Puffbox

A PQ from Conservative shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what her policy is in respect of the installation and use of (a) Internet Explorer, (b) Firefox and (c) Opera website browsers by Government departments. To which Angela Smith replies: Government policy regarding installation and use of web [...] read on »

Now this is how open source is meant to work. In January 2007, the French defence ministry's Direction Générale de l'Armement began work (in association with BT) on a project called Milimail, to enhance Firefox's open-source cousin, the Thunderbird email client for military purposes. It's now known as Trustedbird - and lists among its additional features: Deletion [...] read on »

A bit out of the blue, this morning saw a revision of the UK government's open source policy. And whilst it still doesn't quite endorse the notion that open source solutions are fundamentally better solutions, it does ratchet up the expectations. Last year's revision to the 2005 policy statement introduced a subtle - but, I thought, [...] read on »

You might have seen coverage in the last few days of the Government's forthcoming ICT strategy - 'New world, new challenges, new opportunities' - which leaked out last week, and is due to be published next week to coincide with the Pre Budget Report. The first I saw of it was at UKAuthority.com, with follow-up [...] read on »

I'm sure we've all done it. You're creating a new WordPress installation, and for a bit of privacy whilst you build the thing, you choose not to 'allow my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati'. But in the rush to get the site out the door, you forget to switch the [...] read on »

Of course it's good news that the BBC's in-house Javascript library, Glow has been released as open source. It's a very respectable chunk of code, with some quite nice built-in widgetry. But why on earth should the BBC have its own Javascript library in the first place? Its 'lead product manager' - itself a worrying [...] read on »

The explicit references to the internet in David Cameron's big speech on 'fixing broken politics' this morning don't come until the end. All MPs' expenses to be published online; the same will go for 'all other public servants earning over £150,000'. An Obama-esque pledge to put all national spending over £25,000 online. A commitment to [...] read on »

I wrote the other week about 'the implications of free': how the widespread availability of high-quality technology changed the rules when it comes to project management. Another example struck me today, around COI's ongoing consultation on improving government websites. There's a lengthy section on measuring website usage, with detailed proposals around the new requirement for website [...] read on »

I'm in the early stages of spec'ing up a new site build. The client helpfully provided a wireframe sketch of the homepage, which included - deep breath - a news ticker. And for the first time in living memory, I haven't recoiled in horror. In fact, I'm quite happy to give it to them. Previously, my [...] read on »

The line which jumps out at me from today's new government 'Action Plan' on open source software is quite a neat encapsulation of the entire document: Where there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products, open source will be selected on the basis of its additional inherent flexibility. Fundamentally, the policy on [...] read on »