The peculiar art of the Whitehall press release

Date confirmed for Individual Electoral Registration (IER), says yesterday's Cabinet Office press release: "The government has today confirmed its intention to move to IER on 10 June 2014 in England and Wales and 19 September 2014 in Scotland".

We are moving in Great Britain from household registration to individual electoral registration. That is the will of Parliament as enshrined in the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013.

How will local Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) make sure that the electoral roll includes all those eligible to vote and only those eligible to vote? It's an old question. With old answers – we've been voting for several centuries now.

There was one new answer.

How about comparing the electoral rolls with other databases like the National Insurance number database? That way EROs could be given a list of people to follow up who should be on the electoral roll but aren't, and try to prevail on them to register.

Worth trying. The Electoral Commission drafted in the Government Digital Service (GDS) to do a "data mining" or "data matching" exercise.

Whatever you want to call it, the exercise was an unmitigated failure. "The findings from this pilot do not justify the national roll out of data mining", said the Commission in their July 2013 Data mining pilot – evaluation report, first recommendation, p.8, in bold.

The Commission gave several reasons for their conclusion, including the fact that GDS put forward not only foreign people ineligible to vote as candidates for EROs to follow up but also people who were already registered and didn't need any follow-up.

They had other reasons in addition. The delays caused by GDS. GDS's procedural changes mid-stream which meant results weren't comparable. The refusal by GDS to say how much their work had cost, with the result that the Commission don't know what the pilot cost and can't estimate the cost of live running.

And that's just the second pilot. In the first pilot, GDS made it look as though 82% of residents on the electoral roll in Ceredigion were impostors. EROs need reliable data. This is the election of governments we're talking about here, both local and national.

One way and another, the Commission's conclusion seems unimpeachable. The findings from this pilot do not justify the national roll out of data mining.

And how is this matter dealt with in yesterday's press release?

The Rt Hon Greg Clark MP, the Cabinet Office Minister responsible, is quoted as saying: "Following the successful dry run of the data matching process over the summer, and the Electoral Commission’s assessment that there is no reason to delay implementation, this confirms progress towards a more modern, secure system of electoral registration".

Somehow the unmitigated failure of the second pilot has become a "successful dry run". ☠ Please see comment below, 21 December 2013, 1:19 a.m. Please see also Whitehall press release – an apology.

The peculiar art of the Whitehall press release

Date confirmed for Individual Electoral Registration (IER), says yesterday's Cabinet Office press release: "The government has today confirmed its intention to move to IER on 10 June 2014 in England and Wales and 19 September 2014 in Scotland".

We are moving in Great Britain from household registration to individual electoral registration. That is the will of Parliament as enshrined in the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013.

How will local Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) make sure that the electoral roll includes all those eligible to vote and only those eligible to vote? It's an old question. With old answers – we've been voting for several centuries now.

There was one new answer.

Vaz v. Rapson – book now to avoid disappointment

In their bid to transform government, the Government Digital Service (GDS) have chosen 25 public service transactions to demonstrate their prowess.

Three of them (see alongside) are Home Office transactions. No.20 out of 25 is something to do with criminal record checks.

But things have moved on. No.20 is no more. As ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, executive director of GDS, tells us in his quarterly report:

Following discovery on exemplar 20 (criminal records checks), GDS and Home Office (HO) have agreed that due to contractual constraints and competing policy and legislative priorities, there would be more opportunity to effect transformational change by March 2015 in another service. GDS and HO have agreed to investigate working with HM Passports Office as an alternative, and details of the new service will be confirmed publicly on the transformation dashboard when finalised.

He also tells us that:

We have published guidelines on increasing digital take-up alongside case studies of how public sector organisations have successfully achieved channel shift; we intend to expand on this with additional case studies. We’re doing further research with users of 2 services (online passport applications and Carer’s Allowance) to learn more about: how we can get offline users to use a digital service for the first time why users revert to non-digital channels We’ll publish the outcomes of the research along with the guidance we develop from it.

The "contractual constraints" on the criminal records work can't have just appeared recently. They must have been known about a long time ago.

It looks as though GDS have been taken off criminal record checks but given something else to do on passports as a consolation. Do GDS and the Home Office realise that there are "contractual constraints" on passport work as well, just as much as on criminal record checks?

The contract to provide the Home Office with work on passports is worth £385 million and is currently held by CSC, the software house who contributed so much to the NHS's National Programme for IT (£12 billion of taxpayers' money reduced to ahes) and to the Home Office's biometrics-based visa applications system. CSC is also the software house which has been fined $250 million by the US military and is being sued by its shareholders.

CSC took over the passport contract from Siemens, who were paid £365 million between 1999 and 2009. When DMossEsq renewed his passport on-line 10½ years ago, the Siemens system seemed to work perfectly well. When he renewed it six months ago, the CSC system seemed to work perfectly well.

On that basis, it seems unlikely that we need GDS to do any more work on passport applications. It's a waste of their time and our money and it may invalidate any warranties CSC have given.

The effect of these huge passport contracts to re-write working software is that we are being over-charged by £296 million a year (DMossEsq estimate), a fact which has been brought to the attention of Sarah Rapson, who was executive director chief executive of the Identity & Passport Service (IPS) at the time.

No longer.

IPS is now HMPO, Her Majesty's Passport Office.

And Sarah Rapson isn't the executive director chief executive there any more – she's now interim Director General of UK Visas and Immigration. When she made her first appearance before Keith Vaz's Home Affairs Committee they treated her with sympathetic tolerance and patience.

UK e-borders scheme failing to make immigration checks, the Guardian told us in October: "Border control system's alerts are not being routinely used to stop terror suspects or war criminals, watchdog reveals", the watchdog being the excellent John Vine.

Her next appearance may be more dramatic. Book early.

----------

Updated 22.7.14

Home Office's 'flagship' £350m immigration computer system ditched The Home Office wasted nearly £350 million on a computer system for dealing with immigration and asylum applications that was abandoned, forcing staff to revert to using an old system that regularly freezes. The “Immigration Case Work” system was commissioned in 2010 and was supposed to be a “flagship IT programme”, a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) said. However, it suffered "delays and problems" that led to it being shut down last August. Ministers have now commissioned another new computer system that is due to cost a further £209 million by 2016-17 ...

Vaz v. Rapson – book now to avoid disappointment

In their bid to transform government, the Government Digital Service (GDS) have chosen 25 public service transactions to demonstrate their prowess.

Three of them (see alongside) are Home Office transactions. No.20 out of 25 is something to do with criminal record checks.

But things have moved on. No.20 is no more. As ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, executive director of GDS, tells us in his quarterly report:

Following discovery on exemplar 20 (criminal records checks), GDS and Home Office (HO) have agreed that due to contractual constraints and competing policy and legislative priorities, there would be more opportunity to effect transformational change by March 2015 in another service. GDS and HO have agreed to investigate working with HM Passports Office as an alternative, and details of the new service will be confirmed publicly on the transformation dashboard when finalised.

He also tells us that:

RIP IDA – Universal Credit, bad week/good news

Digital-by-default would work for Universal Credit

only if the JobCentre staff and the claimants were things like kettles.

They're not.

No need to say it, it goes without saying, it should be obvious to all but, just in case it isn't obvious to all, IDA is dead.

IDA is the Cabinet Office Identity Assurance programme. And it's dead.

----------

Private Eye No.1355 13-20 December 2013 p.5

There's been a lot of Universal Credit news this week.

And none of that news is good.

Or almost none ...

First of all, the money. Never mind Private Eye's figure of £34 million being written off, we know that the write-off will be a nine-figure sum in the end and hope it won't be any bigger.

That's bad news for the taxpayer – that's our money going up in smoke. Why bother to pay tax? It's bad news for the human beings who will remain caught in the benefits trap for years. It's bad news for Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. It's bad news for Robert Devereux, Permanent Secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). And it's not good news for the contractors who have been paid a fortune. World-class professional systems integrators every one of them – Accenture (£125 million), IBM (£75 million), Hewlett-Packard (£58 million) and BT (£16 million) – their name is Mudd.

There is one organisation it should have been good news for – the "hot-shot computer programmers from the Government Digital Service (GDS)", as Rachel Sylvester called them in the Times. But it isn't. Not even for them.

Last seen in these parts, DWP had two options. Stick with the existing contractors and try to make the Universal Credit IT systems work. Or ditch them, and opt instead for the more web-based approach recommended by GDS, something more "agile" and more "digital by default".

"As mentioned by DWP last week, we completed work on a digital strategic solution of the Universal Credit service on October 3rd. That included a proof of concept – tested with real users – and an outline of the operating model and any dependent technology required. With that delivered, we’re supporting DWP while they develop the digital skills needed to build and operate the full service."

Thus ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, writing on the Transformation blog the day before yesterday. He is the chief executive executive director of GDS, part of the Cabinet Office, and the senior responsible owner of the pan-government identity assurance programme.

DWP's decision is thanks, but no thanks. They will continue with the existing contractors while re-writing the Universal Credit IT system without GDS's assistance. Once that's written, it will take over and the existing systems will be dispensed with.

But the new system will not be digital by default. Hat tip: Tony Collins, as ever, Universal Credit to be partly online (but not entirely on-line). Special hat tip: Brian Wernham, Universal Credit project to abandon ‘digital-by-default’ – £303m spent, £65m of IT assets to show for it.

That is the decision of Howard Shiplee, Director General for Universal Credit, overall manager of the project, following his success in getting all the Olympics 2012 buildings put up on time.

Mr Shiplee was up in front of the Work and Pensions Select Committee on Monday where there was some badinage about the relationship between DWP and GDS/the Cabinet Office. As Tony Collins puts it: "... Stephen Lloyd, Liberal Democrat, ... asked if there is any truth in the suggestion that if the Cabinet Office doesn’t stop interfering Shiplee will quit".

Mr Shiplee played that with a straight bat, of course, but why have DWP rejected digital-by-default?

The answer given to the Committee was: "From a security point of view to have everything digital is not at this stage a sensible or appropriate solution". Mr Shiplee was talking about the need for claimants to prove who they are and to prove that their current circumstances make them eligible for Universal Credit. What he is saying is that GDS's digital-by-default can't offer that proof.

And that, as others have pointed out, is a grenade with the pin pulled out.

If it is accepted that digital-by-default – or more precisely, on-line identity assurance – cannot offer the proof required, then it's dead. RIP. And if that's a reason for DWP to avoid digital-by-default, it's a reason for every other department, too.

Mr Shiplee holds out the possibility that on-line identity assurance could one day be available: "It will take some considerable time to get to a totally online system". But so what if it is one day available? Would it then be right to make Universal Credit digital by default?

No.

Go back two months to the Public Accounts Committee hearing. Take a look at Q155 and Mr Devereux's answer: "With regard to all those people who are currently out of work and are going to be supported by universal credit, I will want to see them in the jobcentre. I am trying to ensure that—in eyeballing my agents, in signing the claimant commitment and in understanding their obligations—there is going to be some human contact".

Are those "agents" Mr Devereux refers to – the JobCentre staff who are being "eyeballed" by the benefits claimants – doing a valuable job?

If you think the answer is no, then they are redundant, perhaps they can be replaced by computer systems and perhaps, 11 years after digital-by-default starts (GDS's estimate), 40,000 or more of those public servants can safely be laid off and perhaps that will save £1.7 billion a year (again, GDS's estimate).

GDS accept that there are occasions when you need to meet people face-to-face. Particularly when you are doing requirements elicitation, i.e. trying to find out what the users need from a computerised system. Even GDS don't think that all communication can be on-line. You have to be there, in the room with the users, during the "discovery phase" of a project, as GDS call it, otherwise something important is lost. That is an article of the "agile" methodology that they profess.

This is what we have christened before a "Class H" transaction, where "H" stands for "human", and we distinguished it from Class D (for "digital") transactions such as buying a book from Amazon, which can perfectly well be done digitally.

If you think that working with benefits claimants, assessing them and trying to get them back into work, is a Class H transaction, then digital-by-default is not "a sensible or appropriate solution" even if on-line identity assurance is available, which, at the moment, it isn't. The contribution of the JobCentre staff can't be replicated by the artificial intelligence of a set of algorithms and neither can the requirements of the claimants.

We have come across the phrase "the internet of things" before, please see Instrumenting the kettle. Digital-by-default would work for Universal Credit only if the JobCentre staff and the claimants were things like kettles. They're not. GDS's mission in the case of Universal Credit is inhuman. And if an understanding of that point comes out of this week's Universal Credit scandal then at least there'll have been some good news.

----------

Update 10.1.14

One month later, there continues to be a lot of Universal Credit news. In the past couple of days we've had:

• 8 January 2014: Francis Maude plays down universal credit IT row with DWP – Patrick Wintour
• 9 January 2014: Big 4 Universal Credit IT suppliers punished? – Tony Collins
• 9 January 2014: DWP already struggling to recruit digital skills for Universal Credit IT development – Brian Glick
• 9 January 2014: Maude on digital government and driving licences (and Universal Credit) – Andrew Neil
• 9 January 2014: The "rift" between Cabinet Office and DWP indicates that the new HMG IT Strategy is for real – Philip Virgo
• 10 January 2014: Never mind bungled Universal Credit rollout, Maude wants UK to be 'most digital' gov by 2015 – Kelly Fiveash

RIP IDA – Universal Credit, bad week/good news

Digital-by-default would work for Universal Credit

only if the JobCentre staff and the claimants were things like kettles.

They're not.

No need to say it, it goes without saying, it should be obvious to all but, just in case it isn't obvious to all, IDA is dead.

IDA is the Cabinet Office Identity Assurance programme. And it's dead.

----------

Private Eye No.1355 13-20 December 2013 p.5

There's been a lot of Universal Credit news this week.

And none of that news is good.

Or almost none ...

First of all, the money. Never mind Private Eye's figure of £34 million being written off, we know that the write-off will be a nine-figure sum in the end and hope it won't be any bigger.

That's bad news for the taxpayer – that's our money going up in smoke. Why bother to pay tax? It's bad news for the human beings who will remain caught in the benefits trap for years. It's bad news for Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. It's bad news for Robert Devereux, Permanent Secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). And it's not good news for the contractors who have been paid a fortune. World-class professional systems integrators every one of them – Accenture (£125 million), IBM (£75 million), Hewlett-Packard (£58 million) and BT (£16 million) – their name is Mudd.

There is one organisation it should have been good news for – the "hot-shot computer programmers from the Government Digital Service (GDS)", as Rachel Sylvester called them in the Times. But it isn't. Not even for them.

midata in the UK, MesInfos en France

300 individus volontaires ont accès à leurs données personnelles restituées par les organisations partenaires du projet via une plate-forme personnelle de données sécurisée.

Do what?

Look mate, it's French. Alright?

It means something like "300 volunteers have access to their personal data given back to them by partner organisations in the project via a secure personal data platform".

What project?

Project MesInfos, in French, or midata in pidgin English.

Norman Lamb mentioned it when he launched last year's non-consultation into midata, p.22, para.2.15:

In France the FING think tank has created the ‘Mesinfos’ group to look at developments in personal data and is hoping to run a pilot whereby a range of different datasets from the private sector are available to explore the opportunities for new applications and services.

Yes, they've got it, too, the French – midata – a bad dose:

Une communauté de développeurs et designer est mobilisée pour concevoir des applications et services innovants autour de ces données, ouvrant un nouveau champ d’usages pour les individus.

Or as we would say, roughly: "a community of developers and designers has been mobilised to conceive of innovative applications and services around personal data, creating a new utilities space for individuals".

And whereas we in the UK have Ctrl-Shift, the "market analyst and consulting business that helps organisations understand the implications and embrace the opportunities arising from the changing personal data landscape", over the water there in France they have Fing:

La Fing, coordinateur du projet, est un think tank de nouvelle génération qui aide les entreprises, les institutions et les territoires à anticiper les mutations liées aux technologies et à leurs usages.

Fing is "the co-ordinator of the [MesInfos] project, it is a new generation think tank helping businesses, institutions and local authorities to prepare for adaptations in technology use", least I fink that's what it says.

Oh lord. The poor old French being served up the same tosh as us Britanniques.

Do Ctrl-Shift and Fing really think we've never seen a bank statement before? Or an itemised phone bill? Do they think our pockets aren't already stuffed with detailed receipts from Sainsbury's and E. Leclerc? What are they talking about, suppliers refusing to give us our data back? It's nonsense. They're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

And they're not very good at solving even non-existent problems. Either of them. midata or MesInfos. They say they're going to create a personal data apps market. We've already got one. Yea, verily, Google's power stretches even unto France. (And Google is one of the MesInfos project partners.) They're too late to provide a solution, the market already has.

Faites attention, MesInfos, not to make the same mistake as the midata Innovation Lab, and produce five dreary apps that no-one wants.

They promise us control over our personal data:

MesInfos propose une voie nouvelle, différente : faire en sorte que les individus puissent (re)trouver l’usage des données qui les concernent, à leurs propres fins. Du point de vue des individus, il s’agit d’une nouvelle étape dans l’empowerment numérique.

That's Fing today echoing Ed Davey two years ago:

Today’s announcement marks the first time globally there has been such a Government-backed initiative to empower individuals with so much control over the use of their own data.

And it's just as hollow today as it was then. It is beyond the power of Fing to grant French consumers control over their personal data. Just as it is beyond the power of Mydex in the UK. So why do they make these ridiculous promises? You can ask them till you're bleu dans le visage, they can't answer the question how will you provide this control?

They both promise secure websites. A "plate-forme personnelle sécurisée" from Fing and a "hyper secure personal data store and platform" from Mydex. And what do we know about secure websites? They don't exist. Like unicorns.

In the UK the idea is that personal data stores should provide the basis on which "identity providers" can vouch that you are who you claim to be when you deal with government on-line. The personal data store is like a dematerialised ID card.

Is the same true in France?

Someone asked.

And Renaud Francou of Fing answered.

Who he? Answer, "Renaud Francou, 32 ans, a rejoint l’équipe Fing en 2003. Il anime depuis Marseille avec Charles Népote le programme Identités actives (2007-2009) et participe à l’animation du dispositif PACA Labs destiné à soutenir les projets expérimentaux en région Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur."

According to M. Francou:

@DMossEsq @manhack @Expe_MesInfos It is rather a "white ID card" : I don't need to give U my name to prove that I have some rights #mesinfos — RenaudFrancou (@RenaudFrancou) December 3, 2013

So there we have it. Yes, he says, a MesInfos personal data store is an ID card. But a nice white one. Not a nasty black one. (You can say that in France. Presumably.)

Anyone remember Serge Blisko? Good luck, M. Francou, if MesInfos comes to his attention.

----------

Updated 18 December 2013:

The UK has midata. France has MesInfos. And the US? MyData.

MyData is in the purlieu of the Presidential Innovation Fellows: "The Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program pairs top innovators from the private sector, non-profits, and academia with top innovators in government to collaborate during focused 6-13 month 'tours of duty' to develop solutions that can save lives, save taxpayer money, and fuel job creation".

You know what to look for now in these personal data schemes.

And it's all there in MyData.

"Empowering the American people with secure access to their own personal health, energy, and education data." Empowering? In what way? Secure access? Shouldn't that be hyper secure?

"... spurring the growth of private-sector applications and services that a person can use to crunch his or her own data for a growing array of useful purposes." The private sector applications and services market has already been spurred.

What is this array of useful purposes? Is it a 2013 echo of the South Sea Company's 1720 "undertaking of great advantage but no-one to know what it is"? Is it like midata's equally imprecise "data-enabled online market place [that] will create new services that will take your data and do some really interesting things with it"? What really interesting things?

The only distinguishing feature of the Presidential Innovation Fellows' MyData initiative is that when it says "Stay connected: Follow @ProjectMyData on Twitter" and you click on  @ProjectMyData, you see this Twitter page:

All those top innovators? 13-month tours of duty? Saving lives? Saving money? Creating jobs? All those questions, and the answer's "that page doesn't exist"? The PIFs' heart's not really in it, is it?

Updated 23 December 2013:

You know about midata in the UK and MesInfos in France. Also MyData in the US. Dull, dull, dull.

But what, you ask, of India?

And the answer, typically, is far wiser and more human: "Midata is a Telugu Movie. Main Cast: Srikanth and Namitha. Music Composed by Yatish".

midata in the UK, MesInfos en France

300 individus volontaires ont accès à leurs données personnelles restituées par les organisations partenaires du projet via une plate-forme personnelle de données sécurisée.

Do what?

Look mate, it's French. Alright?

It means something like "300 volunteers have access to their personal data given back to them by partner organisations in the project via a secure personal data platform".

What project?

Have you ever had breakfast with Sophia Loren?

There was a very good programme on BBC4 recently, The Joy of Logic: "Documentary exploring the human quest for certainty and sound reasoning itself. Professor Dave Cliff asks, just how logical are we really and can humans stay ahead?". Highly recommended.

Never having had breakfast

with Sophia Loren,

David Moss sets out on a journey

from Plato to Bjørn Lomborg‎,

with a long pit stop

at Willard Van Orman Quine.

Why would anybody do that?

The BBC programme covers much of the same ground as the esteemed treatise on artificial intelligence penned by none other than DMossEsq himself currently basking at no. 5,298,041 in Amazon's bestsellers rankings. If even one person buys a copy for Christmas thanks to Professor Cliff, surely the book could once again shoot up into its rightful position in the high four millions.

Have you ever tried to read Gödel's Theorem? Couldn't even understand the definitions? Same here.

But it's important. In any formalised language, you can have either completeness or consistency, one or the other, but not both.

Professor Cliff reminds us of Gödel's belief that people were trying to poison him. The only person he would allow to prepare his meals was his wife. When she fell ill and went into hospital he starved to death.

Which makes the first of many important distinctions – just because a person like Kurt Gödel is highly intelligent, it doesn't follow that he's sane. Intelligence and sanity are two different things ...

... a Pandora's box which needs to be opened because the study of logic, the principles of mathematics and developments in computer science all wash up on the shores these days of artificial intelligence (AI), not to be confused with artificial insemination.

Surely the brain is like a computer. Surely the web is like a giant brain. Study neural networks and surely you're studying how the brain works.

Really?

Professor Susan Greenfield, who knows a bit about brains, is always magnificently withering about these claims of AI. Studying the computational activity of the brain is the easy bit, the bit that all the logicians and mathematicians and computer scientists just happen to have methods for. What about all the other activities that occupy the human mind? The AI bods have not a word to say about them, she points out scornfully and correctly, AI is baffled into silence.

AI is baffled into silence about human psychology and social dynamics and political governance. Not to mention aesthetic, ethical and theological judgement.

Just like the neuroscience bods who think they can study ethical decision-making by watching which bits of the brain light up during the process. Just like the econometricians who think they can analyse human motivation using nothing more than a trivial model of maximising returns. Baffled. Silence.

An AI bod may know an encyclopaediaful of facts about the web and yet still have nothing especially cogent to say about humanity. Here's professor Sir Tim-Berners Lee, for example, talking nonsense:

Armed with the information that social networks and other web giants hold about us, he said, computers will be able to "help me run my life, to guess what I need next, to guess what I should read in the morning, because it will know not only what's happening out there but also what I've read already, and also what my mood is, and who I'm meeting later on".

And that's just the genuine academics. Then there's the retail end, the burgeoning industry of the so-called "quantified self" – "There is further investment in the quantified self space as Canadian company Retrofit announces $8 million in new funding ..." – where a little more self-knowledge of bafflement might promote a little more healthy silence.

Let's get back to the engaging Professor Cliff. He opens the programme with a disarming story of his own unintelligence. He wrote a computer program years ago that emulates the activity of traders in markets – purely computational, perfectly feasible – which was instrumental in removing the human traders and replacing them with, as he says, a computer, a dog and a man. The dog's job is to protect the computer and the man's job is to feed the dog.

Why unintelligent? He gave the computer program away for free and lots of other people have made a fortune out of it. Is that so unintelligent? Discuss.

The TV programme includes a large cast of eminent talking heads. Including Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, professor of AI at the University of Southampton, chairman and co-founder of the Open Data Institute and chairman of the Department for Business Innovation and Skills midata programme.

He's been putting himself about a bit recently, Professor Sir Nigel.

@DMossEsq #opendata and #midata are entirely distinct varieties of data - and it is essential that people understand the difference — Nigel Shadbolt (@Nigel_Shadbolt) June 10, 2013

I think that you'll find that within the open data community there is a very strong recognition of the need to protect privacy but it’s more complicated than baldly saying 'open data is not personal data.

Jeni Tennison

Technical Director of the Open Data Institute

There was his 22 October 2013 double act with Stephan "embrace the change" Shakespeare, for example, giving evidence in front of the Public Administration Select Committee – there is no good reason to preserve personal privacy, not when making personal data open would benefit society.

There was his appearance in the Financial Times the day before yesterday with his Maseratis and his 30-foot sloop and his book, The Spy in the Coffee Machine: The End of Privacy as we Know It, which is going on at least one person's Christmas list.

And there was his review of the work done by the midata Innovation Lab where he said that the five prototype me-too applications produced by the lab allow us to "get to the future more quickly". Che?

Logic.

That's where we started.

You and Professor Cliff could search high and low without finding the answer to the question where is the logic in Professor Sir Nigel wasting his time and our money re-creating what the market has already provided?

----------

Updated 9-6-14

Computer passes 'Turing Test' for the first time after convincing users it is human

Updated 11.6.14

As you were:

World to Captain Cyborg on 'Turing test' stunt: You're Rumbled Man who pretended to be a robot fooled by robot pretending to be a man ... This week, the realisation may have belatedly dawned on much of the mainstream media that a Kevin Warwick claim needs to be taken with a mine's worth of salt ... What did it this time is Warwick's claim that the "Turing Test" - which measures ability of a machine to convincingly mimic a human while communicating with real humans in a blind test - had been passed at an event Warwick had organised and hosted. This had all the hallmarks of a Warwick stunt - you only had to look.

Updated 14.6.14

Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt:

No, robots aren’t taking over. But the future is dazzling Building an engaging, general and well-rounded intelligence is as far away as ever.

Updated 17.7.14

Jesus College Oxford Election of Next Principal Tuesday, 15 July 2014 Members and friends of the College will be pleased to learn that the Governing Body has resolved to elect as its next Principal, Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, who is, at present, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Southampton. The formal election will take place in October 2014. Sir Nigel will take up the post with effect from 1st August 2015.

Have you ever had breakfast with Sophia Loren?

There was a very good programme on BBC4 recently, The Joy of Logic: "Documentary exploring the human quest for certainty and sound reasoning itself. Professor Dave Cliff asks, just how logical are we really and can humans stay ahead?". Highly recommended.

Never having had breakfast

with Sophia Loren,

David Moss sets out on a journey

from Plato to Bjørn Lomborg‎,

with a long pit stop

at Willard Van Orman Quine.

Why would anybody do that?

The BBC programme covers much of the same ground as the esteemed treatise on artificial intelligence penned by none other than DMossEsq himself currently basking at no. 5,298,041 in Amazon's bestsellers rankings. If even one person buys a copy for Christmas thanks to Professor Cliff, surely the book could once again shoot up into its rightful position in the high four millions.

Have you ever tried to read Gödel's Theorem? Couldn't even understand the definitions? Same here.

But it's important. In any formalised language, you can have either completeness or consistency, one or the other, but not both.

Professor Cliff reminds us of Gödel's belief that people were trying to poison him. The only person he would allow to prepare his meals was his wife. When she fell ill and went into hospital he starved to death.

Which makes the first of many important distinctions – just because a person like Kurt Gödel is highly intelligent, it doesn't follow that he's sane. Intelligence and sanity are two different things ...