Puffbox

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

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    ONS drops jobs data early

    I’ve actually got a lot of sympathy for the team at the Office for National Statistics today. This morning should have seen the release of the monthly unemployment numbers; but due (apparently) to ‘a computer error on automated systems’, they leaked out yesterday – and ONS took the decision to bring forward the official publication. Bearing in mind the market sensitivity of the data, I can imagine the scenes.

    As I’ve mentioned before, I was in charge of the web team(s) at ONS for a couple of years, from 2002. It was one of the most frustrating periods of my career: for all my best efforts, my vision of web-friendly database publication went unrealised. Instead, the current National Statistics website is still fundamentally the same 6-month stop-gap site I pushed through in 2002. I don’t know about the underlying data-crunching systems, but I see no evidence of there having been any improvement since I left. They were inadequate then, and they look even more inadequate this morning.

    Instead, improvements to government statistics online now seem to be centred on something called the Publication Hub. In effect, it’s a big catalogue of government statistical releases – most of which are still located on the originating department’s website, and are still being delivered as PDF or Excel files. User-friendly it ain’t, placing the priority on ‘metadata’ (which, in statistical terms, means lengthy written explanations of methodology) rather than the actual data. Most people will struggle to find any numbers whatsoever.

    There are some appalling quirks: for example, if you press the button to see the homepage button for the ‘next 30 days’ of scheduled statistical releases, you see day 30 first, and have to click two or three times to get to day 1 (ie tomorrow). And whilst it’s good to see RSS has been taken into account, it’s impossible to work out what’s meant to be included in the feed each time you see the orange icon.

    I left ONS five years ago because I didn’t believe senior management recognised that the world had changed. In my letter of resignation, I suggested the Office was ‘five years behind the times’. Another five years on, if this Publication Hub is the answer, they still haven’t understood the question… and we’ll have to rely on third parties.

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    Downing St reopens its email function

    no10mailbox wide

    Rejoice, bloggers! Downing Street has started the rollout of its (apparently?) much-missed function to send an email to the Prime Minister.

    There’s been plenty of commentary on the function’s disappearance last summer, from Tim Ireland to Francis Maude, much of it coming from the slightly naive position of ‘how hard can it be to set up an email account’? Of course, that part’s dead easy. But what do you do when that account receives hundreds or thousands of messages daily?

    I’ve spoken to the Downing Street team about this in the past; the problems with the old ‘just an inbox’ system went beyond sheer volumes. And unfortunately, the classic corporate response – ignore the lot of them (and yes, it does happen) – isn’t an option when there’s the considerable risk of missing something tremendously sensitive: an email, let’s say, from a soldier’s widow.

    It’s based on a web-to-email form rather than a plain email address: no shame in that, it’s what Obama does. However, unlike most (including Obama, by the way), it’s done over https, giving an extra layer of security for those messages whilst in transit.

    Before you get to that form, though, you’re shown a list of subjects you might be emailing about: and if one of these is relevant, it directs you to somewhere more suitable. Isn’t this obstructive? Yes, of course it is. But it stops you before you waste your time typing a message which won’t get the reply you want. That’s got to be a good thing overall.

    Once over that hurdle, the email form is perhaps surprisingly short: all it asks, in terms of personal information, is a name, postcode and email address. Enough for you to get a reply (if they choose to send one), and enough for them to see if any subjects are particularly hot in certain areas. The message is limited to 1000 characters: too tight for Dizzy, but at least there’s a live character count on the screen.

    Before your message is properly submitted, you get an automated email asking you to verify your address. Again, perfectly normal online behaviour, with benefits to both sides: it filters out the anonymous rants, and double-checks the recipient’s address in the event of No10 wanting to reply.

    Then, behind the scenes, I hear there are a few tools to help them cope better with the volumes: the ability to group emails by common subjects, workflow management, and so on.

    A lot of the commentary, it must be said, has been purely a hook on which to hang wider criticism: ‘a beleaguered prime minister retreating to his bunker,’ to quote Francis Maude. It didn’t take any account of whether the former function was actually working. For anyone.

    The new system – built outside WordPress, incidentally – provides added security, greater efficiency and reliability, But most importantly, it provides a much better likelihood of your email actually getting a decent response. Which is the whole point of having such a service in the first place.

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    Irony of rail rover Adonis's ministerial blog

    I’d completely missed the fact that transport minister Lord Adonis, on his recent fact-finding trip round the UK rail network, had written a ‘blog’ of sorts for The Times’s website. Helpfully, the Department for Transport has reproduced the articles in full, albeit shoe-horned into the Speeches section.

    It’s well-written, down to earth… everything a blog should be, to be honest. His week-long mission was ‘to experience rail travel from the perspective of an ordinary fare paying passenger’, and judging by his writing at least, he’s done a reasonable job of it. As a regular rail traveller myself, a lot of the anecdotes ring all too true. It’s really, really good stuff – and you’re left with the image of a Minister who now knows, if he didn’t before, what it’s really like out there.

    And then you get to the conclusion of his final piece:

    I’m told blogging can become an addiction; one it’s probably best for me not to acquire while in government, so it’s now goodbye from me.

    ‘Best not to while in government’? – and there, of course, is the irony of it all. I can’t help thinking back to the recent Hansard Society event on MPs’ blogging, at which Tom Harris wasn’t shy about his (supposed) sacking from Ministerial office due to his blogging.ย  And which specific Ministerial position did he get sacked from?

    Oh that’s right. Railways minister. Ouch.

    (Spotted on Labourhome courtesy of Onepolitics.)

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    WordPress in UK government: an informal audit

    I thought it was about time I compiled a list of all the UK (central) government web projects I know of, which use WordPress. Partly because I’m meeting some people during the week to talk about it; partly to start preparation for the session I’ve volunteered to give at July’s WordCamp UK. This is off the top of my head, and I’m sure I’ve missed a few obvious examples: please leave additions and amendments in the comments.

    I’m only looking for live sites: I know of several more projects ‘in the works’ (and am always keen to receive tipoffs!). I’ve noted those built on Steph’s open-source Commentariat theme with an asterisk.

    HEALTH

    DFID

    BIS

    BERR (now BIS)

    UKTI

    DIUS (now BIS)

    JUSTICE

    DEFRA

    SCOTLAND OFFICE

    WALES OFFICE

    CABINET OFFICE

    10 DOWNING STREET

    MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

    COI

    ORDNANCE SURVEY

    ROYAL NAVY

    LAW COMMISSION

    PARLIAMENT

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    Ordnance Survey's new approach

    ordsvystrategy

    Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working with Ordnance Survey to produce a WordPress version of their new business strategy, published today. As you’ll immediately spot, it’s another piece of work based on Steph Gray’s Commentariat theme, including some of the tweaks I did for BERR’s Low Carbon Strategy.

    As I write this, I’ve literally just pressed the ‘go’ button, so I haven’t even read the document yet myself, and can’t offer any opinion on it (yet). But I didn’t hide my disappointment at the unveiling of the OpenSpace project a year ago, and I’m told things have moved much further forward on that front at least. It hasn’t been enough to satisfy the Guardian’s Free Our Data campaign, though.

    I know this is a subject of considerable interest to the e-government / activist community, which probably covers most of you reading this. We’ve created a web-friendly platform for you to read what OS are proposing, and tell them what you think about it. What are you waiting for?

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    Our top story: government web video

    No10 video on BBC News

    It isn’t every evening that a video clip from a government website features prominently on the main evening news. Except this week.

    Last night, it was the Treasury’s YouTube clip of Alastair Darling preparing for tomorrow’s Budget: nothing too spectacular, nice visual wallpaper for the story. Tonight, the PM’s announcement of changes to MPs’ expenses – presented first on the Number10 website – didn’t just pop up on the 10 O’Clock News; it was the basis of the lead package.

    It’s another curious piece to camera by the PM. When he talks straight into the camera, he actually comes across as quite sincere. But then he ruins it with that unnatural smile, which isn’t convincing anyone. He actually looks like he’s going to burst out laughing when he mentions Harriet Harman. (Insert your own punchline in the comments, please.) Clearly I’ve missed the inherent humour in the words ‘detailed written statement’.

    Prime Minister – please, stop putting it on. Remind me, who was it who uttered these words six months ago? ‘So I’m not going to try to be something I’m not. And if people say I’m too serious, quite honestly there’s a lot to be serious about – I’m serious about doing a serious job for all the people of this country.’ Exactly. No more forced grins, eh.

    PS Is it pedantic of me to point out that Nick Robinson’s oh-very-clever line about ‘a U-turn on YouTube‘ isn’t strictly accurate? The Number10 video player is powered by Brightcove, and the clip isn’t among those uploaded to Downing Street’s YouTube account. There, I’m glad I got that off my chest.

    PPS Jemima Kiss at the Guardian has a nice roundup of views from ‘the web community’ (ie the usual suspects), reaching a similar conclusion. But please, before anyone else declares it the Worst Video Ever, let’s remember the Countdown one.

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    Don't get a feed, get a blog

    I didn’t write about Mash The State when I first heard about it, because the ambitions seemed embarrassingly modest: getting each council in the country to offer an RSS feed by Christmas. In 2009? – seriously?

    And then I note that, of the three e-government super-sites – Directgov, Businesslink, NHS Choices, annual budget approx ยฃ30m each – only the NHS site offers RSS feeds (and even then, only a few). Directgov has recently started offering its first RSS feed, but if you look at the source code, you’ll note that the URLs all begin with slashes. In other words, they aren’t valid RSS. Or in other less diplomatic words, they’re useless. If a guid isn’t globally unique, then it isn’t a guid. Still, at least they’re trying. Businesslink doesn’t seem to have anything in RSS. At all.

    Meanwhile, the rest of the web is racing ahead. I’m especially proud of the DFID Bloggers site in that regard: helpful as ever, WordPress offers pretty much every list available through the site as an RSS feed, if you know the right URL to call. Each category has an RSS feed. Each tag has an RSS feed. Each individual author has an RSS feed. Heck, you can even get search queries as RSS feeds: meaning, in effect, you can have a customised RSS feed of ‘every time that WordPress site mentions X’. All out of the box; at zero charge and zero effort. They just happen.

    RSS continues to delight me as a website designer and builder. Recent WordPress releases have added some extra – undocumented? – tricks: for example, if you can construct the right URL query string, you can get an RSS feeds of all items except those from a certain category. (Clue: ‘cat=-1’.) And it’s going to get even better imminently, with the inclusion of the brilliant SimplePie, for consuming RSS, into the next WordPress release.

    I’ve built entire sites like Real Help Now and onepolitics powered solely by RSS feeds from third-party sites. I’m even building a couple of WordPress sites now which will use their own internal RSS feeds to surface content, rather than me coding ‘proper’ PHP/SQL queries. It’s just easier. And when you’re doing something as an outsider because it’s easier than the ‘proper’ internal method, you know we’ve reached somewhere significant.

    The truth is, if your website still isn’t offering an RSS feed, you’re falling further and further behind the rest of the web, and you’re depriving yourself of the magic which eager geeks might bring to your content. But before you go spending money adding an RSS feed to, say, your press release pages – don’t. There’s a content management solution which is optimised for delivering text documents on a rolling basis, presented chronologically. You’re looking at it.

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    Time called on top UK blogger

    In February, The Times named the blog written by Philip Barclay and Grace Mutandwa, staff at the British Embasy in Zimbabwe, to beย  one of the UK’s best. And rightly so. Some of the stuff they’ve written has been the most moving I’ve ever read on a blog. But while Grace is a local, Philip is part of the diplomatic staff – and in keeping with FCO policy, once three years are up, he’ll be moved on.

    ‘The Foreign Office is cruel,’ he writes in his final post. ‘My brain must go on to some other job, while my heart stays in Zimbabwe. How cruel to be dragged away just as recovery might begin.’ As ever, it’s stirring stuff: how the experience has changed him from an ‘arrogant and complacent British diplomat’, snapshots of the anguish and beauty in the country, expressions of optimism tinged with unspoken anger.

    The blog will continue, he writes, in the hands of his colleague, ‘the incomparable Grace’. But that, in itself, takes us into intriguing territory: a Zimbabwean writing such a high-profile blog on behalf of the British diplomatic service. It’s terrible to have to write this, but I hope it goes OK for her. I was delighted to meet Philip at the FCO’s blogging seminar a few weeks back; it’ll be interesting to see if, or how he might take the blogging thing forward into his new role.

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    McBride: a scandal for the internet age

    So Damian McBride appears to have been taken down by the blogger he was considering trying to emulate.

    It’s being reported that McBride’s emails were sent from his official Downing Street email account. If so, that’s a naive error to have made: partly because it leaves him open to (valid) accusations of misusing public resources, and partly because it exposes him to the risk of exposure via FOI. Guido republished an email he had sent to McBride requesting ‘copies of all emails referring to either myself or my publication, โ€œthe Guido Fawkes Blogโ€… under the provisions of the Data Protection Act (1998).’ (Mind you, Derek Draper told Sky News tonight that his private email had been ‘hacked into’.)

    It would have been an ugly and unpleasant story if he’d been a Labour Party employee discussing such tactics; or even if McBride had sent the emails in his own time, from his own email account. But it wouldn’t have been quite so explosive. And let’s face it, it probably wouldn’t have come to light. (Frankly, I assume such conversations happen all the time inside most political parties.)

    So let’s clear up the technicalities. Someone created a new blog at wordpress.com, under the ID ‘aredrag’ at 4:24pm GMT on Tuesday 4 November – a free service with a minimally intrusive registration form. On the same day, before or after, someone using the pseudonym Ollie Cromwell registered the domain name ‘theredrag.co.uk’ – a tenner for two years through easily.co.uk. They then paid wordpress.com the $15/year fee to run a wordpress.com-hosted site under a different domain name. The site itself consists of a standard Kubrick template, with only the default ‘Hello world!’ post visible. It has a (very rough) custom header graphic, but beyond that, it’s as ‘out of the box’ as it could be. To me, it suggests someone who knows what they’re doing online; and in the right hands, it could have taken only a few minutes. It doesn’t necessarily imply a coordinated, organised, resourced smear campaign.

    At its heart, this is a story about the thin line between politics and government – a subject often mused upon in these pages. Now of course, it’s not a new riddle. But it’s the fact that any individual, with no great financing or technical skill, can become a journalist and publisher in minutes that adds a new dimension. It allows McBride and/or Draper to contemplate setting up such a scurrilous website in the first place. And equally, it has brought mavericks like Guido Fawkes into the mix: independent, and with nothing to lose.

    Numerous times, we’ve tried to draw lines separating party politics and public duties – MPs’ communications allowances, civil servants in quite obviously politically-focussed positions, Ministers blogging their political views, whatever. In this culture of constant communication, I’m wondering if that’s still possible.

    • Does the Prime Minister have to be the ‘leader’ of his/her party? On reflection, Blair and Prescott did a fairly good double-act, with one being the head of government, the other being the party chief.
    • And does the PM’s spokesman actually have to be a civil servant? Should we accept that Downing Street is a special case, exempt from the same neutrality requirement of front-line, service-delivery Whitehall departments? We can’t play out our West Wing fantasies with politically neutral civil servants.

    There’s a long way to go on this one. A very long way.

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    WordPress co-founder's e-government work

    So many new websites appearing at the moment, you’d think it was the end of the financial year or something. The new DIUS site is very pretty, although I hear it wasn’t cheap. There’s a new site for the Ministry of Justice, which (if I’m totally honest) feels a bit dated, and clearly has several rough edges still to be smoothed. The new Parliament site looks really fresh and welcoming, putting its WordPress-powered news function front and centre… although when it comes to Hansard, probably its primary raison d’etre, it still can’t come close to TheyWorkForYou. I’m not particularly fond of the new Civil Service site overall, but it’s good to see them trying some new things.

    But one launch you may well have missed amongst all these big splashes is the Law Commission’s consultation site. It doesn’t look much, but it’s notable because:

    • it’s been done on WordPress, slotted seamlessly into a site which more typically relies on PDF files (!).
    • it also includes a discussion forum running on WordPress’s sister project, bbPress; not as common as you might think. And
    • it’s the work of Mike Little – the WordPress founder who isn’t Matt Mullenweg.

    Having met him at last year’s WordCamp, I introduced Mike to a few government people last year, and I know he’s been doing a few WordPress jobs with Whitehall clients – but this is the first one (I think?) where he’s gone on record to take his credit. So I can finally say how fantastic it is to have him on the team, as it were, further adding to the credibility of WordPress in the government space… and I’m hoping we can find a few opportunities to work together.