Public Sector Bloggers

My favourite German

…historical figure

Summary: In praise of Kaiser Friedrich III (b 1831, d 1888)

In my second blogpost I said I’d one day blog about the greatest emperor Germany never had. Well…he reigned for 99 days in 1888. “Long-live the dying emperor” was one phrase I picked out in one of several history books I have around that cover the time period that Friedrich lived in.

Make no bones about it, this man was a titan amongst a class of weak and feeble-minded royals. When I look at the generation of monarchs that followed his generation – in particular Wilhelm II (Germany), George V (UK), Nicholas II (Russia) I see a picture of intellectual feebleness and, for two of the three individuals at least (Wilhelm & Nicholas), were hopelessly out of their depth for the roles they inherited. George in many regards was fortunate that the UK political system had evolved significantly enough to ensure that blame for bad stuff happening landed at the feet of ministers rather than himself. For those of you interested, have a watch of this Channel 4 documentary.

Friedrich’s marriage was essentially an arranged marriage, even though it was also both a love match and a meeting of minds. His bride? Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter – known as “Vicky”. Vicky was Prince Albert’s pride and joy – bright, intelligent, hard-working…everything that her younger brother, Edward was not. Germany was a mix of small states, kingdoms, duchies, principalities and free cities. Both Victoria and Albert dreamed of a unified liberal Germany. In Friedrich (who at a young age was already showing liberal tendencies), they saw the perfect leader of a united liberal journey. In their daughter, they saw the perfect companion to help him achieve that journey.

And it so nearly worked.

But Otto von Bismarck had other ideas. (I’m currently reading a new biography about him). Bismarck too wanted a united Germany, but not one that was liberal and certainly not one that was being influenced by the English. Hence Anglophile liberal Friedrich with the Princess Royal as his wife were inevitably going to be politically opposed.

Friedrich’s father, Wilhelm I also ended up living far longer than many expected – staying on until the age of 90. By this time, Friedrich had developed throat cancer and at the time of his ascension to the throne, was only a few months away from his own death. By the end of 1888, Wilhelm II was on the throne while still in his late 20s.

The contrasts between Friedrich III and his son Wilhelm II are striking – and I’m sure there has been many a comparative study done (in Germany at least) between the two. You could say that Friedrich showed extraordinary pacifism (as far as his politics were concerned) given that he was a leading Prussian and then German field commander of his day – yet extraordinarily competent in the same role. His son Wilhelm was the opposite – showing extraordinary bloodthirstiness as a ‘war lord’ (certainly in a number of his speeches in the run up to the First World War) but extraordinary incompetence in the same role. Once the First World War broke out, Wilhelm as a major ‘actor’ in the conflict seems to all but disappear from the stage as the generals (in particular Hindenburg and Ludendorff) took control of the German war effort.

Wilhelm had no experience ‘in the field’. His father, Friedrich, did. It was during the wars against Denmark, then Austria and finally France that Friedrich was awarded the Pour le Merite (for gallantry) and – during the last of the three, promoted to field marshal as a result of his exploits as a field commander. You could say that this is the equivalent of Prince Charles taking to the field during the first Persian Gulf War (1991) and winning battle honours. Mind you, the latter has a few medals anyway.

Here was also someone who took a very public stand against rising anti-semitism during the latter part of the 19th Century. This was in complete contrast to the views that his son was to develop later on in life. (John Röhl is regarded in history circles as one of the most authoritative historians of Wilhelmine Germany).

One of the things that stimulates my imagination about this era are the myriad of counterfactuals around it – all of the “What ifs?” One of them ponders what would have happened in Europe if a combination the following happened:

• Prince Albert surviving the illness that killed him, going onto live for say another 30 years (to 1891)
• Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany dying shortly after the unification of Germany / the Franco-Prussian War, giving Friedrich a much longer reign to implement his liberal reforms
• Alexander II surviving (unscathed) the bombing that killed him in 1881

This I think could have led to an interesting combination of two reform-minded monarchs alongside with the reforming Prince Albert (the man behind the Great Exhibition of 1851). What would have become of both Germany and Russia if the Reichstag and the Duma respectively had gained significantly more powers during the latter part of the 1800s? What would it have meant for Wilhelm and Nicholas if they had found themselves as politically impotent as Edward VIII found himself in 1936?

One thing that I would love to see a UK television production company take on is a biopic of Friedrich III. There is an absolute wealth of content to deal with and a brilliant story to tell. It combines love, war, heroism, hope, political change, family feuds and tragedy all on an international scale. Anyone going to ask the powers that be to run with this?

Social bookmarks for social media surgery managers

This week I’ve been playing with stacks on Delicious, the social bookmarking site. Stacks are a way to organise your links into a common theme and the new social features make collaborating much easier.

To learn how the new features work – rather than curate links around an arbitrary theme (such as “most awesome kitten stunt videos”, which someone has probably done already) – I started this stack to share resources and links aimed at social media surgery managers.

Here’s my blurb on Delicious describing what, I hope, the stack can be:

I’ve started this stack to share resources and links related to running social media surgeries for voluntary and community organisations. See socialmediasurgery.com for more details on what a surgery is, the ethos we share and how to start your own surgery. Please feel free to add your own links but – please note – keep this focused on resources you, as a Surgery Manager, think your “patients” will find useful. If you’ve run a surgery, you’ll have a good idea of what people need to get started and what they need to develop further. This stack of links should be a useful resource. Any SEO / self-styled guru types / spammy marketers / self-promoters, please stay away. Thanks in advance for collaborating.

Are you involved in running, or volunteering, at a social media surgery? Are there resources or links you often find yourself demonstrating that others could benefit from knowing about?

Please feel free to contribute your links to the stack and make it a useful resource.

View Social Media Surgery stack on delicious.

Social media guidelines for social workers

Yesterday morning I popped along to a meeting of the Edinburgh Local Practitioner Forum to hear about the latest guidance for social work staff using social media.

The gathering of over 40 practitioners heard from Ann Moffat and Amanda Waugh from the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC), who last year published guidelines for social service workers and their employers on the appropriate use of social media.

We heard about the risks and pitfalls of using social media, with some sobering examples of people being removed from the SSSC register for inappropriate behaviour on the web. See their website for recent hearings and decisions. Examples included:

• a nursery manager who made derogatory and racist comments on her personal blog about children and parents at her nursery
• a care worker who befriended an ex-client’s mother on Facebook and was later seen in online photos drinking large amounts of alcohol with the ex-client (who had a history of alcohol abuse)
• a social worker who was filmed being drunk and disorderly in a shop – the video was posted to YouTube by a bystander

We also heard, though, about the opportunities that social media presents, with some great examples of using it for collaboration and engagement, as a tool for knowledge management, and as a fast and effective communications platform.

The SSSC is keen to hear from social work staff with their thoughts on the guidelines. They were keen to stress that they can’t tell people exactly what or what not to do – every situation is unique and the most important thing is that staff feel confident in using these sites appropriately.

Graphic courtesy of the Edinburgh Local Practitioner Forum.

Northern Ireland is no country for old idealists but it is certainly a best practice case of consociational democracy and conflict regulation

This weekend marks the commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday, which saw 26 people shot by the British army while on a civil rights march in Derry. Michael Kerr finds that the Northern Ireland of today is governed with a remarkable degree of consensus and represents a best practice case of ethnic conflict regulation. 

Were he alive today, IRA hunger strike leader Bobby Sands would hardly approve of the radical transformation that Northern Ireland has experienced over the last decade or so. He held radical ideas about the future of this divided province, how direct rule from Westminster should be ended, and about how the six counties in question should be forcibly integrated into a revolutionary 32 county republic. This struggle led him to forsake his own life in defiance of a British state that both he and his jail mates loathed and misunderstood, and it also led him to be remembered. It is ironic, and perhaps a sign of the times, that the lives of both Bobby Sands as hunger striker and Margaret Thatcher as prime minister are being remembered on celluloid at this time.

Sands would have probably taken a favorable view of Steve McQueen’s searing prison drama -Hunger – set during his standoff with Thatcher and detailing the last days of his life. This gripping and important piece of work depicts the uncompromising young martyr as the likable, charismatic ideologically driven extremist that he was. His violent death however, along with all the other victims of the troubles, achieved practically nothing. I use the word victim. This is how McQueen portrays Sands, forgiving both his self-destructive determinism and the pitiless brutality of his jailers.

In Hunger, the socialisation into conflict and violence by those who inhabit the Maze prison could not be more complete. The prisoners, guards, riot police and priests are all trapped in the same cycle of conflict: conflict not of their making; conflict without boundaries, conflict without compromise or release; conflict that creeps into every facet of everyday life. The film has an eerie sense of predictability about it; the actors on the grand stage that is the h-block prison each play out their roles with such functionality and fatalism that the perversity of the Northern Ireland Troubles appears banal – which of course it was for all those who experienced it. This was the part of Ireland that Sands lived, died, perhaps killed for, and remained stuck in until the end of his life.

The present alternative to the 32 county republican, socialist Ireland, which was the ideal that Sands died for, rather than the political status IRA prisoners sought from the British, is no less radical. Today Northern Ireland is a society shared by nationalists, republicans, unionists, loyalists and others. Although it remains deeply divided, comparatively speaking, Northern Ireland has come to represent something of a best practice case of ethnic conflict regulation.

Following the 1998 Belfast Agreement, the democratic, consociational model has been used to manage the rival national identities and conflicting aspirations of its two main communities. Although this has not fully resolved the troubles, it has successfully addressed the legacy of partition that led to both the outbreak of violence in 1969 and the Irish republican renaissance that Sands and colleagues Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and the recently deceased Brendan Hughes were at the very heart of. Some might take issue with the view that the hunger strikes achieved nothing, for they obviously led to the politicisation of Sinn Fein.

However, Sands’ electoral victory and subsequent death were merely catalysts in a process of change that had its origins in the early 1970s and Adams and McGuinness knew this all too well. For they had once been young guns in a new IRA with an old leadership which, in the mid-1970s, had grasped that the British had no desire to stay in Northern Ireland and that politics was the only means by which they could advance their aspiration to unite Ireland.

Their formative political experiences were secret negotiations with the British. The first were with a Conservative government that sought a Provisional IRA ceasefire to help pave the way for a power-sharing agreement at the early stages of Northern Ireland’s first peace process. The second were with a Labour government that sought to politicise Northern Ireland’s republican and loyalist paramilitaries in tune with more radical leanings towards withdrawal or dominion status.

No doubt these engagements and their failure opened the young IRA leaders’ eyes to the reality of what the British were actually doing in Northern Ireland. Sands and Hughes had no such experience and underwent no such political conversion. While Sands died for his political colleagues and their cause, Hughes lived to see them consolidate the Belfast Agreement with arch enemies the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), and as a castaway from a republican movement in which he was once an icon.

Since then, Northern Ireland has been governed with a considerable degree of consensus, and under the leadership of the DUP and Sinn Fein a power-sharing executive has served a full term for the first time, avoiding the splits, suspensions and unconstitutional opposition that undermined previous governments. A remarkable success, the Belfast Agreement has led unionists to accept that there can be no return to majority rule and republicans to accept that Ireland cannot be united by force or without the consent of the majority community.

Equally importantly, both sides have come to accept that their conflict lies with each other rather than with the respective states that they do not want Northern Ireland to be a part of. The idea of power-sharing has been widely accepted in both communities; a culture of pluralism has been nurtured at many levels of a society which hitherto had practically no cross cutting cleavages. So much so, that all commentators now view an immediate return to violence as most unlikely. One explanation for the dissident republicans’ failure to find significant support for their violent campaign against the detente between realist unionists and republicans, is that they have nothing more than the memory of the idealism of Sands and Hughes to go on.

Please read our comments policy before posting

…………………………………………………………..

About the author

Michael Kerr - King’s College, London
Michael Kerr is Director of the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies and Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at King’s College, London. He is a graduate of Essex University (BA Hons. Political Science), and the London School of Economics (MSc. Government; PhD. International History) where he was Leverhulme Research Fellow in 2007-08. His latest book, The Destructors: The Story of Northern Ireland’s Lost Peace Process was released in June 2011.
Read articles by Michael Kerr.

You may also be interested in the following posts:

1. The demise of Northern Ireland’s first power-sharing administration offers valuable insights for conflict resolution and policy worldwide.
2. Book Review: Lost in Transformation: Violent Peace and Peaceful Conflict in Northern Ireland
3. The violence on London’s streets is less political and less structured than has been the case in Northern Ireland. It is the result of decades of social and economic deprivation and inequality

Using search data to meet user needs

As a Product Analyst in the GDS Delivery team acquiring data is critical for telling us if our products are meeting user needs and how improvements must be made to content and services. Our team analyses not only search data but data from comments left on pages, feedback to our helpdesk and customer surveys.

Search data

One of the best data sources comes from collating what users search for – whether it’s a search on Google or Bing, or a phrase typed into a site search box. This provides direct insight into users’ needs and an opportunity to identify intent.

As well as being high volume and current, search data is also unfiltered: it includes misspellings, colloquialisms and outdated terminology. Users do not always speak the same language as Government, so knowing what people actually search for means we can make sure people get relevant results even with the “wrong” search term. On Directgov when a user searches for license they will get results for licence and the term ‘unemployment benefit’ returns Jobseekers’ Allowance.

There are over 300,000 searches carried out weekly on Directgov, with over 125,000 different search phrases. The most popular term, ‘jobs’, is searched for 4,500 times a week.At the other end of the spectrum there is a ‘long tail’ of 100,000 phrases that are only searched for once.

Using this data to identify needs that are not being met by government can be daunting. However, it is possible to filter or group it to pick out emerging trends and unsatisfactory user journeys.

How search data influences content

During periods when the UK is affected by heavy snow, perhaps the obvious response is to focus on information about the weather and disruption to the transport system and roads. But an analysis of what people were searching for on Directgov (and the web) during one of these periods showed a big rise in searches for ‘school closures’. Responding to this, Directgov made school closure information much more prominent and worked with colleagues in local authorities to collate links through the local Directgov system.

Other occasions when users’ chosen search phrases have informed content include Budget day, when we have seen non-government terms used; from perhaps predictable ones like ‘IHT’ and ‘PA’ (Inheritance Tax and Personal Allowance) through to phrases that proved popular like ’10p tax’ and ‘scrappage’ (the removal of the 10% starting rate of tax and the vehicle discount scheme respectively). These last two are examples where a snappier, easier to understand expression replaces the official government terminology (albeit sometimes helped along by the media).

During the run up to a recent Christmas, a growing volume of searches that included the words ‘Christmas’ and ‘payment’ was spotted. We also noted that users were not clicking on the (irrelevant) results presented to them. Delving deeper, we were able to see what else those users looked for. This identified an unmet user need: benefit payment dates over the Christmas period. HMRC published an article on Directgov and, as we were able to supply the relevant keywords that users were searching for, the search engine-optimised article ranked well in Google quickly.

In addition to sudden spikes or trends, analysis over longer periods of time shows trends through the year or within a month. Searches relating to ‘renewing car tax’ peak towards the end of the month. These search terms vary hugely, and include ‘car tax’, ‘road tax’, ‘tax disc’, ‘taxdisc’, as well as the official ‘vehicle excise duty’ and other smaller volume phrases like ‘tax a vehicle’ and ‘check if car is taxed’. There are also predictable seasonal needs, and it’s important to make sure that – for example – when summer arrives, information on office temperature regulations is available, alongside current bank holiday dates and how to renew a passport urgently.

Search data and GOV.UK

When GDS began sketching out first alpha.gov.uk and then the GOV.UK beta, search data was a key driver in the process of gathering user needs. The key question was “were people looking for it and what were they calling it?”

Directgov analyses search data the following day but with the beta of GOV.UK we will be reviewing search terms and landing pages even more closely.

Analytics tools are embedded deep into the technology stack of the GOV.UK beta providing real-time analysis of how individual pages are performing. Applying a set of metrics to the different content formats on GOV.UK acknowledges that users deal with different types of content in varying ways. What we are calling a ‘quick answer’, ie a single page article dealing with a relatively simple subject, will be measured differently to a complicated multi-chapter guide.

One of the cornerstones of the beta of GOV.UK is the use of evidence from analytics and insight to identify and meet user needs as they evolve. Our use of analytics puts users at the centre of how we make changes and improvements.

Filed under: Directgov, GDS, Single government domain

Storm of rebellion on welfare and legal aid

The previous few weeks have been a whirlwind of political debate and media coverage on all things welfare. The Welfare Reform Bill is reaching the end of its journey through parliament and the most contentious issues in the bill are, as we expected, causing a storm of rebellion against the coalition government.

The abolishment of the discretionary element of the social fund was debated the same day as our media coverage, but in the end the amendment was withdrawn. We’ve a new one for Third Reading making Local Authorities accountable for delivering this crucial service to the people in our communities who are in a crisis.

This Monday, the Government was defeated in a vote on its plans for a £26,000-a-year household benefit cap. Liberal Democrat, Labour and crossbench Peers backed The Bishop of Ripon andLeeds’ amendment that child benefit should not be included in the cap.

After a meeting with Lord Freud a few weeks ago, where we asked for Jobcentre Plus advisers to use proper guidance on discretion for issuing sanctions, Lord Freud said he would work collaboratively with us and other expert organisations to develop these.  He ‘absolutely agreed’ with the need for clear guidance for officials, that decision making will be in line with the Westbury Principles, which we recommended, and decisions should take into account all relevant matters a person raises, including health and finances. Lord Freud went on to say-

“We must ensure that our training and guidance equips advisers and decisions-makers with the tools to understand the circumstances and needs of vulnerable claimants, such as homeless claimants and those with mental health conditions. We must also ensure that the notifications and explanations of decisions to impose sanctions or penalties are clear, straightforward and easy to understand. I accept that there is room for improvement here, and we will make that improvement. I assure noble Lords that, as I have just committed, we will work with stakeholders to ensure that guidance, communication products and decision-making processes are suitably tailored to meet the needs of the range of universal credit claimants.”

Despite a consensus on this policy, government asked for the amendment to be withdrawn because ‘we do not think there is a need to set out a general duty in primary legislation to take into account relevant considerations or to give reasons as part of the decision-making processes.’ They also refused to make changes to the introduction of a civil penalty (if a person doesn’t notify the jobcentre of mistakes immediately, even if it’s the Jobcentres error, they will get fined £50 automatically.)

The benefit cap, the abolition of the social fund, sanctions and a new civil penalty run the risk of hitting the more vulnerable, the poorest the most. Rather than embedding DWP accountability into all of these policies so they are delivered responsibly, government argues that people can always appeal the decisions if they are believed to be wrong.

Worryingly that will be even harder for many people as government is also cutting the main source of funding for advice agencies helping people to appeal. The Legal Aid Bill – only a step behind the Welfare Bill in the Parliamentary Process but intrinsically linked – will completely remove funding for legal advice on welfare benefit issues, including reviews and appeals. Legal aid pays for advice centres like Community Links and Citizens Advice Bureaux to provide the specialist help people need to challenge government decisions. Peers from all parties made clear their opposition to the move, but so far government have given no ground. They claim advice on welfare benefits is not a matter of ‘life, liberty, or homelessness’ and that the Ministry of Justice “do not propose to devote these limited public funds to less important cases on the basis that they could indirectly lead to more serious consequences for that person.”

For both Bills the next few weeks will be all important; we will need to take on government’s arguments and demonstrate public pressure to get continued support from opposition, crossbenchers and those that have rebelled. With such contentious issues that impact on the poorest the hardest and question the role of state support for society and for upholding the law, we urge Members of both Houses of Parliament to take their roles particularly seriously over the next few weeks, as these significant changes are passed into law.

What does “Google is the homepage” mean IRL?

Back in April last year the Alpha.gov.uk team talked about Google being the homepage*:

“Since for the vast majority of people their web journeys (finding out the date of the next bank-holiday, or reporting a lost passport) start with a search engine rather than a direct visit we should think of Google as the homepage and we should also feed Google, Bing and other search engines nice friendly urls.”

So what does that mean in real life?

In the summer GDS launched e-petitions, “an easy way for you to influence government policy in the UK. You can create an e-petition about anything that the government is responsible for and if it gets at least 100,000 signatures, it will be eligible for debate in the House of Commons.”

A few weeks ago a Barbara Hepworth sculpture was stolen from Dulwich Park, and the Friends of Dulwich Park have started an e-petition calling for a ‘Cashless Scrap Metal Trade’.

What’s particularly interesting for us at GDS is how they are encouraging sign up in the park. I was there at the weekend and noticed this sign in the window of the park cafe.

No url, no short url, no QR code, no clunky explanation. Just google “e-petition 406″.

Easy to say, easy to remember and crucially easy to google.

I went home googled it and sure enough it’s the top result. Clicking on the link takes you straight to the petition. Success.

* Other search engines are available, but given Google has well over 90% market share in the UK…

Filed under: GDS, Innovation, Single government domain

Getting Whitehall to incorporate new IT developments in public services remains an uphill struggle. The government now lags ten years behind the private sector in its use of social media and lack of feedback to users

In a scathing indictment of ‘Rip off’ IT contracts in government the Public Administration Select Committee called for sweeping changes in government-contractor relations.  Jane Tinkler finds that the Committee’s follow-up report comments insightfully on the coalition government’s response document, but also stresses new themes. In particular, PASC is now highlighting the across-the-board absence of social media in central government websites and transactional services. Is it a case of ‘plus ca change, plus c’est la même chose?’

Any large organization can get set in its ways, focusing on what it knows how to do and trying to ignore new developments that seem to threaten to disrupt its way of doing business. Even a company that prides itself on being at the forefront of innovation can fall victim to this syndrome – witness the problems that Google has recently had in trying to get its engineers and marketing experts to take the development of social media seriously compared with the company’s traditional (i.e. last decade) focus on search and search-related advertising. Using the freedom that only major corporates have Google took drastic action – making 25 per cent of all its staff’s bonuses (whatever they worked on) dependent upon the company meeting its social media objectives.

The Public Administration Select Committee yesterday powerfully addressed an almost exact counterpart of Google’s problem – namely the striking absence from all of Whitehall’s websites of any signs of social media being deployed, or the least effort being made to feed back to users information on what other users were finding helpful. Instead the legacy of a decade of now ossified e-government efforts are hundreds of old-style government websites still dominated by wall-to-wall text, devoid of any rich media, written in obscure language apparently for people with a near-PhD knowledge of the byways of public administration. Drawing in part on comments commissioned from myself, Helen Margetts of the Oxford Internet Institute and Patrick Dunleavy (included at Appendix 2 of their report), the Committee note perceptively:

“There are obvious areas in which the Government could go further and move faster to implement ‘digital by default’.  For example, officials should be rewarded for using social media and digital channels to disseminate information and provide services (especially where this reduces reliance on other, more expensive channels). User feedback submitted via the Directgov site provides the Government with a great deal of free data on the strengths and weaknesses of its service provision.  The Government must make good use  of it, alongside other information from social media produced outside Directgov itself, to understand better how its services are used and perceived and, in turn, to design better services” (paragraph 19).

And later the report is forthright on improving Whitehall’s ability to experiment and learn from users:

“We recommend that Departments exploit the internet and other channels to enable users to provide direct online feedback both in the design of services and in their ongoing operation and improvement”.

The consequences of lagging government IT are of course intensely offputting for users who have grown used to better private sector and civil society standards, and have to rack their brains to remember how things operated years ago in order to use government sites. The implications of government’s slow adaptation are not just dysfunctional or hard-to-use online services, but also the maintenance of great swathes of unnecessary costs.  For instance, virtually all UK government websites are still provided in expensive-to-alter conventional web pages maintained on content management systems that only Web specialists can fully configure.

Some big departments are still locked into cumbersome integrated IT contracts that cost them an arm and a leg, and impose long delays, to change any webpage. Yet ultra-cheap blogging software is very fully developed and is highly relevant and suitable for most of the government’s information content output – software that can be maintained by non-specialist staffs and updated or changed easily at the click of a button. Perhaps only a small fraction of the most-viewed information pages would then need to be embodied in conventional websites for more permanent use.

The problems that the Public Administration Select Committee so incisively draw attention to are fundamentally those of huge time-lags and gaps in the organizational learning of civil service departments. In a Whitehall where most departments are ‘immortal’ (and some departments like HMRC can trace an unbroken lineage back to mediaeval times), are we condemned to always confronting government IT provision that lags a decade behind the times? Even if we could sort out IT contracting as PASC wants onto a more contractually diversified and competitive basis, and build IT systems in more modular ways to avoid IT disasters, would Whitehall’s pervasive amateurism on modern IT business processes still produce more of the same chronically lagging digital systems?

Please read our comments policy before posting

About the author

Jane Tinkler is the research lead and manager of the LSE’s Public Policy Group

 

You may also be interested in the following posts:

1. The government’s reduction in spending on the welfare state is greater than any in 90 years and private insurance will struggle to fill the gap
2. Social media didn’t start the fire: Proposals for the temporary shutdown of social media during riots are unlikely to prevent further unrest
3. As the coalition government moves to create new public-private partnerships and sell off government assets, the QinetiQ privatization of 2006 is a case study in how not to do things ‘transparently’

That was the local government week that was

As we near the end of January it is fair to say that life for the WLLG team continues to be mighty busy. We’ve all had manic weeks at work and with cuts to make and services to keep going, and even improve, and less staff to do it all things don’t look like they’re going to slow down any time soon.

The big news story this week was not Eric Pickles describing local authorities as immoral over council tax but the debate over the benefits cap. People I work with find the debate about the benefits cap deeply frustrating, feeling that there is little or nothing to be gained, for example, by turfing single mothers (who make up a large proportion of those in our social housing) out of their homes just to save some money on the benefits bill. These feelings were shared and brilliantly summarised on the not so big society blog. As the excellent Ermintrude2 points out:

Politics of envy is easy but it is ignoble. By encouraging the population to envy those who have less rather than those who have more (i.e. the class of politicians) they are diverting our attention from the real battles we should be fighting.

However, when I got home and had a chat with Mrs WLLG about all this she made the point that whilst I might understand the intricacies of the benefits system for the normal member of the public this seems ridiculous and we should be more willing to identify those examples which just aren’t right. The debate will continue – and not just in the WLLG household!

Meanwhile, on the issue of Eric Pickles and Council Tax morality this press release from Surrey Council caught our attention:

Surrey County Council is set to take a stand and save the county from a financial black hole by declining the Coalition’s council tax freeze.

The council’s Cabinet is set to discuss proposing the authority reject the Government’s freeze because it would lead to a £70m financial black hole over five years. The sum is equivalent to wiping out Surrey’s road maintenance budget for more than two years.

The Government has offered all councils a one-off grant of 2.5% for 2012/13 if they freeze council tax for another year. But it means that Surrey would be £14m down in every subsequent year when the one-year grant ends.

Well put sir!

We do like the Guardian Local Government Network so imagine our surprise when we found an article written by the authors of this fine blog up there. Discussing the way councils interact with bloggers we mentioned the case of a Barnet blogger who the council had apparently tried to shut down. Twitter tells us that there is some dispute over the veracity of the story so, as is our usual style, we’d prefer to focus on the substance of our argument and if we got any facts wrong we can only apologise. The rest of it still stands:

Whether or not the law could be interpreted in this way, local authorities are not going to last long if they use the tactic of threatening to prosecute anyone who disagrees with them. Rather, councils need to think carefully about how they should engage with bloggers in their area.

Some blogs are like newspapers; they are well read, and base their success on raising and commenting on real issues that their readers care about. They influence and inform, and take an interest on behalf of others in their community. Aren’t these exactly the sort of people councils would want to engage with, even – or especially – when they are being critical?

Not every blogger is worth responding to: there are many out there who are pure vitriol and should be avoided. Why not ignore them? Those that are mad won’t be influencing anyone, and by taking them to court or responding to them publicly, councils are at risk of giving them more publicity than they deserve.

Some of us were at Govcamp 2012 just a week ago and whilst time will pass and memories may fade thankfully there are hundreds of really good summaries all over blog land. We linked to some of them on our post this week and one of the non-attendees amongst us was taken with this post from a self-described ‘suit’ which has convinced them to make a special effort to attend similar events in the future. After all, if those who aren’t especially technical but understand the value of it don’t go then they’ll miss on being a part of something which seems eminently positive.

We’ve spoken about non-jobs from time to time on this blog and every now and again we check in with the wonderful taxpayers alliance ‘non-job of the week’ section. This week they are upset about a Strategic Director, a Head of Communications (apparently, the problem is both that they are needed but bad at their job and that they are not needed) and some Business Improvement Advisors (apparently they should have already improved the business?!?). I almost feel sorry for the TPA; with less jobs around and lots of people being made redundant it must get harder and harder for them to find new jobs to get really upset about!

So much happens each week and we miss most of it so if you see anything that we should include please drop us a line.

Welovelocalgovernment is a blog written by UK local government officers. If you have a piece you’d like to submit or any comments you’d like to make please drop us a line at:welovelocalgovernment@gmail.com

Lloyd on GovCamp

The group blog collecting people’s thoughts is really good reading.

Lloyd hits the nail on the head here:

We do it this way because it works and because we’ve seen the alternative really fail big time again and again.  Because it’s unusual for most of us and outside of our everyday experience, it’s tempting to make two mistakes.  One is to think that because it’s the first time we’re doing it, that this is the first time it’s being done – nope – it’s a well-established technique that is probably used somewhere in the world every day to help large groups of people organise their own experience.  Secondly it’s tempting to look back at bits of the day that didn’t work for us and think it didn’t work because we got the grid work wrong and therefore we should do it differently next time.  This mostly comes up as a suggestion that “just a little bit more structure or pre-planning” is introduced.  While I’m sure that we do get things wrong sometimes and there are ways that we can make the process serve us better, I don’t think that it’s a reason to introduce pre-planning.  All that pre-planning does, in my experience is make people who are feeling anxious and don’t trust the process think that they will feel better.  The answer is to trust the accumulated experience that the process works well – this will give you much more relief from anxiety and will truly make you feel better.

Possibly related posts:

• My 20 GovCamp 2012 thoughts
• What happened to November?
• UKGovCamp 2012 – your thoughts, please!
• Telling tales
• Thank you, LocalGovCamp sponsors!

Observations on #savetheintern

If you are reading this post it’s probably because you are interested in a trending hashtag on Twitter – #savetheintern. There have been hundreds of comments, questions,humorous one liners and attempts at satire, as well as a small amount of legitimate journalistic enquiry. To be honest, I haven’t got the spiritual energy to personally reply to them all. So here’s a bullet point list of answers to many of the questions that have been posed, as well as a few things I would like to get of my chest:

1. My intern is a student and paid above the minimum wage.
2. She is contracted for a year to work part time.
3. People have asked why I have not deleted the offending tweet. The reason is simple. It’s impossible to delete anything once it is published on the internet. To do so would just have lead to screen grabs of the offending tweet reaching a wider audience. I’ll delete it later today when the fuss dies down though. So if, for some weird reason, you do want to screen grab the tweet, do so quickly.
4. The Sun political team retweeted the comment. Given the grievance recently taken out against the Sun’s political editor Tom Newton-Dunn, this was foolish.
5. Journalists on the Times have been ringing people to find more information about the intern. Do you think I don’t know your motives? Please show some decorum.
6. Yes, she’s very embarrassed. She’s also a little intimidated by stories of the Times and the Sun trying to dig up stuff about her.
7. Three journalists have asked for more information. I have given them as much as I can whilst protecting the privacy of a young intern who is not seeking a public profile. I was surprised the BBC didn’t phone to check facts before they published their online story.
8. The intern has not been sacked nor was she ever going to be. She’s young. We all make mistakes.
9. I know her well enough to know she’ll never do this sort of thing again.
10. And yes, I know I should have logged out. I really do. Thank you to the people who pointed that out.
11. For those that have asked – all my tweets, other than the two this morning, are my own.
12. Though my account wasn’t technically ‘hacked’, yes, I do understand the irony of what happened.
13. Once again, I am sorry.

On a more serious note, don’t you think this parliamentary answer to a question about data deletion from Tim Loughton MP is unusually constructed?

The right to be forgotten – II

I first blogged about this during my early blogging days. The reason why I have come back to this is because of recent coverage of Facebook’s announcement regarding the compulsory Timeline, and due to the announcement from the EU Justice Commissioner regarding the reform of data protection within the EU. I strongly recommend reading the FAQs on data protection reform from the EU.

Not so long ago, I zapped my Facebook account. Most of the people who I was ‘friends’ with had long since ceased interacting with me in any meaningful way. In the five years I had that account, I changed significantly as a person – to the extent that the way that I was using social media then was completely different to how I use it today. Even considering incorporating such an account into my current activities was a non-starter – as I explained to the few people who queried why I was closing it. The fact that only a handful of people asked why I was closing it showed that in recent times at least, my interactions on Facebook were the equivalent of shouting very loudly in a forest surrounded by nothing but the trees.

So I chose to be forgotten.

I’ll need to create a new account though – primarily for business/work purposes. I’ve already had inquiries about delivering training that incorporates Facebook. This is a challenge in itself. What do you do if you want to move away from a certain platform that your potential customers are asking you to deliver training on?

But what price privacy? 

This was something Leveson dealt with today when cross-examining Richard Allan of Facebook today:

Having dealt with the product in outline, and the corporate structure, can I ask you, as I did with the witnesses from Google, a little bit about Facebook’s approach to privacy in principle, please.  Can we start with the document at tab 11 of the bundle.  It’s an article published by the Guardian on 11 January 2010, so just over two years ago, reporting the words of the Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and he was saying that he thought that privacy was no longer a social norm.

He’s quoted as saying — I’m looking at the third paragraph: “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people.  That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.” Can I ask you: what it is Facebook’s approach in principle to the privacy of information? [See Leveson 26 Jan 2012]

Allan (for Facebook) responded:

…Our core raison d’etre is to give people the ability to share personal information with others. But crucial to that is the notion that the individual controls what information they’re sharing and who they may share it with, so they control both the content and the audience.

I have a number of issues around this. The first is the awareness that people have of what others can do with the personal information that they share. It may seem counter-intuitive for Facebook given the above, but I think the firm has a wider social responsibility to help educate people on issue of information security.

This is not just about personal safety – vitally important though it is. It’s also about how firms can use personal data and information that people have put up on their social media accounts to target them with adverts, or taking the mainstream economics concept of price discrimination to an individual level. Online behavioural pricing – a firms’ dream and a consumers’ nightmare. In a nutshell firms using your internet history to decide which goods and services you are statistically more likely to pay more for, and upping the price accordingly – and doing so for each person individually. I really hope it does not come to this.

There is also arguably a cultural issue (reflected by the differences in the legal systems) between Europe and the USA on privacy and personal information. One of the things that has tripped up a number of American firms in the past is over jurisdiction on their activities. Whose law applies? Yahoo vs France over the issue of war memorabilia is a classic case. One of the other things that causes friction between the EU and the USA is data protection. EU laws are much stronger – something reflected by the air passenger data negotiations that have only recently been resolved.

What about people who have grown up with social media?

Young people who started their social media accounts while still at secondary school are now starting to graduate from university, or are already in or looking to enter the workplace. How many firms have done internet searches on candidates that have applied for their vacancies? Are you aware of any candidate who has been dropped like a stone because of a dodgy message on a web board or social media platform, or perhaps a compromising photo from freshers’ week? I’m used to ‘competency-based’ interviewing styles as far as job applications are concerned. Amongst other things, it’s crystal clear as to what criteria you will be assessed against. Should prospective employers make it clear in their job adverts that applicants will be subjected to internet searches about their past as part of the assessment process? On one side it could be a gross invasion of privacy, while on the other hand it could reveal where a candidate has been lying in their application form. The line becomes blurred. Emma Barnett of The Telegraph goes into further detail saying that we must fight for the right to be forgotten online.

For those of you who have or know of children who are at school/college, please point them in the direction of the Information Commissioner’s Youth Advice pages. Help them to protect themselves.

Activity Streams Meet the World of Manufacturing

 Guest Blogger

These days, activity streams seem to be popping up everywhere in enterprise tech as vendors rush to add social features to their software. Twitter and Facebook-like streams are even starting to gain traction in manufacturing software. Two of the most prominent examples of vendors incorporating activity stream data into their manufacturing user interface (UI) are cloud enterprise resource planning vendors: Kenandy and NetSuite.

Incorporating activity stream data into manufacturing software UIs has important  implications for collaboration manufacturing environments. For instance, it enables rapid information sharing between sales teams and production teams to provide instant updates on things like purchase orders. However, I think the impact that activity streams can have on manufacturing software UIs is potentially much more interesting. Activity streams represent a radically new take on ERP Uis and have the potential to change the way users interact with their systems.

Activity Streams Create More Social Manufacturing UIs

One of the things I find interesting about activity streams in manufacturing software is that it alters the dynamic of how users interact with their software. Historically, manufacturing software has been a place where transactional information is simply input and calculations are run. For example, the bill of materials had to be entered and stored so that the material requirements planning application could run and produce reports.

While this is still largely the function of all manufacturing software, activity streams add a twist to the mix. They allow employees and supervisors to share analysis on the reports that are generated and the transactional information that’s input into the MRP ERP system. This offers users an opportunity to look at data and create an interactive conversation about what the data means and what action should given the results. It’s a more human way of interacting with ERP.

Three Further Innovations Activity Streams Can Spur

Beyond allowing users to enrich transactional data, I think that activity streams carry three other important implications for manufacturing software UIs. If incorporated, these features could help to further improve the way that manufacturers operate their shop floors. Activity streams could be use to:

1. Automate reminders that keep projects flowing. A key benefit of an activity stream is that it automatically updates subscribed users with the latest action taken. An activity stream could be used to update every employee on their current and future tasks, directly from the system. This would keep projects flowing while enabling employees to plan ahead for future projects.

2. Stream educational reminders along with tasks. Activity streams allow employees to engage in a virtual conversation about a particular topic. Through these conversations, employees inevitably share educational information. Manufacturing UIs should aggregate this information and attach the bits of wisdom to tasks that employees routinely have to perform. While many systems have wikis built into their software, a stream with this information attached proactively delivers the right information at the right time to the right individuals.

3. Aggregate the most pressing tasks for immediate action. A final benefit I see in activity streams is that it keeps employees abreast of the highest-priority action items. Manufacturing UIs could create an automatically generated list of the most important tasks to accomplish on the shop floor. For instance, an order may need to be completed and rushed to an important client prior to starting on a new purchase order. A manufacturing UI that can order tasks by importance would help manufacturers become more efficient.

This article is adapted from an article that originally appeared on Software Advice – a resource for manufacturing software. You can find the original article at: The Benefits of Activity Streams in Manufacturing UIs.

Investing in the UK’s most successful cities is the surest recipe for national growth

Wage inequalities between North and South in the UK and the dominance of the financial services sector over other industries have proven resistant to numerous policy interventions throughout the last few decades. Henry Overman argues that prioritising growth in the UK’s more successful cities may make the most economic sense.

Yesterday’s depressing economic growth figures, Tuesday’s announcement by Greg Clark on city mayors and Monday’s City Outlook from Centre for Cities have got me thinking again about urban economic policy and the role of cities in UK economic growth.

For some time now it has seemed to me that there is a fundamental, but unresolved, tension concerning the economic objectives for UK cities. On the one hand, government wants to maximise their economic potential. On the other government wants rebalancing both in terms of a shift away from financial services and geographically (from south to north). Of course, some will argue that these policy objectives are not in conflict. Most urban economists would disagree. If we do need to choose (at least in the sense of prioritising one over the other) what should we do? Overall, at least for the UK, I think the evidence points towards prioritising growth in our more successful cities even if this leads to more uneven spatial development. Let me explain why.

Disparities across local areas in Britain are pronounced and very persistent but much of these disparities are driven by ‘people’ rather than ‘place’

Let’s start with the underlying drivers of spatial disparities. In recent SERC research we assess the extent of and persistence in wage disparities across labour market areas in Britain. We examine to what extent these area differences arise because of differences in the characteristics of people who live in different places – ‘sorting’ – versus different outcomes for the same types of people living in different places – ‘area effects’. We also consider the extent to which these differences across areas contribute to overall individual wage disparities. Our research finds that between 1998 and 2008 there were few changes in area disparities, despite many policy interventions. It also turns out that who you are is much more important than where you live in determining earnings (and other outcomes). Area effects only play a small role in the overall wage dispersion.

Earnings disparities are uninformative about differences in people’s overall wellbeing unless we take account of differences in the cost of living and the availability of amenities

Such disparities between different cities and different labour markets concern policymakers because they seem to imply differences in standards of living and economic welfare. In fact, however, this is not the case. Our research shows that across Britain increased living costs (particularly of housing) tend to offset completely increased wages for the average household. In terms of real earnings (conditional on skill) it doesn’t make that much difference where you live in Britain.

In short, looking at area differences greatly exaggerates the importance of place in determining individual wellbeing. Of course, the evidence says that place does play some role in determining wages so there is a question about whether or not we should try to address these area effects. If, say, Hull’s economy is doing relatively badly because of the combination of lower skilled workers and bad area effects, shouldn’t we try to address both?

It is very hard for policy to change area effects

Unfortunately, evaluation of specific policies suggests that it is very hard to change area effects. Details on that will have to wait for another day, but for the purposes of this post let me simply point to the fact that our research suggests that a decade of fairly significant intervention left underlying area effects essentially unchanged. It’s asking a lot for the current government to achieve any bigger impact with much less money.

It is very easy for policy to drive up the cost of living

In contrast to the difficulties in reducing area effects it is very easy for government to do things that drive up the cost of living in our more successful places. The most obvious way in which we do this is through constraints imposed by the land use planning system. If you can’t do much to tackle underlying area effects, then an alternative is to allow people to move to areas where they will do better. Of course, you might think that this is a second best option. But the evidence suggests that it is likely to be the first best feasible option.

The need to focus spending

But what should government do in terms of the limited amount of expenditure that it is able or willing to make? Given the difficulties in addressing area effects, as discussed above, there’s a strong case for trying to build on success. Of course, success can be relative so this might call for focusing investment in, say, Birmingham, Leeds, London and Manchester. Again this is a matter of prioritising, rather than a call for all expenditure to go to a select set of places.

More uneven spatial development: good economics, bad politics?

Investing in more successful cities to either enhance the economy or reduce cost of living clearly exacerbates uneven spatial development. But I have tried to argue that this may make for good economic policy in a world where who you are matters more than where you are and the government can’t do much to offset the market forces that make some places perform worse than others. Of course, adopting such a course, and prioritising growth over rebalancing makes for very difficult politics for constituency based politicians.

Henry G. Overman will be speaking at the LSE on 30 January on ‘What should urban economic policy do? Lessons for London’. Event information is available online.

This post originally appeared on the LSE’s Spatial Economics Research Centre blog. 

Please read our comments policy before posting

You may also be interested in the following posts:

1. Without a greater focus on education, the government’s strategy of transferring more power to cities may struggle to deliver growth.
2. The economic benefits of high speed rail in Europe can now be demonstrated beyond doubt. Now the UK should consider investing in HSR as well
3. Investing in a new High Speed line will provide a once in a generation chance to improve rail services

Poor benchmarking data threatens government IT overhaul

Media Regulation: Case for a Press Ombudsman

I resume this post on press regulation warily [the first part is here]. After all, no less an authority than the editor of the Daily Mirror informed Lord Leveson’s enquiry that bloggers are cowboys. Perhaps, instead of sharing ideas we considered on the design of a future regulator at the Democratic Society roundtable before Christmas, I should wait for the marshals of the tabloid press to produce thoughtful front-page spreads on the subject. But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, so with six shooter loaded, spurs jangling, and chaps swaying in the breeze, I mosey on into the It’s Not O.K. Corral.

Leveson is considering a range of matters, from criminal abuses to the disputed terrain of privacy. But press criminality should properly be the concern of a hitherto lax police force. The excessive dominance of certain media players could be tackled by considering market share, the province of an existing regulator, the Competition Commission. Recent witnesses have warned against new statutory restrictions. So unless Leveson recommends a new privacy law, which none of the pre-Christmas panel advocated, what would be left for a new regulator to regulate?

Plenty, in my view.

Katie Price gets doorstepped by photographers. Difficult to get excited by this if no law is broken: her wealth and fame depend on a cultivated symbiosis with the media. But if the same treatment is meted out to a “private” individual, it looks different. And imagine that individual was the subject of stories hinting, on mere supposition, they were complicit in a crime.

A political party sees the worst constructions put upon its motives by a hostile newspaper. Provided the coverage isn’t libellous, tough. Same for big businesses, corporations, football teams. They are big and ugly enough to take it. But the same treatment to a local charity or a corner shop?

No one was specifically libelled by The Sun’s Hillsborough coverage on 19th April 1989. But an entire community felt besmirched. But how would redress be pursued? A legal action: City of Liverpool versus News International?

In many areas of life, public service, for example, there are bodies which people individually or collectively can approach and seek redress outside the courts. Complainants may lack resources to pursue legal action. They may not actually want damages, but simply an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and an apology, or they may have been treated unfairly but within the letter of the law. One can easily imagine something like this for complaints against the print media: a body hearing claims from members of the public that they had been unfairly pursued or traduced by a newspaper.

Would it be a regulator? Many myths abound about regulators. Time for a few truths.

Regulation suggests standards, rules and procedures, inspection, licensing or permits. Regulation suggests all these things. But regulators rarely do them all. Some regulators issue licences. Many have competence to inspect categories of business, but do not licence or control market entry. Economic regulators may not inspect individual businesses at all, but uphold market standards – competition, fair pricing – to protect consumers. Some regulators develop laws. Others police laws set elsewhere. Whenever a regulator is established, it is almost always an innovation of range, scope and competence. It is possible to create proportionate, risk-based and non-invasive regulators that leave most businesses alone and focus relentlessly on wrongdoers. And it is possible to create overbearing, intrusive, meddlesome regulators that fail to spot wrongdoings because they cannot see the wood for the trees.

Further, it is simplistic to equate regulation with state control. Plenty of regulators are statutory and funded from general taxation. But independence from ministerial control is often a defining characteristic.

One group of independent, publicly funded, quasi-regulatory bodies are the various Ombudsmen. They do not inspect, but respond to complaints. Funded by government, they are not subject to political control. Indeed, the Local Government Ombudsman regularly finds against politicians and administrations of all political shades.

A publicly funded Press Ombudsman could develop and promulgate standards and then receive complaints.

This sounds a bit like the Press Complaints Commission. However, it would not suffer that body’s “producer capture”, which Leveson clearly sees as a major problem. Neither would it be the repressive thought police of news editor imagining. Established by statute, it could be subject to guaranteed long-term funding and non-departmental (ie not overseen by a minister). Senior officials could be Crown appointments, but not selected by the Prime Minister, chosen instead by an independent recruitment panel drawn from a range of stakeholders, including the public. And the Ombudsman could avoid becoming a rich celebrity’s privacy shield by concerning itself with the comparative “vulnerability” of claimants.

Leveson sniped at the PCC in recent exchanges, describing it as a mere complaints handler. Our putative Ombudsman would have to be more than that to satisfy him. It would need real teeth.

The Local Government Ombudsman specialises in restorative justice. This approach might have force with print media. Being required to print full front page apologies could cause editors to interest themselves in the factuality of their coverage. But so would the occasional imposition of very steep fines.

A Press Ombudsman would be mostly silent. It wouldn’t inspect. It wouldn’t licence. It wouldn’t meddle. Its scope would be narrow. But it would be credible, independent and carry a medium-sized stick.

This option, which we discussed at the December session, seems to me a proportionate and constructive step. It fills a perceived gap in the scheme of redress, but does not risk state control or censorship. It builds on existing arrangements, but gives them backbone.

A softly spoken but respected sheriff in the Wild West of news.

A bit of love for the Living Voters Guide (Washington state)

Via the DO-Wire mailing list, I came across a great little site set up to help voters discuss and learn about the ballot initiatives in the 2011 elections in Washington state. You can take a look here:

Your guide to the 2011 Washington Election – The Living Voters Guide.

I particularly liked the Wrangl-like “Yes/no” arguments section, the prominent links to background information (such as the fiscal impact and the full text), and the ability to enter a zip code to see whether there were any local initiatives on the ballot as well. Very nicely done.

A brief overview of technology behind Alpha.gov.uk

The blank slate the Alpha.gov.uk team was handed was a huge privilege, but threw up some unusual technical challenges. Normally when embarking on building web apps you’d expect to have some sense of the corpus of content or the core functionality early on and could make the initial technology choices based on that. Here we were starting with some notions, a few sketches, and a determination that we not constrain our user-focus by early commitments to specific technical solutions.

We were lucky to have a development team with experience of a number of different languages and frameworks, and quickly agreed that rather than try to settle on a single one of those we’d build each tool using whichever technology would most quickly get us to a relatively-durable prototype, and then “federate” them. We started with the python-based framework Django for the Department pages, added Ruby on Rails for a suite of tools focussed on specific tasks, and used Sinatra (another ruby framework) to glue together our search. If we’d continued for longer and expanded the scope of what we were building it’s quite likely that list would have grown.

That got us a few small pieces built, but we needed to join them somehow. While we’re building for google-as-the-homepage, and are committed to consistency-not-uniformity, we needed a reasonable way for our front end developers to introduce that consistency, and to overlay a few site-wide components: like the geo tools that let us target information once you’ve told us where you are. As we anticipated early on, this was where most of the development pain lay.

Our first pass was a custom proxy that all visits were fed through. It knew which pages should go to which apps, applied a standard template, and tied in those site-wide elements. But as time went on it clear that it was awkward to develop with, rather slow, and quite brittle. Eventually we broke it into several pieces, and then replaced them each in turn.

We now have a couple of reusable components that each of our apps can include as middleware that provide templating, and shared services. Above that we’re using an excellent package called Varnish to direct each visit to the correct app behind the scenes. Varnish is primarily used for caching web requests so that you don’t have to do expensive computation or talk to your database every time you display a rarely changing web page, but can also be configured to do the rest of what we needed.

Everything’s hosted on Amazon’s EC2 cloud servers (in their EU-west cluster). We’re also using their Elastic Load Balancer, and we’ve got some of our data stored on S3. Using those services has meant that we could experiment with our server configurations, add in more as needed, and quickly scale up where necessary. To co-ordinate it all we’re using a tool called Puppet, which lets us rapidly change the configuration of a whole suite of servers with a single command.

As with every aspect of Alpha.gov.uk, the code that’s been written is intended as a proof of concept. We’ve got some APIs in place (but not yet well documented) for a few of our tools (and our use of ScraperWiki has established quite a few more), we’ve established a reasonable architecture for our code, and given useful clues as to how a more mature federated system would evolve. But the real measure of what we’ve done is the degree to which it’s allowed the whole team to stay focussed on real user needs, rapidly iterating all the way.

We’re aiming to have some of that code ready to open source within the next couple of weeks, and will be giving more detail on some specific components as time goes on.

Update: We’ve also produced a colophon, so that’s the place to go if you want a fairly exhaustive list of the different tools.

What’s the deal with place names?

We knew very early on that Alpha.gov.uk was going to work best if it had a sense of where in the country (or world) its visitors are coming from. Knowing that means it can provide you with information on where your nearest police station is, or default to your nation’s Bank Holidays or direct you to your local council if they’re the ones who provide the service you’re looking for.

Geonames service and showing that. We know it’s crude, but it quickly gets us to a working prototype. Which is what we’re here for.

There’s work under way already to refine that approach. As I write this two of the team are experimenting with some changes, which may even be live by the time you read this. But it’s going to be an ongoing process. We’ve talked about feedback tools that would allow us to build and refine our own database of what people call the area around a postcode, learning from the way people tag photos on sites like flickr, or a few other approaches. Those aren’t considerations for this alpha.

We’d love your feedback and ideas on this (and everything else). Let us know what you think.

The mobile question: Responsive Design

Directgov has had a mobile website since 2005. To put this into context, the top selling device that year was the Nokia 1110 (pictured below) – so as you can imagine we were quite limited with what we could achieve.

Since then, mobile has exploded. Digital cameras, email, mp3 players, games, maps and more  - mobile has been described as the remote control for your life.

We’re now seeing around 9% of visits to Directgov coming via a mobile device and we’ll see over 2 million visits to the mobile site in January. The recent Businessinyou campaign saw 17% of it’s traffic coming from mobile.

Up until now, the Directgov mobile site has existed as a different entity to the full website. It’s built on an entirely separate platform, taking feeds from the main website for its content and using a database of handsets (known as WURFL) to identify mobile devices and screen sizes. It works – but it’s not ideal.

In addition, our users are now accessing the internet on an ever increasing variety of devices: tablets, laptops, smartphones, feature phones, desktop computers, TVs, gaming consoles and more. So what’s the best way of building a site that works across all these devices, and is future-proofed for new devices coming to the market?

Introducing responsive design

With Government making rapid progress towards a single domain, we’re presented with a fantastic opportunity to start from scratch. So, for the first time in Government, following in the footsteps of the Business In You campaign site (made by Helpful Technology)  GDS is turning to responsive design – a solution that we think can offer a high quality user experience that is both easy to use and performs consistently across a massive range of devices and screen sizes.Simply put, responsive design is the discipline of building a website based on a flexible grid system, where the elements on the page rearrange themselves depending on the size of the browser being used.

It works by using a series of cascading style sheets (CSS) that tell the page how to behave. The style sheets ask a number of questions (called media queries), to find the width of the browser being used, which then tell the page to respond with the correct style for that page width. You can then make further style decisions such as image resizing, touchscreen features, etc. as appropriate.

It’s also pretty handy for optimising the web page on non-maximised browsers and for tablet and smartphone users who can choose between a portrait page orientation or landscape.

It’s important to remember though that it can be slow to download full web pages (with added CSS) over a mobile network and potentially expensive for users on pay-as-you-go (or limited) data tariffs. And some low-end mobiles don’t support CSS. Luckily there’s a very elegant solution to this too…

It’s known as progressive enhancement. If you design your website for mobile first, and then add extra style sheets for larger devices, then you solve both the CSS problem and the data problem in one fell swoop. Progressive enhancement means that you make the most basic version of your site (i.e. mobile) the default version and then build outwards, adding extra layers of style as the browser size gets bigger.

We wanted to build responsive design into the ‘Citizen Beta’ when we were in the planning phase back in August, but large scale implementations were very thin on the ground.  We felt it still had some evolving to do before we were ready to commit to using it, and our priority has always been to get something up as quickly as possible so we can begin iterating.

But the digital world moves fast and we’ve had to be nimble to keep up. By the time work on the shared gov.uk ‘corporate’ publishing platform kicked off in September, responsive design was firmly on the scene.  Hence we’ve incorporated it in the upcoming corporate publishing platform beta, and we’ll also be looking to roll it out across the rest of the GOV.UK beta shortly afterwards.

We think this is a great solution for optimising a site across a whole range of devices and you can expect to see it roll out as part of GOV.UK in the coming months. We’ll be covering this in more detail here as we progress.

Colin Harrall is working on the GDS mobile team

Filed under: Directgov, GDS, Single government domain