Puffbox

The new and very web-2.0 NHS website allows you to offer your opinions on the service you’ve received at your local hospital. Having had the opportunity to try it out, I’m just a little worried about its approach to patient confidentiality.

I was recently sent up to my local hospital for an X-ray, and was quite pleased to have an excuse to try the NHS facility out. Each hospital has a page labelled ‘your thoughts’, where you’re invited to write a short note about what you liked and disliked about your experience; and to rate the hospital out of 5 for cleanliness, pain control, staff cooperation, and so on. So I did; and within a day or so, allowing for moderation, the comments were posted on the NHS site.

But there’s quite a serious problem. I’m the only respondent for my local hospital so far. So in terms of the average ‘marks out of five’ by all respondents, my marks are shown exactly as I submitted them, making them directly and very personally attributable. You can see my name, the date I was at the hospital, and what I thought of it. It’s just as well I was nice about it.

It isn’t such a problem with the written commentary: you can write what you want, and self-censor as you go. But you don’t get that chance with a ‘marks out of five’ system. And it doesn’t allow for the rationale behind some of my answers: I didn’t rate them highly for pain control because, at the time, I wasn’t actually in pain.

In a situation like this where data and identity are gathered (and indeed displayed) simultaneously, normal statistical practice would say you shouldn’t publish any numerical results until a certain number of responses are in – five or ten, maybe. I’m actually quite shocked that the NHS isn’t doing this. There’s also a continuing risk, in that – with aggregated scores given (I think) as a round figure out of 40 – it will be possible throughout the early days to keep track of the scores as each new response come in, to work out pretty accurately what the last person said.

Until they sort this out, I’ll have to strongly advise people against submitting their thoughts.

Hello, 70 Whitehall! The FT reports that COI’s media monitoring unit is considering how to extend its coverage to the blogosphere. Hardly a surprise, but I suppose it’s another endorsement of the importance of the new channels, particularly in politics. According to MMU director Clarence Mitchell: ‘There’s a whole level of debate taking place online which simply didn’t exist before and departments feel they need to be fully engaged in that.’ When he says ‘several were taken increasingly seriously within government’, one wonders which. Apart from the obvious couple.

Incidentally, having been (I thought) quite nice about Iain Dale yesterday, I have to say his summary of the FT piece is pretty slanted, and not exactly accurate.

The Financial Times reports that the government is about to set up a ‘blog monitoring unit’ (I kid you not).

No, Iain, you do kid us. It’s not a new unit being set up, it’s an existing unit thinking about expanding its remit. And besides, as you proudly point out on regular occasions, political stories frequently break online, then find their way into the mainstream media – so it’s probably doing exactly the same job, just a day earlier. And anyway, what’s the alternative – ignore the blogosphere? How often do I read posts complaining that the government isn’t listening to ordinary people outside the Westminster Village? Sheesh, you just can’t win.

An inside source tips me off to the existence of a server at blogs.cabinetoffice.gov.uk, and a work-in-progress site which seems to be laying the ground for Ed Miliband to start blogging. As my source points out, it must be a family thing. Only a string of test postings for the moment, and no obvious activity since 2 July. It’s being built on a platform called BlogEngine.NET which I haven’t previously come across: looks like it does everything you’d expect, with the added bonus of not requiring an underlying database.

Quick update: the work-in-progress site is no longer visible. Not sure why – there wasn’t really anything contentious on it. (Although if it were me, I wouldn’t have made it visible until it was ready anyway.) Thankfully, traces remain in Google’s cache…

It just occurred to me that since the reshuffle, we no longer have any officially blogging ministers in Whitehall. Miliband hasn’t restarted his efforts since taking over at the Foreign Office… and both DWP efforts have been mothballed, following moves for the relevant ministers. Unless you know better…?

Actually, if you hang on a couple of weeks, there will be a ministerially-led blog appearing in the vicinity of Whitehall. But don’t tell anyone I told you.

It’s been up there for a couple of months, but I’ve only just spotted it: the European Commission’s channel on YouTube. You have to admire their choice of username, although the content is a bit dry and corporate. Embedding and comments are both enabled though, making them slightly more democratic than Downing Street.

Interesting to see the Guardian splashing the cash for e-gov specialists Kable (aka kablenet.com, Government Computing, etc). Guardian boss Tim Brooks says it’s an ‘attractive market with good prospects for growth’. See coverage from acquiree and acquirer. If GNM wants to acquire any blogs in a similar territory, I’m open to offers. 😉

Here’s one for anyone with any experience in large corporate environments, particularly government.

Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.

You see this time and again in corporate websites. But depressingly, these words by computer industry veteran Mel Conway were written as far back as 1968.

I note the Foreign Office website has removed the various photos it posted on Flickr last week; as I said, it was almost certainly in breach of the ‘community guidelines’. The user fcowebsite is still active, but there’s no content showing. All the photos shown on the FCO site are being served from FCO’s own servers.

It’s all happening in King Charles Street, suddenly. I see there’s a new YouTube channel being operated by the Foreign Office, under the banner of its i-uk website promoting the UK to interested foreigners. Popping up in this video channel is a bit of footage from SoSFA David Miliband’s trip last week to Pakistan.

But you’ll immediately see it’s something rather different to previous Miliband YouTube intrusions. If it looks like a TV news report with no voiceover, that’s because that’s precisely what it is.

For years now, the FCO has funded something called British Satellite News – a daily satellite TV feed of unvoiced news reports, for broadcasters to use within their own programming. It makes no secret of its mission to provide ‘coverage of worldwide topical events and stories from a British perspective’ – and yes, inevitably that means a relentless series of fluffy ‘good news’ stories, with the occasional piece on foreign policy. The FCO says ‘it has a particular but not exclusive focus on the Islamic and Arab world’, which is a change since the days I worked there, although hardly surprising.

This has been around as professional source material for over a decade. A lot of it is available for ‘preview’ in Windows Media format (although only 320×240 resolution) – and whilst they don’t offer a way to download clips for desktop remixing, a Google search will reveal numerous methods. The only surprise is that it’s taken this long to hit YouTube.

Update: Actually, I’ve just come across a BritishSatelliteNews channel on YouTube, which has only been operating for three weeks. These clips, though, come with voiceover. I suppose it’s not strictly being run by the FCO, but by its contracted supplier.

Actually, no sooner do I publish that last item about David Miliband than I notice some more and rather interesting new online activity at FCO.

Clearly taking the Mayo-Steinberg doctrine to heart, there’s now a Flickr user called ‘fcowebsite’, with a grand total of three images, all from SoSFA’s jaunt over to Afghanistan in the last couple of days. They’ve used a Flickr badge to illustrate the ‘Newsfile’ page about the trip. Using an existing community rather than building your own? Well done, I say – although it must surely be in breach of Flickr’s community guidelines, which state quite clearly:

If we find you selling products, services, or yourself through your photostream, we will terminate your account.

More digg/delicious buttons here too – and yes, once again, it’s only been dugg/tagged by Liam King and ladyclaire. Both of whom seem to be very recent recruits to del.icio.us. Hmm… I note ladyclaire’s use of the word ‘our’ with reference to the ‘Have Your Say’ pages I mentioned earlier, which makes me think she’s actually FCO too. Nothing wrong with doing this, of course, but still…

Incidentally, if Liam or Claire wants to add a Facebook button to the FCO pages – and given the user numbers and demographics, it’s probably a better place to be doing any stirring – the necessary code is on the Facebook site.