digital by default. To make that happy dream come true they need identity assurance – each UK parishioner needs his or her own electronic ID.

• 20 April 2011:
... To someone's dyspeptic eye, IDA looks like a non-starter, another elaborate and expensive plan which turns out to be fantasy, doomed to failure when it confronts reality. The timetable for IDA was presented and described as not over-ambitious. That is perfectly accurate. The timetable is not over-ambitious. It looks more like the psychedelic product of a prolonged session on hallucinogenic drugs. Far from being merely over-ambitious, it is quite simply impossible.

• 22 September 2012, Universal Credit and the December putsch:
... The revised notice was published on 1 March 2012 and the service has to be operational from the Spring of 2013? Barely a year later? Only six months after the contracts are awarded? 21 million claimants? Millions of whom have never used the web? Operational? Countrywide? ... It's a tall order.

• 25 September 2012, Identity assurance – the clock is ticking, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken's chickens are coming home to roost:
... That's six months time if we measure to the start of next spring, or nine months if we measure to the end. Either way, DWP's Universal Credit (UC) scheme has to be up and running by October 2013 and UC depends on identity assurance as Lord Freud, the welfare reform minister, has emphasised – no identity assurance, no UC.

• 6 November 2012, Identity assurance – shall we vote on it?:
... That's what it says in the draft legislation. Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken was meant to announce who would be the UK's so-called "identity providers" by 30 September 2012. We're still waiting ... He'd better hurry up. He's promised to have an identity assurance service "operational" for 21 million Universal Credit claimants by Spring 2013.

• 26 November 2012, Identity assurance – one under the eight:
More to the point, there are 21 million prospective claimants for Universal Credit in the UK. Identity assurance is meant to be operational by the Spring of 2013 for all 21 million of them. The chances of that happening are now nil. GDS's failure is extending the imprisonment in the poverty trap of millions of claimants who could be released by Universal Credit. Putting the wrong people in charge of identity assurance has miserable social consequences.

• 10 December 2012, Universal Credit – GDS's part in its downfall:
... That wouldn't be feasible, not now, December 2012, not even if the details of IDAP had all been worked out but they haven't been ("we now have a group of suppliers with whom we can work out the practical issues"). Why hasn't it already been done? How much longer will it take?

• 11 December 2012, GDS's identity assurance story continues to unravel:
... GDS went on in their blog post of last March to refer to the procurement of identity assurance services, needed by DWP for their Universal Credit initiative: "The initial DWP services will be required to provide identity assurance for approximately 21 000 000 claimants ... To support the rollout of universal credit and personal independence payments, identity assurance suppliers will be selected in summer 2012 and systems will need to be fully operational from spring 2013" ... Question – how did GDS come up with that timetable?

• 18 January 2013, #2 of many lessons about GDS and the external digital thought-leaders:
... it's impossible. Would you trust an organisation that promises the impossible?

And so was born GDS's Identity Assurance Programme (IDAP) [29.12.17: currently known as "GOV.UK Verify (RIP)"] which they have repeatedly promised would be "fully operational from spring 2013".

In the first instance, GDS need to provide identity assurance for the new Universal Credit (UC) system which is designed to rescue people from welfare dependency by making work pay. It's UC that needs identity assurance to be fully operational from spring 2013 and that's what GDS have promised.

From March 2013
Eight so-called "identity providers" have been appointed to turn IDAP into reality. The documentation on the IDAP contracts was published the other day, 16 January 2013, and includes this:

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.

"... fully operational from March 2013" – 37 days away.

That deadline has seemed impossible for years, since at least 20 April 2011 (please see opposite), before GDS existed, but they (GDS) have never sought in public to change it and, even now with only 37 days to go, there may be up to 21 million prospective universal credit claimants out there who assume that the deadline will be met.

It won't. It can't be.

April 2014
In his 22 January 2013 Computer Weekly blog the engaging Toby Stevens reports on the current state of IDAP and says:

And when does all this happen? We would expect to see the first pilots in October this year, with more widespread use kicking off in April 2014.

Fully operational from March 2013? No. October 2013. But that's just "trials". So not fully operational. Maybe more like April 2014. And maybe not.

Has anyone told Iain Duncan Smith that GDS have delayed his beacon policy by at least a year? Presumably not as he keeps telling Parliament that UC's going swimmingly. Has anyone told the press? Or the prospective claimants of UC?

No.

GDS have kept quiet about it.

Cui bono?
Instead, they have diverted us with scores of blog posts about how important the users are – excluding benefit claimants, presumably – and how the users' needs are GDS's only guide and only concern.

They trumpet the success of their single government domain project – "This website replaces Directgov [and] Business Link", it says on the home page of GOV.UK. Manifestly false. The IDAP documentation quoted from above, for example, is on businesslink.gov.uk.

They proudly announce that they will make a minimum of 40,000 public servants redundant thereby saving the government – but not the public – up to £1.8 billion p.a.

Cheekily, in view of UC, GDS claim to believe that they are dedicated to "delivery".

And on 21 January 2013, they held a jamboree, The future is here, attended by 300 civil servants to celebrate themselves and to announce vaingloriously that they would transform government in 400 days.

Who is this all for?

It's clearly not for the users. It's not for the 21 million prospective UC claimants. And it's not for the 40,000+ ex-public servants.

That's alright then
The executive director of GDS and senior responsible officer owner for IDAP is ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken. And on his website he modestly quotes these words of Martha Lane Fox's:

It is a rare individual that can take a bunch of ideas and turn them into a reality in any environment but particularly in government. Mike is doing just that for me and it has been a privilege to watch.

Ms Lane Fox was interviewed at the heady, revivalist, the-future-is-here jamboree by a Computer Weekly journalist, Kathleen Hall, who finishes her article with this:

Although Lane Fox has been digital champion for four years, she has no immediate plans to step down. “I think you have to be constantly appraising yourself as to whether yours is the best voice – or whether you are becoming a bit like white noise, and not doing a good as job as you could be. But at the minute I’m still having a great time,” she said.

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?