Comments on: If I could commission one government IT project

By: Tom Loosemore

Tom Loosemore — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:24:44 +0000

Lynne, you should enter this idea into the ShowUsABetterWay.com competition for ideas to re-use Government data. You migth win 20k from Tom Watson, which would be fabulously ironic.

What’s more, the site just persuaded the Royal Mail to release the entire postcode address file to people wanting to enter.

http://www.showusabetterway.co.uk/call/data.html#mail

So someone could now build a prototype of your idea without the hassle of negotiating a licence for postcode data with the Royal Mail (often long and painful, as well as costly in the past)

By: Lee Griffin

Lee Griffin — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:06:23 +0000

I too want to say that Lynne, I know I’ve commented on your blog in the past with my honest opinions and sometimes they’ve been against your views, and for instance recently I disagree with how readily you’re taking on board this equality bill idea…but I really appreciate the way you converse with people and engage with them. Same view point or not, I hope a lot more MPs take a leaf out of your book when it comes to getting in tune with current communication technology.

By: Anastasia Christofis

Anastasia Christofis — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:05:32 +0000

Here, Here, I agree with Thomas.
(even though I am unsure what D Lammy was criticized for. I only know he has been against some of the Gambling Licenses in Green Lanes, which is no bad thing. Tell me more…)
The lovely Lynne Featherstone is one of our more approachable M.P s and I have noticed she does put up a good fight on our behalf. Credit where credit is due.
Having thought more about the postcode link to services on line via e mail, I have realised that it could be very useful indeed, though I am not sure of the technicalities myself nor the costs.
In terms of sustainable develpment it makes sense if people are aware of what help is available to them in their local area, improving access to existing services and reducing the need to travel unnecessarily.
The A-Z of Haringey Services and the ‘I shall survive’ (for victims of domestic violence) booklets for example are quite comprehensive guides to services in our Borough, though getting access to the actual services is quite another matter in some cases.
If these two booklets (just for starters) could be merged and put on a website for easy access we would be half way there, add a postcode/ email link to the service providers and we are getting closer to what Lynne had in mind?
I have noticed that mostly in Haringey I have to travel by bus from N10 to N22 (Wood Green), N8, N17, for most services, (except school, Doctors, Dentist, Library) especially when I can’t get through by phone, often to find ‘there is no help available’ or am told to go to another building or come back another time. Numerous times this has happened….too numerous to mention. Having another point of contact/reference may have helped to keep the spirits up and if we can get a real time response to our on- line requests/ queries then we really will be getting somewhere.

By: thomas

thomas — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:07:49 +0000

Considering the criticism David Lammy has been subjected to on another thread, I think we should applaud Lynne Featherstone for *actually* engaging in the discussion here and showing she is prepared to listen as well as talk.

By: lynne featherstone

lynne featherstone — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:47:32 +0000

thanks for feedback,. It’s good to see idea stands up to immediate reactions. Yes – I have contacted Tom about it – and if others think it is a good idea, would do no harm if you also encourage MySociety too or blog about it also.

By: ukliberty

ukliberty — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:18:15 +0000

Andreas, DirectGov has much improved since its deployment.

By: ??????

?????? — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:53:18 +0000

thank you

By: Andreas Paterson

Andreas Paterson — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:27:27 +0000

ukliberty – That would be a valid criticism if the search tool on directgov was a major aspect of the project, I seriously doubt this was the case given the simplicity of the feature. The search feature I wrote on a site I worked on took one day of six month project.

I would guess that the vast bulk of funds for directgov would be for the creation of content rather than the technical development. The criticism that they wasted cash reinventing the wheel just doesn’t stand up.

By: ukliberty

ukliberty — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:15:34 +0000

Andreas Paterson,

ukliberty – That’s simply not a good enough reason, it works as a criticism along the lines of “directgov’s search engine is inferior to google” but it’s not surprising that a multi million pound project can’t match up to that of a multibillion pound search engine. I would go further and say that directgov’s is particularly crap, a better one could be written without much difficulty.

That’s the point – not only did the Government’s team try to reinvent the wheel but they didn’t do it very well, and it cost a lot of money.

By: Anastasia Christofis

Anastasia Christofis — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:04:09 +0000

I cannot imagine why this Government would bother spending another round of millions on these intrusive IT projects if it were not to keep tabs on the movements and behaviour of ‘ordinary’ people.
Everyone in the crimminal fraternity already knows that all telephone/e-mails are monitered and probably don’t even communicate their busness willingly using these methods, (does anybody watch TV?). We will have to go much further to monitor the wink wink nudge nudge world of the real crimminals.
In addition false ID/passports and papers has never been a problem, and indeed are often a prerequistite for most crimminals so I think it will be business as usual in the criminal world despite the vast sums wasted on these projects.
As one of the parents whose details have been lost/stolen in the lost child benefit details scandel I am now a woman of little faith in these matters and would prefer the money to be better spent helping our ‘battery children’ out of poverty and to cope with their ever dimminishing lot.

We could extend your very good post code idea to include a ‘postcode lottery’ but then I realised we have already got that….. such is life.

By: Tez Burke

Tez Burke — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 23:08:23 +0000

Lynne; talk to Tom Steinberg about this. He knows what he’s doing.

And it’s at times like these, and on projects like that you envisage, where Tom’s old colleague Chris Lightfoot is missed very, very much.

By: devolute

devolute — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:33:17 +0000

This is exactly the sort of thing that should be entrusted to mySociety or similar. Anything else would lead to a expensive contractor-based horrible unusable mess.

By: thomas

thomas — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:32:42 +0000

Yes, basically.

This represents a good suggestion to step towards integrating e-information with service provision to prevent waste and delay.

Not only that, I also think that a coordinated system which is successful at instigating improvements in current services may overturn public scepticism against the value and security of new provisions by developing confidence and a track record from which positive lessons can be carried over.

All technological systems experience a development cycle of applications, so it should certainly be profitable to investigate ways to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency they afford: 999 give a good illustration.

Before telephone exchanges were automated we had the friendly voice of the operator to help us navigate our communication networks. 999etc was only instigated when the exchanges were automated to give directer access with greater responsiveness and only rationalised when the cost of the increased scale of the service could no longer match the improvements it enabled. Privatisation brought about innovation in technology, now government is forced to adapt to provide individually tailored responses.

By: Someone who's tried

Someone who's tried — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:43:12 +0000

Sure you have to factor in the email forwarding and other overheads, such as having to deal with the emails because the whole point of making contact easier is that you end up with more contacts.

And that’s why it won’t happen. Trust me, I’ve been working with the Home Office for years trying to get them interested in e-crime, and the police have consistently resisted online reporting for e-crime (never mind all crime) because they don’t have any resources to deal with that reported by the handful of people who do know how to reach specialist units. When we ask “Why can’t e-crime be treated as seriously as regular crime?” the answer, quietly admitted in private, is that it is: we’ve just got an unrealisticly level of confidence that the police really are concentrating on something else instead, rather than failing generally.

So, nice idea, but it won’t happen, because it will show up the general failings in the existing system, so everybody on the inside is against it.

By: Andreas Paterson

Andreas Paterson — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:55:43 +0000

ukliberty – That’s simply not a good enough reason, it works as a criticism along the lines of “directgov’s search engine is inferior to google” but it’s not surprising that a multi million pound project can’t match up to that of a multibillion pound search engine. I would go further and say that directgov’s is particularly crap, a better one could be written without much difficulty.

The page itself is just a simple fusion of the information in directgov and google. But it would be foolish to claim that it would be possible to create directgov in an hour and I think the authors of directionlessgov would freely admit that.

By: ukliberty

ukliberty — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:00:01 +0000

Tom, whats wrong with direct.gov, why is theyworkforyou so much better?

See this.

By: Cheesey Monkey

Cheesey Monkey — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:03:53 +0000

Why not make it a Google-style front page that only asks you for your postcode. Type it in, press enter and a list of local services/amenities is returned, separated by categories (and subcategories if needed: the heading “Education” may have subcategories “Pre-School”, “Primary”, “Secondary”, etc.) which can be hidden/revealed by the user to aid legibility. Address, telephone/fax, email address and times of service for each result should be displayed with (ideally) a link to display a location map and another that returns a set of directions from the postcode to the service.

By: Sunny Hundal

Sunny Hundal — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:10:11 +0000

I agree with Cabalamat: talk to My Society.

I don’t think the problem would be setting up the IT infrastructure. The problem would be getting govt agencies to buy into this and setting themselves up to respond to it.

By: Andreas Paterson

Andreas Paterson — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:57:07 +0000

In terms of google results is that they can’t be guaranteed, they have to compete with other pages and new pages generally take time to move up the rankings. The police site is relatively new so any movement in the rankings will take time, the address has been mentioned on a local police newsletter which I assume is likely to be a semi regular occurence.

All of the links I posted can be found on directgov, I think a search and two clicks is sufficient. A big problem is that directgov has not really entered the public conciousness as a place to visit for government services and this needs rectifying. The problem with all government information including Lynne’s emails idea is the difficulty of getting the message out to people that that these services exist.

By: Jennie Rigg

Jennie Rigg — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:50:11 +0000

I agree with Cabalamat: talk to My Society.

By: Jono

Jono — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:30:38 +0000

Andreas, the main problem with the existing solutions (if they exist at all), is illustrated by your post – you listed 4 addresses; you should only need 1 entry point (though public transport is a slightly special case).

(In addition, the first of your links doesn’t appear on the first page of google results for ‘police norfolk’ (though the general Norfolk Police page does, and you can get there through a couple of clicks, though the pages are quite busy)).

By: Andreas Paterson

Andreas Paterson — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:50:39 +0000

Lynne, I'm pretty sure a lot of what's being proposed here already exists, certainly linking postcodes to public services is nothing new in data terms, everything below does it already. Police (where I live, anyway) http://www.safernorfolk.co.uk/your-neighbourhood Schools http://schoolsfinder.direct.gov.uk/ NHS http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/ Public Transport http://www.transportdirect.info/ The difficulty would be contacting local teams, NHS could mean any one of doctors, hospitals or dentists. Schools could mean Nursery, Primary, Secondary or Sixth Form. Public transport is even trickier since the best point of contact is dependent on destination. The problem is that when you get into more detail it gets trickier some queries would be ambiguous in who they get sent to and there is a possible need for dedicated staff to answer some queries. Tom, whats wrong with direct.gov, why is theyworkforyou so much better?

By: Cabalamat

Cabalamat — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:12:45 +0000

This is a pretty good idea. I agree with Unity’s comments that this would be fairly easy to implement, and would require a web-based as well as email-based solution.

Lynne, I suggest you talk to mySociety about this. They could probably set it up reasonably quickly and efficiently. If it goes down the normal route of government IT projects, the contractors would make a fortune from it, probably adding one or two zeroes on the end of the price.

By: Tom Taylor

Tom Taylor — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:10:00 +0000

Agreed, this type of thing definitely needs to exist. The main stumbling block is the data. Nobody seems to make it available (except through Freedom of Information requests) and if they do it involves signing contracts and service level agreements (see NHS Choices).

Definitely don’t do another Direct.gov. Definitely do do another They Work For You.

By: Unity

Unity — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:52:53 +0000

Logistically, Lynne, this is not that difficult if you stick to geographically defined services like the Police and most Local Authority services. It does get a bit more difficult with services that are not necessarily geographically bounded, like GP surgeries and, these days. schools, where the nearest provider is not necessarily the one that people will use or where you have multiple providers covering the same patch.

Your purely e-mail based solution may prove impractical on the lower scale, but a web-based system in which you put in your postcode and it returns a webpage with hyperlinked e-mail addresses for local services is not difficult in technical terms. The biggest task involved is simply creating and maintaining the database, which can be a bit like painting the Forth Bridge, but otherwise just a question of resourcing things adequately.

Its not difficult to find much of this information locally from Local Authority & NHS websites but the quality of information can be variable – some areas have cottoned on to the value of the internet and are very good, others still behind the times, so one of the objectives of a project like this would be to provide for some standardisation of information across areas.

In short, what you’re wanting is a public sector Yellow/White pages system and if anyone in government fancies paying me £35-40k a year to cover one salary (mine), a dedicated webserver and bandwidth, I could have it up and running in say, 6-8 weeks, and still have plenty of time for blogging, and if you don’t fancy that then talk to the LGA who’re probably the natural starting point for such a project.

BTW – I’m not being facetious here. This is actually a pretty good idea because it has the virtue of simplicity – as long as you keep it away from consultants and stick to doing the simple things well.

Actually, it might come a bit more expensive than the figures quoted, as one of the biggest single item costs of such a system would be licensing the postcode database from the Royal Mail – unless you could do something about that as it really our information and not theirs.