Thursday 19 March 2015

Budget travel to Estonia

The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered his 2015 Budget report yesterday.

The media have clocked all the good jokes, please see for example How George Osborne's Budget jokes cost Britain £81m.

A selection of press release jokes issued by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills some time ago without anyone laughing:

• 1.11.12 More than £1 billion to be invested in UK science and research
• 5.11.12 New powers for courts to improve justice for wronged consumers
• 6.11.12 Government to care homes sector: help us improve enforcement of regulation
• 8.11.12 Fallon to big businesses: Commit to paying suppliers on time, or be named
• 8.11.12 Use of Civil Sanctions Powers Contained in the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008
• 9.11.12 UK space industry set to rocket with £240 million of investment
• 9.11.12 Government to invest £20 million in synthetic biology
• 13.11.12 Mums and dads will share parental leave
• 14.11.12 Business Secretary’s statement on European Commission’s proposed directive on improving gender balance on Europe’s corporate boards
• 15.11.12 Business Minister hails North East Regional Growth Fund success
• 16.11.12 Business Minister announces £40 million boost for high growth SMEs
• 17.11.12 New power to boost consumers’ access to data
• 20.11.12 £150 million for businesses to build skilled workforce
• 21.11.12 £400 million boost to England’s colleges
• 21.11.12 UK secures £1.2 billion package of space investment
• 22.11.12 Government sets out steps to change culture in UK equity markets
• 23.11.12 Bureaucracy busting boost for street traders
• 23.11.12 Emerging technologies to drive growth identified
• 26.11.12 Multi-million pound boost for UK manufacturing supply chains
• 28.11.12 Green bank opens for business
• 28.11 12 Lord Currie sets out vision for new Competition and Markets Authority
• 30.11.12 Business Secretary urges headhunters to seek out new female talent
• 3.12.12 Boost for UK automotive supply chains
• 4.12.12 Groceries Adjudicator to have new power to fine supermarkets
• 6.12.12 Vince Cable launches schemes for skills and jobs on South Coast
• 6.12.12 New £550m capital investment programme will transform FE colleges
All po-faced, they say: "While Tory MPs cheered a series of one-liners aimed at Ed Miliband and Labour, taxpayers will be covering the bills". Taxpayers cover the bills whenever politicians open their mouths. Yesterday's announcements were no different.

And while they were busy being all reproving, the Puritan press missed the bad jokes, see particularly p.27:

1.76 Budget 2015 announces that the digital ambition will extend beyond central government and arms-length bodies, to consider local services. HM Treasury, the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Government Digital Service will collaborate with partners in local government, as the sector develops a set of proposals that will enable more customer-focussed, digitally-enabled and efficient local services in time to inform future budget allocations.

1.77 In this Parliament the government has delivered significant savings from centralising the procurement of goods and services. Budget 2015 announces that, following a successful trial, the government will implement ‘GOV.UK Verify’ – a new way for people to prove their identity online when using government services – across central government. This means that departments will use the same tool for their digital services, reducing duplication. Further, to prevent individual departments paying different amounts to either build their own data centres or outsource this service, the government will create a joint venture to host departments’ non-cloud based servers, which could save up to £100 million.

And p.37:

1.108 Building on these foundations, Budget 2015 announces that the government will transform the tax system over the next Parliament by introducing digital tax accounts, removing the need for annual tax returns. By the end of the next Parliament over 50 million individuals and small businesses will be able to see and manage their tax affairs online.

We have noted this government's green ink fascination with Estonia before, please see for example Francis Maude seeks future in Estonia and RIP IDA – The Road to Estonia.

Estonia provides all or most of its public services on-line. So we are to have digital-by-default in the UK.

Estonia only needs one website. So we are to have one website in the UK for all of central government and for all of our 450 or so local authorities (para.1.76 above), never mind the fact that the entire population of Estonia is little bigger than the London Borough of Ealing.

Estonia relies on issuing everyone with a central government ID. So we are to have GOV.UK Verify (RIP) in the UK (para.1.77 above):


The UK should be more Estonian

Estonians can complete their tax returns in 19 seconds. So we are to have digital tax accounts (para.1.108 above) in the UK:



There will be all sorts of promises about the security of these systems. You can't put them in the bank but never mind, the Chancellor must have his little joke, let's go all the way, Tallinn here we come, for "Estonia", read "the UK": Estonia hit by 'Moscow cyber war'.

Budget travel to Estonia

The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered his 2015 Budget report yesterday.

The media have clocked all the good jokes, please see for example How George Osborne's Budget jokes cost Britain £81m.

Tuesday 17 March 2015

The lesson of the web? There. Is. No. Such. Thing. As. A. Secure. Website.

There is no such thing as a secure website.

You know that.

You've read the papers, listened to the radio, watched TV and browsed the web. You know Sony were hacked. You know JP Morgan Chase were hacked. And Lockheed Martin and the US State Department.

You know that. They know it and so does everyone else – there is no such thing as a secure website.

Knowing that, if someone offers you a web service and promises that it's secure, how do you react?

It doesn't matter who that someone is, it doesn't matter how often they claim to take security seriously, it doesn't matter if they claim to have learnt the lessons about privacy and confidentiality and security, the promise is suspicious.

Does this someone believe that you can't read or understand the news or draw elementary logical conclusions from the unmistakable evidence?

They must do.

They must think they're marketing to cretins.

It's extraordinary that anyone in the 21st century is still offering security on the web. We all know that it's not available. That's the lesson of the web. There is no such thing as a secure website. If you don't get that, you don't understand the web.

Anyone who takes your intelligence seriously will acknowledge that when they market to you. They will say that they take all due care and they expect you to take all due care but that security breaches are inevitable and that there is a well-oiled compensation scheme in place for when they happen.

Anyone else now, today, in the 21st century, looks like nothing more than an old-fashioned mountebank.

----------
October 2010Unicorns
15.5.13"When it comes to cyber security QinetiQ couldn’t grab their ass with both hands"
22.10.13Hyperinflation hits the unicorn market
16.2.14Some people must think that the British public is a cretin
30.3.14The Scottish on-line security experiment
7.8.14Cloud computing goes up in smoke
24.2.15RIP IDA – "we're building trust by being open"
12.3.15Current and future uses of biometric data and technologies
......

The lesson of the web? There. Is. No. Such. Thing. As. A. Secure. Website.

There is no such thing as a secure website.

You know that.

You've read the papers, listened to the radio, watched TV and browsed the web. You know Sony were hacked. You know JP Morgan Chase were hacked. And Lockheed Martin and the US State Department.

You know that. They know it and so does everyone else – there is no such thing as a secure website.

Knowing that, if someone offers you a web service and promises that it's secure, how do you react?

Monday 16 February 2015

The most unhappy science of face recognition

There were scenes of disgraceful levity at DMossEsq Towers this afternoon when the entire staff was reduced for an hour to helpless fits of infantile giggles. Only the appearance of the scowling proprietor himself, surging forth from his inner sanctum, furious, restored order.

Readers should know that this is a rare event, the news room normally being the very epitome of decorum. Stranger still is the occasion of this hysteria – an article in the Guardian newspaper. Po-faced and scandalised by every fact of life, you don't readily associate that organ with mirth.

There was obviously something in the air today.

The Nidd Hall portrait of Anne Boleyn. Putatively.
What did Anne Boleyn look like?

That was the question the Guardian posed themselves.

And the answer is simple.

She looked like the so-called "Nidd Hall" portrait alongside, clearly labelled "Anne Boleyn, spouse, Henry VIII".

Except that the answer isn't simple.

The Nidd Hall portrait wasn't painted until the late 16th century whereras Anne had parted company with her head in 1536.

Most contemporary pictures of her were destroyed on her death. All of them, in fact. Except for one – a likeness of her on a battered lead disc known as the "Moost Happi" medal.

The question is, does the woman depicted on the medal look like the late 16th century portrait?

And the answer, according to the Guardian, was to get an academic software engineer to use a face recognition system to determine yes or no whether they were pictures of the same woman:
Researchers in California used state-of-the-art face recognition to compare the face on the Moost Happi medal with a number of paintings and found a close match with the privately owned Nidd Hall portrait, held at the Bradford Art Galleries and Museums.
Anne Boleyn according to the Moost Happi medal
"Researchers"? "State of the art"? "Close match"?

This is science.

Bow down. Respect.

Leave your brain at the door and this is the confidence-inspiring technology, you can agree, which underwrites UK border security.

Face recognition. Biometrics. Worth every penny of our money that Whitehall so wisely spends on it.

The most unhappy science of face recognition

There were scenes of disgraceful levity at DMossEsq Towers this afternoon when the entire staff was reduced for an hour to helpless fits of infantile giggles. Only the appearance of the scowling proprietor himself, surging forth from his inner sanctum, furious, restored order.

Readers should know that this is a rare event, the news room normally being the very epitome of decorum. Stranger still is the occasion of this hysteria – an article in the Guardian newspaper. Po-faced and scandalised by every fact of life, you don't readily associate that organ with mirth.

There was obviously something in the air today.

The Nidd Hall portrait of Anne Boleyn. Putatively.
What did Anne Boleyn look like?

That was the question the Guardian posed themselves.

And the answer is simple.

She looked like the so-called "Nidd Hall" portrait alongside, clearly labelled "Anne Boleyn, spouse, Henry VIII".

Except that the answer isn't simple.

The Nidd Hall portrait wasn't painted until the late 16th century whereras Anne had parted company with her head in 1536.

Most contemporary pictures of her were destroyed on her death. All of them, in fact. Except for one – a likeness of her on a battered lead disc known as the "Moost Happi" medal.

The question is, does the woman depicted on the medal look like the late 16th century portrait?

And the answer, according to the Guardian, was to get an academic software engineer to use a face recognition system to determine yes or no whether they were pictures of the same woman:
Researchers in California used state-of-the-art face recognition to compare the face on the Moost Happi medal with a number of paintings and found a close match with the privately owned Nidd Hall portrait, held at the Bradford Art Galleries and Museums.

Thursday 18 December 2014

Matt Ridley and the GDS PR blitz


"It is not just me who is starstruck
by what Mr Maude and Mr Bracken are doing"

Matthew White Ridley, 5th Viscount Ridley, DL, FRSL, FMedSci (born 7 February 1958), known commonly as Matt Ridley, is a British journalist who has written several popular science books. He is also a businessman and a Conservative member of the House of Lords ... Ridley was chairman of the UK bank Northern Rock from 2004 to 2007, during which period Northern Rock experienced the first run on a British bank in 150 years ...
That's the Matt Ridley who writes weekly comment pieces for the Times newspaper. Comment pieces like Monday's To avoid big IT catastrophes, follow Darwin.

Why do big IT projects fail? Because they're like creationism, says Matt Ridley – he takes the example of the BBC's digital media initiative which was cancelled after five years with nothing to show for £100 million invested. The analogy with creationism fails. Creationism is quick. One week to create the entire world including a day of rest. But let's pass over that.

How can big IT projects avoid failure? Matt Ridley says:
... it may surprise you to hear that I think a genuine success story of this government is that it has finally learnt how to prevent such problems and design new systems so that they work. In essence, it has begun to adopt the principles of evolution, rather than creationism.
That certainly will surprise you. What do you know about evolution? It takes millions of years. Random mutations are tested against nature, most of them fail, a few survive, one step has been taken forward and a few hundred thousand years later the eye has evolved.

Is Matt Ridley suggesting that the government's alleged success consists in employing millions of people to make random mutations to IT systems, which may as a result work some time after 102014AD? Surely not. The analogy with evolution fails. But let's pass over that.

If we overlook the popular science components, what is there left in Matt Ridley's article? Answer:
Largely unheralded, the government digital service is one of the current administration’s success stories. Tirelessly championed by Francis Maude, as minister for the Cabinet Office, egged on by Baroness Lane-Fox, and run by Mike Bracken, brought in from outside, the GDS is not just trying to make government services online as easy as shopping at Amazon or booking an airline ticket. It is also reshaping the way the public sector does big IT projects to make sure cost and time overruns are history.
What we're left with is another uncritical regurgitation of the Government Digital Service PR briefing:
  • Applying for state benefits isn't remotely like buying a book on Amazon or an airline ticket. Another analogy fails.
  • Cost and time overruns are the present as well as history. Identity assurance is GDS's only big IT development project, it's years late and it doesn't work. No wonder their success is unheralded.
"One-click government at last" – that's the last baffling line of the Times article. More like one-click PR. Hook, line and sinker:
  • Matt Ridley dutifully does waterfall v. agile.
  • Then he does user needs v. supplier needs.
  • Followed by CIOs v. CDOs and small IT suppliers (heroes) v. big ones (villains, apart from GDS's friends – Apple, of course, and Google and Facebook and Amazon).
  • GOV.UK won an award.
  • We should be more like Estonia.
  • The civil service needs to be taught by GDS how to do their job – apparently it shouldn't take more than 12 weeks to get started on developing new IT systems for the UK tax code.
  • He's won the Hayek prize for economics and yet Matt Ridley serves up: "Mr Maude reckons he will have saved £4 billion a year by 2019-20".
It is not just me who is starstruck by what Mr Maude and Mr Bracken are doing ...

Matt Ridley and the GDS PR blitz


"It is not just me who is starstruck
by what Mr Maude and Mr Bracken are doing"

Matthew White Ridley, 5th Viscount Ridley, DL, FRSL, FMedSci (born 7 February 1958), known commonly as Matt Ridley, is a British journalist who has written several popular science books. He is also a businessman and a Conservative member of the House of Lords ... Ridley was chairman of the UK bank Northern Rock from 2004 to 2007, during which period Northern Rock experienced the first run on a British bank in 150 years ...

Thursday 27 November 2014

The Whitehall Effect

Not a single solitary soul on the whole editorial board of DMossEsq had heard of John Seddon before he published The Whitehall Effect on 5 November 2014. They all have now:
Agile is an example of the IT industry re-inventing itself ... if the way work is done is central to the problem (as is the thesis of this book), Agile can only amount to doing the wrong thing faster. (pp.48-9)
IT innovation is truly faddish: plausible but fuzzy ideas pushed by large marketing budgets on unwary lemmings who follow the herd ... Take, for example, the 'cloud' ... (p.152)
In any event, 'digital-by-default' is guaranteed to fail (see later). (p.153)
Mr Seddon believes that back offices, targets and IT systems are all very well for industrial systems but they can be downright unhelpful in the health sector, for example, or for state benefits. What you need there is ... people.

Where up to 80% of transactions can arise because the system doesn't work (failure demand), you don't need to get the unit costs down – you need to re-design the system.

And the good news is, according to him, that high quality public services can be cheaper than the poorly-designed and mismanaged systems that Whitehall currently wastes our money on.

The Whitehall Effect

Not a single solitary soul on the whole editorial board of DMossEsq had heard of John Seddon before he published The Whitehall Effect on 5 November 2014. They all have now:
Agile is an example of the IT industry re-inventing itself ... if the way work is done is central to the problem (as is the thesis of this book), Agile can only amount to doing the wrong thing faster. (pp.48-9)
IT innovation is truly faddish: plausible but fuzzy ideas pushed by large marketing budgets on unwary lemmings who follow the herd ... Take, for example, the 'cloud' ... (p.152)
In any event, 'digital-by-default' is guaranteed to fail (see later). (p.153)