Disruptive Proactivity

Before I waffle, here’s the useful stuff: We’ve just published the opentech audio. Thanks to David for all his work on recording, and (other) David for handling the programme on the day, and Emily for all the work she did, and all our chairs, especially Dave, Zoe and Siobhan. All the sessions we have audio for are now available (all download links are on that page). We’ve also published a short feedback form to get your comments on the event.

Robin and Heather (session 1A) talked about what happens when you do stuff, and then Tom Loosemore (2A) gave an amazing and wonderful talk about what happens when you do. Both these talks are utterly fantastic. Bill and Ben then talked about why all this is important. Suw and friends then talked about some of the aspects of community and what happens when you do things, and the challenges they faced in relation to Ada day and taking that forwards.

The final sessions we had in the main room talked about persistance and privacy of transient information, location and the measures of environmental privacy. And this was one of the double sessions I most wanted to attend. Unfortunately, due to scheduling constraints, it had to be against ORG and No2ID, which meant that many of those who may have been interested went there.

Gavin Bell talked about how databases are easy to create, can be data-mined, and can have almost no value to people over time because of the huge granularity. Gavin Starks talked about how energy smart meters can tell that your Zanussi fridge has a faulty coolant motor, or that your Playstation3 was turned on between 3:57 and 6:29, and the Sanyo TV was turned on between 6:30 and 7pm, and then a Dell gets turned on till it goes to sleep at 7:48, and a John Lewis hob (but only the 3rd hot plate, and the grill) gets turned off at 7:43. That data has incredible value. There are some reasons to share some of that data with some people, but there are huge reasons not to share it with others – it must be under you control. Sony would be very, very interested in advertising in or before that TV programme, to that school child. Mix that with something like Phorm (especially for broadband via your cable TV provider), and being able to target adverts exceptionally precisely – because a PS3 with the laser shooting attachment probably has a different energy profile to all the one with the Barbie Doll attachment. Big Brother isn’t watching you, but he really wants to watch your energy usage.

This data is incredibly valuable, and there are huge privacy implications.

And there are many people and companies interested in using it for their own profits. As Gavin Starks highlighted in that session, British Gas are recruiting 2500 “green engineers” to install smart meters in every home. Only if they own the data from them. EDF are doing something similar; and Electricite De France (the very same EDF, but the version in France) turns your supply off if you go over a certain limit, no matter how cold it is in January. How do you know that whoever owns your data will do what’s in your interest? Rather than that of their shareholders, profits or customers?

There’s a consultation ongoing about all aspects of smart meters. If you care on any of the issues that they raise, and there are very very many, you might want to comment, and then tell your friends. All your friends.

Angie: Someone who many of us would like to have known for far, far longer.

Shortly before OpenTech, I was chatting to someone about DirectGov. I’m not sure how we got there; but there are a couple of things that could be done in an hour to make DirectGov better.

1. Link
2. Direct Feedback

Link. Link!

Tim Berners Lee’s talk on Raw Data Now starts talking about making documents linked, and how it can go to virtually any document you can imagine. This is basic stuff, but something that still gets missed so very very often.

Looking at a current page (it’s on swine flu), there are many places where there just aren’t links where there should be. Part of that is policy, part of that is focus, both parts are wrong. Here’s one line near the top:

… Until then, if someone thinks they may have swine flu, they should go online and check symptoms on the NHS Choices website, or…

One of the reasons for DirectGov is the standardisation and consistent quality of the site; at no point in the handling of that page did any of the processes notice that there’s no link there to the website the words are telling people to check. It’s just not there (at time of writing, below that paragraph; it’s buried a lot further down the page under a set of different links).

I understand that DG want high levels of editorial control – that’s the reason for DG’s centralisation – but if you want high editorial control, is it too much to expect some basic standards? It’s not just that page, it’s all over. I can understand not linking to randomdomain.com, but there’s got to be some level of faith in other government websites. Surely? There are numerous examples on DG where they talk about some news from PM.gov.uk, but don’t link to it there either.

How to fix this: In one of the editorial checks, add a requirement that if the text says to references a website, there’s a link given to the actual website. So very basic; and completely unnoticed.

Direct Feedback

The reason that the problem on that busy page (if DG’s SwineFlu page isn’t getting a lot of traffic, then DG has bigger problems), is there’s no feedback mechanism. You get a page and you get what you get. If there’s something you think’s missing, then you have no way to point out that there’s even a missing link. DirectGov should add a “comment on this page” link right at the bottom, which connects viewers to the content authors/editors in a controlled way.

One use of IntenseDebate is to allow easy commenting on a page that doesn’t already have it. Cut and paste a line, and people can suddenly attach comments to any page on your website. Put it in the footer next to the “Jobs at DirectGov” link – because more people use DirectGov than work there.
Then, have one of the innovation team, take the XML feed of pages & comments, access to the DG CMS, and send the comments on pages to the people who edited the page last (or, say, in the last 3 days). Pretty quickly, quality will go up. Some comments will be from the tin-foil-hat brigade (and Intense Debate is good for facilitating a sensible tone in that type of debate); but most will have suggestions that are potentially helpful. Installing ID is a cut and paste of one line, and I’m sure the Innovation team can knock something up in an hour (depending on CMS access) to connect with the people who use DG, with the people who write it. Issues here are in no way technical.

One of the current trends in the media industry is all about connecting journalists with those who see their work, either via twitter, facebook, or just publishing an email address, and how this increased connectivity is often considered good for journalism. It’s not substantively different for DirectGov’s authors and editors. And that’s got to be a good thing.

After a number of requests, I’ve put the instructions on how to format a document for CommentOnThis.com online at http://www.commentonthis.com/instructions

It’s not the easiest possible way to format a document, but it is doable by anyone who has a copy of notepad.

Allowing a self-upload of documents would not be particularly hard – glue the pdf reader onto a very simple and friendly editor for formatting (like the blogger editing tool I’m writing this in), ad then self-publishing. If anyone wants to help, get in touch

The 2009 hip and happening way would be to upload to google wave, and let people pull it apart in there. Which would have interesting other effects.