Puffbox

Simon Dickson's gov-tech blog, active 2005-14. Because permalinks.

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    From my presentation to new civil servants

    On Tuesday this week, I gave a presentation at the Government Communication Network’s foundation course for new entrants – talking about the current online and social media landscape, and highlighting a few specific implications for those working in government. I haven’t received the feedback questionnaire summary yet; but the initial signals look encouraging. (Thanks Sue.)

    For a while now, I’ve been doing slides which don’t make a lot of sense unless I’m standing up in front of them; so I’m not going to share my slideshow per se. However, I thought I’d share the key information sources I used: you’ll find the facts and figures I quoted, plus – undoubtedly – some other gems I missed.

    The best sources of numbers were the Ofcom Communications Market Report and the National Statistics release on Internet Access, both published last August. The Ofcom report is particularly good for numbers and charts on all aspects of media consumption. I also used a few figures from the BBC’s iPlayer press pack, to illustrate the growth of high-bandwidth activity, and the use of non-traditional devices (specifically in that case, PS3s and Wiis).

    Click to see it a bit larger

    The most useful visual was probably this one, from Hitwise – using data originally produced for the BBC’s Virtual Revolution series, it visualises the UK’s top 30 web presences, and the traffic flows between them.

    It’s particularly useful to show just how significant Google, Facebook and Hotmail (or strictly nowadays, Windows Live Mail) are in the UK online experience – and hopefully made people think a bit more about tools which government (and indeed, party politics) often seems to ignore.

    I used to do similar sessions for GCN (or as it was then, GICS) courses on a fairly regular basis; and it was great to be doing them again, forcing me to stay up-to-date on the latest statistics. The biggest single change between this one and the last one I did, back in 2006? The language I found myself using.

    I was perfectly comfortable using ‘industry terms’ which I’d felt the need to avoid (or certainly, explain) last time: and the audience knew what I was talking about. But perhaps most striking of all, I was conscious of the fact that most of what I was saying was in the present tense, where last time it was future.

    My thanks to Jon Worth for recommending me for the course; and to course leader Sue Calthorpe for going far beyond the call of duty, when I stupidly left my laptop power cable behind. I really enjoyed it all; I hope the attendees did too; and I’m dead keen to do more.

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    Cabinet Office's open source fail

    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 browsers is that all decisions must be in line with value for money requirements. In addition, the Open Source, Open Standards, Re-use strategy requires Departments to consider open source browsers such as Firefox and Opera on a level basis with proprietary browsers such as Internet Explorer.

    A slightly disappointing answer on a few levels. It shouldn’t necessarily be seen as an either/or thing. A Strategy which says ‘we don’t have any specific preference’ isn’t really a strategy. Oh, and without wanting to be too picky, Opera isn’t actually open source.*

    I’ve had trouble finding a copy of it online; so here’s the key section of the Opera licence:

    All intellectual property rights such as, but not limited to, patents, trademarks, copyrights or trade-secret rights related to the Software are exclusively the property of, and remain vested in, Opera Software ASA and/or its suppliers.

    You shall not modify, translate, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the Software or any part thereof or otherwise attempt to derive source code, create or use derivative works therefrom. You agree not to modify the Software in any manner or form or to use modified versions of the Software including, without limitation, for the purpose of obtaining unauthorized access to the Services or disabling features of the Software or Services.

    See that bit about ‘You shall not attempt to derive source code’? Well, that’s basically the complete opposite of Open Source. We’re going to have real trouble making this debate happen if we can’t even get the basics right.

    * Although, in an unexpected moment of charity, I’m wondering whether it’s actually a punctuation failure. Perhaps they meant ‘open source browsers such as Firefox, and [non-open source browsers like] Opera’? No, I doubt it too.

    Update (er, a year later): To their credit, I suppose, they did issue a correction in Hansard a few days later: ‘Errors have been identified in the response given to the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) on 24 February 2010. The words “such as Firefox and Opera” and “such as Internet Explorer” were incorrectly included in the answer.’ – maybe this blog does have influence after all.

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    The great WordPress / MU merge

    A subject which keeps coming up in conversation just now is the planned merger of ‘normal’ WordPress with WordPress MU, the ‘multi user’ version. There’s been both excitement and concern at what it might mean: but the latest report from Jane at WP HQ should be enough to calm anyone’s worst fears.

    It was announced at WordCamp San Francisco last year that WordPress and WordPress MU would be merging codebases. This has now happened in 3.0-alpha, and we’re working on smashing bugs and tidying up a few screens. If you’re currently using a single install of WordPress, when you upgrade to 3.0 you won’t see any of the extra screens associated with running a network of sites. If you’re currently running MU, when you upgrade you’ll notice a few labels changing, but upgrading should be as painless as usual. If you’re going to set up a new WordPress installation, you’ll be asked as part of the setup if you want one site or multiple sites, so that’s pretty simple. If you want to turn your single install into one that supports multiple sites, we’ll have a tool for you to use to do that, too. So if you’ve been worried about the merge, have a cup of chamomile tea and relax; it will all be fine. 🙂

    It’s quite a relief to see how they’re planning to manage this: most existing users of ‘normal’ WP won’t even see the new functionality, but if they want to make use of it, there’ll be a way to do so. Any impact will be seen by the existing MU user base, but as it’s a more complex product by definition, they should be better able to cope with any changes. That seems like the perfect solution all round.

    The feature I’m personally most excited about? Never more having to refer to ‘ordinary’ WordPress, ‘standard’ WordPress, ‘WordPress solo’, ‘non-MU’…

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    Yes you can change your Twitter ID. Don't.

    A while back, Mark Pack wrote a couple of articles noting that if MPs were worried about breaking election campaign rules by running a Twitter account with the letters MP in it, they probably needn’t be. The authorities tended to be ‘sensibly flexible’; and besides, it was dead easy to change your Twitter account name. In the piece which appeared on LibDem Voice, I commented:

    But is there a risk that someone grabs your temporarily vacated username? I can’t see anything in the Twitter documentation to suggest there’s a ‘grace period’ between one person giving up a username, and someone else claiming it… as is often the case, say, with domain names.

    Funny I should ask. Last week, colourful Conservative MP Nadine Dorries changed her Twitter name to ‘Nadine4MP’, apparently following Tom Harris’s lead. But somebody swiftly jumped in, and bagged the newly vacated NadineDorriesMP identity. Tim Ireland at Bloggerheads.com insists it wasn’t him, and has done some further digging into who it might have been. The account is currently reporting ‘that page doesn’t exist’. Accusations and conspiracy theories are flying.

    Yes, if you leave your main MP-labelled account dormant for a few weeks and switch to a new non-MP-labelled account, you’ll lose a good few followers. But to be honest, if they don’t follow you to your new location, they weren’t following you very closely, were they?

    Instead, where are we? No1 result from a Google search for ‘nadine dorries twitter’, and in the top 10 for plain ‘nadine dorries’, is the vacated, possibly hijacked, currently defunct @NadineDorriesMP account page. And this on the evening when said Ms Dorries is getting primetime terrestrial TV exposure for an hour.

    You have been warned. Again. 🙂

    that page doesn’t exist

  • Berners-Lee, Bin Laden and business logic

    Watching BBC2’s The Virtual Revolution at the weekend, I found myself drawing an unexpected and slightly uncomfortable parallel.

    Entitled Enemy Of The State?, this week’s installment looked at social networks and political activism – touching, as you’d expect, on Twitter during the Iranian election, the great firewall of China, Islamic fundamentalism and the Estonian cyber-attack. All implications of the decentralised network, it gently argued:

    Al Qaeda, like the internet, has no centre. It’s a dispersed group of loosely associated people.

    Those few seconds of prime-time Saturday evening telly seemed to be laying down a challenge. If you asked people name the biggest influences on modern life over the last decade, the internet and Al Qaeda would be right up there. Both hugely successful, despite the lack of formalised structure. So why am I getting hung up on the supposed need to build a bigger company, and become a ‘proper’ business?

    There are, of course, entrepreneurial opportunities in this field, for those motivated, resourced and skilled enough to exploit them: to build large corporate structures, and extract money from fellow large corporates. As I’ve blogged here previously, I know I probably should be looking at these. But the truth is, I don’t feel a compelling need to do so.

    I’m left wondering whether the lesson of the decade of Bin Laden and Berners-Lee is that loose affiliation isn’t just as good as formalised corporate structure; but is actually better. Anyone?

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    Captcha yourself on

    There’s always a risk attached to using automated text-generating services. For example, this ‘captcha’ I was presented with by the Conservatives’ Blue Blog website:

    Not one to raise on the first trip to Camp David, perhaps.

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    French military's open-source collaboration

    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 receipts (MDN);
    • Delivery receipts (DSN);
    • Encryption/Signing with triple wrapping;
    • RFC 2634 Security Labels and Signed Receipts;
    • Address autocompletion with several LDAP directories;
    • CRL download from LDAP directories;
    • Manage Out of Office settings on a Sieve server

    …only some of which I even begin to understand. But apparently, the key enhancement is the fact that you can ‘know for sure when messages have been read, which is critical in a command-and-control organization’ – according to Mozilla executive David Ascher, quoted by Reuters. And that’s good enough for it to hook into NATO systems.

    What’s more, code from the French project found its way into Thunderbird’s v3 public release last December – making the product better for everybody.

    The recently revised UK government policy on open source seemed to focus solely on the procurement angle. But as Trustedbird demonstrates, there’s potential for the benefits of open source to go much, much wider.

    And if a particular open source product doesn’t quite meet your exacting specification, that shouldn’t mean you simply dismiss it. Ask not what open source can do for you, you might say; ask what you can do for open source.

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    No10 e-petition on abandoning IE6

    I’ve happily signed the e-petition on the Downing Street website calling on the Prime Minister to ‘encourage government departments to upgrade away from Internet Explorer 6.’

    I’ve written on this subject before; and I know the huge headache it would be to alter in-house applications built for IE6 alone (although that’s another story altogether).

    I note the petitioner’s failure to mention the government-backed Get Safe Online initiative, which explicitly recommends upgrading. So when he says ‘(The French and German) governments have let their populations know that an upgrade will keep them safer online. We should follow them.’ – I know he’s wrong. And I’m not sure I buy his suggestion that ‘When the UK government does this, most of Europe will follow. That will create some pressure on the US to do so too.’

    But that’s all beside the point. If we can use this petition as some kind of leverage, I’m prepared to overlook its deficiencies. And with nearly 5,000 signatures in a couple of days, and front-page coverage from the BBC, we have a platform on which to build.

    The latest browser market share numbers show that finally, IE6 has been deposed as the world’s #1 browser. And in the last few days, Google has announced that its Apps will be phasing out IE6 support, becoming the latest big name to say enough is enough.

    It’s time to put IE6 out of our misery. Sign the petition.

  • WordPress in your pocket

    The trinity is complete: with the release of an officially-sponsored Android app, following in the footsteps of previous iPhone and BlackBerry releases, there’s now a WordPress client for the three biggest-hitting smartphone platforms. (Sorry Nokia.)

    It’s development like this which, in my mind, lifts WordPress above other similar platforms – and any bespoke CMS build. You’ve suddenly got remarkable power to publish to the world, in a free download which sits in your pocket until you need it, whenever and wherever that may be. It’s also nice to note how the app is based on a previous independent effort (wpToGo).

    After literally minutes playing with it, the most striking function of the new Android app is comment management – be it notification, moderation, or even the ability to reply instantly. In the right context, it could really ramp up the two-way communication around a given blog or site.

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    WordPress powers Scotland's new national newspaper

    A hearty congratulations to Stewart Kirkpatrick whose project to launch a new online national newspaper for Scotland got off the ground at the weekend. It’s called the Caledonian Mercury, and its rather ambitious mission statement is ‘to revive Scottish journalism by using the internet rather than railing against it.’

    If you remember the days when, inexplicably, The Scotsman was one of the best online news sources on the planet – that was Stewart. I met him when I spoke at a conference in Edinburgh; he had moved into a small online startup, but was clearly still a news man. And looking back over his blogging in the last year or so, you can see how he’s reached this point: one track extolling the virtues of WordPress (well, usually), the other seeing an opportunity to reinvent the news business.

    So here it is then, the CalMerc. A fairly straightforward WordPress build, using an off-the-shelf news-y theme – with a bit of customisation, and a healthy dose of plugins. I can see a few rough edges to be smoothed out, and it’s all fairly modest in design terms: but as they told one critical tweeter, ‘behaviour first, design second’. Couldn’t agree more.

    So Stewart – all the best, big man. If anyone can do it, I’m pretty sure you can.

    PS: Other WordPress-powered newspapers are available – Bristol 24-7 springs to mind as a similar online startup; the Express & Star came to WP after 120-odd years in print. There may be much more to come if the Press Association has its way.