Interview: Query Queen Elizabeth II's Webmaster

Our interview guest this week is Mick Morgan, the man responsible for choosing Linux to run The British Monarchy's Web Site, the huge open.gov.uk Web site, and more than 80 other official U.K. sites. (continued below)

I e-mailed Mick and requested the inteview, really on a whim, the day we ran this story. To my surprise, unlike U.S. government officials and politicians who typically dither for weeks or months before answering their e-mail if they bother to answer it at all, Mick replied almost immediately with a message that said, in part, "Happy to oblige, if only to put the record straight on a few points. I can see from today's edition that there is a great deal of misunderstanding out there."

We're always happy to set things straight. And getting "the word" directly from the man himself is always better than getting it second-hand from The Sunday Times. So here we are, happily welcoming Mick Morgan to Slashdot.

Mick is a genial fellow, but please don't forget that he is also a highly-placed, trusted government official. He has laid down several necessary interview ground rules. He says, "I will not be drawn on specifics of system security (generalities I will answer at my sole discretion). Nor will I comment on UK Government policies on web usage, architectures etc. But since the questions are likely to be technical rather than policy oriented there should not be a problem."

The usual Slashdot interview rules apply: one question per post; moderators choose the most intriguing ones; editors make the final "cut" Tuesday afternoon; Mick's answers appear Friday.

Comments

What's the official reaction...

[jd]

...to these sites running Linux?

Assuming the British Government, and Her Majesty, aware that their public image on the Internet is being presented via software that is non-traditional and non-commercial, what do they think of it all?

Given the infamous traditionalist attitude of the Civil Service (Sir Humphrey Appleby is alive, well and encrypting everything into English), I can see the possibility of some "concerns" being expressed by people who know just enough to be dangerous.

On the other hand, the Civil Service, et al, hire experts to worry about technical issues, so that senior officials don't have to, which would imply that nobody not involved in the decision would know or even care if the web server used Linux or HP Sauce.

On the third hand (a consequence of drinking large quantities of Typhoo :), given the press' love of so-called "cyper-terrorism" escapades, it wouldn't be unsurprising of Her Majesty, or the Rt Hon Tony to march down to the server room, give the senior manager a clip round the lughole, and tell them to shift from Microsoft by yesterday or be fed to the royal corgis.

Changes

[chromatic]

If you could add or change three things about Linux to make your job easier or more enjoyable, what would they be?

--
QDMerge 0.4!

Comparison to Sun Solaris

[Raul Acevedo]

In the original S unday Times article, you are quoted as saying:

"... you can't beat them [Linux on Intel] in the bangs for your buck department. It blows Sun out of the water..."

Could you elaborate on how Linux compares to Solaris? Did you mean that Linux blows Sun out of the water in terms of price/performance (which is obvious since Linux is free), or just in general for your particular needs?

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on Linux vs. Solaris, not just in terms of price, but overall performance, reliability, maintainability, and ease of use. As a developer, I'm seeing Linux considered as an alternative to Solaris in many places, but there's little factual (or even anecdotal) information comparing the two.
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A general security question (ie. not specific)

[anthonyclark]

Do you get many cracker/script kiddie attacks on the various web sites you run?

Open Web Standards

[Simon Brooke]

I've been very pleased lately to see Open.Gov's clear policy statement on the use of open standards. I'm personally involved in working with some large UK companies on their own Web standards policies, and having this to point to has been extremely useful to me. How difficult was it to get buy in to these standards by all the people who 'own' different Government sites, and how difficult is it to enforce?

I notice, for example, that the Scottish Parliament's web site, and my local Council's Web site, do not yet conform. Without wishing to point fingers at specific organisations, is it your intention to cajole all sites within .gov.uk to conform to these standards? Is it appropriate for members of the public to draw administrators of these sites attention to these standards?

Oh, and, by the way, keep up the good work!

Royal involvment

[wowbagger]

To what extent is the Royal Family involved with the site (e.g. content creation)

Why Linux?

[fprintf]

Seems like a simple question, but why Linux? It seems like all the other high powered sites are using BSD of one variant or another.

thanks!