Last 7m non-digital Brits are OUT OF LUCK: I'm OFF, says Baroness Fox Gasps were heard in places as far from Westminster as London's Brewer Street as news spread that the government's DIGITAL CHAMPION has quit her role. The job may not be finished - given that a staggering 7 million citizens made up mainly of elderly, disabled and unemployed folk have never been online - but dot-com …
revolution
rɛvəˈluːʃ(ə)n/Submit
noun
1.
a forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favour of a new system.
"the country has had a socialist revolution"
synonyms: rebellion, revolt, insurrection, mutiny, uprising, riot, rioting, rising, insurgence, insurgency, coup, overthrow, seizure of power, regime change; More
(in Marxism) the class struggle which is expected to lead to political change and the triumph of communism.
noun: Revolution; noun: the Revolution
"when I grew up it was the Marxism that was very strong, it was like the revolution was coming next week"
a dramatic and wide-reaching change in conditions, attitudes, or operation.
"marketing underwent a revolution"
synonyms: dramatic change, radical change, drastic/radical alteration, complete shift, sea change, metamorphosis, transformation, conversion, innovation, breakaway; More
2.
an instance of revolving.
"one revolution a second"
synonyms: single turn, turn, rotation, circle, whirl, twirl, spin, wheel, roll, round, cycle, circuit, lap More
It's being built by GDS, will do a fraction of what the Government Gateway does (which is being switched off next year, so no pressure there then); is based on the SAML protocol (so no AD integration, but that's ok because we can haz identities in Mongo*); and best (worst?) of all, doesn't, and will not use privacy enhancing technologies (PET). I mean PET in the sense of U-Prove (or CredLib), and not the Information Commissioner's more general sense.
The upshot is that if GDS get their way, your bank, or Vodafone, Experian or Equifax (i.e. whichever identity provider you end up with) will know that you're being treated for amoebiasis because you're using your digital identity to get your amoebicide prescription. Or (less embarrassing, but equally sensitive), that you're suddenly unemployed and claiming tax credits (oh, wait...).
Quite sad really. Take a great technology (identity federation), and do a half-arsed job because GDS is dogmatic about open source, and wields said dogma through the hands of 20-something script-kiddies that haven't seen an enterprise system, let along built one. The other elephant in the room is the choice of Identity Provider. In the UK there are only two logical options (ideally a combination of the two) - the Home Office, and the DVLA. And even those two come with huge privacy implications...
But hey, it's all good. When labour wins the next election the GDS guys will move on to cushy private sector jobs, and some new version of Martha Lane Fox will scrap GDS and invent a new thing, just as what happened to Directgov.
* Unfair maybe. I've no idea what their identity providers intend using.
Oh I can tell you've been there. I think she's found out what the rest of us have. Dealing with IT change in govt means fighting everyone, all the time and getting nowhere. Everyone else has generations of "how to fuck you over" training to rely on, BFFs that scratch each other's backs, an unlimited supply of elephant traps and a retirement date to allow new blood in to carry the group c***ism on forever...
...and you don't. To anyone thinking of applying for or considering Dave's request to come on this job...do yourself a favour...don't.
That, I think, may have been the point.
The superficial Web 2.0-ified GOV.UK front door generates all the Lane Fox/GDS column inches and dubious industry design awards. But once you need to get actual things done you quickly end up back on the legacy DirectGov sites.
Yes, I was wondering what the article was saying until I noticed that the branding was still direct.gov.
Mind you, the DVLA site(s) were always a bit different, because they were run directly from servers in Swansea, rather than on the main direct.gov servers. You used direct.gov to find them, and then everything else EVL and DRP was done from Swansea (with a bit from a mainframe in Salford, but I think that went several years back).
But the systems in Swansea went effectively into maintenance only mode (no new developments) back in 2008 when everything was going pear-shaped, so I guess that the people to change the branding are no longer there (my contract was not renewed, and lots of people were re-deployed away from DVLA by IBM and Fujitsu).
Sounds like the gov.uk site is still just a front.
Right, smart-arse, now try changing the address on your driving license.
At the point where you've entered your last three addresses and it still hasn't asked you for the new one, and then tells you you can't renew your driving license because the photo on your passport is too old, let's see if you're still such a fan.
" Right, smart-arse, now try changing the address on your driving license."
Been there, done that. Just 3 weeks ago in fact.
Afrer filling it all in they said they'd send me a form to sign and I'd to include a photo, because I'm an old fart from before photo-id's had been invented.
Payment was taken online (I lost my old license years ago ), I received the form and only had to sign and date it (as did the poor sod who had to vouch for my photo), and post it back in the supplied freepost envelope.
Job done!
I was a bit peed off that I couldn't complete it online, but that was because I somewhat optimistically thought I could get away with not requiring a bloody driving ID card.
Yep. You jump through all the hoops, tell it various bits of info, including move-dates for the past 5 years then it drops you out saying that the photo is too old. So you fill in the paper form, post it to 'em, and a week later they send the newly-addressed license with the perfectly-ok old photo on it. Go figure!
"Your work has helped establish a digital culture at the heart of government. That culture, in turn, is transforming how government works and stimulating a new digital economy, improving millions of lives every day," The PM said in a personal letter to Comrade Lane Fox.
If I walk down my local high street looking at the closed down shops and generally faltering local economy how does this of what Cameron speaks translates into real life hereabouts?
@BongoJoe
You can tweet a picture on your smart phone as you avoid the puke on the corner and step right in the dog turd. Nowt changed since the 1980s with this lot.
The Tramp: I'll be in the doorway opposite, in the sleeping bag, ordering a pizza on my smart-phone, that will be delivered by a mini-cab driven by a Latvian postgraduate student funding her research into nuclear waste management. There is a mad poetry in all this. Downriver by Iain Sinclair springs to mind.
My mother-in-law has a habit giving work to men who knock the door. If she was given a computer, the chances are good that all her savings would end up in West Africa. That's if she could use it at all; she still doesn't understand her new digital television. I'm sure she would love to watch her grandchildren on Facebook and be able to email them and so forth, and every now and then I consider getting her on-line, but always decide that it is just too dangerous.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
