For some time now the Government Digital Service have behaved as though it is realistic to nudge everyone onto the web even though they know perfectly well that that will make public services inaccessible to millions of people in the UK.
Now reality is catching up with them.
Friday 22 March 2013
Parliament questions digital-by-default
For some time now the Government Digital Service have behaved as though it is realistic to nudge everyone onto the web even though they know perfectly well that that will make public services inaccessible to millions of people in the UK.
Now reality is catching up with them.
Now reality is catching up with them.
Thursday 21 March 2013
Potemkin power in Whitehall
| Then ... Potemkin village The phrase Potemkin villages ... was originally used to describe a fake village, built only to impress. The phrase is now used, typically in politics and economics, to describe any construction (literal or figurative) built solely to deceive others into thinking that some situation is better than it really is. It is unclear whether the origin of the phrase is factual, an exaggeration, or a myth. According to the story, Russian minister Grigory Potemkin who led the Crimean military campaign erected fake settlements along the banks of the Dnieper River in order to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787. Historical debate Modern historians are divided on the degree of truth behind the Potemkin village story. While tales of the fake villages are generally considered exaggerations, some historians dismiss them as malicious rumors spread by Potemkin's opponents. These historians argue that Potemkin did mount efforts to develop the Crimea and probably directed peasants to spruce up the riverfront in advance of the Empress' arrival. According to Simon Sebag-Montefiore, Potemkin's most comprehensive English-language biographer, the tale of elaborate, fake settlements with glowing fires designed to comfort the monarch and her entourage as they surveyed the barren territory at night, is largely fictional. Aleksandr Panchenko, an established specialist on 19th century Russia, used original correspondence and memoirs to conclude that the Potemkin villages are a myth. He writes: "Based on the above said we must conclude that the myth of "Potemkin villages" is exactly a myth, and not an established fact." Panchenko writes that "Potyomkin indeed decorated cities and villages, but made no secret that this was a decoration." Also, the close relationship between Potemkin and the Empress would make it difficult for him to deceive her. Thus, the deception would have been mainly directed towards the foreign ambassadors accompanying the imperial party. Regardless, Potemkin had in fact supervised the building of fortresses, ships of the line, and thriving settlements, and the tour – which saw real and significant accomplishments – solidified his power. So, even though "Potemkin village" has come to mean, especially in a political context, any hollow or false construct, physical or figurative, meant to hide an undesirable or potentially damaging situation, it's possible that the phrase cannot be applied accurately to its own original historical inspiration. According to a legend, in 1787, when Catherine passed through Tula on her way back from the trip, the local governor Mikhail Krechetnikov indeed attempted a deception of that kind in order to hide the effects of a bad harvest. | ... and now The phrase Potemkin website was originally used to describe folders in GOV.UK, the single government domain which was meant to replace all the separate departmental and other central government websites. It is unclear how re-writing a lot of websites that already existed was deemed to be a sensible use of money and unknown how the departments of state put up with this interference. According to the story, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, executive director of the Government Digital Service, created these folders all over GOV.UK acting under the instructions of Lady (Martha) Lane Fox of Soho. Future debate Future historians will be divided on the exact nature of these Potemkin websites of GDS's. While GDS claimed to have replaced the Department for Transport website, for example, it was clearly still there all the time behind the façade. Ditto the HMRC website, still there for all to see. These little deceptions cannot have escaped Lady Lane Fox but she described it nevertheless as a "privilege" to watch GDS crafting GOV.UK. For over a year Bracken claimed that he would make an elaborate system of identity assurance available to all 21 million DWP claimants. It was due to be unveiled in March 2013 but in the event, a dark night for all concerned, the service turned out unfortunately to be entirely fictional. Scrutiny of contemporary source documents reveals the claim that GDS would replace the Government Gateway with a new means for people to transact with the government. Future historians may conclude that this service, too, proved to be "exactly a myth, and not an established fact". It is in the nature of the web, of course, in its very openness to inspection, that these lacunae could not be concealed. And yet the promises were repeated, budgets were agreed, frameworks were discussed and conferences were addressed. The people who remained in the dark would have been mainly the public and visiting dignitaries from Estonia. Despite which, GDS's Potemkin power over the other departments of state continued to grow and it took on more and more responsibilities, its qualifications for which were rarely questioned. At a time when virtual gurus plaited virtual trading with virtual businesses into a virtual reality, perhaps digital-by-default was no more a "hollow or false construct" than many another Whitehall initiative. Let that be a historical warning about the difference between modish wishful thinking and evidence-based policy. It is said that Francis Maude looked to GDS to change the way the census was conducted. And that Nick Clegg relied on GDS to bring individual electoral registration to pass. Healthy fruit both of them, but neither was harvested. |
Potemkin power in Whitehall
| Then ... Potemkin village The phrase Potemkin villages ... was originally used to describe a fake village, built only to impress. The phrase is now used, typically in politics and economics, to describe any construction (literal or figurative) built solely to deceive others into thinking that some situation is better than it really is. It is unclear whether the origin of the phrase is factual, an exaggeration, or a myth. According to the story, Russian minister Grigory Potemkin who led the Crimean military campaign erected fake settlements along the banks of the Dnieper River in order to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787. Historical debate Modern historians are divided on the degree of truth behind the Potemkin village story. While tales of the fake villages are generally considered exaggerations, some historians dismiss them as malicious rumors spread by Potemkin's opponents. These historians argue that Potemkin did mount efforts to develop the Crimea and probably directed peasants to spruce up the riverfront in advance of the Empress' arrival. According to Simon Sebag-Montefiore, Potemkin's most comprehensive English-language biographer, the tale of elaborate, fake settlements with glowing fires designed to comfort the monarch and her entourage as they surveyed the barren territory at night, is largely fictional. Aleksandr Panchenko, an established specialist on 19th century Russia, used original correspondence and memoirs to conclude that the Potemkin villages are a myth. He writes: "Based on the above said we must conclude that the myth of "Potemkin villages" is exactly a myth, and not an established fact." Panchenko writes that "Potyomkin indeed decorated cities and villages, but made no secret that this was a decoration." Also, the close relationship between Potemkin and the Empress would make it difficult for him to deceive her. Thus, the deception would have been mainly directed towards the foreign ambassadors accompanying the imperial party. Regardless, Potemkin had in fact supervised the building of fortresses, ships of the line, and thriving settlements, and the tour – which saw real and significant accomplishments – solidified his power. So, even though "Potemkin village" has come to mean, especially in a political context, any hollow or false construct, physical or figurative, meant to hide an undesirable or potentially damaging situation, it's possible that the phrase cannot be applied accurately to its own original historical inspiration. According to a legend, in 1787, when Catherine passed through Tula on her way back from the trip, the local governor Mikhail Krechetnikov indeed attempted a deception of that kind in order to hide the effects of a bad harvest. |
... and now
The phrase Potemkin website was originally used to describe folders in GOV.UK, the single government domain which was meant to replace all the separate departmental and other central government websites. It is unclear how re-writing a lot of websites that already existed was deemed to be a sensible use of money and unknown how the departments of state put up with this interference. According to the story, ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, executive director of the Government Digital Service, created these folders all over GOV.UK acting under the instructions of Lady (Martha) Lane Fox of Soho. Future debate Future historians will be divided on the exact nature of these Potemkin websites of GDS's. While GDS claimed to have replaced the Department for Transport website, for example, it was clearly still there all the time behind the façade. Ditto the HMRC website, still there for all to see. These little deceptions cannot have escaped Lady Lane Fox but she described it nevertheless as a "privilege" to watch GDS crafting GOV.UK. For over a year Bracken claimed that he would make an elaborate system of identity assurance available to all 21 million DWP claimants. It was due to be unveiled in March 2013 but in the event, a dark night for all concerned, the service turned out unfortunately to be entirely fictional. Scrutiny of contemporary source documents reveals the claim that GDS would replace the Government Gateway with a new means for people to transact with the government. Future historians may conclude that this service, too, proved to be "exactly a myth, and not an established fact". It is in the nature of the web, of course, in its very openness to inspection, that these lacunae could not be concealed. And yet the promises were repeated, budgets were agreed, frameworks were discussed and conferences were addressed. The people who remained in the dark would have been mainly the public and visiting dignitaries from Estonia. Despite which, GDS's Potemkin power over the other departments of state continued to grow and it took on more and more responsibilities, its qualifications for which were rarely questioned. At a time when virtual gurus plaited virtual trading with virtual businesses into a virtual reality, perhaps digital-by-default was no more a "hollow or false construct" than many another Whitehall initiative. Let that be a historical warning about the difference between modish wishful thinking and evidence-based policy. It is said that Francis Maude looked to GDS to change the way the census was conducted. And that Nick Clegg relied on GDS to bring individual electoral registration to pass. Healthy fruit both of them, but neither was harvested. |
Sunday 17 March 2013
GDS falls at the first fence (Software Engineering 101)
Like any religion, digital-by-default needs manuals for its adherents to follow and the lead story in the Government Digital Service (GDS) broadcast on 15 March 2013 is the publication of one such manual, the Digital by Default Service Standard:
To embrace digital-by-default is to see government as the design of so many services and the question is what makes a service a good service, what is the definition here of "excellence"? This is the question to which ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken addresses himself in the clip above and the gospel answer is given in the service standard manual.
There are four stages apparently through which you must progress in the development of a digital-by-default service:
"The discovery phase is your chance to gain an understanding of what the users of the service need ...", it says in the manual ...
which reveals further that "This information is found through: workshops ... simple mock ups ... paper prototypes ... [and] plenty of whiteboard diagrams" ...
and that "A small team will be required, consisting of your stakeholders and any core team members that have been identified, including the service manager. The phase should not take longer than a week. At the end of the phase a decision should be made whether to proceed to the alpha phase".
Click on the "small team" link above and a message is displayed saying "This web page is not available". For the moment, we can't be sure just how small a team is required. No religion is complete without its mysteries.
Still, if you click on the other links, you can follow the steps yourself from the discovery phase all the way through to the fully operational live phase, when a service is released to the users that is so excellent that they will immediately want to use it in preference to any rival – "Build services so good that people prefer to use them", as they say at GDS, that's their motto.
As we know, for GDS, "the people and organisations with which we work must be imbued by the culture and ethos of the web generation ... we are not just on the web, but of the web. And our culture and governance must reflect that". That is the central article of the digital-by-default faith.
And who better to lead in its practice than GDS themselves? Who better to exemplify its efficacy?
Exemplify?
Consider for example the identity and assurance programme (IDAP, or sometimes just plain IDA), a service which was promised to be "fully operational" for 21 million DWP claimants "by March 2013".
Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, chief executive of GDS, is the senior responsibleofficer owner for this pan-government digital-by-default service (a fact which he modestly fails to mention in his weekly broadcasts). We may safely assume that a small team spent a week discovering the users' requirements and then proceeded to the alpha phase.
Actually we don't have to assume that, we know it – Identity Alphas was published on the GDS blog on 12 March 2013. A bit late, perhaps, given that IDAP was meant to be fully operational already, but remember, digital-by-default is ... agile.
And the acid test, do "people prefer to use" GDS's IDAP?
No. They don't:
#Fail.
Back to the whiteboard.
To embrace digital-by-default is to see government as the design of so many services and the question is what makes a service a good service, what is the definition here of "excellence"? This is the question to which ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken addresses himself in the clip above and the gospel answer is given in the service standard manual.
There are four stages apparently through which you must progress in the development of a digital-by-default service:
"The discovery phase is your chance to gain an understanding of what the users of the service need ...", it says in the manual ...
which reveals further that "This information is found through: workshops ... simple mock ups ... paper prototypes ... [and] plenty of whiteboard diagrams" ...
and that "A small team will be required, consisting of your stakeholders and any core team members that have been identified, including the service manager. The phase should not take longer than a week. At the end of the phase a decision should be made whether to proceed to the alpha phase".
Click on the "small team" link above and a message is displayed saying "This web page is not available". For the moment, we can't be sure just how small a team is required. No religion is complete without its mysteries.
Still, if you click on the other links, you can follow the steps yourself from the discovery phase all the way through to the fully operational live phase, when a service is released to the users that is so excellent that they will immediately want to use it in preference to any rival – "Build services so good that people prefer to use them", as they say at GDS, that's their motto.
As we know, for GDS, "the people and organisations with which we work must be imbued by the culture and ethos of the web generation ... we are not just on the web, but of the web. And our culture and governance must reflect that". That is the central article of the digital-by-default faith.
And who better to lead in its practice than GDS themselves? Who better to exemplify its efficacy?
Exemplify?
Consider for example the identity and assurance programme (IDAP, or sometimes just plain IDA), a service which was promised to be "fully operational" for 21 million DWP claimants "by March 2013".
Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, chief executive of GDS, is the senior responsible
Actually we don't have to assume that, we know it – Identity Alphas was published on the GDS blog on 12 March 2013. A bit late, perhaps, given that IDAP was meant to be fully operational already, but remember, digital-by-default is ... agile.
And the acid test, do "people prefer to use" GDS's IDAP?
No. They don't:
Oh God.
IDA services put on ice for Universal Credit delivery
No mention was made of the use of IDA in the DWP's Local Support Services Framework ... Instead, the paper referenced the issuing of PIN numbers to users for their online accounts ...
#Fail.
Back to the whiteboard.
GDS falls at the first fence (Software Engineering 101)
Like any religion, digital-by-default needs manuals for its adherents to follow and the lead story in the Government Digital Service (GDS) broadcast on 15 March 2013 is the publication of one such manual, the Digital by Default Service Standard:
To embrace digital-by-default is to see government as the design of so many services and the question is what makes a service a good service, what is the definition here of "excellence"? This is the question to which ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken addresses himself in the clip above and the gospel answer is given in the service standard manual.
To embrace digital-by-default is to see government as the design of so many services and the question is what makes a service a good service, what is the definition here of "excellence"? This is the question to which ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken addresses himself in the clip above and the gospel answer is given in the service standard manual.
Thursday 14 March 2013
GDS's misplaced faith and the governance of Whitehall
Thus ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken writing today in a post on the Government Digital Service (GDS) blog, Of the web, not on the web. He's the executive director of GDS and the senior responsible
Today we announced some small but important changes in governance. The detail is here but the upshot is: we won’t have a cross-government Chief Information Officer (CIO) any more, nor a Head of Profession for Information and Communications Technology (ICT). We are moving responsibility for these capabilities to the Government Digital Service and we are closing some cross-government boards in various technology areas and reviewing the rest in order to make sure we are set up as efficiently as possible.
Take a look at the quotation above:
- We won't have either a cross-government CIO or a head of the ICT profession any more, he says. False, because he goes on to say that responsibility for these capabilities is moving to GDS. So we will have a cross-government CIO and a head of the ICT profession and they will both be GDS.
- Some cross-government technology boards are already being closed down, he says, and the future of others is being reviewed. GDS looks like having more and more of the field to itself, the competition is being wiped out.
- These changes in governance are described by the ex-Guardian man as small. Clearly false. Healthy plurality is dwindling. More and more power is being centralised in GDS. That is a big change.
Alarm bells may ring. Is GDS the right place to centralise power?
They may ring even harder when you read this:
This quasi-religious worship of the web is a recurring theme. Think back to 17 October 2012 when the ex-Guardian man published Why GOV.UK matters: A platform for a digital Government including his meaningless bon mot:
... the people and organisations with which we work must be imbued by the culture and ethos of the web generation.
... we have to put digital leaders and Chief Operating Officers (COOs) in the driving seat across government.
... we are not just on the web, but of the web. And our culture and governance must reflect that.
GOV.UK is neither government on the internet nor government of the internet. GOV.UK is a website. And nothing more.
GOV.UK is not Government on the Internet, but of the Internet.
This GDS religion/culture/ethos with its digital leader apostles and its veneration of Lady Lane Fox has already failed. Despite the blessing given by Tim O'Reilly, it has failed to provide the identity assurance service that was needed to support digital by default.
Since that was its only job we had better look elsewhere for salvation.
GDS's misplaced faith and the governance of Whitehall
Thus ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken writing today in a post on the Government Digital Service (GDS) blog, Of the web, not on the web. He's the executive director of GDS and the senior responsible
Today we announced some small but important changes in governance. The detail is here but the upshot is: we won’t have a cross-government Chief Information Officer (CIO) any more, nor a Head of Profession for Information and Communications Technology (ICT). We are moving responsibility for these capabilities to the Government Digital Service and we are closing some cross-government boards in various technology areas and reviewing the rest in order to make sure we are set up as efficiently as possible.
GDS's Identity Assurance Programme goes up in smoke
Computer Weekly, 14 March 2013:
Well now, thanks to Computer Weekly, we know the answer.
No. Judging by this 12 March 2013 post on their blog, Identity Alphas, GDS are innocents abroad in the world of identity management.
"Where did it all go wrong?" You may well ask.
Only the other day there we were, weren't we, asking if the Government Digital Service's pan-government Identity Assurance service is up and running yet. They had promised that it would be "fully operational" for 21 million Department for Work and Pensions claimants "by March 2013".
IDA services put on ice for Universal Credit delivery
Well now, thanks to Computer Weekly, we know the answer.
GDS talked a good game once. Is there any hope now for IDA?
No mention was made of the use of IDA in the DWP’s Local Support Services Framework ... Instead, the paper referenced the issuing of PIN numbers to users for their online accounts ...
No. Judging by this 12 March 2013 post on their blog, Identity Alphas, GDS are innocents abroad in the world of identity management.
"Where did it all go wrong?" You may well ask.
GDS's Identity Assurance Programme goes up in smoke
Computer Weekly, 14 March 2013:
Well now, thanks to Computer Weekly, we know the answer.
No. Judging by this 12 March 2013 post on their blog, Identity Alphas, GDS are innocents abroad in the world of identity management.
"Where did it all go wrong?" You may well ask.
Only the other day there we were, weren't we, asking if the Government Digital Service's pan-government Identity Assurance service is up and running yet. They had promised that it would be "fully operational" for 21 million Department for Work and Pensions claimants "by March 2013".
IDA services put on ice for Universal Credit delivery
Well now, thanks to Computer Weekly, we know the answer.
GDS talked a good game once. Is there any hope now for IDA?
No mention was made of the use of IDA in the DWP’s Local Support Services Framework ... Instead, the paper referenced the issuing of PIN numbers to users for their online accounts ...
No. Judging by this 12 March 2013 post on their blog, Identity Alphas, GDS are innocents abroad in the world of identity management.
"Where did it all go wrong?" You may well ask.