Christopher Andrew, MI5′s official historian, on job satisfaction:

[Andrew...] also claimed that the human resources consultants employed to discover the levels of job satisfaction at the British domestic intelligence service had found that there was “only one organisation they had investigated that had higher morale: the publisher Mills & Boon”.

Which does rather beg the question of which other organisations they had investigated.¹

1. I’m sure MI5 is a much happier place to work right now than, say, BP’s PR agency. ↩

It turns out there’s a minor glitch in our new government’s policy that ministers eschew the use of chauffeur-driven government cars:

Now ministers are being told they must travel to their constituencies by second class public transport, but for security reasons their red boxes must travel to the constituency separately in a private car.

This seems like the sort of thing that happens when someone takes a new policy just a bit too literally. Surely it’s eminently fixable: just make other arrangements for ministers to have access to the material in their red boxes.

Given that much of the material the minister is being asked to review will be reports, correspondence, memos and the like that were prepared on a computer,¹ how hard could it really be?²

[Via New Statesman]

1. Or that could have been prepared in the appropriate format if it was known in advance that this was necessary. ↩
2. That said, let’s hope that the chosen solution isn’t to have all this correspondence prepared in various nice, accessible formats only to be copied to a flash drive that is handed to the minister on their way out of the building on a Friday night. ↩

Remember Paul Chambers, the Twitter terrorist? Back in January, when the harsh winter was threatening to close Doncaster’s Robin Hood airport, he posted:

“Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

Guess what happened next:

I never expected to be charged, but a month later I was: not under the offence of making a bomb threat, for which I was originally arrested, but under the communications act for the offence of sending a menacing message. [...] Even after all the preceding absurdity and near-breakdown-inducing stress, I was confident common sense would prevail in my day in court.

Unfortunately, yesterday I was found guilty and ordered to pay £1,000 in fines and legal costs, which I have to find along with my own legal costs of another £1,000. I am considering an appeal, though I have no means, having left my job due to the circumstances.

I wonder if our new Justice Secretary has any thoughts about whether taking Chambers to court really served the interests of justice.

John Lanchester finds an apt metaphor for post-election Britain:

The voting system and the electorate have botched this election. Reality, as it sometimes helpfully does, offers a metaphor for what we’ve done. In Chingford, an Independent candidate decided to do something frightfully amusing and changed his name to ‘None of the Above’. But because of the way names were presented, he appeared as ‘Above, None of the’ – at the top of the ballot.

The Right Honourable Stephen Timms MP is getting some stick for writing a letter that suggests that he believes that the term ‘IP address‘ means ‘Intellectual Property’ address. It really doesn’t help that Stephen Timms is the Minister for Digital Britain…

I have some sympathy for Timms. I suspect that he probably does know what an ‘IP address’ is, given that the concept of an ‘IP Address’ is central to one of the key issues around the problem of identifying ‘internet pirates.’ The logging of an IP address by an ISP can – at best – allow online activities to be associated with a particular ISP customer’s account but not a particular person. In the case of a commercial provider of internet connectivity, like a cafe or pub or hotel that offers free wireless internet access, they may not even be able to manage that much.¹

Given that Timms and his civil servants have probably been using the term ‘IP’ as shorthand for ‘Intellectual Property’ for months now as they’ve exchanged goodness knows how many emails and memos and drafts of bits of the Digital Economy Bill, I can easily imagine whoever drafted the letter either having a brain-fart, misinterpreting the abbeviation when they typed up the letter, or simply falling foul of Microsoft Word’s ever-helpful AutoCorrect feature.

It’s a poor show that nobody spotted the slip before sending the response, but I’m deeply sceptical of the notion that it represents evidence that Stephen Timms believes that my computer’s connection to the internet has been allocated an ‘Intellectual Property address’ by my ISP.

[Via Why, That's Delightful!]

1. We can be pretty sure this will have come up during Timms’ discussions with ISPs and the record companies over the Digital Economy Bill. The ISPs will have been pressing the point that an IP address doesn’t identify any particular culprit, whereas the record companies will have been explaining that this is exactly why they need the ISPs to just downgrade/disconnect their customer’s internet connection, rather than expect the record company to identify the individual engaged in ‘piracy’ and take them to court. ↩

The House of Lords debates the safety of corned beef cans:

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Lord has asked me a Question about corned beef cans. I have been answering questions about them all my life and I regard them as one of my real areas of expertise.

There is a real problem about corned beef cans. They have a trapezoidal shape and a key kind of ring. The DTI has done much work on this issue in giving further instructions and also special coatings for the cans which enable the corned beef to be extracted more easily. There has in fact been a remarkable drop in accidents with corned beef cans. They have fallen from 8,720 per year out of 26,000 accidents caused by all tins to 3,091 out of 19,000. I should point out that the really dramatic decrease came after 1997.

[...]

Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, is the Minister aware that if, having taken off one end of the corned beef can with the twisty thing provided – assuming that you have not lost it – you then take a common, ordinary, household tin-opener and take off the other end, it is very easy to push the corned beef out of the tin without any danger to yourself?

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Yes, my Lords, I was aware of that, and I am very glad that that essential piece of information is passed round for the benefit of this House.

Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes: My Lords, does the Minister agree, as the noble Baroness has demonstrated, that most home accidents are avoidable, arising out of carelessness, and that therefore paying attention is one of the best cures?

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I totally agree. These statistics on accidents are extremely fascinating; they prove that the British public can use practically anything in this world to hurt themselves with. It is understandable that there are an estimated 55 accidents a year from putty, while toothpaste accounts for 73. However, it is rather bizarre that 823 accidents are estimated to be the result of letters and envelopes. It is difficult to understand how they can be the cause of such serious plight. I agree with the noble Baroness that it would be helpful if people paid careful attention.

Baroness Strange: My Lords, does the Minister agree that sardine tins and anchovy tins are also very difficult to open with their tin-openers?

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I think I will just agree with the noble Baroness on that question.

I’m all in favour of turning the House of Lords into a directly elected body, but I have to admit that there’s a small part of me that’ll miss the Lords Spiritual and Temporal when they’re gone.

[Via Joel Hanes, posting a comment at The Edge of the American West]

The latest batch of Ministry of Defence files about past UFO investigations includes a lovely instance of bureaucratic buck-passing:

The person concerned had written to ask about MoD policy on alien abductions and pointed out that if the experience was real, the MoD was failing to maintain the territorial integrity of UK airspace – a core defence mission. After explaining the MoD’s role with respect to UFOs, the somewhat sniffy response stated: “Abduction is a criminal offence and as such is a matter for the civil police.”

[Via The Browser]

Was this tweet from unhappy traveller Paul Chambers in poor taste?

“Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

Perhaps so. Perhaps not. Depends who he was talking to. I’d imagine that any family/friends/acquaintances were following him on Twitter probably knew his sense of humour and, quite possibly, his travel plans.¹

Was this a textbook case of an official overreaction?

A week after posting the message on the social networking site, he was arrested under the Terrorism Act and questioned for almost seven hours by detectives who interpreted his post as a security threat. After he was released on bail, he was suspended from work pending an internal investigation, and has, he says, been banned from the Doncaster airport for life.

Hell, yes! Unless, that is, the prosecution reveal that their trawl through Chambers’ computer has revealed evidence that he actually is a spectacularly dim terrorist wannabe.

I’m not going to hold my breath.

As an added bonus, I’ll bet Chambers will be on various watch lists for the rest of his days, or until officials everywhere develop a sense of proportion in dealing with ‘terrorist threats.’²

[Via Groc's various musings]

1. He was due to fly out from the airport the following week. ↩
2. Again, I won’t be holding my breath while I await the blessed day. ↩

Where Does My Money Go? presents an overview of government expenditure in the UK with a limited amount of freedom to drill down by region, time period and type of expenditure. It’s pretty and it works well as far as it goes, but I’m not sure how useful it is given that it’s providing such high-level data without much in the way of context.

I suppose my fundamental question is this: who would be able to accomplish anything useful with this data presented in this format, without pulling down the data that underpins these charts and doing some number-crunching of their own?

That being said, I’ll be fascinated to see where they go with this. The simple act of pulling together all this data in one place is a useful service in itself; perhaps in the long run it’ll be the data they collate, not the graphs they draw, that make Where Does My Money Go?¹ worthwhile.

[Via Qwghlm]

1. I really wish they’d called it Where Does Our Money Go? ↩

Indians take becoming a civil servant very seriously:

If the thought of memorising the bathing habits of the one-horned rhinoceros or the virtues of the Wild Ass Sanctuary of Gujarat leaves you with a feeling of mild vertigo, the Indian Civil Services examinations might not be for you. In fact, if you happen to be sitting the exams over the next three weeks, as some 12,000 eligible Indians across the country will be, you’d better hold on to your table tightly. Questions on topics as diverse as folk dances, constitutional developments, religious and social reforms and the usefulness of camels, or even the type of winter northern India would experience in the absence of the Himalayas, could crop up in one of your exam papers.

Forget “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” – this is India’s toughest contest. And the potential prize is greater than anything money can buy. While a reference to the civil service in some countries will elicit a yawn, for many young Indians a career as a civil services officer sparkles with the allure of status, job satisfaction, government accommodation and top-notch marriage proposals. But much more than this, the civil services are an institution of critical relevance to society and social change in India. As a newly qualified Indian Administrative Officer, for example, your early postings will include the position of Collector in your assigned district. Far from fermenting in an office, you will be out in the field, perhaps surveying the land, picking up after a train crash or putting into practice a program of social uplift whose results will unfold before your eyes. Imbued with the authority of government and the omnipotence and benevolence that accompanies it, you might, quite literally, find yourself king of the district. [...]

In the run-up to the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics has invited staff to write pieces celebrating the anniversary. One statistician submitted this paean to the power of numbers:

Life

Some mock me for doing statistics
Some loathe me and statistics
Some don’t understand what statistics are

Why is it that statistics
Put a calm smile on my face?

Because of statistics
I can solve the deepest mysteries

Because of statistics
I will not be lonely again, playing in the data

Because of statistics
I can rearrange the stars in the skies above

Because of statistics
My life is different, more meaningful

I love my life, my statistics

A little corner of my Excel¹ geek’s soul stirred when I read that. Sad, but true.

1. Yes, I know: Excel is a horrible tool for statistical work. But sometimes it’s the only tool you’ve got… ↩

Statebook: what do you want to know about $CITIZEN now?

[Via Open Rights Group]

In preparing for the 2011 census, the Office of National Statistics is going to invest £12 million in creating a postcode database. Sounds reasonable enough, you might think.¹

Sad to say, there’s a catch:

Unfortunately, Royal Mail and Ordnance Survey make good money from selling the postcode databases to other organisations. These datasets are very valuable: you’ve probably made use of them whenever you’ve put your postcode into a website. Royal Mail and Ordnance survey did not – apparently – like the idea of ONS making another postcode database with which they’d presumably have to compete. So, rather than take that nice dataset and do useful things with it – like giving it back to us taxpayers – the ONS have pledged to build the database, use it for the census, and then destroy it.

I’m sure that this seems like good sense to the Royal Mail and Ordnance Survey; especially in the current financial climate, protecting their annual income from selling postcode data is always going to seem like the right move. Ministers should know better.

[Via Qwghlm]

1. Apparently the existing Royal Mail postcode database is inadequate to the needs of the ONS. Unfortunate, but in the end if existing data sets don’t meet the ONS’s needs then it’s not unreasonable for them to do something about it. ↩

Ethan Zuckerman brings us The Cute Cat Theory Talk:

Based on my Tripod experience, I’d offer the hypothesis that any sufficiently advanced read/write technology will get used for two purposes: pornography and activism. Porn is a weak test for the success of participatory media – it’s like tapping a mike and asking, “Is it on?” If you’re not getting porn in your system, it doesn’t work. Activism is a stronger test – if activists are using your tools, it’s a pretty good indication that your tools are useful and usable.

Zuckerman’s talk is well worth reading in full; there’s much more to it than the hypothesis put forward in the section I quoted.

Of course, you don’t necessarily have to choose between online protest and LOLcats: sometimes you can combine the two.

[Via MetaFilter]

I just knew how this story about the money spent on celebrity participation in public sector health campaigns would end long before I got to the end:

[The Department of Health...], which increasingly uses actors, singers, television stars and sports personalities to convince the nation to adopt healthier habits, refuses to admit how much it spends on celebrity campaigns. Now critics have accused the government of “unacceptable secrecy” following speculation that stars are being paid up to £10,000 a day for their appearances.

[...]

Officials confirmed that [Jenny] Frost, of the band Atomic Kitten, worked on the campaign for eight days and was “paid for public relations work, including interviews and personal appearances, as well as the use of her image on the pack sent out to young mums who sign up for Breast Buddy”. But the DoH refused to reveal how much the singer received, citing “commercial interests” as the reason. Disclosure of the amount would deter other celebrities from fronting such campaigns in the future, it said. One official working inside the department said Frost had received £10,000 a day for her work, but the Observer has been unable to verify that figure. [...]

At this juncture, it’s important not to get too caught up in speculation about precisely how much a given celebrity may (or may not) have been paid for a given campaign, or to get worked up about the notion that having a celebrity’s image associated with a given project will make it more effective; those are valid issues, but of secondary importance. The major issue is that this is yet more evidence of the shockingly common attitude among government departments that “commercial interests” (whatever that means) justify hiding information from the taxpayers about how the government spends money. As far as I’m concerned, if you take money from the public purse then you should not expect to be able to keep the amounts involved or the terms of your contract secret.¹

As to the argument that revealing the amounts paid would deter celebrities from participating in such public-spirited activities in future, in the absence of hard information about the amounts involved it’s difficult to avoid one simple, damning conclusion: the celebrities involved are worried that their adoring public would be much less impressed with their idols’ public-spiritedness if they knew that they’d received a good fraction of the national average salary for what may amount to a few days’ modelling work or a couple of days learning a script to deliver to camera.

1. I work in the public sector, and as I’ve noted before I have no problem with people knowing how much I take home in return for my daily toil. ↩

MySociety founder Tom Steinberg talked to the Guardian about the organisation’s first five years:

[...] Steinberg admits that he has shifted the culture of government “less than we might have hoped”. On the other hand, he’s pleasantly surprised by the survival rate of MySociety sites. “We were thinking in dotcom boom terms, that we’d have a 70% failure rate. In fact we haven’t shut down anything at all.” Another shock was the body that turned out to be most resistant to MySociety ideas. “I didn’t think we’d see parliament being so crushingly slow.”

SpyBook:

When you see people at the office using such Internet sites as Facebook and MySpace, you might suspect those workers are slacking off.

But that’s not the case at the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency, where bosses are encouraging their staff members to use a new social-networking site designed for the super-secret world of spying.

“It’s every bit Facebook and YouTube for spies, but it’s much, much more,” said Michael Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analysis.

The program is called A-Space, and it’s a social-networking site for analysts within the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. [...]

Presumably when someone takes you off their Friends list on this system the result will be a wet job, a body bag and an unmarked grave.

[Via The Morning News]

Simon Caulkin despairs at the prospect of the ‘Compassion Index’:

In private, Labour politicians acknowledge that managing by targets has gone too far. ‘You see, public services were so bad we had no choice,’ is the current party line. Now, the voices add soothingly, ‘we can back off a bit and allow choice and the public to drive improvement’.

If only it were so easy. Loosening the reins suggests that the horse was pulling the cart in the right direction. In fact, the past 10 years’ ‘reforms’ have done such a thorough job of roughing up and desensitising the beast that urgent remedial action is needed to socialise it again.

For proof, look no further than Alan Johnson’s inexpressibly depressing announcement the week before last of a ‘compassion index’, the results to be published on an official website, to show how kind hospitals are to their patients. This is so tragic that it’s hard to know where to begin (although I already have an idea of the ending). But let’s try. [...]

[Via Memex 1.1]

Professor Edward Felten and his colleagues have come up with beautifully simple strategy to improve the way that governments provide information to their citizens:

In order for public data to benefit from the same innovation and dynamism that characterize private parties’ use of the Internet, the federal government must reimagine its role as an information provider. Rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet each end-user need, it should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that “exposes” the underlying data. Private actors, either nonprofit or commercial, are better suited to deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data. The best way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large.

[Via rc3.org]

The outgoing Italian government’s parting shot was to publish details of every Italian’s tax declaration on the web. Obviously I’m horrified that such a huge quantity of confidential information was released by a government in such a cavalier fashion,¹ but I can’t help but think that there must be more to the story than we’re seeing in the BBC’s report.

I’m quite prepared to believe that the outgoing government might want to make a point by rolling out the site before it left office, but the government surely couldn’t have put together a site on that scale from scratch in the fortnight since it lost the election. Was the surprise at the notion of putting the information out there, or at the fact that the site had been rolled out early? Or was the real surprise how interested the Italian public apparently was in this information?

[Via Qwghlm]

1. That said, there’s a small part of me that is amazed that people get so up in arms about the possibility that other people will find out how much they earn. I’ve never understood why this is seen as such a sensitive issue. For the record, my gross salary last month was £1,359.25. ↩