Every British Citizen To Have a Personal Webpage

Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is about to announce that within a year everyone in Great Britain will be given a personalized webpage for accessing Government services as part of a plan to save billions of pounds by putting all public services online. The move could see the closure of job centers and physical offices dealing with tax, vehicle licensing, passports and housing benefits within 10 years as services are offered through a single digital gateway. [This] 'saves time for people and it saves money for the Government — the processing of a piece of paper and mailing it back costs many times more than it costs to process something electronically,' says Tim Berners-Lee, an advisor to the Prime Minister. However, the proposals are coming under fire from union leaders who complain that thousands of public sector workers would be made jobless and pointed to the Government's poor record of handling personal data. 'Cutting public services is not only bad for the public who use services but also the economy as we are pushing people who provide valuable services on the dole,' says one union leader."

Comments

Surveillance.

[daniel.waterfield]

It also makes us nice and easy to keep an eye on. All our activity now leaves a nice little easy to follow trail. Much nicer for the government to follow than before.

Re:Surveillance.

[migla]

Yes, but on the other hand I'm thinking that this'll bring all the UK populace into the digital database age and people will be asking people for advice and the people with the most powerful memes will be the fuck-you-big-brother-type-geeks and it will lead to a united, informed people. Soon enough they will be lining the streets, chanting "El Pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!" and it will be known in the history books of the next century as the spark of the new enlightenment and actual democracy. Or did I dream it?

Re:Surveillance.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

With suitably malicious design, it could be a very convenient tool for surveillance(a visited link scanner seeded with a list of URLs that the feds might be interested in your having visited, would be a trivial example, various sorts of cookie snooping, cross-site scripting, history inference, and so forth attacks could also be used, in addition to boring old IP geolocation and date/timestamping).

However, in absence of these sorts of fairly overt malicious features(which would fly right past the noobs; but would be hard to hide from security researchers for more than a few minutes), I'm not sure that a move from a paper 'n civil servants based frontend to a web based frontend actually makes all that much difference. In both cases, you are doing some nontrivial data dump/exchange with the state, either because some law obliges you to, or because you want the state to do something for you based on that information. That act of data transfer is the point of the exercise, and occurs in either case. Also, unless the British civil service is far behind the times, the data end up being dumped in a big database somewhere no matter which frontend you use. It isn't as though a people and paper frontend implies a people and paper backend, just a more expensive translation process.

With the exception of fairly visible malicious techniques, a web site doesn't provide all that much useful information in itself. Any attempt by the state to use such techniques should, of course, by resisted fiercely by both technological and political means; but fretting about cookies is largely a distraction from the serious area of data disclosure, which is whatever forms you are going to the website explicitly to fill out.

Re:Surveillance.

[selven]

people with the most powerful memes... lining the streets, chanting "El Pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!"

Nah, they'll be chanting "Yo puedo tiene cheezburger"*

*Amazingly, Google Translate understands it perfectly

Re:Surveillance.

[davester666]

Yes. Go to this page to find out all the information you need to steal this persons identity.

Re:Surveillance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, how dare the government track things such as applying for a passport and paying taxes

Re:Surveillance.

[moosesocks]

Err, what?

As far as I can tell, no new information is being collected. They're simply moving from paper to bits -- the sort of thing that most Slashdotters would have encouraged before we were invaded by the Ayn Rand disciples. It makes the government more accessible, convenient, and efficient.

Re:Surveillance.

[aldo.gs]

Heh, I wonder if "I can has cheezburguer" sounds to a native english speaker as funny as "yo puedo tiene hamburguesa" sounds to a native spanish speaker.

Re:Surveillance.

[OrwellianLurker]

Please stop pretending to know anything about the world, just in case some poor sod believes you.

It's hard for us to know what's really going on as you guys are across the ocean and our media is not to be trusted.

Re:Surveillance.

[jonbryce]

It's not going to happen though. The government can't even get their payroll taxes computer to talk to their income tax computer, so we will each have our own personal flying pig before this will happen.

Re:Surveillance.

[Brian Gordon]

should, of course, by resisted fiercely by both technological and political means

So paper-bound inefficiency and insecurity is a good thing?

"union leaders who complain that thousands of public sector workers would be made jobless" is absolutely absurd of course. If anything, cut those jobs and send the people their paycheck anyway with the money the government is saving, instead of having them do unnecessary work all day.

Re:Surveillance.

[TheRaven64]

Automation, yes. Consolidation of data, not so much. This isn't a new concern in Britain. Episode 4 of Yes Minister, broadcast in 1980, was about opposition to a central government database. Currently, there are a number of legal safeguards that prevent data collected for one purpose from being used for another. Schemes like this, and the ID card system, aim to consolidated the data into a single location, making it very easy for departments that should not have access to some of it to accidentally see everything.

I probably have an even lower opinion of the Ayn Rand bots than you, but that doesn't mean that I agree with granting power to civil servants and members of the government that are easy to abuse. Government departments should not have more information about citizens than they need in order to function. Fortunately, they will probably contract EDS to get the system built, meaning it won't be finished in my lifetime.

Re:Surveillance.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

By "such techniques", I meant the "fairly visible malicious techniques" that I had mentioned earlier in the sentence. Those I think ought to be resisted. When dealing with a potentially ambiguous phrase, local context counts.

The whole point of my post was that, barring a reasonably well defined and visible set of clearly evil techniques, the use of which would be totally unacceptable on a government web site, using web forms rather than paper ones is actually a pretty minimal privacy and security issue.

Re:Surveillance.

[Mr. Freeman]

Are you serious? This is GOVERNMENT PAPERWORK we're talking about. Whether you fill it out in person or online there's ALWAYS a trail. Of course the government is keeping track of who is licensing their cars, pets, and so forth. That's the ENTIRE POINT OF A BLOODY LICENSE!

Re:Surveillance.

[daniel.waterfield]

I didn't state there wasn't a trail, I stated that an electronic, consolidated system makes the whole system of tracking citizens a heck of a lot easier.

Re:Surveillance.

[smittyoneeach]

In the future, who will be so crass as to steal identities?
Look for a whole surreality TV show genre, as the new sport becomes hacking and making subtle changes to others' pages. Goal: drive them crazy, at a (NSFW) medium pace.

Re:Surveillance.

[clarkkent09]

Hmm, what exactly are you talking about? Ayn Rand "disciples" are not exactly the first people to come to mind when it comes to concerns about privacy which is what GP was talking about. Not that they are not concerned with privacy, just that somebody like ACLU in the USA at least would come to mind first. And if you are right that this will not cause any expansion of government power, plus the fact that unions are bitching about loss of government jobs that this will entail, if anything Ayn Rand people would probably approve. And BTW, GP did not say that new information is being collected, just that it is easier to follow a trail of bits than a trail of paper which is true enough.

Re:Surveillance.

[FourthAge]

Ah, it's always a good day to rip the piss out of libertarians. Goddamn anti-government morons with their old fashioned ideas about "liberty" and "individual freedom"! Bunch of retards, eh? What do they know?

But I think you've called it wrong. I'm inclined in that direction, and I'm pleased about every government non-job that disappears due to improvements in the efficiency of the public sector. The UK public sector bureaucracies spend huge amounts of tax money just on admin and anything that reduces that expense is good! Once made redundant, bureaucrats could get proper jobs doing something productive, and contribute to the economy instead of feeding off it.

I don't believe for one moment that anything will get better, but it's a nice thought.

Re:Surveillance.

[colinrichardday]

Once made redundant, bureaucrats could get proper jobs doing something productive, and contribute to the economy instead of feeding off it.

If they could get proper jobs, then why did they become bureaucrats in the first place?

Re:Surveillance.

[Fjandr]

It's easier to sit on your ass all day pushing papers for an inflated check and benefits far in excess of the private sector than it is to have to get a job that requires actual thought and skill, that's why.

Re:Surveillance.

[d34dluk3]

Yes. In English, it's an absolutely ridiculous grammatical construction.

Re:Surveillance.

[Gerzel]

Uhm...You do know that the paper was being put into a computer already and the government always had access to the information on the paper right? From the looks of it no new information is going into the computers or into government hands it is just being centralized and access is being given to the citizens directly.

There are plenty of real threats of government overstepping its power please try not to make up false ones.

Re:Surveillance.

[Smauler]

The idea being that "health care" is a right. It's not a right, though. It's a product.

It's a product every citizen should be able to have, just like something like a passport (which _is_ entirely provided by the government, and I would consider a right, excluding certain circumstances).

I personally have not used the NHS at all for about 2 years (last time was when I was washing up a pint glass, and it broke, and cut into the side of my hand. A few stitches, and the nerve was severed so I feel nothing on the outside of my little finger). However, I far from begrudge my taxes going to it because not having healthcare is a proper nightmare, and I think everyone deserves it. I personally believe that anything above basic education is _way_ less of a right than healthcare, yet there's not the same issues about funding that.

I do understand the difference between for example the right to bear arms and the right to healthcare. One is a right that the government cannot interfere in, the other is a right to something provided by the government. There are however plenty of things provided by the government of far less importance than basic healthcare.

Re:Surveillance.

[N Monkey]

It also makes us nice and easy to keep an eye on. All our activity now leaves a nice little easy to follow trail. Much nicer for the government to follow than before.

Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't this just data any government would have anyway? Surely the only difference is that it is cutting out the dead trees part of the cycle?

Re:Surveillance.

[the_womble]

Its another big and ambitious British government IT project.

The usual outcome is consultants and contractors make lots of money, and it is implemented a decade late, if at all.

Re:Surveillance.

[Jurily]

It also makes us nice and easy to keep an eye on. All our activity now leaves a nice little easy to follow trail. Much nicer for the government to follow than before.

As an added bonus, now all you need to do is lose a record from a database and someone ceases to exist. I believe the proper term is unperson. /tinfoilhat

Also, this maximizes the possible inconvenience that losing a password or data leaks can cause. Add in the UK's record of data leaks and the average password strength of J. Random Citizen, and you have the perfect recipe for disaster.

Just ask Blizzard about stolen accounts. And those are people who care about their accounts and do everything in their power to keep it secure.

Re:Surveillance.

[Hognoxious]

The police have only recently started to make even token efforts concerning honour killings. And if it isn't years of the softly-softly approach that made them think they could get away with it then what is the cause?

And the Archbishop of Canterbury, no less, has supported the introduction of Sharia.

Re:Surveillance.

[sonicmerlin]

It's funny that you say that, considering neocons have done far more to grow government and massively pile up our national debt than Democrats have.

Re:Surveillance.

[rtb61]

Technically you never steal a person's indentity, you use other peoples information to fraudulently pay for products and services> Those people that you have duped, then fraudulently attempt to recover that money from an innocent third party. That third party is fully entitled to seek criminal charges against the company that sought to charge them for services and products that they did not provide to them.

At the moment credit card companies are playing, well to be blunt, fuck the end user games by claiming identity theft, that's a big lie, it is the legal responsibility of the person who accepts credentials provided are valid and they should be liable for the full costs of targeted innocent third parties with fraudulently charges. However this puts the whole credit card system under threat, technically proprietors who accept false credentials should be charged until they can provide evidence that leads to the arrest of the guilty party, really who would want to take that risk, so the credit card companies play marketing games and shift the focus to innocent third parties who must now prove their innocence.

Re:Surveillance.

[MonTemplar]

Ah, but this is the UK Government we're talking about. Would be a greater concern if this was in the hands of anyone competent... ;)

-MT.

Re:Surveillance.

[Haeleth]

Oh, for heaven's sake. The paranoia of Slashdot's audience is getting really, really old and tired.

THIS IS FOR INTERACTING WITH THE GOVERNMENT.

Amazingly enough, the government can already monitor all your interactions with the government very easily! OH NOES IT IS TEH ORWELLIAN STAET!

I know, to avoid the government spying on my communications with the government, I'd better start encrypting everything I send them. I'm sure that will help. Good luck guessing the 4096-bit RSA key I used to protect my tax return from you, Mr Taxman! What do you mean, you're prosecuting me for not submitting a tax return?

Re:Surveillance.

[Haeleth]

If public-sector workers actually had inflated salaries and benefits far in excess of the private sector, and did jobs that required no thought or skill, then you'd have a point.

It's true that the mean public-sector wage in Britain is higher than the mean private-sector wage. Why is this the case? Because all the low-paying public-sector jobs have been outsourced to the private sector. If you try comparing like for like, public-sector workers doing equivalent jobs do not earn more than they would in the private sector. In most cases they earn significantly less.

Re:Surveillance.

[Thinboy00]

"tiene" is completely the wrong tense (should be infinitive "tener"). You probably wouldn't say "yo" because it's redundant to "puedo". Unfortunately, the order of the words makes sense if you add "?" to it.

P.S.: <rant>curse you stupid slashdot for not supporting unicode and some types of HTML encoding including in this case "&iquest;"! This isn't very difficult!</rant>

Re:Surveillance.

[jitendraharlalka]

Well, this all sounds great! Only thing I don't understand is Why slashdot had to name this story "Every British Citizen To Have a Personal Webpage' instead of 'Government going online in Britain' or something. This story has nothing to do with Personal homepage at all.

Re:Surveillance.

[selven]

Technically you never steal a person's indentity, you use other peoples information to fraudulently pay for products and services

Can't emphasize this enough. All the arguments about obtaining information not being theft don't stop applying just because the victim changes from being the RIAA to being normal innocent people. It's not identity theft, it's pretending to be other people, a form of plain old normal fraud that has existed for millennia.

Re:Surveillance.

[zippthorne]

Any taxation or obligation that you or I "don't begrudge" is one that is voluntarily taken on. The question is whether we have the authority to tie that yoke on others so that we can feel better about ourselves.

It's the difference between the sentence, "I would like to pay for your blahbiddyblah" and "I think you should pay for sam's blangohbibber" Don't invite yourself to dine at my table. That's for me to offer to you.

The passport you mention is not a right. The right is the freedom to move about. The passport infringes on your right to move about. The government isn't doing you any favors, and in fact is charging you a fee for the "privilege" of being tracked and controlled.

The existence of things that we really shouldn't be paying for in no way justifies taking on entirely new obligations and ceding control of a massive portion of our activity to the government. Numerous small tyrannies that have managed to entrench themselves don't justify adding a big tyranny to the mix.

Re:Surveillance.

[mdwh2]

Because that was the title of TFA. Slashdot didn't name anything.

Re:Surveillance.

[DaveGod]

In the UK if you dispute items on your credit card bill they are cancelled and reversed against the retailer. My credit card was used fraudulently (for a second time) the other week and the card issuer simply went through the list of recent transactions with me and without question cancelled every item I said was not mine. It certainly does not put the credit card system under any threat, actually it's about the only good reason for having them at all.

I agree with the general principle of your argument at least some of the time, in that often the person who's identity is being "stolen" is often not their fault at all. I dispute heavily however the concept that retailers "fraudulently attempt to recover that money from an innocent third party" or that "technically proprietors who accept false credentials should be charged until they can provide evidence that leads to the arrest of the guilty party". This is not the "technical" position at all, retailers are not committing fraud unless they are aware the details are false. They do of course have a duty of care (and usually a contractual requirement) to take reasonable measures to ensure the transaction is genuine, but these alone are not enough to stop fraud and it is ridiculous to suggest they are committing a crime if events were wholly out-with their control.

The problem with "identify theft" is the inability to determine who is ultimately responsible for it. Consider just a few of the possibilities:
- I made some transactions then fraudulently claimed those transactions were false (my fault)
- my good nature led to my assisting Nigerian royalty escape persecution; (my fault)
- malware on my PC (could be seen as my fault, but also shouldn't my bank be designing systems to counter such a common issue?)
- a hacker steals my details from a retailer I used months ago (that retailer's fault, not the fault of the retailer who later gets hit with the fraudulent transaction)
- a retailer has inadequate systems (the retailer's fault)
- some government employee leaves an unencrypted disk with my personal details on the train, allowing a fraudster to open an account in my name (partly the government's fault, partly the account provider should have controls to defend against this e.g. always sending a confirmation letter to my address, which they have confirmed as genuine and current by other means e.g. electoral roll);
- the processing system used by the retailer is ran by a contractor [as is almost always the case] and their equipment has a flaw which was exploited by hackers to obtain my details (fault mostly of the contractor, though the retailer also has a duty to audit those systems)

It goes on and on. The worst bit is most of the time nobody has any idea which if any of the above is what actually happened. There is no silver bullet allowing the cost of the fraud to be passed onto the person responsible for it.

Re:Surveillance.

[Fjandr]

In regard to wages, I'm only familiar with the US. If that doesn't apply in your country that's fine.

I somehow doubt all of the front-line public sector offices have all their work done by private sector employees there, but if you say so then you'd likely know better.

Re:Surveillance.

[Fjandr]

At least you put "free marketeers" in parenthesis, since there have been only a handful of free marketeers in any sort of powerful office in the US since the Industrial Revolution. Mostly those who are pointed to as abusing the "free market" were doing no such thing (primarily because there was no free market system in place to abuse). They were using the government as a tool to protect their private interests at the expense of the free market. The only difference between Republicans and Democrats is which special interest they want to control any given market. Using the term as a pejorative against people who want an actual free, open marketplace just shows people who actually pay attention that you don't care enough about the issue to bother learning about it.

Your argument makes as much sense as saying the Amish love to torture their enemies because the Inquisitors were Christian.

Re:Surveillance.

[OrwellianLurker]

You know that Inter-net thing everyone is talking about? I heard you can use it to access websites in other countries. Maybe it's just a rumor, but still, it's probably worth investigating.

Yes, but the internet is no substitute for a non-biased, comprehensive media report. Sadly, we just have the internet. People don't have time to get a complete understanding of other countries. Some people don't even understand their own country.

Re:Surveillance.

[moosesocks]

If the only protection of our freedom lies in the fact that "pushing papers is difficult," then we probably need to amend the laws, rather than opposing technological innovations that the private sector embraced decades ago.

Re:Surveillance.

[thisisntme]

"tiene" is completely the wrong tense

Whoosh!

Re:Surveillance.

[LingNoi]

The passport infringes on your right to move about.

Try going to a different country without one and see how it "infringes" your right to move about.

Re:Surveillance.

[LingNoi]

All the paper work is digitally scanned in anyway. It makes no damn difference.

Re:Surveillance.

[zippthorne]

The passport infringes on your right to move about.

Try going to a different country without one and see how it "infringes" your right to move about.

Yes, exactly. Thank you for supporting my point.

Re:Surveillance.

[Smauler]

The passport you mention is not a right. The right is the freedom to move about. The passport infringes on your right to move about. The government isn't doing you any favors, and in fact is charging you a fee for the "privilege" of being tracked and controlled.

I do not need a passport to move about in my country. I only need a passport when I leave my government's control, because of other government's rules. My government has no juristriction there. A passport allows me to leave my country, and go to another country, it has zero effect in my own country. Basically, a passport is irrelevent to my government... it's a right granted by my government, because of agreements with countries, that lets me travel to other countries. Within my country, a passport is useless, and not required.

Basically a passport grants you rights that you would not have without it. Unless you want to do away with individual foreign governments, and their rules, you must accede that point.

Oh god

[Karganeth]

It's myspace all over again!

Re:Oh god

[dangitman]

It's myspace all over again!

No, this is FaceGovernment. Much cooler.

Re:Oh god

[iggymanz]

it's even better, the stalking creep psychopath following your posts is your government

Re:Oh god

[mdwh2]

Profile pics must contain no smiling, and you're not allowed to wear anything covering your hair (unless you're religious, in which case it's okay, as religious people never kill anyone).

Big red panic button for other people to press, saying "This person is a pedophile, arrest him now".

Privacy options allow things to be visible to Everyone, Friends only and your Government network, or only your Government network.

Adverts will be provided by the Metropolitan police. And you'll have to pay for your account too, anyway.

firpanopticone?

[RockMFR]

firpanopticone? Is that an alternate spelling for "fire"?

Re:firpanopticone?

[physicsphairy]

Britain is putting their citizen observation stations EVERYWHERE, even in the middle of words.

Re:firpanopticone?

[SoVeryTired]

Yepanopticons it is

Re:firpanopticone?

[mindbrane]

panopticon.

just in case someone doesn't know. Jeremy Bentham left instructions that his corpse be stuffed. His stuffed self sat at the entrance to his club for many years, although I read it was removed after it began to smell bad.

Re:firpanopticone?

[migla]

Thepanre is noopthing to sconee here. War is peace.

Re:firpanopticone?

[skine]

Poit! Narf! Fjord!

The system... is down...

[EEBaum]

Bet that'll be fun when the system goes down for whatever reason. It's enough of a fustercluck when ONE major government system goes on the fritz... here, they'd all go down together!

Re:The system... is down...

[maxwell demon]

Bet that'll be fun when the system goes down for whatever reason. It's enough of a fustercluck when ONE major government system goes on the fritz... here, they'd all go down together!

I'm sure when this goes online, someone will post it on Slashdot ...

What?

[AnonGCB]

Did anyone else think this was talking about the British Government reinstating a nationalized Geocities?

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Just stupid title. But summary was clear enough.

Re:What?

[KibibyteBrain]

After Brown was devastated when he found out his DBZ and Sailor Moon SVGA wallpapers site with 2482 hits was closed down by the whims of the private sector after a good 14 year run, he decided that only the public sector could be trusted with running such a critical service.

Re:What?

[magarity]

Government reinstating a nationalized Geocities
 
Sweet - I'll move to the UK if I can get my official government webpage customized in the 'OMG Ponies' theme.

A computer for all?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will they also be providing a computer for everyone will no longer be able to go to a local government office?

Re:A computer for all?

[Manip]

Actually yes. They already are. If you are on low income you can apply for a grant to buy both a laptop AND internet connection.

Re:A computer for all?

[Simmeh]

and internet? and educational training?

Re:A computer for all?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Unless the public library system in the UK is markedly worse than that of the US, it would probably be cheaper just to make sure that local libraries have some computers, assuming they don't already, and somebody on staff with a clue about the site(which will be more or less automatic, since librarians would also be users of it, and tend to be nonidiots in general) and just have people go there.

Re:A computer for all?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually yes. They already are. If you are on low income you can apply for a grant to buy both a laptop AND internet connection.

Of course, you'll have to visit your personal webpage to apply for this, as the physical offices will be closing.

Re:A computer for all?

[A nonymous Coward]

Possibly at a local government office known by the colloquial term "library".

Re:A computer for all?

[Simmeh]

[citation needed]

Re:A computer for all?

[Hadlock]

Really? http://lmgtfy.com/?q=low+income+support+britain

Re:A computer for all?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Unfortunately, since the guy down the road cracked the cheap, insecure system they gave you within about two minutes and used your broadband to download content illegally, your connection is now being revoked and you can't access any government system any more. Thanks for playing, and congratulations on now being unable to meet your statutory tax obligations due to legal restrictions on Internet access.

It is quite remarkable that no-one in government seems to have noticed the obvious conflict between the draconian, Big-Media-backed provisions in the Digital Economy Bill and the push to get more essential government services on-line.

Re:A computer for all?

[digitig]

Really. I can see a news report of a promise two years ago to make that available within a year for people with school age children, but I can't see any sign of it actually being available.

Re:A computer for all?

[Hadlock]

Well if you'd googled it before and already knew the answer, why didn't you contribute to the conversation rather than write a redundant -1 [citation needed] comment? :)

Re:A computer for all?

[Hognoxious]

I'm sure those computers in the library won't have any malware on them at all, what with librarians all being computer security experts and all that. Identity theft FTW!

Re:A computer for all?

[blackest_k]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7631940.stm

was the best I found about it

Officials were not immediately able to say how the scheme would work. For example, if two households had similar incomes but one had chosen to provide their children with internet access and the other had opted for a newer car, it was not clear how the entitlement would be assessed.

Guess benefit levels have vastly improved in recent years or Officials havent the first idea about surviving on benefits. In the words of Ricky Tomlinson newer car, my arse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Tomlinson

Re:A computer for all?

[guruevi]

I would think that over the next 10 years, most people in the Westerner world will have some form of a internet-enabled device and know how to use a website. Currently there are some people that don't - those people that exited the workforce before the early 90's (which would mean they are currently aged 70+) - everyone else including my grandmother has or knows at least how to use a computer in some fashion.

Re:A computer for all?

[digitig]

I didn't write a "citation needed" comment. See that line that says "by"? There's something there called a "usename" which might give you a clue.

Re:A computer for all?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Compared to an ideal world, I don't doubt that the state of library IT is lousy. The comparison to make, though, is with home IT, which is generally abominable. Because they have to survive frequent, heavy, use by members of the public, library computers are generally kiosk-ized to hell and back. If they aren't, they won't last a week. Home machines, by contrast, generally rot slowly until they finally become unendurable, and are either wiped or replaced.

Librarians have no special expertise in computer security; but any library that wants to have working computers has typically had someone, whether internal or vendor contract, apply one or more of the usual kiosking strategies. There are a few library specific ones, which have integration with patron library cards for scheduling and logon and print control, and there are the usual general purpose ones(deepfreeze, draconian AD policies, automated reimage ever 12-24 hours, linux machine with a read only root disk and a TMPFS /home that gets wiped on every logout, OSX guest mode, whatever).

The fact that clients are generally not trustworthy, either from the perspective of their owners or in the orwellian "trusted computing" sense is a significant issue for any sort of attempt to bring high value interactions online; but libraries are hardly high on the risk of threats.

Re:A computer for all?

[Builder]

UK Libraries are DIRE. When I moved here from South Africa, I was expecting them to be wonderful resources full of books and computers and a place to hang out.

Not so.

All 5 of the libraries that I have been to in London have been smaller and grubbier and had less of a selection than my old library in Brakpan. To be clear, Brakpan is a half assed town on the east rand in South Africa, and it really bowled me over to find that I had grown up with a better library there than I would have had access to in London, England!

Re:A computer for all?

[Tim C]

My daughter's mother received a letter about this scheme a couple of weeks ago. It is very much alive and well.

UK Gov + IT... Oh no...

[Manip]

Good news the UK government is getting involved in another large IT project... So we can assure ourself of two things, first off this will be hugely overbudget, and secondly it will never remotely do what they had originally intended. How is that NHS system coming? That nationwide police database? That system to monitor people entering and leaving the country? ...

The UK government has a bad track record of IT. They do stuff by committee and hire tons of "consultants" who only seem to exist to get themselves more consultant work. Instead of just written an ironclad contract and giving the work to a third party they instead give it out to dozens of third parties with a big government organisation in the middle and then wonder why it won't fit together at the end.

The sad truth is that nobody ever asks IT guys who to complete IT projects. Can you imagine if nobody asked doctors how to cure sick people? Or asked the military how to win a war? Sigh, now I'm pressed. I need a drink.

Re:UK Gov + IT... Oh no...

[mikael]

IT project go over budget because the committees keep changing the specifications as they go along. Then the consultants aren't the people doing the actual coding, they're the ones writing specifications and handing them over to the backroom code-monkeys in India or wherever.

In order to implement the ID card system, it will be necessary for every individual to keep their details up to date. This includes whenever the individual changes nationality, employer or address. Failure to do so within three weeks will result in a fine and/or jail sentence.

Re:UK Gov + IT... Oh no...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm not sure that your examples of doctors, and military are actually as distinct from the IT experience as one might like.

When some system has gone casters-up, users screaming, immediate crisis, people are happy to talk to(and typically blame) IT. Similarly, when somebody staggers into the ER, they usually obey the doctor, whether actively or de-facto because they aren't conscious enough to do anything else. When a shooting war erupts, the military commonly acquires substantial clout, and control over operations.

However, far fewer people are interested in listening to IT people give long boring talks about all the money and time they will need to build a system that actually functions. They are, in fact, almost exactly as willing to do that as they are to listen to, and follow, their doctor's advice on boring stuff like diet and exercise(and god help the poor epidemiologist who gives politically unpalatable advice like "Y'know, a food system based on subsidizing corn-syrup is turning us into lardasses" or "No, we shouldn't squander valuable antibiotics in order to make meat incrementally cheaper" or "Guess how many excess deaths the pollution from $FAVORED_LOCAL_INDUSTRY causes every year?"). On the military side, armies are commonly handled conflicts created and defined by outside political conditions, equipped with whatever hardware had the most persuasive vendor, and expected to achieve a politically satisfactory objective.

The details vary, of course, from situation to situation; but I'd say that all of those areas suffer from the common problem of having high short-term clout(once the shit has hit the fan, people generally cling to the experts who might save their sorry asses as though they were drowning babies); but far too little systemic clout to head off the problems that they can easily see coming(nobody wants to hear IT whine about vulnerabilities that might be exploited, they want to act surprised when they do get exploited. Nobody wants to reform their diet and exercise because of some doctor's mumbo-jumbo about cholesterol counts; but they are surprisingly willing to let the same doctor chop them open and do emergency maintenance when they keel over. During wartime, you can get excoriated for not supporting the troops hard enough; but that doesn't mean that you have to listen to their assesments of the situation on the ground, or even bother to order the hardware that they say they need.)

Re:UK Gov + IT... Oh no...

[williamhb]

Good news the UK government is getting involved in another large IT project... So we can assure ourself of two things, first off this will be hugely overbudget, and secondly it will never remotely do what they had originally intended. How is that NHS system coming? That nationwide police database? That system to monitor people entering and leaving the country? ...

The UK government has a bad track record of IT. They do stuff by committee and hire tons of "consultants" who only seem to exist to get themselves more consultant work. Instead of just written an ironclad contract and giving the work to a third party they instead give it out to dozens of third parties with a big government organisation in the middle and then wonder why it won't fit together at the end.

The sad truth is that nobody ever asks IT guys who to complete IT projects. Can you imagine if nobody asked doctors how to cure sick people? Or asked the military how to win a war? Sigh, now I'm pressed. I need a drink.

You might want to rethink your examples. "Medical error" is one of the leading causes of death (far more than breast cancer or road accidents -- in the US equivalent to a major plane crash every second day); meanwhile the military's last two wars haven't been pinnacles of success either.

People "expect" IT projects to be straightforward -- it's just 1s and 0s, right? -- but neglect that when you introduce new IT you are changing effectively changing the work practices of everybody in the organisation. And for the NHS that is a bloomin' big organisation (the world's second largest employer). The expectation of "but surely it's easy, right?" is both the cause of bad IT, and also the cause of its bad reputation -- that somehow it should do better than other fields just because you naively think it is a simpler domain.

Re:UK Gov + IT... Oh no...

[Spad]

And for the NHS that is a bloomin' big organisation (the world's second largest employer). The expectation of "but surely it's easy, right?" is both the cause of bad IT, and also the cause of its bad reputation -- that somehow it should do better than other fields just because you naively think it is a simpler domain.

The NHS NPfIT is a disaster not because of the size of the NHS or the complexity of the functions the system is required to perform; the system is a disaster because it was poorly conceived, had its requirements changed regularly, was given to multiple contractors to "compete" with each other in different geographical regions to produce a better quality end product and, worst of all, at no point did anyone consult any of the clinical staff - who have to use the systems every day - to find out what *they* needed from it.

It's a £15bn black-hole that still doesn't work properly, hasn't had all the components actually delivered yet and has without doubt one of the least intuitive interfaces I have ever had the misfortune to use. It should never have been started in its current form, let alone be allowed to continue this long.

What about ex-pats

[walkoff]

It seems to be using the wrong list. i'm a British citizen but not currently on any voting lists because i've been living out of country for years, if he really wants to number us all they should be using our national insurance numbers.

people who provide "valuable services"?

[rubycodez]

so there are thousands of government workers that could easily be replaced by a small pile of silicon chips and a bit of electricity, and they are said to provide "valuable service"? I have an idea, let them go work and provide something of actual value, or let them starve to death. win / win either way.

Re:people who provide "valuable services"?

[jabithew]

Yes, to quote Yes Minister;

Sir Humphrey: It sets a dangerous precedent.
Jim Hacker: What, you mean if we do the right thing now we might have to do it again later?

Re:people who provide "valuable services"?

[Burnhard]

Who or whom marked this guy as a troll? He's absolutely spot on. The Unions see the public services as job creation schemes, rather than providers of useful facilities for citizens. This tells you all you need to know about why public services are so bloated and give poor value for money.

Re:people who provide "valuable services"?

[dcollins]

"so there are thousands of government workers that could easily be replaced by a small pile of silicon chips and a bit of electricity, and they are said to provide 'valuable service'?"

You show a surprising amount of gullibility in whatever the government is telling you today. The UK government has a track record of absolutely not being able to deliver on promises like these.

Tell you what, $50 US says the UK government will NOT be able to replace any one of the mentioned functions with a "small pile of silicon chips", in the stated time frame of the next 10 years. In other words, the human services are in fact too complex to be captured by algorithms at this time. You on?

Re:people who provide "valuable services"?

[timmarhy]

so your saying a website can't send and recieve forms as well as some government worker behind a counter?

your on.

Re:people who provide "valuable services"?

[girlintraining]

I have an idea, let them go work and provide something of actual value, or let them starve to death. win / win either way.

Sir, this idea of them retraining into a new position as automation eliminates old jobs is based on the idea that there's a new job waiting for them. Maybe you haven't heard, but we're in a global recession. The US, UK, and Japan have been particularily ill-effected. Such automation efforts need to be made when the unemployment level is more reasonable, which is optimally about 5%, maybe as high as 7%, because workforce mobility explains most of it then; That is, people between jobs, who are able to find jobs, and do so in a reasonable timeframe. In an economy where GDP is negative and unemployment and inflation is rising, the sensible solution is to funnel public funding into infrastructure projects that create new jobs, not reduce costs. For every dollar spent, regardless of profession, that dollar moves on to the next person to be spent, and so on. This movement of money is what drives an economy upwards, and is what is needed now.

It's a good idea, but it's an idea that needs to be implimented at a better time.

Re:people who provide "valuable services"?

[Anne Thwacks]

so your saying a website can't send and recieve forms as well as some government worker behind a counter?

I believe there is a substantial body of evidence showing that said forms are so complex that no government minister can understand them! In fact, it may not actually be possible to define "complete" in the terms of the forms, let alone the project.

Ther only thing you cna be certain of tis that the amounts recieved by EDS and Peter Mandleson (minister for corruption) for this will exceed the GDP of several small countries.

Re:people who provide "valuable services"?

[Hognoxious]

How is it different to paying one set of blokes to did holes and another to fill them in? Or employing professional window breakers to keep glaziers in business?

Re:people who provide "valuable services"?

[Spad]

Because it'll upset the unions and they'll ballot their members and convince them it's in their interest to go on strike. Then we'll have months of disruption to public services and the public won't support any of it (we're getting really pissed off with unions making utterly unreasonable demands and then fucking up the country's infrastructure for a week while they strike about not getting what they want - see: Postal Service, British Airways, National Rail, etc.) and then the government will be able to use it as another reason to implement this system - after all, computers don't strike when you refuse them a no-strings-attached above inflation pay-rise every year, which will make the unions cry even more.

Re:people who provide "valuable services"?

[rubycodez]

no, UK has the problems it does because of wholesale destruction of home economic base over the last three decades, losing the means to produce real wealth by muscle and mind. Graduates are churned out of school with moron-level knowledge and no concept of self-sufficiency, ready for the dole. Creating make-work jobs is NOT the way out of the hole but only prolongs total collapse for a short time. Solution is building a base of wealth creation relevant to modern world. What I say applies equally well to the USA.

Re:people who provide "valuable services"?

[rubycodez]

So the forms themselves are largely purposeless and useless, how does that invalidate my point? It sounds like eliminating entire departments of government is viable......

Re:people who provide "valuable services"?

[Tim C]

Well, the service is valuable. That doesn't necessarily mean it's being delivered in a cost-effective, efficient manner however.

Too late

[blai]

Geocities had already closed down.

Copyright infringement

[bcmm]

So, how does this fit in with the plans to disconnect the families of people who are accused of copyright infringement? I guess media companies are going to be able to get anyone they don't like prosecuted for tax evasion too?

Re:Copyright infringement

[esme]

I see you're not very familiar with the British tax system. My understanding is that unless you're self-employed, you don't file a tax return. Your employer takes the taxes, and you don't get them back, no matter what. You do the equivalent (registering family changes that would affect your tax due) with your employer, and they adjust the withholding accordingly.

I lived in England (while telecommuting to a job in the US) for a couple of years. And it took me 18 months to figure out that I didn't have to pay taxes in the UK on my US income. Best of all, the way I found out was that I applied for a tax number so I could fill out a tax return, and they refused to give me one. It was a little disorienting to have the British civil service tell me it didn't want to tax me...

-Esme

Re:Copyright infringement

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I see you're not very familiar with the British tax system.

Actually, you are clearly not familiar with the British tax system. There are many reasons you may be required to file a tax return, and even if you aren't, you can file one voluntarily (and it may be in your interests to do so).

The rest of your post is so completely wrong that there is no point going through it.

Re:Copyright infringement

[esme]

First of all, I never said I had anything more than a passing familiarity with the British tax system -- but my general point was that the vast majority of British people don't have to file tax returns (I've seen it estimated that only 10% do). So the notion of getting people in trouble for not filing tax returns makes much less sense when most people don't have to file tax returns in the first place.

Second, the rest of my post isn't "wrong" -- and you couldn't possibly know anything about it, anyway.

-Esme

Re:Copyright infringement

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I've seen it estimated that only 10% do

HMRC issues roughly 10 million tax returns each year. The total population of the UK is roughly 60 million (of whom approximately half are employed).

Second, the rest of my post isn't "wrong" -- and you couldn't possibly know anything about it, anyway.

Well, let's see, shall we?

Unless people are self-employed, they don't file a tax return.

Wrong.

Your employer takes the taxes, and you don't get them back, no matter what.

Wrong.

You do the equivalent...with your employer, and they adjust the withholding accordingly.

Wrong.

Please stop giving financial advice when you don't even know the basics of the subject. Someone might trust that you did, and then make a very expensive mistake because of it.

Re:Copyright infringement

[MWelchUK]

The same law that is being proposed to disconnect individuals is coming under fire from the British library (among many others) as it will leave them quite exposed. What if the libraries decide that internet access isn't worth the risk?

It's about time

[Katatsumuri]

The amount of paperwork and legwork to get anything government-related done is untolerable in this day and age. We should have been enjoying electronic government for at least 15 years by now. Finally someone up there is getting it.

Now half of the posts here will be about the stupid "personal webpage" phrasing that has nothing to do with the actual idea, and the other half will be about an Orwellian apocalypse. Which may be well-grounded, as British government earned some bad reputation in regards to privacy.

However, I would still argue that this is a step in the right direction, and it is inevitable in the long run. We as a technical community should suggest ways to protect privacy with proper modern protocols, not with the obscurity of 18th century style paperwork.

I also hope that the governments in other countries will follow the example.

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a youngster aren't you.

You have no idea what a government might do given the technology. You think fascism is just something you read about in the history books. You don't even seem to realise that parts of Orwell's prediction have already come true. You are a frog in a pot and you don't even realise its on the gas.

Just take a walk through central London and see the machine guns and CCTV following you around everywhere you go. Are you old enough to drive? Take a drive through London. You number plate is logged and stored. Go to the British Library and ask to see on of their many books. Your name and the book you asked to see will be logged and stored permanently. The police have instant access to your location via your mobile phone. Believe it or not, in the not too distant past, it was possible to travel anywhere in the country, to buy almost anything you wanted to buy, to speak to anyone by phone without it being monitored.

We're already half way down the slippery slope, and you make some cheap joke about at the expense of those who are concerned about it.

One thing is for sure, if someone stops it, it won't be thanks to you.

Re:It's about time

[GrumblyStuff]

...obscurity of 18th century style paperwork.

Oh, this aspect won't go away. You'll still have to jump through hoops and feel like bashing your head on your desk trying to comprehend legalese.

Re:It's about time

[Hurricane78]

Wrong. Now you can automate it with a script.
Of course that’s only an obvious thought if you are used to really using a computer.
Instead of just playing with point-and-click appliance systems.

Re:It's about time

[Hadlock]

I was rather amused when my Belgian couchsurfer confided in me that they might be ticketed before they return home because they "may have exceeded the speed limit at some point". They calmed down when I explained we don't have speed cameras on our highways here in the US, but still didn't completely believe me.

Re:It's about time

[TheRaven64]

Just take a walk through central London and see the machine guns and CCTV following you around everywhere you go.

Seriously? Okay, I've not been to London since last month, but I'm fairly sure I'd have noticed machine guns. CCTV, yes. London does have a lot, but then it needs to because it also has a lot of known criminals that it needs to keep track of. Machine guns? Not so much.

Re:It's about time

[Sir_Lewk]

Too bad CCTVs don't actually help solve crimes.

Re:It's about time

[drsmithy]

They calmed down when I explained we don't have speed cameras on our highways here in the US, but still didn't completely believe me.

I see plenty of speed camera vehicles parked on the side of the highways here in AZ. Though at least they're easy to spot.

Re:It's about time

[Hadlock]

Do they measure your average speed between the two cars over long distances, and then mail you a ticket?

Re:It's about time

[GrumblyStuff]

Automate what?

I mean, if it's anything like some of the stuff I've filled out online for education, being on paper or being online won't make a difference except that your sessions online might timeout and you have to start over or log back in.

Re:It's about time

[drsmithy]

Do they measure your average speed between the two cars over long distances, and then mail you a ticket?

I assume that, like most other speed cameras around the world, they measure your speed with RADAR or LIDAR and then mail you a ticket if you're over.

Re:It's about time

[Hadlock]

As I understand it, the Brits realized that people simply slow down near a speed camera, so they started photographing your licence plate between two points, and calculating your speed based on the difference in the two time stamps and a known distance. Apparently this is common in other countries as well, for example, Belgium.

Re:It's about time

[drsmithy]

As I understand it, the Brits realized that people simply slow down near a speed camera, so they started photographing your licence plate between two points, and calculating your speed based on the difference in the two time stamps and a known distance.

The "yellow vultures" (average speed cameras) are typically limited to roadwork zones in the UK (or at least they were as of ~6 months ago), though they're also on a few regular motorways in the North. They're not common in this "general purpose" role, however.

The vast, vast majority of speed cameras in the UK are either mobile vans or fixed roadside devices (though the boxes are painted bright yellow to make them easy to spot - one thing you can't criticise the English on is their sense of sportsmanship).

Getting back to the point, there's plenty of vehicle-contained speed cameras here in Scottsdale and Phoenix, though I must admit my travels within the US have been fairly limited thus far, so I've no idea how common they are in other areas (I don't recall seeing any in Hawaii).

Re:It's about time

[Philip_the_physicist]

The Australian Centre for Visual Technologies has a project which aims to help reduce the manpower required to actually catch the person responsible, once you've spotted the crime occurring (amongst other things), which will allow you to follow a person of interest across many video streams until either you get a good, high-res image of their face, or they go close to a policeman (although that would require manual intervention in the current version of their system). The beauty of their system is that it primarily relies on straightforward object tracking, not biometrics, which allows it to work with much lower resolution cameras than biometric-based approaches, provided there is enough space around the target (which would occur even on less busy urban streets), greatly reducing the cost of the system. It can also be added to existing systems, the network can be expanded without human intervention at the software level, and the system lends itself very well to distributed computing.

(There are two of the key papers at the bottom of the linked page.)(Disclaimer: I'm not a member of the centre, but I think I've found an interesting thesis topic related to one of their other projects, so I'm not entirely unbiased. :) )

on the dole, VS on the dole

[Anonymous Coward]

Cutting public services is not only bad for the public who use services but also the economy as we are pushing people who provide valuable services on the dole

So either we pay people to continue to do a job that can be done better by an automated system or we pay their unemployment benefit.

Re:on the dole, VS on the dole

[robot256]

Once again a demonstration of why adjusting policies to save specific jobs is totally bass-ackwards. This is the same as forcing GM to keep too many dealerships open. Using politics to subsidize or arm-wrestle certain jobs from going extinct hurts the free market and prevents those people from actually being productive in the economy. The only legitimate use of power is to alter policies for the public good and let the market decide what jobs are and are not required to serve that public good. And in this case, the public good means saving money on bureaucracies so it can be spent actually helping people.

[Cue cynical comments in response to reasoned idealism.]

Re:on the dole, VS on the dole

[KahabutDieDrake]

It's remarkably cheaper to do the latter. Suppose you didn't have to pay for hiring, managers, facilities, supplies, training, or anything else that goes with having employees on site. Now suppose you use all that extra money to put up a computer that's better than the humans were. Now, pay all the humans 2 years wages and walk away having A) improved services, B) cut spending, C)profit! It would of course be the first time in recorded history that a government had ever done more than C.

Re:on the dole, VS on the dole

[BeanThere]

Exactly; people seldom see it this way, but 'useless government jobs' *are* basically just another form of welfare (just not in intent, necessarily).

Re:on the dole, VS on the dole

[Philip_the_physicist]

True, but I for one would rather see them sweeping streets or something rather than acting as hardware perl scripts. The job would get done just as well and at least the streets would be tidier, and there are probably plenty of more useful jobs various levels of government could find, such as drivers for mid-ranking civil servants, which would be a nice perk and doesn't cost very much if you're going to be paying the drivers to do nothing otherwise, or under-gardeners for public parks and gardens.

Evil conservative

[Anonymous Coward]

let them go work and provide something of actual value, or let them starve to death. win / win either way.

A little harsh, but not a troll. Why should the government be exempt from good stewardship with tax revenue?

I've heard it said that schools exist so the teachers have jobs. Toll booths remain open, even though they only support the employees and bring in no further revenue.

There is no reason the government should be allowed to waste money just so someone has a job. Might as well pay one person to dig a hole and another to fill it back up. But that would only make sense if it was a union job.

In the private sector, a leech who doesn't care about his customers quickly goes out of business. In the public sector, a leech who doesn't care about his customers forms a union.

Eroding specialist knowledge?

[Lemming Mark]

Well, this doesn't sound so great to me. I'm a tech savvy UK citizen and I do lots of things online. But certain aspects of our nation require specialist advice to navigate. If you're job seeking it is probably worth having someone who can give you sensible advice on the law etc without you having to trawl through pages and pages of documentation to (possibly) find the information you're interested in. Ditto the tax system - the guys at the local tax office will see people without an appointment and can quickly explain what needs doing in a given circumstance. I'm happy "wasting" some of my taxes on maintaining these places even if they could be replaced by an online gateway because they provide "someone who knows" without every citizen who ever has a question having to work themselves up to being a minor domain expert before they can do a relatively simple task. Even with a good UI and a lot of online help I doubt I could sort out problems as effectively myself online as by just asking an expert with access to the right information and the knowledge to use it well.

Re:Eroding specialist knowledge?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see why we would lose access to these experts just because they are no longer civil servants. It sounds like those people have valuable knowledge, which they could offer privately for a fee just as they have done as a public servant.

I am suggesting that they take their knowledge and skill and open up shop offering their services as private business owners. Those that take advantage of their services can pay their fees. True they lose the reliable government jobs, but as entrepreneurs the reward is there if they are good at what they do. They have been given government sponsored training, and on the job experience.

Re:Eroding specialist knowledge?

[TheRaven64]

Ditto the tax system - the guys at the local tax office will see people without an appointment and can quickly explain what needs doing in a given circumstance

Rather than a big IT project, maybe they could eliminate these jobs by removing some of the insane levels of complexity from the tax system so that it's actually comprehensible by someone who hasn't read the few hundred thousand pages of relevant laws.

Re:Eroding specialist knowledge?

[Hadlock]

Alternately, he could just email the tax office, wait for a response, and then act on that.

Re:Eroding specialist knowledge?

[Lemming Mark]

I'm not sure our tax system needs to be as baroque and unintelligible as it is in order to deliver results. Most of the things the Inland Revenue do seem downright pointless to anyone with an engineering mindset although I expect many of them had some sane motivation originally.

The bonus of your strategy is that it would also cut down on overheads for individuals, sole traders, small businesses, etc across the country by reducing the amount of admin needed! So it ought to be quite attractive. I doubt any of the consultants the government hires to advise them on this stuff are going to recommend something difficult like reforming the tax system when they could got a lucrative IT contract, though. To a management / IT consultancy with a favourite hammer government problems have good reason to look like nails.

I'm reminded of a comment in Asimov's Prelude to Foundation where Hari Seldon remarks on the characteristics of tax systems. Roughly, part of the point was that a simple tax system is easier for the populace to deal with (good) but that it tends to be / seem less fair, whereas you can have more nuances in a more complex system and find people are unhappy because they don't understand it.

Re:Eroding specialist knowledge?

[Spad]

Clearly you've never had to deal with HMRC then.

government services = oil spill

[pydev]

'Cutting public services is not only bad for the public who use services but also the economy as we are pushing people who provide valuable services on the dole,' says one union leader

Hey, let's engineer a couple of oil-spills, too! Jobs for thousands of people, and those people will be performing valuable services!

Re:government services = oil spill

[emj]

It's funny how a Troll rating can really underline the joke, the Troll/Funny Mod should go on pydevs post.

Re:government services = oil spill

[pydev]

Hey, let's make specious comparisons and stupid remarks on internet forums!

They're only "specious" if you don't understand them. The point is that there are lots of ways in which we can put people to work through useless jobs. They'll make it appear as if everybody is productively employed. An oil spill is a typical example for a bad event that, on paper, looks economically beneficial. And employing people in the government in order to do jobs that can be better done by machine is another such example.

In a free market and with technological progress, jobs become obsolete and it makes no economic sense to continue employing people in those jobs. We all lose if groups like this union succeed in forcing the public to continue employing people in those jobs.

Re:government services = oil spill

[dangitman]

They're only "specious" if you don't understand them. The point is that there are lots of ways in which we can put people to work through useless jobs.

I understood perfectly. It's still specious.

An oil spill is a typical example for a bad event that, on paper, looks economically beneficial. And

Except that an oil spill doesn't look beneficial on paper. Also, public servants working in an office is not equivalent to an oil spill (an economic and environmental disaster) - they are actually providing useful labor.

And employing people in the government in order to do jobs that can be better done by machine is another such example.

Can providing advice to people be done better by machine than in person? I don't see any clear evidence of this. In certain areas, face-to-face advice or counseling is much more efficient than machines.

In a free market and with technological progress, jobs become obsolete and it makes no economic sense to continue employing people in those jobs

That is obviously true for many cases, but not always. The problem is, you don't specify what "those jobs" are, and you actually liken "those jobs" to a disastrous accident.

We all lose if groups like this union succeed in forcing the public to continue employing people in those jobs.

"Those jobs" might actually be better performed by humans. But you provide no analysis of what these imaginary jobs are, and why they might be better provided by machines.

Re:government services = oil spill

[pydev]

Except that an oil spill doesn't look beneficial on paper.

On paper, an oil spill is a net economic benefit.

Also, public servants working in an office is not equivalent to an oil spill (an economic and environmental disaster) - they are actually providing useful labor.

They're not providing a useful service if the same function can be performed more efficiently online.

But you provide no analysis of what these imaginary jobs are, and why they might be better provided by machines.

RTFA.

Re:government services = oil spill

[dangitman]

On paper, an oil spill is a net economic benefit.

How so? Where are your figures on that?

They're not providing a useful service if the same function can be performed more efficiently online.

Where is the proof that the function can be performed more efficiently online? Also, if there is no existing online service, then they are still performing a useful function. After all, somebody still needs to do the work if the online service is not established.

RTFA.

I read the fucking article, and there was no analysis of efficiency of machines versus people. There was no analysis of what jobs are being cut. It was basically a press release.

The article does mention eliminating face-to-face contact with public servants, but doesn't reference any studies about whether this would be more efficient or not.

Re:government services = oil spill

[dangitman]

it generated untold millions, if not billions, in economic activity -- cleanup, lawyers, judges, court personnel, newspaper column-inches, etc.

Yes. All of it negative.

I don't see the issue...

[SanityInAnarchy]

...after all, we're talking about access to stuff which was traditionally handled with paper. The only difference is that an electronic trail is easier to follow than a paper trail -- but here, "easier" only means "less time-consuming," or, alternatively, "cheaper."

Here in the US, we have the option of filing our taxes online, or mailing in a paper form. Either way is going to include our social security number, along with a bunch of other personally identifying information. Either way might lead to our personal information being leaked or abused. The only real difference is that the online version is faster and potentially more secure -- properly done, I'll trust cryptography long before I'll trust the postal service.

Same with vehicle licensing, passports, housing, everything else they mention -- again, which of these is something you used to be able to do anonymously? In what way does merely putting these in a web browser make it easier to keep an eye on you?

Even if you find some marginal benefit to paper -- and it will be marginal -- is it worth the cost, the increased amount of fuel burned transporting it, the paper, the increased amount of fuel used to harvest the wood, make the paper, and recycle/destroy/bury it once used? How about the increased cost to the state of employing all those people to deal with the paper -- the same people who are currently whining about losing their jobs -- how much would it be worth to have them doing something actually productive instead of something a webserver could do for them?

Re:I don't see the issue...

[mmarlett]

Yeah, who cares about the jobs lost? Those jobs are shit jobs. I mean, who wants to preserve a job that is retyping something that someone else wrote? Screw that. Free people up. Let them actually think about things. I bump into this all the time. I just had a conversation with a friend of mine in IT and we were standing on the street corner shouting this same thing into the air. If the computer can do it, then it's repetitive and boring. Stupid, stupid work. There are hard things that people do well that actually is worth something. People just do not think when they worry about protecting this sort of job.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[Tassach]

Sadly, there are a lot of people who are simply incapable of performing any job that requires original or creative thought. Call me an elitist if you will, but you know it's true. There are only so many burgers that need to be flipped, floors that need to be mopped, etc.

Put someone into a job that's beyond their capacity they'll do it poorly, be miserable while doing it, and make everyone everyone miserable in the process.

A casual acquaintance from high school has been working for the last 25 years cleaning up roadkill for the county, and he's as happy as a pig in slop doing what most people here would consider a shit job. He'd consider any job that involved more math than tallying up how many critters he scraped off the pavement to be the "shit job".

Re:I don't see the issue...

[SanityInAnarchy]

There are only so many burgers that need to be flipped, floors that need to be mopped, etc.

Not true. Put another way, if this really becomes an issue, think about the army of servants that a wealthy family might've had in the late 19th century. The challenge is creating a demand for that, but frankly, I would much rather have more tax dollars with which to hire, say, a housekeeper, than have my tax dollars go to a paper pusher, given the choice.

Put someone into a job that's beyond their capacity they'll do it poorly, be miserable while doing it, and make everyone everyone miserable in the process.

Do that in school, instead. Not beyond their capacity, either -- one of the largest factors in the success of a given student body is the teacher involved.

A casual acquaintance from high school has been working for the last 25 years cleaning up roadkill for the county, and he's as happy as a pig in slop doing what most people here would consider a shit job. He'd consider any job that involved more math than tallying up how many critters he scraped off the pavement to be the "shit job".

Doesn't have to be math, and there are very few people who could only ever be qualified for that sort of work. For example, you haven't said anything about your friend's intelligence -- it could well be that he's simply unmotivated and uneducated. It could be that he hasn't found his passion.

Or it could be that, if we ever invent a machine to clean roadkill instead, he should bite the bullet and find what to him might be a "shit job", but which hasn't (yet) been replaced by machines.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[beguyld]

While I tend to agree that some people are seemingly incapable of creative thought, I also have had the "opportunity" to have some brain-dead jobs early in my life, and those jobs caused my brain to wither. I swear I lost 30 IQ points by being in brain-dead jobs.

I've talked to other people who have experienced the same thing. The brain is like a muscle, use it or it wastes away and gets flabby. But start exercising it again, even if "forced labor" and it gets back and in shape and become stronger and more efficient.

Putting people in jobs supposedly above them might cause them to complain for a while, but they might well start using their minds more. And that is good for everyone, as then they are better able to make intelligent decisions at the polls.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[williamhb]

Yeah, who cares about the jobs lost? Those jobs are shit jobs. I mean, who wants to preserve a job that is retyping something that someone else wrote? Screw that. Free people up. Let them actually think about things.

It is the last part that is an issue. Where pencil and paper, and where telephones are concerned, the person at the other end in the UK still has some leeway to use their own common sense. For example, there are many tax issues to which the solution is "write a letter explaining the situation to your local tax office" (or phone them up and talk to someone). Where web forms are concerned, the fixed Java code at the other end doesn't really care a toss about any letters you write. You might moan about "inflexible bureaucrats", but automatic processing is even less flexible than that. Welcome to the world of "computer says no".

There is also always an overestimation of the amount of money saved. Not only because governments are bad at estimates (though they are) but because the government is the only employer that gets about a third of whatever it pays straight back in tax (more if you count the flow-on effects that they also tax everyone you buy anything from, so get a fair whack of your "after tax" income too).

Re:I don't see the issue...

[Dalambertian]

Sadly, there are a lot of people who are simply incapable of performing any job that requires original or creative thought. Call me an elitist if you will, but you know it's true. There are only so many burgers that need to be flipped, floors that need to be mopped, etc.

Put someone into a job that's beyond their capacity they'll do it poorly, be miserable while doing it, and make everyone everyone miserable in the process.

The majority of people who work shit jobs do not them because that is the job they are best suited for. People are much more capable than what the current system allows them to be. I started doing physics not because I thought I was smarter than other kids (I wasn't), and I've come to find that most scientists aren't either. They simply took the classes, did the things they were supposed to, and stayed the course. I say let the boring jobs disappear. We will adapt.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[arkhan_jg]

The issue is not the transition from paper to online interactions; in an ideal world, you're entirely correct that the savings are worthwhile and it's not like doing it on a web form directly is much different than visiting a local office to fill in a paper form, that the first thing you then see the clerk do is tap into a computer.

There are however issues with this plan. First, this government has screwed up IT plan after IT plan, at huge cost with marginal or no functional end product - the current plan to put all NHS patient records online for doctor's to use is massive behind, massively overbudget and still not working properly in the trial areas, and that's just one example. This government able to manage the build of a personalized portal access to every government service in a year? Hah. 10 years, at 10 times overbudget with it barely useable and constant crashes? Yes, maybe.

The next issue is that there are a significant proportion of the population who cannot get broadband at all (or only a very, very slow broadband), and also a significant number of those that can don't want it. Some 50% of the population can't yet get ADSL2+, and only 75% of the population can get broadband from anyone other than BT. Some 7% of the population can't get broadband at all, and under current plans, probably never will. If they're going to make this site the *only* way to access these services by shutting down local offices, as planned, they're going to basically require everyone to own a computer and have a broadband connection. In addition to those in rural areas, you can add poor people and many of the elderly to the list of the disenfranchised (given the rate libraries are closing, that won't be an option for the poor in 10 years)

Finally - the government is trying to rush through the Digital Economy Bill, which amongst other things, introduces a '3 strikes' law that will result in people's internet connections being crippled merely by being accused of copyright infringement by the content industry. Although people will not be cut off in this version of the bill, it also contains scope to introduce 'additional technical measures' at will, which would include cutting off people's internet connection if the current measures don't result in the goal of a 70% cut in piracy in the next couple of years, so pretty much a certainty. It also means that public access wifi in cafes etc will be shutdown, along with pretty much all cybershops, as it will make them liable for any copyright infringement their customers commit. So there goes another method that people without computers had of accessing this super site.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[Gordonjcp]

A casual acquaintance from high school has been working for the last 25 years cleaning up roadkill for the county, and he's as happy as a pig in slop doing what most people here would consider a shit job. He'd consider any job that involved more math than tallying up how many critters he scraped off the pavement to be the "shit job".

That sounds like a great job. You get a van, you get a brush, you get a shovel and you get some plastic bags. Then you get some of your favourite CDs and a flask of coffee and go sweep up some roadkill. Come 5pm, you aim the pointy end home and you're not mentally exhausted from figuring out how to move the title half a pixel left on the online TPS reports - so you're nice and fresh for implementing your own projects that you've had time to think about all day.

That sounds absolutely bloody brilliant.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[zmollusc]

What makes you think Mr Roadkill is unmotivated and uneducated? He might be highly motivated to work where he has freedom from micromanaging bosses looking over his shoulder. As for uneducated, you have no idea what his educational achievements are.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[Reservoir Penguin]

There are retarded people of course. But most likely you are talking about people who have already been working these shit jobs for years. "You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid, monotonous work, chances are you'll end up boring, stupid, and monotonous." - The Abolition of Work

Re:I don't see the issue...

[misexistentialist]

think about the army of servants that a wealthy family might've had in the late 19th century.

Wealthy people have gotten very stingy. Many multi-millionaire celebrities, for example, seem to frequently crash their cars, which means they don't even pay for minimal staff. They probably hire maids, but on a contractor basis.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[ultranova]

Not true. Put another way, if this really becomes an issue, think about the army of servants that a wealthy family might've had in the late 19th century. The challenge is creating a demand for that, but frankly, I would much rather have more tax dollars with which to hire, say, a housekeeper, than have my tax dollars go to a paper pusher, given the choice.

Of course you would. And I'm pretty sure that most people would prefer pushing papers in an office to being a housekeeper to you. That's why they fight to keep paper-pushing jobs around. Besides, we already have automatic vacuum-cleaners, so it's not like the job of a housekeepr will stay around for much longer either.

In any case, I don't think that our current economic model can survive the ongoing technological revolution. Job insecurity and resulting stress about your survival when the society is wealthier than ever is an insane combination; sooner or later something will give. Compete, compete, compete in an endless rat race or hope Wal-Mart is hiring; screw that. The only question is whether the change is peaceful and constructive one, leading to a new era of prosperity and cooperation without compulsion, or a total social collapse. Could go either way...

Or it could be that, if we ever invent a machine to clean roadkill instead, he should bite the bullet and find what to him might be a "shit job", but which hasn't (yet) been replaced by machines.

So basically such a machine would change his life for the worse. And as the word "yet" indicates, it's just one step in the endless downward slide. I guess he would fight pretty hard to keep such a machine from being used, just like paper-pushers fight for their jobs.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[General Wesc]

If they're going to make this site the *only* way to access these services by shutting down local offices, as planned, they're going to basically require everyone to own a computer and have a broadband connection.

I like broadband. I'd like to make it available to everyone. But in many cases, dial-up does work. Filling out forms in one such case.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[blonkm]

And I don't see the issue of needing broadband. Presenting the options "apply for passport, pay taxes" takes only a couple of bytes and can be presented bare bones using just a cell phone. Is there anyone who is unable to get a working cell phone in Britain? A 1985 1200b modem could handle it, you know...

Re:I don't see the issue...

[FreudianNightmare]

Put someone into a job that's beyond their capacity they'll do it poorly, be miserable while doing it, and make everyone everyone miserable in the process.

Ah, so you've met Gordon Brown then?

Re:I don't see the issue...

[Patik]

And then you get the paycheck for your roadkill job and remember how much you got paid for aligning pixels on a TPS report. Money isn't everything, no, but if you intend to have a job that stays out of the way and enables you to persue real hobbies in your free time, then you need the money to support those hobbies.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[mdwh2]

Yeah, and we shouldn't replace all those menial manufacturing jobs with machines, some people are incapable of doing anything else.

- Ned Ludd.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[mdwh2]

So it's better to use more expensive methods, just to keep people employed?

In that case, I've got some broken windows that need fixing...

We could build a thousand schools with the money that goes into one battleship," Like hell -- if they canceled the battleship, they'd find something else to piss the money away on -- not one damned school would get built out of it.

So it's okay to piss money away, because they'd piss money away anyway? That's a rather poor argument.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Here in the US, we use electronic vote tabulation devices for our elections,

Voting is an entirely different process, precisely because it's anonymous. This isn't.

Historical Database Security Failures

File cabinets have security failures, also.

MIM attacks for IDentity theft.

Much harder to do with proper crypto, as I described. Harder, in fact, than intercepting postal mail.

No electricity, no Data.

No running water, no toilets. This is rapidly becoming less of a problem.

You mentioned passports, well they might not have been "anonymous" a paper passport didn't BROADCAST your data.

Neither do these, unless you mean the unicast transmission between your machine and a government machine -- not particularly less secure than someone mailing a passport to you, which does happen.

You want to talk about corruption at DMV?

Again, something which already happens with paper.

I know I sound negative here, but maybe I just have a really sour taste in my mouth from how the USA exploits electronics,

You mean how we use them?

over the last ten years this has allowed corruption to destroy our Constitution, Civil Rights, and our wonderful monetary system,

Wait, seriously? You're blaming electronics on all of this?

A computer didn't vote for the Patriot Act. People did.

It was a mathematical algorithm invented by a person which is most directly responsible for the current economic crisis. Again, while this may not have been possible without a computer, it wasn't the computer which decided to trust the magical algorithm -- people did.

this slices your argument to shreds, without getting into all that other crap.

The one actual counterargument you provided that was even close to an argument was your mention of voting machines, which wasn't relevant. Care to try again?

Re:I don't see the issue...

[SanityInAnarchy]

First, this government has screwed up IT plan after IT plan, at huge cost with marginal or no functional end product

Fair enough, though that suggests we should be addressing this issue, rather than shrugging and giving up on government IT in general.

The next issue is that there are a significant proportion of the population who cannot get broadband at all (or only a very, very slow broadband),

So what? This isn't exactly the kind of application which requires broadband at all. Done right, it should work via dialup.

you can add poor people and many of the elderly to the list of the disenfranchised...

I though there was a government plan in which people who can't afford it can apply for a free computer and Internet.

(given the rate libraries are closing, that won't be an option for the poor in 10 years)

Again, that seems like a separate issue which should be addressed.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[SanityInAnarchy]

That's why I qualified it with "could be". It seems likely to me that he is, especially given the context (that he would hate to do math).

If he's intelligent and educated, that actually suggests a weaker argument. There are other jobs which don't require micromanaging bosses, though I suspect said bosses are involved in the paper pushers that this online system would be replacing. However, I don't think we should hold back progress just to save a job that's actually obsolete.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Wait, what does crashing their cars have to do with minimal staff?

Re:I don't see the issue...

[SanityInAnarchy]

we already have automatic vacuum-cleaners, so it's not like the job of a housekeepr will stay around for much longer either.

The housekeeper job is an example, and automatic vacuum-cleaners can't do everything -- changing sheets, doing laundry, cooking meals and handling the dishes... And then there are other jobs to take away tedium we don't want to do, like an accountant to handle our finances and pay our taxes... Finally, other luxuries like a masseuse...

In any case, I don't think that our current economic model can survive the ongoing technological revolution.

I think the amount of revolution that's happened in the last hundred years suggests that it can. We went from the first powered flight to walking on the moon in less than seventy years.

Job insecurity and resulting stress about your survival when the society is wealthier than ever is an insane combination...

Given the number of social programs that exist, not to mention private charity, a little bit of unemployment doesn't actually threaten your survival. What it does is force you to find a better job, or to think about what you should actually be doing.

The only question is whether the change is peaceful and constructive one, leading to a new era of prosperity and cooperation without compulsion, or a total social collapse.

Do you have any suggestions for how either might be achieved?

So basically such a machine would change his life for the worse.

That's one option, yes.

It could also force him to change his life for the better, or it could be that it has little to no effect on his life.

as the word "yet" indicates, it's just one step in the endless downward slide.

Not endless.

For example, computers make lousy tour guides, lawyers, chefs, doctors, programmers, financial advisers, dancers, and many other things. In fact, the demand for programmers has gone up in the current recession, and that's a job that didn't exist a hundred years ago.

So it's not even necessarily a downward slide -- buggy-whip manufacturers are going to fight to keep their job, yes, but eventually, they'll find something else, maybe even being a mechanic for these new horse-drawn carriages. It's always messy, but technology does seem to replace old jobs with new ones, not displace jobs altogether.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[misexistentialist]

A chauffeur/bodyguard would be the first servant I'd get if I were wealthy (well, after the mistress positions were filled).

Re:I don't see the issue...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Huh. First one I'd get would be a housekeeper -- plenty of middle-class people have them, too. Next, an accountant -- again, middle-class people have them -- balance my checkbook, pay my taxes, give me nice, obvious summaries of what you did. Next would be a chef, or a housekeeper who can cook. I might also consider people to handle researching purchases for me -- for example, the amount of time I might spend nowdays researching how well Linux runs on a given machine would quickly get old.

A chauffeur wouldn't be high on the list at all -- I enjoy driving. A bodyguard would be far enough down the list that I'm still obscenely wealthy, even after hiring all these other people.

Also, I don't think mistresses would be much of a concern at that point. Do it the old-fashioned way -- hire a personal trainer, dietitian, etc, and get in shape, which is a good idea anyway. At that point, I'm good-looking, fit, and wealthy -- if picking up women is a problem for me then, I kind of fail at life.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[pjt33]

I first used this portal to submit my taxes about 5 years ago. I think* that what's new is that they're going to give everyone an account. So really it's just a question of how broken the scalability is.

* No, I haven't RTFA.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[drsquare]

There's also the government's terrible record for procurement. Is it worth eliminating a few thousand pen-pushing jobs with a multi-billion pound IT project? Especially as most of that pen-pusher's salary will be dragged back through taxes and savings in welfare.

Plus the laid-off workers probably won't be able to find another job. There are already millions on the dole, and anyone laid off in their 50s or later is effectively on the scrapheap.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[zmollusc]

Pfft! Don't worry, they will find a way of padding the forms to 250Mb.

Re:I don't see the issue...

[hattig]

Most people enjoy driving their cars, especially if they're rich and have bought some really nice machines.

Most people hate doing housework however. I'd definitely hire people to sort that out for me. A cleaner for a few hours a week for a start...

What else do I hate ... taxes. An accountant would be a few hundred a year to sort that out for me, worthwhile if you're earning money from multiple sources or self-employed. So that would be quite high up the list of desirable hires too. They'll also pay back what they cost in terms of tax savings and advice.

I like gardening, but not weeding. I'd get someone to sort the weeding, but I'd do the planting and growing.

Chauffeur? Quite low down the list. Mistresses - too much work.

Denmark Already There

[Jezral]

Denmark already has a similar thing. We can perform most actions dealing with the government online, and we even get a gratis certificate for digital signing and encryption of emails. I haven't had to go to a government or city office in years.

Re:Denmark Already There

[TheRaven64]

You can already do most things that you need to with the central government in the UK online too. I've never been into a government office. Some local government things may need to be done in person, depending on your local authority (for example, applying for a license to sell alcohol), but most people don't need to do them. The issue is whether the government should be consolidating all of these into a single system.

On the digital certificate issue, this was proposed in Parliament back in 2000, and I was under the impression that it had passed and was meant to be implemented by the Royal Mail. Somehow, ten years later, I still don't have my Post Office issued digital certificate.

I'll sponsor the first contest.

[Cornwallis]

What a wonderful way to have EVERYBODY's personal information in one easy-to-hack location.

then are they going to internet connection

[KB3NZQ]

i have a friend in the UK and he hardly gets on line cause it costs too much so if the government is going to move all services online than what are they going to do about the cost for the internet

Re:then are they going to internet connection

[EnglishTim]

o_O

Er... you can get ADSL broadband for £6 (around $9) a month. That's (up to) 8Mb/s with a 10GB cap.

Perhaps your friend is very, very hard up, but although the UK doesn't have the cheapest broadband in the world, it's really not that bad, either. I think it compares reasonably well with the US.

Re:then are they going to internet connection

[KB3NZQ]

this guy had a 56k dial up line

Re:then are they going to internet connection

[KB3NZQ]

o_O

Er... you can get ADSL broadband for £6 (around $9) a month. That's (up to) 8Mb/s with a 10GB cap.

Perhaps your friend is very, very hard up, but although the UK doesn't have the cheapest broadband in the world, it's really not that bad, either. I think it compares reasonably well with the US.

at $50 US a month i had 512 X 512 KB cable with $4 a month for the modem in Johnstown PA at home in pittsburgh pa i have 15M by 1M dsl but only 3M by 512 KB is my and that is also $50 a month US

Re:then are they going to internet connection

[Sir_Lewk]

And I pay about $20 a month for DSL from verizon, while my grandparents pay $100 a month for FiOS from verizon. Prices vary place to place, and tend to go up the better service you get. I'm not really seeing what point you are trying to make here... My confusion might have something to do with my not being able to understand a damn thing you are saying in the second half of that line though.

Regardless, the shittiest of dialups would be plenty for paying bills online, and if you can't afford that then you have some serious issues.

Re:then are they going to internet connection

[misexistentialist]

A 10GB cap is really really bad, though it would be fine if the connection were free as part of the new government initiative.

Re:then are they going to internet connection

[KB3NZQ]

And I pay about $20 a month for DSL from verizon, while my grandparents pay $100 a month for FiOS from verizon. Prices vary place to place, and tend to go up the better service you get. I'm not really seeing what point you are trying to make here... My confusion might have something to do with my not being able to understand a damn thing you are saying in the second half of that line though.

Regardless, the shittiest of dialups would be plenty for paying bills online, and if you can't afford that then you have some serious issues.

this guy had dialup and he hardly ever got on line cause it cost too much

Re:then are they going to internet connection

[EnglishTim]

Unlike the US, local calls are not free, so when you connect via a dialup modem you get charged by the minute.

The current BT charge to 0845 number ISPs is 2p/minute daytime or 0.5p/minute in the evening. (That's £1.20 hr daytime or 30p/hr evening).

Now, if your friend is spending several hours a day online, it'd be much cheaper for him to move to broadband.

Re:then are they going to internet connection

[EnglishTim]

For £6/month, I think a 10GB cap is fine. I bet there's huge swathes of people who never get anywhere near that.

We have this in Norway already..

[hyfe]

We have a single website for this in Norway already (norge.no), it's bloody usefull. Everything you need from the government is either there, or linked to from it. They even run free phone/sms/e-mail support.

There's nothing sinister about it, it certainly hasn't magically removed the bourecrazy, but it is another of the many small reasons I'm slightly smug to be norwegian; The land where stuff for the most part just works (which still doesn't stop people from whining though).

Re:We have this in Norway already..

[ciaohound]

Slightly smug? That is so Norwegian of you. I mean, if I were Norwegian, I'd be obnoxiously smug about it, but I guess perhaps that's why I'm not Norwegian. (Full disclosure: German American, ancestors came in 1734. See? Obnoxiously smug. Can't help it.)

Canada has this already

[dieth]

I've used to to file my EI reports, my Income Tax, and to bitch at my elected representatives for being sell outs.

Leave it to the unions...

[fluffy99]

... to stand in the way of progress. Unions have a long history of holding milking their employers with little regard to the overall health of the business (who cares if GM is going down the toilet, so long as the retired union guys gets their pension) . Here is yet another case where they are holding their own pocketbooks as more important than all else. As a tax payer, I'd rather see the govt get rid of agencies that are manually processing paperwork (inconsistently at that) and automate as much as possible. However, I do strongly feel that you should be able to reach a real person if something needs straightened out.

Re:Leave it to the unions...

[timmarhy]

unions are a bunch as big a bunch of crooks as i've ever seen. some rep's aren't too bad, most don't get the basic concept of "if the business fails, then were will your people work". they always think that management are hiding profits in some secret bank account. some rep's who were blooded in the 80's are just fucking retarded. they think everyone needs to pay union dues or they shouldn't work, and that they have the right to run the country.

Re:Leave it to the unions...

[emj]

Everyone I know that runs companies tries as hard as they can to keep their money, from their employees or the gov. I think it's ok that the union tries to get as much respect and money as they can as well. There are almost no crooks in management nor in the union, but it's easy to think that if you have need to polarize issues.

Re:Leave it to the unions...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

they always think that management are hiding profits in some secret bank account.

Are you seriously claiming they're wrong about this?

Re:Leave it to the unions...

[jrumney]

And then to mention data leaks as if it were the computers in the server room responsible leaking information, and not the unionized employees carelessly leaving laptops on trains, containing all the case files they have ever personally dealt with or might deal with in future.

Re:Leave it to the unions...

[timmarhy]

in a publicly traded company you don't hide profits because your reported earnings would go down and down goes your share price.

never worked in management before have you?

Re:Leave it to the unions...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Never heard of "Hollywood Accounting" before, have you? Hint: it's not limited to Hollywood.

Ah, never mind. Keep on slurping that Kool-Aid.

Re:Leave it to the unions...

[Hognoxious]

never worked in management before have you?

You clearly haven't. Hidden profits don't generally get taxed.

Re:Terminology...

[magarity]

Make that: "economics - never the strong point of politicians or union reps"
 
  we are pushing people who provide valuable services on the dole,' says one union leader
 
Government employees are net tax recipients; not wealth creators. At the margin (recognizing that not ALL government employees could be laid off) all the ones who go on to private sector jobs would be a benefit to society.

If you are not smart enough...

[NotQuiteReal]

I say, if you are not smart enough to request public assistance, then weed thee out of the gene pool, forthwith!

Re:Terminology...

[TheRaven64]

Not necessarily. Those employed by the government maintaining roads, for example, provide valuable infrastructure support. If they were to enter the private sector then the cost to the economy from degraded communication would be greater than the gain from their extra incomes. If, on the other hand, we're talking about people copying data from printed forms into computers, then it doesn't matter whether they are in the public or private sector; doing a superfluous job does not create any wealth, no matter who does it, and does incur an opportunity cost.

Maybe it's mutual

[Gonoff]

I'm not even sure I want to even visit the UK anymore

And I would really like to go to the USA again. The problems are getting there, getting in and being safe.
Getting there, we are forced to go through a ridiculous amount of control and surveillance - and that is from a Brit.
Getting in involves getting past your (in)famous immigration. I will get asked questions, may have my property confiscated and may even get jailed for hitting some drone on the fist with my face.
Safe? In the USA? According to the media, everyone carries - law abiding, police, bankers and other criminals.

I once went in uniform. Got to the base and was issued an M16. Next time, I want an M1 Abrams!

Police state? Yes we had someone shot by them here once - Jean Charles De Menezes in 2005. He was unusual. Normally, you need to at least pretend or carry a chair leg or something. Your police are described as a little more trigger happy.

Re:Maybe it's mutual

[beguyld]

Safe? In the USA? According to the media, everyone carries - law abiding, police, bankers and other criminals.

I see your media is about as accurate about the USA as the US media is about the rest of the world.

You might want to do some personal research, including talking to real people in the areas you intend to visit. Yes, there are some areas in certain cities which are not safe, regardless of the presence of guns. A gang can beat you to death in any country, without using any guns. (though a friend carrying might be able to save you...)

But living in Seattle, I'm not concerned about guns. Violence, in certain areas after dark. Guns are not necessary for violence. People have been finding ways to kill and maim each other since the the first jawbone of an ass. If I was really worried I would pack a gun and keep the odds more even, but it's a lot better idea to just avoid conflict entirely.

What removing guns from the responsible adult does is merely to make the balance of power completely in favor of the government.

Police state? Yes we had someone shot by them here once - Jean Charles De Menezes in 2005. He was unusual. Normally, you need to at least pretend or carry a chair leg or something. Your police are described as a little more trigger happy.

Hard to argue with our police tending toward the trigger happy, though they have some justification in that they may well be facing a real firearm.

I notice that even when shooting someone for carrying a table leg in a plastic bag the UK officers get off free. That "our police can do no wrong" attitude seems the same the world over...

On the other hand, the total number of shooting deaths from police in the US are something like one per day, in a country of over 300 million. (http://social.jrank.org/pages/1333/Law-Enforcement-Police-Shootings.html) It seems quite likely to me that one person out of more than 300 million might actually need to have deadly force used on them, and that the officers are truly facing imminent death themselves. (though I don't for a second believe that is always the case, or that police don't abuse their power, as they tend to do all over the world)

With our police it is quite likely that it is not a table leg, but a real shotgun... That might seem to argue for just getting rid of guns altogether, but we don't trust unlimited power in the hands of the few. History shows that has gone wrong many, many times.

A de-armed populace is a vulnerable populace, to a great many possible dangers, both from within and from without. You might be getting away with it now, but time will tell... The world may not always be as it is today, and someday you might wish a sizable portion of your populace could quickly get to firearms, and have the life long training in how to use them.

Re:Maybe it's mutual

[misexistentialist]

According to the media, everyone carries - law abiding, police, bankers and other criminals.

The media has a liberal slant, which means they support outlawing weapons. They try to correlate high crime to guns, but since there are few weapons in law-abiding citizens' hands, a negative correlation would be more logical. It is true that police states are safer, though from what I hear about the UK they are also safer for misbehaving thugs.

Re:Maybe it's mutual

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting in involves getting past your (in)famous immigration. I will get asked questions, may have my property confiscated and may even get jailed for hitting some drone on the fist with my face.

I'll have to agree with you on this point. We want to punch them in the face too. The airport security is much better and less snotty in any European airport I've ever traveled to.

After that everything you have to say after that is a giant crock of shit.

  According to the media, everyone carries - law abiding, police, bankers and other criminals.

Yes this partially true. First off the media are idiots. Journalism shouldn't even be considered a real degree, all the ones I met while in college were morons. The engineering school would beat them in there own catagory every year on the anual evaluation exams. Pretty sad really.

In States that I've lived in that had VERY EASY licensing to get a concealed weapons permit, the crime rate was lower than in England and any other State that did not (California). In South Dakota it cost at the time $10 (about £7) and took two weeks for your paperwork to get back. In the 4 years I lived in Rapid city there wasn't a single firearm releated murder. We had a drug addict robbing stores with a roofing hammer and a homeless guy strangling other homeless guys, but that was about it. At any given time in town I'd guess that maybe 5% had a firearm on their person and another 25-30% in there car, double those number if you were out in the woods. The reality is that carrying a gun is a huge pain in the ass. It's heavy, it gets in the way when you sit down, and its one more thing to keep track of. If you lose it then you are out a bunch of money and then have to deal with the police if you don't want to get in trouble if something bad happens with it.

The media hypes everything and are not a valid source of anything. Being from England you should know that since you don't have a single source of news that is not a tabloid. I do miss the Page 3 Girls though.) When I moved to the UK I thought there was going to be a punk kid on every corner ready to stick me with a knife, the way people and the news went on about it. Turns out it wasn't every corner, but every fourth one or so. You guys have a stupid amount of petty and non-firearm related crime over there that we just don't have in the states.

The one thing that the media doesn't like to tell you about firearm deaths in the US, is that more than half of them are just simply suicides. No dramatic showdowns between desperate criminals and the police (99% criminals are complete pussies once the guns come out), no drive by shootings, just someone at the end of their rope. Slightly more than half of the remainder are murders and the rest are the police or private citizens doing their duty. A small percentage are accidents.

I once went in uniform. Got to the base and was issued an M16. Next time, I want an M1 Abrams!
I call bullshit on this one. No one is just "issued" a rifle over here. You go to the armory and are issued one for training or duty and then you turn it in once it's over. Yes that may mean you have it for a while, but you don't just walk around with it all the time unless you are security forces. The only reason they'd ever give a Brit a weapon would be for joint training, so that means either going to the range, or out for manuvers in the field, which also meant you weren't issued any live ammo.

Normally, you need to at least pretend or carry a chair leg or something. Your police are described as a little more trigger happy.

This is a crock of shit too. Another image hyped up by the media. If you want to see what the police deal with on a regular basis, watch the tv show "Cops". Most if it is just dumb kids stealing a car, trash (pick a color) domestic calls, druggies, and boring paperwork.

The police don't fool around when they are threatened which is why the media gets their panties in a twist all the time. If you pull a gun on a cop you might at the most get a single verbal warning and then you are going to be killed. Natural selection at its finest, absolutely nothing wrong with a justified killing.

Re:Maybe it's mutual

[mdwh2]

Banning things is liberal now? If you say so.

Re:Maybe it's mutual

[expatriot]

Safe? In the UK?

According to the UK media which we can read online over here, everyone carries knives - except the law abiding, who huddle and cower; and the police, who arrest the law abiding for anti-social behaviour if they dare resist their knife carrying, stabby chav overlords.

Of course my perception of your living conditions across the pond might be a tad colored by the fact I live in a state where if some bastard wielding a knife or other weapon threatens me I can blow him to hell and gone in a heartbeat with very little concern about ending up on the wrong side of the law.

"The first Operation Blunt was launched across 12 London boroughs in 2004. It was expanded in 2008 after a spate of murders involving young men and knives. Between 2007 and 2008, 277 stabbing deaths were recorded across England and Wales.

There were almost 20,000 homicides in the US.

"Offences for the current financial year are at their lowest level for a decade, with 31 fewer homicides than at the same time in the previous year. Knife crime is down 1.2 per cent on 2008 levels and 13.5 per cent on 2007."

  as for relative gun crime vs gun ownership, see http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF01.htm.

I know where I'd feel safer.

Re:Maybe it's mutual

[mjwx]

Banning things is liberal now? If you say so.

I love how some USians describe the media as liberal when the largest media conglomerates are controlled by ultra-conservatives like Rupert Murdoch.

Next thing they'll be saying is that the newspapers would never print a lie to increase circulation.

"Their record on IT"

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I find this odd, because I already use several government IT systems at least annually, e.g.,

• filing my personal tax return,
• filing various official paperwork required for my company,
• renewing my car tax, and
• renewing my electoral registration.

Without exception, these systems have been efficiently designed, professionally presented, and vastly easier to use than the corresponding paper/telephone/whatever versions. If all they did was bring other systems into line with this so I never had to fill out another paper form from the Post Office and then mail it back, I would be quite happy.

Moreover, I have personally been hassled for a few months due to a mistake by a real person (probably a minimum wage data entry clerk) who mistyped data relating to me and caused The System to confuse me with someone else. So while I certainly share concerns about allowing wider access to any personal data than anyone in government or in the public has at the moment, there is definitely an upside to a system that isn't as subject to human error in that respect.

Of course, government IT has seen colossal screw-ups as well, usually when they try to "improve" systems in the process, rather than simply automating the collection of data they already have anyway that goes to people who already see it anyway. Thus we get things like the universal NHS mess, ever more invasions of privacy via new databases tracking more stuff and accessible by more people, and so on.

I'm just saying that it really doesn't have to be that way. Some government IT systems do what IT should do: make tedious but (arguably) necessary processes more accessible to the average citizen, less error-prone to use, less subject to human error by third parties, and less of a burden to work with. They just need to stop trying to sneak other stuff in on top of that.

Re: Every British Citizen To Have a Personal Webpa

[JackDW]

I'd like to know how it differs from www.direct.gov.uk.

The UK Government created Directgov several years ago for exactly the reasons stated in TFA.

How many single, centralised points of access to Government services do we actually need?

Like This Is A Surprise...

[Nom du Keyboard]

However, the proposals are coming under fire from union leaders who complain that thousands of public sector workers would be made jobless and pointed to the Government's poor record of handling personal data.

Like this is a surprise to anyone? If the unions had their way we'd all still be riding horses as long as the horse industry protected union jobs. How long before people - even union people - realize that more unions == lower productivity and a lower standard of living?

Re:Like This Is A Surprise...

[Spad]

It's not even that simple. unions per se aren't a bad thing, it's just that once they reach a critical mass they lose all sight of their purpose (to protect work rights to basic pay, reasonable hours, holidays, fair dismissal, etc) and instead focus on "free" pay rises for their members (i.e. without having done anything to earn them), eternal employment (It's essentially impossible to fire someone in the public sector, no matter how bad they are at their job, unless they manage gross misconduct or a criminal offence) and a complete lack of awareness about the fact that if you strike all the time and make ludicrous demands of your employer then they'll end up going out of business and you'll *all* lose your jobs.

So what are we going to do about it?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

That may all be true (though a lot of it is hyperbole).

The interesting question is, since you can't stop the march of technology and there are genuine advantages to be had, wouldn't it be better to start thinking about similarly advanced ways of safeguarding privacy in an age of databases and global communications?

Both the theory and the physical hardware exist to do things like properly encrypting all digital communications. We know how to store data such that only those with proper authority can access it. We know how to separate systems so that even if the front-end looks common and uses common credentials for the individual, any particular government worker can only see certain parts of the data, and any access to it is logged.

We have also learned ways to reduce the dangers of abuse by those with privileged access to a system, for example by logging all access, mandating independent oversight, and criminalising abuses of access with a deterrent level of penalty.

Finally, the more I debate the dangers of modern technology with others, the more I become convinced that the one thing we really need is for any automated systems to have a timely and effective method of correcting mistakes. It is not acceptable to have, say, a tax system based on a database that can cost you money for months at a time because of some small human error that was never plausible, because mistakes are inevitable and we'll never avoid them all. However, such a system might still be an improvement on what we have today, given better checks at the point of entry to reduce the number of silly mistakes combined with a robust system where anyone can query something incorrect that got through and have a real, sufficiently senior person check out the situation and put it right quickly.

To be sure, these measures aren't going to be perfect, but the current system isn't perfect either, and organisations like banks and security services have been using such techniques for years so we have at least a fighting chance of developing workable safeguards and any social changes necessary to understand that mistakes will happen and shouldn't be held against the innocent victim.

Or we could just stick our fingers in our ears, blow a few raspberries, and hope that continuing with no real isolation of sensitive data, hopelessly outdated security precautions, unencrypted communications and so on won't be abused sooner or later.

I think it's a law

[iplayfast]

For every ease of use that a computer can give a person, the government will increase the complication in order to make up the difference.

This is why taxes need to be done with computers now.

If ever there was a program that should be piloted

[BlueBoxSW.com]

It is this one.

Re:I don't see the problem said the milch cow

[timmarhy]

they can do all of this now anyway you moron.

What of the computer illiterate

[theeddie55]

they do still exist, for a start, my mum, even though i've given her an old laptop, she won't dare turn it on unless i'm there. and further behind, my grandma, who if you gave her a mouse and told her what it was, she would probably try to feed it cheese.

ahhh....

[Exception Duck]

soon nobody will have to work in britain

Broken Windows

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

'Cutting public services is not only bad for the public who use services but also the economy as we are pushing people who provide valuable services on the dole,' says one union leader."

Yes, $DEITY forbid they should have to get productive jobs! Won't somebody please think of the glaziers, and go smash some windows to keep them employed?

As the T-shirt says: "Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script." Isn't this why we invented computers in the first place?

Re: Every British Citizen To Have a Personal Webpa

[Cope57]

Reminds me of when AOL used to have a web page for their users...

Re:Has everybody gone insane?

[vtcodger]

People are going to be able to get drivers licenses, passports, register vehicles, etc over the Internet and presumably with no manual verification of supporting documentation? What could possibly go wrong?

Mod parent +1, Constructive

[Katatsumuri]

I wish there were more comments on this story like this one of yours.

Now another interesting question is how we can possibly make the government consider your suggestions. On their own, they will probably optimize for control and low cost, not for citizen convenience or privacy.

identifiable access to the internet?

[Arty2]

What about foreigners that are temporarily in Britain and want to deal with something? And now that they will be given per person IDs and passwords the field is open for identifiable internet access, login or you can't connect.

There's a general election coming in the UK

[hughbar]

And these announcements are coming thick and fast.

Also, UK government's record on successful system implementation is very expensive and patchy (to say the least): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/591645.stm That's the best link I can find quickly, doesn't include failure at the Student Load system: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/19/student_loan_fail/, Child Protection Agency: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3235394.stm and the monstrous Hational Health System: http://www.silicon.com/management/cio-insights/2004/07/27/5bn-nhs-it-failure-warning-39122638/

So if Gordon (who is a an ex TV journalist, in spite of his belief in his own enormous intellect) says is going to knock us up a few pages with an out of date copy of Dreammweaver, we shouldn't take this too seriously, right now.

Re:Terminology...

[Anne Thwacks]

Those employed by the government maintaining roads, for example, provide valuable infrastructure support.

This might be true if the jobs were ever finished - as it is, most roads in the UK (well, in London, anyway) seem to have had a bit coned off since 1973, and the work is never actually completed!

Personal webpage? Er...

[DaVince21]

This doesn't sound like a web page, it sounds like an user account. You know, like how sites like MySpace allows you to make an account and automatically gives you a "home page"?

Gordon the Gimmick

[Hognoxious]

What makes Gordon the Gimmick think he'll be in power in ten weeks, let alone ten years? By then he'll be a historical bogey man, Stalin to Maggie Thatchers's Hitler.

Re: Every British Citizen To Have a Personal Webpa

[Spad]

And don't forget about the Government Gateway...

You should do a story about Denmarks E-box

[Snaller]

Since 2001 every adult Danish citizen has a legal right to get an "e-box" (www.e-boks.dk) - an electronic 'vault' where you get mail from government,state, tax authorizes and a growing number of private companies.

The point of this is that it has legal standing - if you sign up (and you don't have to) - any mail you get from the municipality or IRS has the same legal standing as if you got it on paper - except you don't waste paper, nor do they.

You can keep all the mail you keep forever - and it doesn't cost you (except via taxes of course).

More and more companies are signing up for this as well since it saves *them* money - by not having to print out tons of letters and spending money on stamps etc. This include insurance companies, banks, unions, oil companies, etc.

So you get bills this way - digitally, and you switch over to your internet bank and pay the bill - no need murder any trees in the process.

And an ever growing number of Danes like it, because you don't need to keep piles of paper all over - you just keep it online in your ebox (or download as pdf and print it out if you must have a hardcopy)

You can, for a modest fee, buy some extra space in case you want to scan stuff and upload your own material - but you don't have to and if its enough to just receive mail it doesn't cost you.

You can set the system up to notify you via regular email or text message to your cell phone when there is new post.

What about security? All adult Danes have a right to get their "digital signature" - digital files used to 'sign' any electronic interaction which requires you to prove you are you.

So far about 35% of the population have decided they trust the system - and the number is growing.

Another disasterous scheme

[hicksw]

Tim should get out more, maybe visit a job centre. Many of the people applying for the benefits available are unable to fill in the paper forms, and need the help of experienced form interpreters, some of whom can actually spell some words.

The forms themselves are unintelligible because they must follow tortuously constructed regulations based on incomprehensible legislation. They are expressed in a jargon unknown to non-governmental employees or specialist advisors. The website will either (1) follow these forms and be unintelligible or (2) be reworded in a kind of baby talk that misdirects the user. Guaranteed - garbage in, nothing out.

On past performance of UK government to do anything with computers or information, we have nothing to fear but further waste of our money, taken as tax and given to (foreign) consultancies.
--
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.

*facepalm*

[Indigo]

When did Tim Berners-Lee go to the dark side?

Will it have a tilde-username?

[Compaqt]

brits.uk/~username ?

Passports? How does that fit with ID cards?

[mdwh2]

I'm all for something that cuts costs, though I wonder if this means I'll no longer have to pay the additional few pounds in processing fees when renewing a passport?

But more to the point, it's this Government that's been forcing through compulsory ID cards, and passports will be combined with this system - meaning getting a passport means you have to supply all the biometric details that will be recorded for the ID card national database.

So with this new system, they'll somehow be able to take all the fingerprints and so on online? And this means I won't have to pay the extra £30 in processing fees (on top of the whopping £93 that it'll cost in the first place, for the combined passport/ID card)?

redundant workers

[DaveGod]

are redundant.

Re:Tim Berners-Lee

[Shimbo]

I wonder how many others have noticed that 'Tim Berners-Lee' is the man behind this...

Well, Tim Berners-Lee is leading a project to provide open access to goverment data; it seems pretty worthy and uncontroversial. I don't know about the rest of the story - but running an article from the Telegraph on what Gordon Brown may say tomorrow is rather like reading a Fox News report on what Obama said tomorrow.

Could we not just wait to hear the announcement - I've got this terribly old fashioned idea of reporting news stories after they happen, rather than before.

The Torygraph speaks ...

[RockDoctor]

And I contemplate whether to print the story on nice, soft paper. Enough said?