Archive for October, 2009

Defamation consultation

I’ve put a commentable version of the MoJ Defamation consultation up at http://www.commentonthis.com/defamation

ernest marples take down

As you’ve probably already heard, Ernest Marples, the postcode to location lookup service, has been legally served with what’s effectively a demand for an innovation tax, and the functionality of a load of sites have stopped working.
JobCentreProPlus wont be searchable until that gets sorted out. But that’s not the biggest problem when pieces of online infrasructure go away. The bits that keep workng behind the scenes, also aren’t. Job data is transient – sometimes jobs are only posted for a day or two until they’re filled.
And if the innovation tax demand takes longer than that to be sorted out, then some of the statistics that we generate, how many jobs, in which areas, and when, start to become useless, and the site suffers not just for users today, but for the future.
When we (have the time to) draw a heat map of where jobs are, and put that next to the unemployment heat map, there’ll be a gap of however long, right around what’s said to be the turning point of the recovery. [If anyone wants to draw those maps, drop me an email for the data in an easier form than our API]
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What you do matters far more than what you say. Talk is easy; doing is much harder.

Disruptive Proactivity is one outcome of the "shut up and work" mentality. It changes the status quo, via innovation or other positive, productive activities. When successful, it leads to the "reality" of a game changing.

I've been at least partially responsible for parts of various e-democracy projects in the UK and beyond, including TheGovernmentSays.com (including regional and Whitehouse and UN versions, leading to Spin Different), www.iquango.org, www.commentonthis.com www.notapathetic.com and www.directionlessgov.com and www.mptables.com. I've also built stuff for, and am heavily involved with mySociety. I also offer consulting and printing services in areas of direct interest.

You can contact the author, Sam Smith, on sams@disruptiveproactivity.com or 07980 210 746 (UK).

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