Bunkum as a policy
Vaizey said he wants to the UK to become a "gigabit Britain" over the next ten years
Which means what, exactly?
No point in asking him, obviously.
UK.gov kicks long awaited digi strategy into long grass, blames EU referendum
The government's digital strategy will not be released until after the EU membership referendum, culture secretary Ed Vaizey has admitted. Speaking in front of a Parliamentaryselect committee yesterday, Vaizey said he wants to the UK to become a "gigabit Britain" over the next ten years. "The strategy has been drafted and is …
-
Wednesday 23rd March 2016 13:01 GMT PaulAb
Government insider response to comment
'Another source said it would help if we had a clear statement about what the government is going to do, as there has been a lot of uncertainty'
Response:
We at the department of culture and all things useless, will analyse closely the fast moving trends and requirements of Government and business. Internet speed and capability is far too important a topic to rush at like a bull in a china shop, so, we will take the precautionary position and let everything stagnate for several years but, we will have many, many meetings about it.
Under Secretary of Moats and Expenses
-
-
Thursday 24th March 2016 11:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: It could be used to rebuild GOV.UK
"Best practice" is now (1) throw up any excuse for a prototype and give yourself a kiss, retweet your genius and selfies at stand-ups: then (2) "iterate wildly" (PaulS, CEO, DTO Australia) without concern for budget, time or stability. In an era of limitless funding there is no reason to ever (a) finish, (b) be in any way embarrassed, (c) lose your job. When too much iteration is barely enough ...
Should I understand that the standard of code in GOV.UK is crap? JordanH and Co produced a liability and not an asset? Now onward to GOV.AU. How much fun can a Koala bear?
-
-
Wednesday 23rd March 2016 13:55 GMT TitterYeNot
I looked it up, but... I'm aware that 'gigabit Britain' isn't meant to mean anything at all in the first place, but purdah still has my stymied.
'Purdah' is the political practice of delaying government announcements till after an election, or in this case the EU referendum, to avoid accusations of unfairly influencing the vote.
'Gigabit Britain' to a politician means a gigantic bit of erm, oh, I don't know, my permanent secretary tried to explain it to me, but I don't really understand this technical stuff and I don't think he does either, but it'll be really good for Britain, really...
-
-
-
Wednesday 23rd March 2016 21:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
I doubt it. A more probable explanation is that both politicians and civil servants will seize any excuse to put off anything that might be either embarrassing, or involve a modicum of hard work. Look at what happnened when they asked Sir John Chilcot to write a report on the rationale for the Iraq War. Ten million quid later, and seven years later, and we've still seen nothing.
The moral of both the article and Chilcot is "never send a civil servant to do a man's job; Or a woman's, or even an indolent, spotty teenager's".
-
-
Thursday 24th March 2016 10:56 GMT BurnT'offering
rebuild GOV.UK, as the current code quality is not up to scratch
Really? I thought it was the bestest possible code in the universe. And, hey, you need really advanced 'code' to serve a bunch of web pages and run a search engine. And it's open source, with a vibrant developer community (all working inside GDS, for pay, but I'm sure the tipping point will, be reached soon)
Verify isn't actually all that bad as an ID service - that is if you exclude the tiny chunk actually provided by GDS. And if you fall into the customer base actually able to use it (i.e. people who already have a digital footprint) and you're not one of those weird edge cases (e.g. a child).
Anyway, £450m doesn't go far these days. It barely buys you a 3% of a broken-by-design Universal Credit system - or a paper-based Rural Payments System.
GDS - where SLA means Sips Latte All-day
Biting the hand that feeds IT
