NHS World Service

Making the UK government's ambitions for free data real requires simple demonstrations of what can be done to help citizens. Attending the launch event yesterday at Downing Street I was reminded of a proof of concept I did a year or so ago to free up the government's excellent, unbiased health advice online.

The web is awash with health care information but it can be hard to work out what to trust - did this piece of advice come from a drug company, was it influenced by a crazy politician or by an insurance company or religious group? The UK is very lucky to have the huge and expensive resource of NHS Direct online that does a good job of providing unbiased free health advice to all comers on the internet. But if you aren't from the UK you won't have heard of it. Even though there is a fair bit of non-English language content.

I mashed NHS Direct up with elements of the BBC World Service model to ask if developing countries would find the NHS Direct data set useful to repurpose in their own cultural context, rather then write their own, or worse still buy it from a big consultancy or drugs company with a world Bank grant. The idea got a good wind inside Whitehall but couldn't find a neat home to implement.

Gary Ashby of NHS Choices was at the Downing Street event too - he tells me that they are already working with Kenya to do something like this - so with his permission and to get a debate going, I publish the internal slides here. The slides are not a statement of policy, they are/were a discussion paper and are Crown Copyright, allowing you to reuse them freely.

NHS World Service

View more presentations from william perrin.

Citizens empowered by information

The new Cabinet Office survey of public service best practice has a strong power of information theme.

In late 2006 I was in the Cabinet Office trying to work out how the new wave of web2.0 activity applied to government. Since 2004 I had been working with what became the mysociety collective. Although never a paid up member of mysociety, I would often find myself as the link between external disruptive innovation and internal discomfort as i reassured civil servants who were suddenly victim of unplanned innovation. I followed closely all the other stuff mysociety got up to.

By 2006 it was clear that the new web technologies were becoming pervasive - not just a spot effect, but a more profound wave of change. Opportunities lay not only in reusing public information, but also in working with information people themselves were creating. We could see very large groups emerging online debating public policy issues such as childcare for instance. Hilary Armstrong MP the then Cabinet Office Minister and a former social worker could see how groups like netmums were enormously helpful to parents and rightsnet to social workers and benefits advisors.

So with David Halpern in the Strategy Unit, backed by Andrew Stott now Director Digtial Engagement and John Suffolk the UK Government CIO we commissioned the Power of Information Review for Hilary Armstrong to work out what this was about. Lots of work has flowed from Tom Steinberg and Ed Mayo's original report.

Cabinet Office Strategy Unit have today published a global survey of best practice in using information along the POI lines. The chapter on empowering citizens in the information age is an interesting round up of what is going on. The conclusion is good:

New technologies are providing opportunities to open up information as never before. Governments around the world are responding to this technological revolution by re-evaluating the approach they take to information transparency. The shift required, however, is more than just a technical one. The starting point for government in countries such as the USA, which are at the leading edge of information transparency, is that government information should be in the public domain and easily available for use and re-use by citizens. This approach is underpinned by freedom of information legislation and practices which actively promote openness in government. Across other countries, government cultures will similarly need to change, possibly prompted by changes in legislation.

The final sentence is the important thing- the real benefits of the power of information require culture change, not actually legislation, nor even much money. To get this culture change political leadership is vital, but so is administrative leadership by the civil service cadres. Financial incentives always help of course. The technology community can support this if they keep showing directly what the potential is with clear vivid examples that relate to public service goals.

An open, digital Iraq inquiry

Lord Hutton's 2003/4 inquiry in the death of David Kelly was a model of open-ness and transparency, unusual in Britain at that time. Freedom of Information is still in its early days in Britain and daily transcripts live video, documents made avialble online were a novelty in 2003. The 2004 Butler Review into the intelligence failures around Iraqi WMD was a secretive affair, in part because it dealt with intelligence. Sir John Chilcot, head of the new Iraq inquiry served on the Butler review.

The Iraq inquiry has already got into a dispute over secrecy and open-ness. It seems to his credit that Sir John is pro-openness where possible. How could his new Iraq inquiry use modern online methods to better Lord Hutton and become a model for digital transparency?

COI and the Government's Director of Digital Engagement are already no doubt advising the new Inquiry Secretary, Margaret Aldred on an approach. HMSO who handled the MPs expenses publication and redaction will also be in the loop I guess. But I thought it would be interesting to try a Blackhall approach and bring many external minds to bear. Blackhall is a metonym for a Whitehall that embraces modern collaborative working tools and greater transparency see this post, slides and a paper on Blackhall.

This post is inspired by Sir Tim Berners Lee's recent note on publishing government data and my late night experience of marking up my MPs expenses on the Guardian's superb crowdsourced expenses website.

Some of the following might sound a bit 'techy' or complicated to the uninitiated. It is just good practice and low cost to implement. In many cases small up front investments bring large downstream benefits and cost savings.

Documents

The Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office are good at paper trails in making decisions. There will no doubt be very large quantities of documents for the inquiry. The Scott inquiry into arms to Iraq received 130,000 documents. There will, quite rightly, be some redaction of names and posts to protect people. Redaction is usually done manually with a marker pen and the document rescanned and pdf'd or in som cases TIFFed. So you can't tell by looking at the electronic file what is in it without reading it. A search engine can't penetrate the innards of the scanned pdf. The same applies to any document that has been scanned to a pdf. For people going through huge numbers of pdfs this electronic opacity slows things down enormously and adds to expense, cost and frustration for all concerned.

A tiny investment as the documents are sent by departments to the inquiry would work wonders. It is possible to put electronic labels or 'tags' on the documents so that computers and search engines can tell what is in them without having a human to read. This information about what is in a document is known as 'metadata'. Books have metadata - the index, ISBN number, title etc that make them easier to use - electronic documents have something similar that you can't see but the computer can when say you are searching for it.

Metadata, like making dictionaries is dull work. But the inquiry can insist on the format of information sent to it electronically. If it were to ask for basic metadata in each document it would greatly speed their prioritisation and later re examination. What metadata should be in each file?

• Date of origination
• for a communication, name from
• name to
• title of document as written
• place of origination
• keywords that describe content, including names of units, people mentioned etc
• if map or image description of what it is representation of
• any unique reference number in the original document
• reference number for department sending to inquiry
• inquiry reference number

In the Hutton inquiry the secretariat used the time honoured civil service technique of giving each pdf document a file name composed of the inquiry's reference number. This method is primitve and only helps the inquiry, not others.

Metadata tagging by the originator transfers cost and man hours from the inquiry team and the general public back onto the Departmental originators. Which is only right. It is an investment in transparency, democracy and openness.

The inquiry's log of documents and reference numbers should be live online

Website principles

The inquiry will have a website. What are some basic tenets it could follow to be fully open and electronically transparent?

The inquiry should procure the servcies of a competent technical advisor with proven track record in reusing information online or publishing it for reuse (not me - i am not technical enough). And perhaps assemble an informal bunch of online publishing advisors.

The inquiry should assume that interesting things will be done with the information they publish off their website by independents. And design the site accordingly following the principles of the Power of Information Taskforce report. See for instance They Work for You or the Guardian crowd sourcing of MPs expenses.

All documents, maps, images, transcripts, audio and video should be on the inquiry website as soon as they are received or created. This would be different from the Hutton inquiry where only documents used by Counsel were published. There would be some exemptions for legal correspondence.

Documents should be put online with a unique static URI/URL (or the site should in general follow RESTful principles). This means people can easily link to and reuse information.

Documents should record how many times that have been viewed and in particular be marked as not viewed if no one has looked at them.

The site should be archived to the highest standards by National Archives so that it does not disappear and its collection is held together in perpetuity. The Hutton inquiry site is archived in full.

It should not be acceptable for departments to publish evidence documents on their websites alone where there is a greater risk of links disappearing, especially with an election due in the near future which always causes disruption to departmental sites.

Google site search should run on the site (pay Google $2000 to remove adverts) not a bespoke search engine nor google enterprise box.

Documents being discussed by the inquiry on a particular day in open session should be brought to the front of the website and associated with the witnesses that day.

The site should either be designed for low bandwidth connections or have a 'low graphics' option so that it can easily be seen by people in Iraq who may have slow internet connections or older computers and browsers.

The inquiry should consider funding an Iraqi internet service provider to cache or mirror all its material locally in Iraq.

Some sort of simple API should be provided to let third parties reuse the information on the site

All material published should be free of copyright or under a permissive creative commons licence.

Video/Audio

The video stream from the inquiry should be declared to be free of copyright and for anyone to reuse. The video stream should be stored online for people to search through. Each change of speaker should be tagged in the video stream.

The time clock on the video stream should be synchronised carefully with the time stamp in the written record so the two can be matched up. (Hansard time stamps for instance are out of synch with the parliamentary video causing problems for reusers).

Audio should be treated in the same way as video. This is especially for countries such as Iraq where the bandwidth may not be available to view video easily.

Conclusion

This post has probably only scratched the surface and i may well have got some things wrong. Let me know in the comments how you could improve this.

Comments are moderated to be on topic, polite, free of conspiracy theories, sane, in english and playing the ball, not the man etc.

Declaration - I used to work for the UK government, but not on Iraq issues. This post is in an entirely personal capacity and does not represent the view of my former employers. My career details can be found on Linked In. I am currently on sabbatical running a hyperlocal startup Talk About Local.

'Blackhall' - collaborative working in Whitehall

At last year’s Civil Service Live I gave talks to about 150 people on modern ways of working in the civil service. Alex Allan, a long term champion of modernisation sponsored and chaired the sessions. It was great fun to do some free thinking on how we could work differently in what is arguably Britain’s biggest knowledge factory. In the spirit of the event I published the slides which have been viewed nearly 1,000 times. There was a strongly positive reaction from our audience, mostly front line workers who complained of ‘death by email’ and were passionate that ‘there must be a better way’.

The feedback from Civil Service Live, inspired me to set out a knowledge working vision for Whitehall – ‘Blackhall’ a ‘universe like ours but different in many ways’. With Alex's explicit permission I am publishing the Blackhall internal paper here in advance of Civil Service Live 2009 where we are taking part in a session on 'Digital Engagement' at 1115 on Wednesday 8 July at Olympia. (The paper has typos etc in it - please let me know of errors or omissions i will republish a commentable version when I have time.)

The Blackhall paper asks whether there is a cheaper, quicker, greener, better version of policy making and administration if modern ways of working are adopted in the civil service. Things like the ability to 'Google' filesystems across Departmental boundaries, fully flexible place independent working, transparent online diaries, the ability to find people with the right experience using internal directories similar to Facebook etc etc.

The Blackhall I describe is powered by a pervasive electronic working environment of the sort that you can create yourself in a low security way using free web tools. Or that is found, more securely and expensively in some knowledge businesses. It is common to see people arriving from say a management consultancy in the civil service who are baffled as to why they can't work as flexibly as they are used to. The day one experience of the Obama's Whitehouse team was instructive- 'It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari'. Whitehall though is better than the Bush Whitehouse.

Since I wrote the paper, some excellent work has been done to create a secure internal civil service wiki 'Civilwiki' - 'Blackhall' was the first substantive article and is in the top ten. And the philosophy behind the Public Sector Flex desktop is the right direction of travel.

A big obstacle to pervasive knowledge environments in Whitehall has been, historically security. Central government faces some eye watering IT and other security challenges that the private sector does not. But for the security community to manage these risks, which with great skill they often can do, a coherent vision is needed. Given Alex Allan's role in the security apparatus I am always heartened that he backs this vision. To get Blackhall across I have been asked to speak at IA09 the big government security conference.

Political leaders seem to be heading in this direction.

Tom Watson MP, when cabinet office minister said in a speech at IPPR that:

‘the policy process is a bit like building a Morgan in Malvern: a handful of people taking years to create a beautiful, hand-crafted model…but surely the future is to be more like a Toyota made in Derby, modern tools, modern processes, high-speed development and delivery.'

Adam Afriyie MP who speak for the Conservatives on new technologies said recently that new technologies:

"will make the man in Whitehall redundant". He said a Conservative government was committed to using technology to give people more power over their lives and to scrutinise and choose public services.....Do we embrace the new culture of openness, transparency and interactivity? Do we respond as if we, too, were 'born digital'? Or do we stick with the same clumsy, controlling tactics of a tired political system?"

George Osborne MP said in a newspaper diary that:
‘David Cameron and I meet…..the founders of Google and two of the most creative people I've come across. We talk about the contrast between their world and the world of government, stuck as too much of it is in a bygone bureaucratic age’. Observer 25th May 2008

I'd be interested to know what people think of 'Blackhall' - is it something worth pursuing, or are the old ways best? Can the security risks be managed? What are the obstacles? Who should lead this change? Is it something the Institute for Government should look at in their work on transition or the National School of Government? Are your knowledge tools better at work or at home? Have you got some great examples of modern knowledge working or some bygone practices you could change?

If you are a civil servant and want guidance on commenting in public then there is simple guidance here.

Disclaimer: the above is expressed in a personal capacity and does not reflect the view of the government nor the cabinet office. William Perrin is on sabbatical/special leave from the Cabinet Office running a community empowerment project Talk About Local.

Audience and cost curves - some dull micro economics

Pete Ashton has an interesting post about the changes in the distribution of media audiences. He essentially presents a flattened power curve for the relationship between audience reach and size of media outlet. The curve shape he says has changed from a teepee to a yurt. This can be expressed another way as above - illustrating that, as well as Pete's point, for the first time high reach options are available at low to zero cash cost. Old media retains the very high fixed costs (print, distribution, broadcast, transmission, legacy penions etc) making them vulnerable to market entrants with low to nil fixed costs and thus more flexibility.

I shall write more on this and the implications for the changing costs of engagement in due course.

Tom Watson MP - making leviathan twitter

In the UK, the dialogue between a government minister and their civil servants takes place behind a screen, like any good professional relationship. Exchanges are relatively stylised and formal as one might expect and some might hope. Social media in government makes that dialogue occasionally break out into public when you are least expecting it.

The recent coverage of Tom Watson reminded me of this unexpected public exchange when I was working on the Power Of Information work in the Cabinet Office. It is hard to explain to those outside the system how odd it is to see 'your Minister' suddenly popping up replying to your tweet about the work you are doing for him.


As one of the people behind the power of information work I am all for this sort of thing, but it isn't everyone's cup of tea.

Goat Carter - can Lord Carter bring free, simple wifi to the great British greasy spoon?

These happy goats in Argentina are on an isolated farm about 50 miles from Salta. The Santa Anita goat farm has a little cafe and is in the middle of nowhere on the route to the fabulous Calchaqui Valleys. The goats look happy in part because they have free wifi, so does anyone who stops off there for a cup of tea or some cheese. Like dozens of simple cafes and restaurants I visted in Argentina the cafe probably plugged in a simple wirelss router to its Telfonica Argentina broadband and provides the wifi key to his visitors.

In Britain it is a rarity for an independent cafe to do this. If you want casual, simple access to wifi to check an email, using your bargain netbook or phone then the outlook in Britain's cities is poor. Even London's West End is a free broadband desert. To my mind in a successful knowledge society, bandwidth should be plentiful enough to give some away around the edges. When you speak to foreign visitors or travel a lot outside Europe it is clear that Britain has an uncompetitive position in casual, easy, free broadband access in cafes, hotels or popular public spaces. The contrast with the USA is stark, but also with far less devleoped nations like Argentina. This seems bad for a knowledge society.

But why do so few independent cafes and hardly any of the the great British greasy spoons have free wifi for their customers? It should be there like salt, sugar, ketchup and brown sauce on the table.

The economics should be straightforward - the greasy spoon's bandwidth isn't constantly being used, the cafe owner will often pay a flat tariff so why shouldn't s/he give away bandwidth at marginal cost (ie zero) to his customers? If you want quick and simple access over a coffee or in a public space it should be free. But if you want to start filesharing video say, then you should pay for it. And public authorities should not be leading in this provision - the private service sector should be there providing this trivial service to its customers on the premesis.

In major cities there are paid for wifi services provided by say The Cloud and or BT Openzone. But they are expensive and erratic in coverage, despite their PR. This reflects a simple cost equation - it is expensive to roll a city wide network and not many people use it, compared to say a mobile phone network. Pret and Mcdonalds are belatedly starting to roll free wifi for customers but they are big corporates and indeed you have to ask why they didn't do this years ago. You can get a 3G dongle, but again it isn't cheap and requires some forethought.

The roots of this must go back to the bad old days of broadband in the UK. When broadband was in short supply in 2001ish, a rather paranoid BT was worried it would lose customers to folk sharing their broadband connection with neighbouring homes and businesses. The small print in the standard BT broadband contracts (that were resold by third parties like Tiscali etc) prohibited you from reselling or sharing your connection. A lot of campaigners were unhappy about this, but the contracts persisted for years. From a regulatory perspective, the micro economics of this seem suspect to me given what was then BT wholesale's position in the market. Only in the last few weeks has BT come out with an notionally free hotspot product for businesses to provide to their customers although still attached to the Openzone kit.

Now that almost every business that wants it can have broadband why can't the big telcos let go a little around the edges and create permissive sharing standard terms for SME and domestic broadband contracts? Indeed 'share it' is the best answer to the puzzling question of what to do with your very own 50MB connection.

So for Lord Carter is there an opportunity to bring broadband to the greasy spoon? Can the Carter work bring about a culture change amongst the telcos to encourage free wifi in cafes? If goats in Argentina have free cafe wifi, in a developing country with a rolling economic crisis, then why doesn't my greasy spoon? There must be over 100,000 small cafes in Britain - imagine bringing simple free wifi to that many high street outlets - it would palpably change the feel of our knowledge society.

I'd love to know the real answer to all this. Is this something OFCOM has looked at? Is Carter working on it ? Let me know in the comments (moderated - no abuse, rudeness, swearing pls).

Disclaimer - this piece is written in a purely personal capacity (after the theft of my 3G mobile force me to explore the high street wifi scene) and does not reflect the views of any organsiation I may have worked for.