midata and your money

WHAT'S NEXT POST LAUNCH OF THE MIDATA INNOVATION LAB?

Good question.

That's the title of an interview with Dan Bates, director of the midata Innovation Lab (mIL), published in Ctrl-Shift News, where space is so tight that there isn't room to remind the reader that Ctrl-Shift is one of the 22 Founding Partners of mIL.

"I am proud that we have set the bar high by bringing the mIL to life in just seven weeks from project kick-off", says Dan, too young perhaps to remember that "project kick-off" was 91 weeks ago on 3 November 2011 when the Department for Business Innovation and Skills published Government, business and consumer groups commit to midata vision of consumer empowerment.

mIL has several "learning streams of activity", we learn during the interview, and a "project heartbeat". mIL is an "enabler" and "we have made it easy to get involved". It is a "potential consumer blockbuster" but, before that happens, Dan needs more organisations to sign up.

What kind of organisations? Answer: "these organisations will be trail-blazers who have the humility to acknowledge no-one as yet has all the answers, and thus share and learn, whilst at the same time having the vision and boldness to be the first-movers that accelerate the personal data market".

It's not easy to find organisations like that and Dan's boss, Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, has been reduced to trying to buy them in:

Calling all developers - prizes and seed corn funding for best apps in #midata #midatalab - join now http://t.co/B7bwbdg1Gb — Nigel Shadbolt (@Nigel_Shadbolt) July 30, 2013

As well as bold humble visionaries, there are "experts involved in the mIL", Dan wants it to be "transformative" and he wants to "kick start a collective inflection point in business". midata is all about apps. What kind of apps? According to Dan, "really interesting" ones: "I want some really interesting apps and services to come out of the mIL".

You wouldn't fund a project for 91 weeks, would you, based on breathless promises of really interesting transformative apps that will kickstart a collective inflection point?

You just have. And there's no end in sight.

midata and your money

WHAT'S NEXT POST LAUNCH OF THE MIDATA INNOVATION LAB?

Good question.

That's the title of an interview with Dan Bates, director of the midata Innovation Lab (mIL), published in Ctrl-Shift News, where space is so tight that there isn't room to remind the reader that Ctrl-Shift is one of the 22 Founding Partners of mIL.

"I am proud that we have set the bar high by bringing the mIL to life in just seven weeks from project kick-off", says Dan, too young perhaps to remember that "project kick-off" was 91 weeks ago on 3 November 2011 when the Department for Business Innovation and Skills published Government, business and consumer groups commit to midata vision of consumer empowerment.

Cloud – Dale Vile tells it like it is

Freeform Dynamics is an "IT industry analyst firm" distinguished by "straight talking, telling it as it is in down-to-earth language".

Dale Vile, the CEO, is a "cloud advocate", he tells us in SMBs are tumbling into the cloud? Oh get real, and he's not pleased. Large companies and public bodies are adopting cloud computing but small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) aren't: "we are hardly scratching the surface when it comes to selling cloud options into the SMB space".

What seems to be the problem?

Dale says: "IT policy and planning is down to business people at the lower end" and "where a business person rather than an IT professional is responsible for IT policy, planning and decision-making, cloud is far less likely to be on the agenda".

What's the matter with these business people?

Dale thinks they're hysterics: "... then there’s the MSPs [managed service providers, i.e. cloud shops] who despite the current privacy-related hysteria are still reporting impressive growth that shows no signs of abating".

IT professionals are pretty relaxed about storing their company's data in the cloud and losing control of it but psychologically damaged business people seem to suffer from a primitive need to protect their intellectual property and to honour their promises to keep client data confidential.

If the business people are removed and IT professionals run businesses instead, will that solve the uptake problem suffered by cloud computing?

No.

Dale has another issue: "bloody well appreciate that you aren't going to unlock the SMB space without the channel, so pay more attention to enabling your partners and making sure that cloud is good business for them as well as yourselves".

Cloud – Dale Vile tells it like it is

Freeform Dynamics is an "IT industry analyst firm" distinguished by "straight talking, telling it as it is in down-to-earth language".

Dale Vile, the CEO, is a "cloud advocate", he tells us in SMBs are tumbling into the cloud? Oh get real, and he's not pleased. Large companies and public bodies are adopting cloud computing but small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) aren't: "we are hardly scratching the surface when it comes to selling cloud options into the SMB space".

What seems to be the problem?

Dale says: "IT policy and planning is down to business people at the lower end" and "where a business person rather than an IT professional is responsible for IT policy, planning and decision-making, cloud is far less likely to be on the agenda".

What's the matter with these business people?

Classical innovation and old-fashioned digital

8:51, Friday morning, 2 August 2013, the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, and Evan Davis interviews Emma Stenning, executive director of Bristol Old Vic, and Max Hole, chairman of Universal Group International. The question is what innovations are needed to make classical music more popular.

The proms at the Bristol Old Vic have introduced a screen allowing the audience to see the conductor in the same way as the orchestra does. That seems eminently sensible, but not innovative – Evan Davis and Max Hole agreed that rock concerts have had big screens "forever".

They have also introduced a standing pit for the promenaders. Again, eminently sensible, and ticket sales have gone up by 20% as a result, but not innovative – Emma Stenning made the point that this was actually a return to the way the theatre was in 1766. (When America had only just ceased to be a British colony ...)

In between these sensible points there was a bit of talk about digital innovation, new technology, digital opportunity and the promenade concerts being made more accessible by exploiting the analogy of a concert with computer games and digital environments in which avatars respond to the music (3'22" to 3'47").

Admittedly someone was driving to a funeral while this piece was broadcast, and was feeling mighty sour, but the digital innovation drivel sounded tired, old-fashioned, tawdry, gratuitous and past its sell-by date. The horse is dead and it's a waste of time to keep flogging it.

How boring an old fart have you got to be to still find computer games exciting?

"Digital" doesn't mean "open" or "welcoming" or "warm" or "informal" or "accessible" or "engaging" or "popular". It doesn't even mean "modern" any more.

Classical innovation and old-fashioned digital

8:51, Friday morning, 2 August 2013, the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, and Evan Davis interviews Emma Stenning, executive director of Bristol Old Vic, and Max Hole, chairman of Universal Group International. The question is what innovations are needed to make classical music more popular.

The proms at the Bristol Old Vic have introduced a screen allowing the audience to see the conductor in the same way as the orchestra does. That seems eminently sensible, but not innovative – Evan Davis and Max Hole agreed that rock concerts have had big screens "forever".

They have also introduced a standing pit for the promenaders. Again, eminently sensible, and ticket sales have gone up by 20% as a result, but not innovative – Emma Stenning made the point that this was actually a return to the way the theatre was in 1766. (When America had only just ceased to be a British colony ...)

In between these sensible points there was a bit of talk about digital innovation, new technology, digital opportunity and the promenade concerts being made more accessible by exploiting the analogy of a concert with computer games and digital environments in which avatars respond to the music (3'22" to 3'47").

Admittedly someone was driving to a funeral while this piece was broadcast, and was feeling mighty sour, but the digital innovation drivel sounded tired, old-fashioned, tawdry, gratuitous and past its sell-by date. The horse is dead and it's a waste of time to keep flogging it.

How boring an old fart have you got to be to still find computer games exciting?

"Digital" doesn't mean "open" or "welcoming" or "warm" or "informal" or "accessible" or "engaging" or "popular". It doesn't even mean "modern" any more.

GDS's grip on public expenditure

It's always a pleasure to read the Government Digital Service's diary, This week at GDS. And never more so than when it's written by Mike Beaven as it was yesterday:

... Carl Meweezen and his team over in ERG (Efficiency and Reform Group), who look at all things spending in government and look at where we’re saving money. Mark O’Neill and Gill (Elderfield) worked with their team over there, to help them build a thing called the ‘Government Interrogation Spending Tool’, or ‘GIST’, as it’s known. That went live and there’s been some really good feedback from Stephen Kelly, Carl and his team, and the Minister (Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude), saying, “Thanks for creating something that’s very easy to use and intelligent.” So well done to those guys.

The "thing called ... 'GIST'" is an infographic of public spending. We have seen GDS's penchant for arresting graphics before. That was aspirational, at the time. Now it's reality:

It's not just Stephen Kelly and Francis Maude who have provided "some really good feedback" about this infographic.

Here, for example, is Pete Swabey, writing on the Information Age website:

UK government's new spending data site is "an embarrassing mess" GIST website "is a joke", says data visualistation expert Stephen Few, and fails to allow users to make basic comparisons ... It is "either an attempt to obscure the data under the guise of transparency or the work of people who have no knowledge of data visualisation", he told Information Age. "The charts in every case are either inappropriate for the data or appropriate but ineptly designed."

Few. What a scorcher.

ElReg have provided some really good feedback, too:

Ha ha, Osborne, these Gov 2.0 web wranglers have wiped out UK debt "A digital revolution, masterminded by a team of dress-down civil servants, could save the taxpayer billions," The Times newspaper gushed on Tuesday. And behold: it already has. The UK has apparently paid off its national debt years ahead of Chancellor George Osborne's predictions. Alas, it's no miracle, but an infographics cock-up by the dress-down civil servants at the Government Digital Service ...

The "cock-up"  referred to is the unfortunate omission from GDS's infographic of the UK's £50 billion p.a. of debt interest, a point which ElReg picked up from Guido Fawkes's, No Interest in New Government Spending Website – you get the gist.

Readers who submitted comments to ElReg also expressed mystification at the annual Department of Health expenditure quoted in GDS's easy to use and intelligent infographic as £5.1 billion. They were expecting a figure closer to £120 billion.

The "digital revolution, masterminded by a team of dress-down civil servants" quotation comes from Rachel Sylvester's column in the Times on Wednesday, Geeks in jeans are the Treasury’s new heroes, the latest episode in GDS's PR blitz.

Much more positive feedback like Information Age's, ElReg's and Guido Fawkes's and GDS are going to run out of biddable publicists, even at the BBC and the Guardian. And the Times.

Readers may remember POST, the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. We last encountered them misbriefing MPs on the subject of on-line identity management.

Now POST have produced a paper on Invasive Alien Plant Species:

Invasive alien plant species (IAPs) exhibit greater abundance, density, or competitive dominance than species native to habitats ... Early detection and eradication is more cost effective and less risky than later interventions, which may have unintended consequences, such as increases in another, previously suppressed invasive alien species.

Are POST trying to tell us something about the effect of the advent of GDS on the habitat in Whitehall?

GDS's grip on public expenditure

It's always a pleasure to read the Government Digital Service's diary, This week at GDS. And never more so than when it's written by Mike Beaven as it was yesterday:

... Carl Meweezen and his team over in ERG (Efficiency and Reform Group), who look at all things spending in government and look at where we’re saving money. Mark O’Neill and Gill (Elderfield) worked with their team over there, to help them build a thing called the ‘Government Interrogation Spending Tool’, or ‘GIST’, as it’s known. That went live and there’s been some really good feedback from Stephen Kelly, Carl and his team, and the Minister (Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude), saying, “Thanks for creating something that’s very easy to use and intelligent.” So well done to those guys.

The "thing called ... 'GIST'" is an infographic of public spending. We have seen GDS's penchant for arresting graphics before. That was aspirational, at the time. Now it's reality:

It's not just Stephen Kelly and Francis Maude who have provided "some really good feedback" about this infographic.

You'd have to be naïve not to

The third and final episode of Steve Hewlett's report on Privacy Under Pressure was broadcast on Monday 29 July 2013.

The programme took the form of a debate and at one point the participants turned to the Edward Snowden revelations. The US National Security Agency (NSA) and GCHQ here in the UK monitor our phone calls, emails and web browsing on a monumental scale. That makes a nonsense of privacy.

Surveillance is justified, said Lord Carlile, by the state's duty to protect us against terrorists. In other words, in the fight between privacy and surveillance, surveillance must win. That can't be right, said the great Simon Jenkins, not without qualification.

The advocates of freedom admit that we're not free to shout "fire" in a crowded theatre. The advocates of counter-terrorism should similarly admit that there are limits.

Among others, there are financial limits. How many billions, Simon Jenkins wanted to know, should we pay for the NSA and GCHQ's work? Lord Carlile had no answer.

We're back with the arguments advanced by Fraser Nelson and Charles Moore. Of course spies spy. That's their job. Of course we're all under surveillance. You'd have to be naïve to think otherwise. It's for our own good. No-one sensible should be surprised by the Guardian's scoop, it's not a scoop, we've always known all about the interception of communications.

Let's follow the Nelson-Moore-Carlile (NMC) proposition when it next goes out for a walk. See where it leads.

And let's concentrate on money.

In yesterday's Guardian, in addition to learning about X-Keyscore, we also learned about the NSA paying GCHQ tens of millions of pounds. That's handy money. This surveillance lark is expensive and someone's got to pay for it. You'd have to be really naïve not to have worked that one out.

We're following NMC, he bumps into his NSA opposite number and there's an argument. Tempers rise, voices are raised and we can just make out the NSA saying "that's it, you were paid to deliver, you didn't deliver, no more money".

Oh dear. GCHQ's budget is being cut by the UK Exchequer and now the US are turning off the taps (faucets), too. But the state still has a duty to counter terrorism according to NMC. How to fund it?

As luck would have it, in the ordinary course of their work, which is entirely legal according to William Hague (Foreign Secretary) and Sir Malcolm Rifkind (chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee), GCHQ trip over a lot of useful information.

They knew about Berkshire Hathaway taking over Heinz, for example, months before the news was made public. Should GCHQ do their duty, take advantage of that knowledge and invest, say, £100 million in the target company? That would have yielded a £20 million profit: "Shares in Heinz soared nearly 20% in New York to hit the $72.50 price being offered". If not, why not?

That's one place where NMC leads. And you'd have to be naïve not to realise that.

You'd have to be naïve not to

The third and final episode of Steve Hewlett's report on Privacy Under Pressure was broadcast on Monday 29 July 2013.

The programme took the form of a debate and at one point the participants turned to the Edward Snowden revelations. The US National Security Agency (NSA) and GCHQ here in the UK monitor our phone calls, emails and web browsing on a monumental scale. That makes a nonsense of privacy.

Surveillance is justified, said Lord Carlile, by the state's duty to protect us against terrorists. In other words, in the fight between privacy and surveillance, surveillance must win. That can't be right, said the great Simon Jenkins, not without qualification.

The advocates of freedom admit that we're not free to shout "fire" in a crowded theatre. The advocates of counter-terrorism should similarly admit that there are limits.

Among others, there are financial limits. How many billions, Simon Jenkins wanted to know, should we pay for the NSA and GCHQ's work? Lord Carlile had no answer.