Puffbox

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

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    Remember to say thank-you

    A bit of a tricky moment this morning. As you might have spotted, Downing Street has launched an initiative asking ‘public sector workers’ to help the government find ways to implement the massive spending cuts proposed in Tuesday’s budget ‘in a way that is fair and responsible’. And as has become the norm for such initiatives, there’s a comment-enabled website dedicated to it, built on WordPress. A ‘hooray’ is obligatory at this point, although to be honest, that’s getting a little predictable. 😉

    In fact, it’s a return to an initiative launched by Nick Clegg last summer:

    The people who are best placed to tell us where money is not being well spent are the teachers, nurses, social workers and other public servants who work so hard day and night on our behalf. Politicians should stop talking over the heads of public servants. We need to listen to the people in the know on how we can better run public services, making sure that every penny of taxpayers’ money is well spent. That’s what ‘Asking People In The Know’ is all about.

    … but since it’s all happening again, and since the 2009 website is now giving 404 errors, one must assume it wasn’t especially fruitful.

    Anyway… If you have a look at the new website, you’ll note a startling resemblance to the Programme For Government site which I built a few weeks back. It’s very obviously a derivative work, based on my code. I didn’t build it, and I didn’t get paid for it. My contract gives the Crown the right to reuse my work; and in fact, I’m very glad they did. It’s entirely in keeping with the open-source spirit… not to mention the need to find cost savings.

    But as anyone following me on Twitter may have spotted, there was one slight hiccup. By convention, WordPress themes include details of their author. The original PFG theme notes me as its originator – obviously. But the derivative theme didn’t. My name had been deleted, and replaced with the names of two people I’ve never met or spoken to: at least one of whom appears to be a direct commercial competitor.

    I was not best pleased. I sent out a tweet to that effect: and to the credit of one of the individuals concerned, he subsequently added a line of acknowledgement. My name is duly checked, and I’m happy again.

    I am absolutely not suggesting there was any attempt to infringe my intellectual property rights, or deprive me of a deserved payment. I’m perfectly prepared to accept that it was a simple oversight. But I needed to make the point.

    Acknowledgement is the currency of the open source movement. There are communities of developers spending their free time building these tools, not to mention businesses freely handing over the fruits of their labours, resulting in you getting phenomenally powerful tools for £0.00. Saying ‘thank you’ is really the least you can do; and it’s often the only ‘payment’ that the open-source contributor receives. Don’t forget.

    Not for the first time, Steph Gray lays down a good model to follow. On every page in his Commentariat theme is an explicit credit for the Whitespace theme by Brian Gardner; and there’s a note of thanks to my regular collaborator Simon Wheatley in its style.css file.

    And in case anyone’s interested: yes, I do plan to write something for the consultation – it’s also open to ‘private sector partners working within public sector’. Now, I wonder what I might propose?

  • Govt skunkworks planned for November

    Buried – inevitably – deep within a PDF file, the Cabinet Office has announced a start date of November 2010 for the ‘skunkworks’ team promised in the Conservatives’ technology manifesto.

    But the Structural Reform Plan, reportedly the first of many to be published by government departments, says the skunkworks team’s role will be ‘to assess and develop faster ways of developing ICT’ – which, on the face of it, sounds like it’ll be more concerned with procedure than prototypes.

    The Plan also points to the setting-up of a new Chief Information Officer’s office, and an increase in the power vested in the CIO role, by the end of August. There’s (yet) another repetition of the pledge to ‘create [a] level playing field for open source software’ – although as mentioned here previously, Francis Maude seems to have taken things a step or two beyond that commitment already, certainly where websites are concerned.

    Additionally, there’s a rather vague pledge to ‘devise a government-wide strategy on digital engagement and enablement’, and a promise to ‘support departments to reduce costs of transactional services including putting more services online’.

    Other than that, a lot of it is simply the formalisation of manifesto pledges – but it’s interesting to note some specifics in terms of target dates. The promise to put all tenders above £10,000 on a single free-of-charge website is due to be completed in September this year; and details of all spending above £25,000 will follow by November; but you may have to wait until 2013 for the ‘right to data’ to kick in.

    And one more thing: the wording on the publication of details of those earning over £58,200 is somewhat watered down – in that it doesn’t explicitly mention the publication of people’s names. But I wouldn’t necessarily read anything into that: the PM did sign a letter which said ‘names, grades, job titles and annual pay rates’.

  • Another PDF-driven gov website launches

    The new Office for Budget Responsibility has a new website. It’s quite nice looking: plain, sober, entirely befitting its subject matter. Its HTML validates, albeit with some 404 errors around favicon graphics; and it’s easy to find your way around – although admittedly, with a tiny handful of pages, bewildering navigation would have been quite some achievement.

    So on the surface, it’s a nice enough job. But it frustrates me to see yet another website launched without so much as an RSS feed; and with an almost total reliance on PDFs for its main substance – not for the first time, even the most basic text-only press release is only available in PDF format. No data.gov.uk-friendly data files, either. (Not yet anyway.)

    There also seem to be suggestions in the source code of manual HTML coding going on behind the scenes..? Surely not.

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    What's yon MP gibberin' on aboot?

    Those of you who don’t hail from Northern Ireland will probably be unaware of Ulster-Scots. It’s a language spoken in certain parts of the province, distinct from English, and is recognised in both the Good Friday and St Andrews Agreements. It’s become increasingly visible in recent years: here’s an example of a Northern Ireland government department, Regional Development, whose logo features its name in three languages (English, Irish and Ulster-Scots) – as well as details of its Ulster-Scots helpline number. Bilingual street signs are also popping up here and there.

    Now, you might suggest that its resurgence is purely a tit-for-tat response to the province’s Irish language lobby, and to the availability of EU funding. You might also argue that it’s just a phonetic transcript of broad Glaswegian – think Rab C Nesbitt or Billy Connolly. But you would of course be wrong.

    Why mention it here? Because this week, apparently for the first time, Ulster-Scots was heard on the floor of the House of Commons. Step forward Jim Shannon, newly elected DUP MP for Strangford, making his maiden speech on Tuesday, who received special permission to offer the following remarks.

    Thaur is monies a guid thang at A cud sae aboot tha fowk o mi Baille-Wick bot yince an firmaist A coont it a muckle oaner tae spake oot oan thair ahauf in tha Hoose O Commons. Tha Strengfird fowk ir tha satt o tha grun, an in thenkin thaim fer thair support A wud promis thaim at A’ll wrocht an dae fer thaim aa at A caun.

    If that doesn’t make any sense, try reading it out loud. Thankfully for the MPs present in the Chamber who will clearly have struggled with this foreign tongue, Jim proceeds to read his remarks translated into English. (Although given that he speaks nearly as quickly as I do, the Ulster-Scots version may have been easier to understand.)

    You can enjoy this groundbreaking moment at the Parliament website: wind the video forward to 18:02:45. Actually, start watching from a little bit before… and see if you can actually detect the moment he switches languages.

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    Another national newspaper goes WordPress

    Just to note that the Independent has switched its blogs from Livejournal to WordPress. Why? According to online editor Martin King, there was a simple reason for the move: ‘to make them better.’ Clearly a man after my own heart.

    He writes: ‘We are demonstrating that globally standard programs can free mainstream journalism from the complex bespoke set-ups of the past.’ And his colleague Jack Riley tells Journalism.co.uk: ‘WordPress is infinitely more customisable, which means that we can adapt it all as we go along. By bringing it all in-house it also means our development and editorial teams can work closely on getting the features that readers and bloggers want live as quickly as possible.’

    I must admit, I always had my suspicions that the Independent’s former arrangement with LiveJournal was driven primarily by the personalities involved, former Downing St colleagues Ben Wegg Prosser and Jimmy Leach (now back in Whitehall, of course).

    Worth mentioning too that the Telegraph has gone deeper into WordPress just recently, with the migration of its My Telegraph user community. Its blogs.telegraph.co.uk site, for journalists and commentators, moved over to WP about a year ago.

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    Puffbox site wins election award

    Front left: back of my head. Front right: back of Mark Pack's head.

    This morning, shortly before 11am. I’m sitting in the waiting room at the local GPs’ surgery. Nothing serious; just a routine appointment for a family member. Things are running a bit late, as usual, so I casually start looking at Twitter.

    An event about the internet and the election? Ah well, another of those London events I never get to attend. A report being published? Cool, I’ll read it tonight. Some awards? Always worth a look. I wonder who’ll win. Oh look, somebody’s leaked the results. Er… it appears I’ve won. And the train I need to catch is in 15 minutes. So, dedicated family man that I am, I abandon said family member in the waiting room, and (literally) make a run for the station.

    The event marked the publication of Anthony Painter‘s excellent – although perhaps too diplomatic? – analysis of the digital election, brought to you in association with Orange. Whilst much of its content will be familiar to anyone reading this, there will certainly be a few examples you won’t previously have heard of. Well worth a read.

    And I’m delighted to note that Puffbox client Lynne Featherstone was the unanimous winner of the day’s big award, for Best Use of Digital Campaigning by a Candidate, ahead of Anthony Calvert’s (ultimately unsuccessful) ‘castration’ attempt, and Walthamstow’s media-savvy Labour MP, Stella Creasy.

    Anthony’s report is wonderfully complimentary about our work on Lynne’s site:

    On every level, Lynne Featherstone’s campaign site excelled: design, engagement, relevance, information. It featured a ‘Lifestream’, which was basically a live feed of all of Featherstone’s social media and web engagements… Her campaign secured a swing of almost 4% against Labour against a national swing of 3.5% (though in London the swing from Liberal Democrat to Labour was only 1.25% so it’s an even better performance by that measure.)

    In a brief chat afterwards, I couldn’t resist reminding Lynne that, at one of our first meetings, I’d promised we would deliver a website which would win awards. I’d said that because I’d meant it: an all-too-characteristic moment of wild optimism on my part. We’d actually had our eye on the then-annual BCS Awards for MPs’ websites; but they were cancelled last year… so this news comes as quite a relief, actually!

    Lynne was very complimentary about me in her remarks; compliments I’m happy to return (and more). The site was designed entirely around her – her activities, her personality, her narrative, for want of a better word. I’ve since had a good number of enquiries from people asking ‘could we have a website just like Lynne’s’ – and I’ve said ‘no’ every time. (We’ve generally then gone on to design something equally attractive, but more appropriate.)

    Once again, I must thank Jonathan Harris, who worked with me on the concept and design; and Mark Pack, who looked after a lot of the technical stuff at the constituency end – not to mention Helen Duffett and others on Lynne’s team. They’re a genuinely great bunch, and all deserve a slice of the recognition.

    I can’t tell you how chuffed I am about this. And if I’d promised to do something for you today: sorry.

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    Supreme Court's untendered website cost revealed

    My thanks to Charles Arthur at the Guardian for picking up my piece last week on the apparent commitment to using open source for government websites. In the same article, he notes an FOI request which reveals that the costs behind the admittedly quite pretty website for the new Supreme Court.

    • It cost us £360,000.
    • It was produced by Logica, and uses Open Objects. It’s built on the RedDot CMS.
    • And here’s the best bit, which Charles overlooked: ‘No tendering process took place, as the work was let to Logica under the existing DISC commercial framework and to Open Objects as part of their on-going service provision.’

    For that money, you’d have hoped for half-decent HTML coding – but there are some pretty basic errors to be found.

    You’d have hoped for a website which doesn’t seem to consist primarily, almost exclusively, of PDF files – even a basic press notice.

    You’d have hoped for a website with an RSS feed – several, in fact. But no, not a single one.

    You need to ask yourself whether £360,000 seems like a fair price for such a website. I’d suggest it isn’t. Even with a significant allocation for design, I’d have thought you could produce a similar result – with better functionality – for 95% less. If there’s more going on behind the scenes than is obvious from the front end, perhaps they might like to explain what.

    This is a perfect example of why I’m not scared of all the talk about massive public sector spending cuts.

    Well done to Henry Kitt for extracting that figure via his FOI request.

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    Gov websites to use open source 'whenever possible'

    In the response to a pretty innocuous parliamentary question from Tom Watson, new Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude makes a statement which could, on the face of it, be of monumental significance for UK e-government.

    The Government believe that departmental websites should be hubs for debate as well as information-where people come together to discuss issues and address challenges – and that this should be achieved efficiently and, whenever possible using open source software. Any future development of websites run by the Cabinet Office will be assessed and reviewed against these criteria.

    We’ve heard the ‘hubs for debate’ line before, in the Conservative tech manifesto, but the other part is quite startling. Open source software ‘wherever possible’. An unqualified statement of policy. No caveats at all; not even financial. That takes us far, far beyond the ‘level playing field’.

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    Directgov unveils syndication API

    In one of his final speeches ahead of the general election campaign, Gordon Brown announced plans to offer Directgov’s content via an API ‘by the end of May’. And whilst other announcements in the same speech, such as the Institute of Web Science, have since faded or disappeared, the commitment to a Directgov API didn’t.

    Bang on schedule, the API has been launched – and it looks quite marvellous. You’ll need to go here to register – but all they ask for is an email address. Once you’ve received confirmation and a password, you’re away.

    Pretty much all Directgov’s content is available, and in various formats. So you can request (for example) articles by section of the website, or by ‘keyword’ (tag); or articles which have been added or edited since a given date, optionally restricted to a given section. You can pull down contact information for central government organisations and local councils. Data is made available, dependent on the query, in XML, JSON, Atom or vCard. (There’s also a browsable XHTML version, from which I’ve taken the screengrab above.)

    This stuff isn’t child’s-play; but to those who know what they’re doing – and despite a few successful experiments this morning, I don’t really count myself among them – the potential here is huge. Reckon you can do a better job of presenting Directgov’s content, in terms of search or navigation? Or maybe you’d prefer a design that wasn’t quite so orange? – go ahead. Want to turn it into a big commentable document, letting the citizens improve the content themselves? – well, now you can.

    There’s quite an interesting back-story to it all: I had a small matchmaking role in joining up the ideas people in Downing Street with the delivery people at Directgov. And whilst I’m told Directgov did have it in mind for some time this year, the Brown speech on 22 March rather forced the pace. Six weeks (so I’m told) from start to finish isn’t half bad. And whilst I’ve certainly had the odd dig at Directgov in the past, I’m happy to say a hearty ‘well done’ on this one.

    It’s a potential game-changer in terms of how the content is presented to the public; but it may also have implications for those producing it. A quick look at the nearly 15,000 ‘keywords’ reveals, perhaps inevitably, a rather chaotic picture: bizarre and inconsistent choices, typos, over-granularity, and so on. My guess is, it’s not been used for front-end presentation before, so it hasn’t had much editorial attention. However, now the data is out there, it has to be taken seriously.

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    Minister (not) warned for (not) tweeting at 1am

    For the last week or two, I’ve been trying to draw together some thoughts on Ministers and blogging / tweeting, particularly as regards former Opposition figures now finding themselves in government, and a coalition government at that. Truth be told, I still don’t have a great conclusion to share, only that it’s a bit complicated.

    One MP who hasn’t let the transition to Ministerial office stop her blogging is Lynne Featherstone. She’s been as prolific as ever, with posts on constituency matters, party affairs and her new Home Office equalities portfolio. This caught the attention of the Daily Mail, who published a story at the weekend entitled: ‘Minister warned over 1am tweets‘.

    There were only two problems with that headline:

    • The tweets weren’t at 1am. As Mark Pack explained at Lib Dem Voice, the default timezone when you look at Twitter.com is San Francisco: so those ‘1am tweets’ would actually have been 9am UK time… if that even matters.
    • I’ve been in touch with Lynne directly, and she confirms to me: ‘no [Home Office] mandarins have told me off at all!’ And the next bit won’t come as any surprise: ‘Nor did the Mail check any details with me.’

    The extent of the warning appears to have been a proactive call to the Home Office press office, with a ‘spokesman’ being quoted: ‘The Minister is well aware of her responsibilities under the Ministerial Code.’ You could call that a warning; I’d call it a statement of fact.

    It’s a pathetic character assassination piece, with so many holes in it that I can’t face picking it to pieces. Even a blog post highly complimentary of her ‘boss’ at the Home Office, Conservative minister Theresa May was depicted as a controversial expression of her doubts. So it’s not a bit of wonder that the ensuing comments react with horror at how someone so divisive and clearly deranged should be a government minister. Even if the Mail were to correct or withdraw the piece – which, so far, it shows no sign of doing – it’s too late; the damage, such as it is, is done.

    But at least the ‘proper’ newspapers wouldn’t print something so shameful, would they? Sadly, they did. Later the same day, the Telegraph basically re-wrote and re-published the Mail piece, minus (to give them a tiny amount of credit) the embarrassing timezone thing. The Sun did pretty much the same thing, the next day.

    You know, you’d almost think they’re more interested in inventing controversy than reporting facts.