The large corporation and the government consultation – no, not that one

In the week that the big news story is about a large corporation well used to allegations of monopolistic behaviour (like this one), and its attempts to build relationships with those formulating government policy, in areas where a certain decision could be to its distinct commercial advantage…
I draw your attention to a post on the GDS blog, describing itself as an ‘important update’, written this evening by Liam Maxwell.

On 4th April 2012, Dr Andy Hopkirk facilitated a roundtable on behalf of ICT Futures on Competition and European Interaction. […] At the time he was engaged to facilitate the Open Standards roundtable, while we were aware that he represented the National Computing Centre on the Microsoft Interoperability Executive Customer Council [..] he did not declare the fact that he was advising Microsoft directly on the Open Standards consultation.

This all appears to have been sparked by Mark Ballard’s report, declaring the event to have been a ‘triumph’ for the ‘proprietary lobby’, and some pretty heated debate in the ensuing comments. Ballard himself adds in the comment thread:

Hopkirk is himself a cohort of MutKoski, Parker, and Brown. They are all members of the OASIS Transformational Government Framework Technical Committee, an unusual policy lobby unit that is sponsored by Microsoft. All have been critical of either UK government policy or its objectives and have specifically opposed defining elements of the coalition government’s open standards policy.

Dr Hopkirk was given a right to reply, in which he declares:

I do have a longstanding relationship with Microsoft purely on the basis of my consistently neutral, pragmatic, end-user oriented and supplier-agnostic perspective. I have supported, and continue to support, open markets, open standards and free/open source software for their contributions to furthering interoperability and IT market competition. I have not been asked to publicly or privately support any client brief or position in the government consultation.

Regardless, Maxwell has done the right thing, by declaring that ‘any outcomes from the original roundtable discussion will be discounted in the consultation responses’. The session is to be re-run, and the consultation deadline extended.
Didn’t I tell you this stuff was dynamite?
[Disclosure: I have worked for both BSkyB and Microsoft in my past. I do not do so currently. I cancelled my Sky Sports subscription a year ago. My main computer these days is a Mac. I’m writing this on a Linux machine. My belief in open standards is well documented.]

Boris Johnson Twitter storm: no oversight, no grey area – and not his first such offence

You’ll remember the furore, just about a month ago, when London mayor Boris Johnson renamed his @mayoroflondon Twitter account @BorisJohnson – and in doing so, turned what had ostensibly (?) been an official account owned by the Mayor’s office into a campaigning platform for his re-election.
The decision to stop tweeting as Mayor was, unquestionably, correct. But by simply renaming the account, his (party political) campaign team had suddenly acquired an opt-in contact list of a quarter of a million people. Understandably, there was quite a backlash – and by bedtime, the account had been renamed @mayoroflondon, and mothballed.
Having spent almost my entire career walking that tightrope between ‘party political’ and ‘elected official’ communication – whether it be as a civil servant myself, or these days, running websites for MPs / ministers / candidates – I saw this as a fascinating case study. The @mayoroflondon account had been quoted on official Greater London Assembly communications for several years. But who actually owned it: Boris himself, or the office of Mayor? Had anyone ever asked that question?
So I lodged an FOI request. And they’ve just sent me their response.
I asked:

Can you please release copies of any correspondence to/from the Mayor’s private office, the Mayor’s press office or the GLA Public Liaison Unit relating to:

  • the decision to rename the account in 2009, adopting the name of the office of Mayor, with no indication of any direct personal attachment to the current incumbent;
  • the formal ownership of the account: whether it was considered Mr Johnson’s personal property, or whether it belonged to the office of Mayor;
  • requests to use the account for official purposes;
  • the decision to include references to the MayorOfLondon Twitter account in press releases and other official communications;
  • Mr Johnson’s move today (20 March) to rename the account and change its purpose into that of a platform for his re-election campaign, including references to the BackBoris2012.com website where there had previously been links to london.gov.uk

They have only been able to supply material in response to my final point. Which means, one would naturally assume, that the matter had never been raised beforehand. An regrettable oversight perhaps.
And so to 20 March 2012.
At 4.22pm, a good few hours after things had kicked off, head of media Samantha Hart sent an email to press office colleagues:

As you’re probably aware now, the @mayoroflondon twitter account has now been renamed  Boris Johnson and is being run by the campaign. If you have any links to @mayoroflondon on your email signature or anywhere else, please can remove it asap?

In other words: City Hall staff hadn’t been forewarned. And the account was now ‘being run by the campaign’ – where, one can reasonably infer, it wasn’t before. Half an hour later, Sam sends round a ‘line to take’, to help press officers deal with any enquiries.

Boris Johnson has decided it would not be appropriate during the pre-election period for him to be tweeting as Mayor of London. He has therefore made it clear to all his followers that he will now be tweeting under his own name outside of City Hall. Anyone who no longer wishes to follow his tweets will be reminded repeatedly that they can unsubscribe with one click of the mouse. @mayoroflondon can be revived by whoever is elected on May 3.

A resolution of sorts, then. The @mayoroflondon account is thus formally deemed to be the property of ‘whoever is elected’: meaning this won’t happen again next time. And a couple of hours later, at 6.25pm came further confirmation from Guto Harri – the former BBC journalist, now Boris’s Director of External Affairs:

The MayorOfLondon twitter feed has been mothballed until the 5th of May. Boris will update his long-standing followers about his non-campaigning activities under the a new feed called @Boris Johnson (…) The @MayorOfLondon feed can be revived on May 5th by whoever wins the election.

… although by midnight, the plan had changed again. The @BorisJohnson account too was mothballed, before a single tweet was sent; with all party-political tweeting through @backboris2012.
So, what do we learn from this silly little affair?
Ministers, Mayors and other elected representatives are multi-dimensional beings. They have an official status. They probably attained that official status by winning an election, on behalf of a political party. And they are (almost certainly) human beings too, with interests and relationships outside politics.
If we insist on maintaining a separation between all three dimensions – and there’s an argument that we should drop the pretence, as referenced by Jon Worth’s excellent blog post – then the Rules of Engagement for any ‘personal’ communication channel needs to be made clear. If you’re a social media manager, or Head of Digital Engagement, that’s your job. You need to lay down some ground rules on behalf of any ‘official’ communications channels… and see that they are enforced. Ask any difficult questions now, before it becomes an issue later.
Except – it had already been an issue.

Seeing Sam Hart’s request that all links to @mayoroflondon be removed, I naturally had to search the london.gov.uk website to see if that had happened. The answer? – yes and no. Certainly there aren’t many references to the account on london.gov.uk any more. But that made it all the easier for me to find this document from October 2009, relating to a complaint made against Mr Johnson by one Graham Parks.
He had complained that a tweet from the @mayoroflondon account on 30 September 2009 had apparently welcomed The Sun newspaper’s decision to back the Conservatives at the forthcoming general election. The matter went to the Assessment Sub-Committee of the GLA’s Standards Committee, who ruled:

it was clear that (the tweet) was written by or on behalf of the Mayor of London, as the hyperlink to the twitter account was found on the Mayor of London page on the GLA website.

In other words, the Sub-Committee had already, in effect, ruled that the @mayoroflondon account – by quoting a london.gov.uk URL – had declared itself to be the property of City Hall. They unanimously concluded:

Having regard to all the circumstances, the Assessment Sub-Committee concluded that, by writing in that manner, the Mayor of London could be seen to have breached paragraph 6(b) (ii) of the Authority’s Code of Conduct, as it appeared on the evidence presented that the Mayor of London was using GLA resources in seeking to affect party political support.
Having regards to all the facts and circumstances, the Assessment Sub-Committee considered that it was appropriate and proportionate for it to take a decision of “other action”, requiring the GLA’s Monitoring Officer to raise this with Mr Johnson, the Mayor of London, and give guidance to him about the use by him or his office of the Mayor of London twitter account.

In other words, the matter had been discussed: there was no oversight, and no grey area. The GLA had already asserted its ownership of the account. And Boris had already been sanctioned for abusing it.
Make of that what you will. And if you’re a Londoner, remember to cast your vote on 3 May.

Five Years

It came as quite a shock a few weeks ago, when I realised Puffbox Ltd was fast approaching its fifth birthday – specifically, the fifth anniversary of its incorporation at Companies House. Perhaps because I’m a parent of two young girls, five years feels like a significant milestone: it’s the age at which a child starts ‘proper’ schooling, and begins the journey down the long road to adulthood. It also marks the longest time I’ve ever stayed in a job.
Over those five years, I’ve learned to go with the flow. When I started Puffbox, the plan was to offer advisory services to government and/or large corporate clients. But I soon realised that people weren’t short of advice: what they needed were people who could actually be trusted to make stuff. And you may find this hard to believe, but I didn’t start out with an attachment to any particular technology platform either.
I’ve also learned that I’m good at spotting the currents within that flow. Looking back, I’ve done pretty well at picking out the technologies – and just as importantly, the people – who were going to have real, lasting impact in my field. Occasionally I find myself trawling back through my blog archives, nervously checking to see if I dismissed something (or someone) which went on to be huge… and to my great relief, finding very few examples thereof.
A couple of years ago, I could see that people’s perception of me was changing. I used to be a government person who happened to know a bit about WordPress. I’m now a WordPress person who happens to know a bit about government. Perhaps that’s inevitable, given that it’s six or seven years since I was last a Civil Servant. Maybe it’s pure coincidence that it coincides (broadly) with the 2010 general election, and the ushering-in of the new order. Maybe it’s a mark of the growing maturity of my chosen technology platform, and the community around it.
And so, once again, it’s time to let the flow take me somewhere new.
I first met Simon Wheatley at the first UK WordCamp, back in 2008. His presentation on WordPress plugin development was truly fantastic: it was the first time anyone had explained the process in terms I could understand. His code wasn’t bad either. I started to bring him in to help on projects which were beyond my own technical capability – like DFID’s blogs site, launched three and half years ago, and still going strong.
As many of you will know, for the last couple of years, we’ve been working as a partnership in all but name. Nearly every large-scale job has been a joint effort. We speak the same language; in a lot of areas, our skills and experience complement each other beautifully; and he’s very understanding, when I commit heinous crimes against web development.
So last summer, after much beating around the bush, we agreed it was time to formally merge our operations, into a new and explictly WordPress-centric business. Our projects are reaching a scale where they need more than a ‘one man band’ to support them. It will be more reassuring to clients – and indeed to ourselves! – if the two of us are legally bound together, and it gives us a platform upon which to build a proper company, whatever that means.
On 25 January this year – a date we chose deliberately – Simon and I formed that new company: Code For The People Ltd. And with the start of the new tax year, and the closure of several public sector projects, now is the time to activate it.
The name is deliberately provocative. It’s a statement of our confidence in the open source business model, and our belief in building websites to suit the people who will use them – and indeed, those who will run them – rather than the technology. It’s also a commitment to keep giving back to the community of which we’re a part: you’ll note, for example, that Mr Wheatley’s name features once again on the Credits for the forthcoming WordPress v3.4 release.
What does this mean in practice? At least to begin with – and who knows what’ll happen after? – things will continue as they always have done. It’ll be me, Simon and a handful of hand-picked contacts, doing the same basic things, in the same basic way. Any projects or contracts which were started under the Puffbox name will be completed in the Puffbox name, and will be invoiced as Puffbox. However, any new work will be in the name of Code For The People. Once all our current contracts reach completion, Puffbox Ltd will bow out gracefully.
I’ve spoken in the past about retiring from the front line: I just can’t see myself coding into my 40s, and with various new things coming along – responsive design, HTML5, LESS – now seems like a good time. The new company obviously gives me a path towards that exit, but I doubt it’ll be happening any time soon.
We’ll still play our part in the ‘gov geek’ community. We’re already quietly working on a couple of big government jobs, for delivery in the next couple of months. And yes, puffbox.com will continue as my personal blog, with a particular focus on government and politics. But we’re doing more and more work outside government these days; and for the moment at least, I don’t feel government needs us in the way it did a year or two back. (And to be quite frank, it told us as much at this year’s UKGovCamp.) Mission accomplished? – maybe, maybe.
To all those who have inspired, supported, contributed to and done business with Puffbox Ltd over the last five years – from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
We’ll be launching Code For The People’s website shortly, as soon as we decide what technology to build it on (joke). In the meantime, you’ll find us on Twitter at @cftp

Open source advocate is new gov Deputy CIO

 News today that Liam Maxwell has been appointed Deputy Government CIO, replacing Bill McCluggage.
Maxwell joined the Cabinet Office last summer, on an 11-month sabbatical from his job as Head of ICT at a Berkshire secondary school. Liam’s belief in open source is well documented, and it’s quite remarkable to have someone like that in such a senior position.
The Guardian says he will be retaining his responsibilities as Cabinet Office director of ICT Futures.