Locatum

The decline of democracy?

2011-12-19T16:32:00.005Z

Weird starting with Francis Maude again but his "bonfire of the quangos" Public Bodies Act quietly came into force last week with Royal Assent. Putting aside the rather lacklustre execution to date of the quango cull it was the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) that attracted the most comment in a rather under-reported story.

Now the RDAs certainly are not perfect and for many have failed to deliver on some of their purposes, notably in getting match funding to accelerate economic development. You could as I do call this a problem of execution rather than function or you could see it as an exemplar of all that is wrong with quangocracy with all the placemen, red-tape, inertia etc beloved of red top ridicule.

Just for a moment step back and consider QUANGO - quasi autonomous non governmental organisation - organisations to which government has devolved power, which operate at arms length from Ministers and which in government parlance are referred to a Non Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs). Very much a product of 1980s thinking there are well over 1000, with 177 or so due to fall under the latest axe. And they sound like a mechanism for mediation too, for coordinating and focusing the often conflicting demands of different stakeholders in local issues, dispassionately, putting out some mfires and stoking others to, in the regional context, at least, seek ultimately to lead not follow.

The irony is that for some quangos offered a route for delivering traditional governmental services along more commercial lines, independently of politics and changeable government priorities and unencumbered by civil service practices and bureaucracy. And in so doing could in some cases, such as RDAs, be seen to provide a more local, coordinating perspective than heavility centralised sensibilities in Westminster.

So now we have the death of RDAs and the return to centralised edict, masked by the mantra of localism. In a perfect world there would be thriving vibrant communities with all the diversity of US sitcom networking, interacting, supporting each other in the daily struggle to maintain their environment across social, economic, environmental, political, cultural milieus. But it aint so an to pretend it is and will all be address by a multi-channel digital by default paradigm in two flicks of a lambs tail is naive. I beleive in all of that and wish it would be but wishing wont make it so and a huge investment in ripping up the rule book of design and delivery is needed to even begin the process; one hopes that GDS might make some headway in this direction.

In the meantime, back to localism. In the accepted absence for most of a coordinated localism rooted in consultation and compromise, localism comes very quickly to represent the worst shades of the human condition. Trade associations, lobbyists, vested interests and men with menaces, George Monbiot's elite 1% (well mostly) are incredibly adept at painting a prosperity canvas highly loaded in favour of laissez-faire 'development'. RDAs (or organisations like them) provide the sounding board, neutrality (though obviously can be gamed if you're in it for the long term), reference point, guidance, mechanism for consultation and compromise that most in any community would expect of their representatives and worthies.

Pork barrel politics and the presumption to approve (planning) will combine to steam roll through all kinds of misbegotten short term development in the interests of the few. The consequences, pickaxes and filth encrusted letterboxes notwithstanding, are the loss of planning, over-pressured resources, over-heated south east, the loss of more green lung space (SANGs anyone?) and the deliberate absenting of government from the one thing that it was elected for - allegedly to run the (whole) country.

A few years back I was in the Potteries, Newcastle-under-Lyme specifically and having never been there before was shocked and stunned to find an area, for all its legacy of skilled workforce, proximity to markets, excellent communications (really excellent actually) not to mention stunning environs, palpably down on its luck - it felt under-invested, forgotten almost. If those factors alone don't alert anyone still still expousing regional planning virtues to what could be done to coordinate and run the (whole) country (to the greater good and at lower cost) then I would be surprised. And in a digital, linked data world, we don't all have to be in Shoreditch or Holborn.

Trouble is localism is meant to solve this on its own and it can't when the whole process has been emasculated and opened up to gerrymandering - quangos may be undemocratic and counter-intuitively to have ended up over-extending the hand of government but localism is really another side of that same coin. That's government reneging on its remit to lead.

Why am I so vexed? - everything happens somewhere but something should happen just about everywhere, even if its peace and quiet!

Can data boost growth?

2011-12-16T15:54:00.015Z

Francis Maude has today been quoted on Twitter that the Cabinet Office is busy talking to 250 companies in a bid to "identify data sets that will boost growth". Leaving aside how much what I know to be a rather over-pressured and under-resourced CO can do and how much knowledge it has, it rather begs the question, not of who they're talking to (though that should be open too) or even the data sets that might be identified (or the methodology by which that is arrived at - that ought to be open too) but rather whether indeed the sought after, mythologised even, 'growth' and the jobs and tax revenues that will allegedly follow can be acheived.

Even if you believe the Euro 40bn (once you've read the report you won't) much of any 'value' to be gleaned comes from savings to government from being the beneficiary of improved knowledge and decision making - valuable yes, growth no.

The big win to be had from big data is analytics; while sales and marketing are traditionally thought of as the areas where enterprises can leverage their customer data (with or without third party data sources such as data.gov.uk) it is frequently the case that such activities are about gaining competitive advantage from fresh insights that help deliver market share, better targeting, improved productivity and greater efficiency. That's also the 'excitement' over FB - being able to deliver specific messages to very specific market niches - doing more with less (though at a premium to untargeted ads).

And so it is with analytics across the board - doing more (or even the same) with less. In current economic times many are having to come to terms with doing less with less such are the level of cuts. And big data sure can help, but is it growth?

On the one hand we have a cry for government to up its game in the analytics field so it can do better itself. On the other hand we are told that "the best thing that will be done with your data will be done by somebody else". Further there is the ongoing potential of an entitlement culture undermining the freemium model often touted as the best chance for leveraging revenue from free or open data. Something like 81% of all apps downloaded are for games; $3000 is the average revenue per developer of apps. That circle doesn't square.

So we have the prospect of a bun-fight as the open data economy struggles to emerge. Take market presence - in the real world we don't take it for granted but however good or useful or politically connected a web presence might be does not mean that others shouldn't be encouraged from improving on that in entering the market. Or take lobbying - dirty word de nos jours perhaps but one only has to look at the membership of various open data entities - panels etc - to see how successful an approach this can be. Or the continued pedalling of ever bigger and unsubstantiated numbers - the growth argument has become an act of faith (Michael Cross) only. And yet there was fuss earlier this year over spotlightonspend, SpikesCavell's data analytics service adopted by some local authorities to both provide easily digestable representation of local authority expenditure to citizens and allow under pressure executives to drill down into how that spend can be rationalised/optimised.

The fuss purported to be indignation that these useful citizen facing services were a smokescreen behind which the source data was still buried; and indeed the raw data is now available. But one wonders also whether there wasn't some moral outrage that a commercial enterprise was providing paid for services on top of open data when some bedroom hacker could do have done it for nowt. But no one ever says this. Government is an organisation like any other and needs surety of service and everything else, things that start-ups, bedroom hackers and many SMEs struggle with, so outsourcing your analytics under a commercial arrangement makes sense and will become commonplace. And as the G-cloud tender documentation illustrates just the hurdles to become an approved supplier can be daunting for an SME.

The future of the freemium model for open data is around smart analytics being used to provide consulting and other services back to...government (either directly or via their third party service providers). Government can't afford to recruit, train and retain a cadre of data scientists when the commercial shortfall of these skills remains acute. It might want to but it just won't be able to and so the best thing will be done by other people. But the sting in the tail is that those people will then be selling both the resulting analytics and the services back - to deliver the change necessary to meet spending and other targets/measures.

This is a game already joined at enterprise engagement level and it seems likely that a kind of PPP position might be arrived at around free and open data in which the public role is to give data away and the private role is to sell it back in order to drive out costs, improve productivity, do more with less. So far so predictable, but growth it aint.

And bigpharma extending its wealth of personal (you dont believe de-anonymisation do you?) data to produce new drugs/remedies as other revenue generating ones run out of patent aint growth either but should at least hold up their billion dollar businesses. They'll be pleased no doubt that the data will be available and won't even notice the fraction of a fraction of a percentage point that the fact that it is free and open affords them but then that's a different story.....

There are those of course who will benefit and will grow out of the back of open data - there are self evidently smart things that can be done and smart positions and relationships to be in in a 'from data to insight' ecosystem - and that is great but I don't think the evidence supports a growth agenda at scale.

And I've just realised that that is only my second post this year - been busy!

Where did 2010 go and whence 2011

2011-01-20T13:35:00.008Z

More a reminder ot myself of the blog than a post on anything specific - there is sooooooo much to rant about that I'm just resigned to yelling at whatever media is giving me the 'news' and neglected these pages. Some say blogging has had its day but you just can't be coherent in other (anti?) social media but with say Twitter Times to curate (censor?) one's interests its evident that blogs are a significant piece of my world at least. So, more attention here this year!

This post is also not going to be the ever-popular forecast of what might happen in the GI sector, plenty of others have been down that path already! 2010 was certainly a year of (some) change in the inner workings of the GI landscape, the consequences of some of which are not as apparent as some would have hoped (remind me of those killer apps folks, you know the ones with very big social and economic benefits attached; unless you were at Location Economics when the public sector laid a few out), the absence of which others have long anticipated.

And data.gov.uk has been a context free illusion too for the most part. Reverting to type - potholes: number, size, speed of disappearance, appearance, re-appearance, type of contract, method of repair. The problems inherent in identifying 'efficiency' in pothole repair are repeated across the data domain - in the absence of policy context, contract award criteria (targets anyone - even old DC contradicts himself there in NHS speech) and so on, the only thing that can be pedalled is an agenda.

2011 promises more change for the small coterie of interested parties in this landscape with the launch of the PSMA, further changes to pricing of certain OS products, the establishment of the GI Group (no, not applying to Chair it myself), the sadly continuing recession and potential for double dip as public sector cuts hit hard in April and beyond and the adjustment in private sector business models to compensate for what was perhaps an over-dependency on public sector spend.

This is a landscape of opportunity I sense, of clear blue water, for bold decisions by suppliers and buyers alike, and to that I look forward. And perhaps this year emapsite's services will get a mention here, who knows!

Announcing the all new Plans Ahead - better print services

2011-01-20T09:42:00.012Z

I haven't often used this blog to announce or extol emapsite's products and services but I am genuinely excited to be able to share that we are releasing an entirely new platform for the production of maps in printed plan form under our Plans Ahead by emapsite brand.

We have retired the old Java platform and in its place comes a solution seamlessly integrated to our existing OpenLayers based mapshop platform; amongst many other things no more plugins for users. In comes a brand new customisable plan design interface with visualisation of backdrop mapping and user overlays at its core. Plans Ahead for emapsite is available now, accessible by all to easily create clear and compelling plots and plans whether for consumer planning applications or professional public consultation.

The retired Plans Ahead was revolutionary when launched giving users the ability to view large scale mapping in any browser with re-usable OGC-compliant WMS back end, logic and web services components including dynamic pricing of often complex products. This platform found favour with consumer and professional alike and has in recent years seen spiralling numbers of users from our accreditation on the UK planningportal. However, we have always had greater ambitions for emapsite as platform for the professional map user. To accommodate feedback and suggestions from users while being easily extensible, in comes print sizes from A4 to A0 with landscape option as well and in comes revisions to text placement, movement, sizing and colouring, a revised approach to symbols from uploading through selection, placement and sizing and a genuine fully WYSIWYG print preview.

Don't just take my word for it, see an example plan.

Plans Ahead by emapsite illustrates our ambition, putting the user and their requirements at the heart of the solution, giving them the tools and the power to combine their own data with the latest Ordnance Survey detailed mapping and customisable overlays to create unique customer-branded prints and plots.

At its heart Plans Ahead opens up the opportunity, absent til now, of users being able to create printable maps with any backdrop, overlay and annotation, maps that are easily understood by the people using them in decision making processes. Plans Ahead by emapsite provides the tools and content to do this, creating truly accessible printed maps on demand.

We've even bundled in very large scale block plans for an even more streamlined service for consumers seeking printed maps for their planning applications. And yes, if ye seek, ye shall find GIS-lite type visualisation functionality including buffering, object re-sizing and rotation.

And this is solely another, albeit significant, step down this path....exciting times.

Insidious hyperlocal big society

2010-05-27T16:12:00.006+01:00

Its now a post new condemnation dawn, the dust is settling, the fractures clear for all to see, the first signs on the walls....

Hyperlocal...means.....different things to different people and while Mr Gale makes a valid analysis on its application as it relates to the aggregation and delivery of location specific content Gary's Hyperlocal Bloggage, there is a sense that the term has achieved a level of common usage, certainly amongst certain areas of the politico-digerati, and is due a critique at a different, less technically oriented level that is less awed and self-reverential than seems to be currently the case.

To cognoscenti hyperlocal is used as a catch all term in relation to an ecosystem that embraces data and information (and opinion), collates, aggregates and in some cases analyses or comments on that information and a mechanism by which these parts are published and distributed (online but not necessarily). Critically advocates anticipate that this ecosystem stimulates interaction with and the influencing of outcomes for and by the residents and citizens that are the subject of or might be impacted or influenced by the data collated and the implications for them of putting it in one place. So, data (bus timetables, surgery opening times, 24hr pharmacies, taxi ranks/numbers, your usual yellow/white/green pages), information (automated updates of central, local government, parish news, news aggregation/feeds, blogs, tweets), events and on and on. An upmystreet for those in my street if you like. All well and good you would think with energetic extension of successful 'models' mushrooming around the country, typically on the back of one or two energised individuals.

The embodiment of volunteerism (the willingness of people to work on behalf of others without the expectation of pay or other tangible gain) or almost - more of a freemium model in which advocates and early adopters can leverage that exposure for other gain. No harm? Not to be confused with voluntarism - the use of or reliance on voluntary action to maintain an institution, carry out a policy, or achieve an end. Oh you mean the big society James, don't you? But so easily and conveniently confused.

Hyperlocal(ism) is to a degree synonymous with local activism of one kind or another and represents one way in which residents might feel more engaged, included or even represented. NIMBYism is a subset of the species, typically given over to single issues be they planning, dog poo or parking. Tribalism is another slightly more loaded subset of the species. These groups of 'concerned' or 'engaged' individuals can be very small, very vocal, very well coordinated, very aggressive, very 'right' (as in if you don't agree with me you can only be against me).

Bit like the lights in our street, happily still off for a few hours every night. Any why is that? Simply put; because the greater good takes precedence - local authority bills are reduced, carbon emissions cut (slightly!), star gazers can, noctural wildlife gets a welcome stimulus, citizens with blazing lights might turn some of them off - net social and economic welfare benefits.

Trouble is the big society subverts hyperlocalism, volunteerism and the greater good in favour of voluntarism and any number of -isms to drive down societal granularity and undermine our common frame of governance. There is a very real risk of the return of the politics of the ducking stool and the lynch mob, the accreditation of a new generation of grown up bully boys (you think those gangs of teenagers are scary, wait til small groups gerrymander local decisions and intimidate nay sayers in the name of the big society) who can and will ride roughshod over regional and national vision.

There is of course plenty wrong with an over-centralised state where every decision requires central sign-off; most sane folk recognise that a devolved hierarchical administration has to have stronger frameworks and stronger operational mandates at each level to reconnect them with the executive. Hyperlocalism as a 'movement' needs to forge an identity that truly engages with a genuine cross-section of their citizenry rather than be hijacked as an exemplar or communication tool for narrow interests. At the same time local authorities need to grasp the nettle of hyperlocalism themselves to reconnect with those same constituents.

In the meantime we might be able to better collate the relevant information from all those geotagged and other-wise location related data sources though a vernacular, dynamic sense of place means that this will never be perfect!

Hyperlocal - online/offline

2010-04-16T09:51:00.006+01:00

Recently some scummy type swiped a camelia and pot plant off our doorstep while we were out, probably on Easter Sunday; we live a long way down a cul-de-sac, there are plenty of people around washing cars, twitching curtains etc including our neighbourhood watch fellow and at least one police officer. About the only thing this little enclave gets in terms of 'strangers' are speculative white vans looking to trim trees and sort out your driveway. Yet no one saw anything (I have asked). OK, so sometimes s**t happens.

Since around Christmas our same street has been benefitting from a local government policy (or pilot more likely) that turns out the street lamps from midnight. Fantastic! Saving energy, diminishing that bane of our lives, light pollution, opening up the sky at night, what's not to like.

I am old enough to remember when street lights did just about enough for you to see the post they were attached to and to drive down unlit motorways in an old opentop enjoying the stars. At some point someone decided that we needed to be lit up all the time; its expensive, damaging and intrusive, underpins ever greater surveillance (and don't come the "if you've got nothing to hide" paradigm, I mean, please, we're so far past that), disconnects us from our environment, makes unlit areas "dangerous", "scary", "other" etc. What happened to adventure, excitement, discovery, to lost shoes, torchlight and bramble scratches?

But, what do you know, I'm told I'm the only one who appreciates this "strange" (I kid you not, this is the term being used) unlit world that descends at midnight/1am. I fully expect these insecure, never go out types with their permanenntly on door lights and search light "security" lights (and thickly drawn curtains so they can't see the same) to assert their right to unneeded street lights. They'll be asking for cctv next.

We're not sleepwalking into a surveillance society, we eagerly seek it out as some kind of bogus reassurance of old perverted, media-pedalled paranoias. No one reads Ballard down our street obviously but the absent camelia is very much a signal.......

(Almost) one week on.....

2010-04-06T20:29:00.017+01:00

...from the publishing of the government's response to the OS Consultation.

They caught us on the hop with the changes to OS Free but we still managed to have OS maps for free ready for All Fools sunrise.

Much has been made (including by me) of the hostage to fortune set by GB back in November regarding the timeframe for the outcome of the consultation, made worse by the delay of its release til 23rd December. Well, they've got away with it so to speak and the indecent haste is well papered over in the document itself, though at first glance the meat is rather lean with plenty of promised downstream engagement to flesh out the true meaning.

It is evident from the foreword by John Denham (well, signed off by him) that what some of us long suspected, i.e. the need to offer, in the form of a long overdue OS Free portfolio, an answer (or a sop?) to the nagging Free our Data campaign as well as assorted nay sayers, trolls and self-proclaimed freetards (oh, and TBL, new hero to No.10) as well as to everyone else of course, was effectively the sole focus of the consultation and that all the important related matters were a side- or even a no-show. The Executive Summary reiterates this. Aye, and there's the rub......from there on the response appears to dwell on this theme but then uses it to bring in elements that hardly featured in the consultation (or even in the responses judging by the summary provided in the response) and which one assumes have come in from a rearguard action by OS themselves.

While OS Free (not sure I want to use the term OS Op**Da**) delivers on the one hand much of what most commentators including myself had been supportive of (and lobbying for) for a number of years, the OS has arguably grabbed much of this back with positioning that is certain to cause ructions across the GI arena as the implications emerge.

So, while we (and HMT) wait for the tax coffers to fill from all those new economic opportunities and the (far more likely) invisible savings from socially beneficial mashups (note to self - future piece on PSI data and how it "allows everyone to see how decisions are made" = transparency? doh! Am I giving too much away?), the consultation does seem likely to impact the existing tax generating GI landscape in a more tangible way (and timeframe)....

Q7 (and Q3) in the consultation always seemed to this commentator to open the door to the kind of competitive activity that OS has always had one eye on ("moving up the value chain" as I was once told by a senior OS fellow) and it looks like I've been proven right (again - see bottom re Pollock). Much of what emerges from the text is far removed from the public task as currently 'defined' and where many will have thought the consultation was headed.

So, we have OS consultancy, OS G-cloud, OS value added products, OS INSPIRE, OS D2G (OK, I made that up but it serves as a shorthand for direct to government, superseding PGA, MSA and other collective purchase agreements on 1st April 2011), OS Services, OS INSPIRE, OS Open Sauce. And to cap it all we have (para 3.28) the positioning of OS not as the data capture and quality control organisation de nos GI jours but as a "data management and delivery focused organisation". Sure you can interpret this as OS as an out-sourcing (to private sector for data collection), customer focused (for specifications), collaborative GI engine for UK plc but that would be generous in the extreme. Have they really managed to handbag just about the whole GI (and some of the SI) value adding community?

Whether OS and CLG will be able to squeeze all these ambitions past the various regulators remains to be seen but to those who thought the consultation signalled the beginning of the end for the 'old OS', OS Free nevertheless remains a hollow 'victory' - schadenfreude indeed. Even resolution of the derived data issue is still on the long finger and some of the progress of the old revised business strategy appears to have been buried.

Picking just one example, the success of the private sector in building geo web services and platforms is seen as a competitive hill to climb rather than a resource to exploit and relationships to develop. One can hope that reason will out but with additional government funds quietly sanctioned last week (£14m - worse than Planning Portal's £2.4m pa on its hosting - see p16) maybe the hare is off and running. Although perhaps not in the original consultation purview, this is the really big missed opportunity, to drive down the cost of running OS and more importantly give it a really sharp sense of purpose around data specification, capture and quality control - that's what our customers care about, the products.

If anything the carefully constructed mandate embedded within the consultation response opens up the likelihood of a more bloated organisation with more sales and marketing activity, an organisation in competition with its channel and failing in its primary responsibility, to ever improve the quality, currency and content of its core OS MasterMap product.

What is not clear is how much of this will survive a change in administration on May 6th, if indeed there is one, and whether after the exhaustion of the consultation and the election there will be the appetite for more tinkering.

At the very least the lean bones of the consultation response will still need flesh - reference points for same: paras 2.7/3.5 (future OS direction), 3.9 (expert panel for OS Free content), 3.15 (TOID service - already available in the commercial sector), 3.17/3.20/3.21 (mapping agreements), 3.22 (expert panel for service specification), 3.23 (CLG obviously not sure they can swing this legally, using "would"), 3.24 (derived data and other licensing issues), 3.26 (redefining the public task), 3.27-3.30 (INSPIRE - lots of futurology in here, though OS does have good thematic institutional knowledge on some elements). You know where the devil is......

Not that you'll find me beefing about any of this too much......always best to have a plan I find. And now that we're in purdah don't expect OS to say anything much. Convenient - OS Consultation response ftw is likely on an internal OS memo!

Oh, yes, ftw....this wouldn't be a piece on the OS Consultation if I couldn't highlight para 3.25 and its dismissal of the assumptions of the Cambridge Study, long paraded by many as the basis for all kinds of GI futures, long held up by myself as an evidence-free piece of 'research' prepared to support a particular world view. Ha.

Footnote: if Appendix B is complete then there are some notable vocal absentees

GMOs - whats not to like

2010-03-28T20:28:00.004+01:00

While I tend to regard myself as generally pro-technology and pro-science I find I also have a long and deeply held anti-GMO 'position'. Glyn Moody's recent post on the subject reminded me of this and stirred me to ponder this view.

In essence you can take it as a given that I am as deeply suspicious of the corporatism so ably detailed in Glyn's (and Andrew Leonard's) post as they are. If you're not then pretty much any scientific/technical objections are going to fall a long way second.

A very good friend of mine worked for a while in a unit within the EC that amongst other things used to test for the presence of GMOs in various crops both in field trials and on the dockside. In a purely statistical sense a negative presence (even in parts per billion) does not disprove the null hypothesis regarding whether or not the sample is 'contaminated' by GMOs. This is depressing enough as we know that field trials of GMOs always leak into the surrounding environment - those field buffers are a joke.

Then consider that lab testing of the GMO prior to release focuses entirely - as is common in almost all such trails across big pharma, household products, cosmetics etc as well as agro-ind and foodstuffs - on the individual GMO molecule. Now, for sure, we can worry and lobby and campaign about the intellectual monopolies, the corporate power, the loss of power of the (mostly) poor farmers around the world but, in a world knocked sideways by the shock of the recession and riding unsuspecting into a future where the consequences of the tactics adopted in repsonding to this, in many ways that argument looks like being for the most part one of righteous indignation. The recent decision (February) by India's environment minister Jairam Ramesh to revoke a previous decision (October 2009) by India's Genetic Engineering Approvals Committee (GEAC) to allow GMOs into the country's aubergine industry does I would agree suggest that protest on the scale witnessed in India can acheive what I fear will ultimately be temporary and may already be fruitless closing of the legislative door to GMOs. As the 'anti' community put it - "I am no lab rat".

As Rachel Carson detailed half a century ago it is not necessarily the presence of a single 'toxin', the changing of a single part of the DNA of an organism, the release of a single aerosol that gives cause for concern. Rather it is the cocktail that it creates in the natural environment. And this is never tested, never. "It can't be", claim the corps. So, go ahead anyway? How sane does that sound? And in no time you're back to trying to disprove the null hypothesis.

In the meantime, incredibly complex issues get a bye-line which while useful for lazy journos, the gullible and others, hides that very complexity and allows much bad stuff to happen 'out of focus'. So, for example, diesel engines end up being seen as 'good' compared to petrol and taxed accordingly. It's as if no one thought to look at the chemical composition of the exhaust outputs of a normal diesel engine; the mix of SOx, NOx and other pollutants that have far greater impacts on the upper atmosphere than C02, not to mention the particulates.....

Then there's housing; the stuff that houses are made of bleed chemicals into your often hermetically sealed 'safe' environment - insulating materials, plaster, paint, varnish, PVC, concrete, man made fibres - while you add fitted carpets, double glazing, air fresheners and the full array of the supermarkets 'household' products aisle. Then personal grooming. Yuk. And we're surprised at the rise in non specific respiratory disease in children? Have a wild guess. No single element can be blamed, the cocktail most certainly can. We tested it.....here's how.

Child 2 shortly after birth was diagnosed as requiring a ventilator thingy. We were astonished. But then we lived in a late 1980s 'box' backing onto the M3 with a distinct shortage of greenery, fitted carpets, double glazing etc. Then we moved - surrounded by trees, cul de sac, wooden floors, draughty doors (yes yes the heating bills - simple - no heating, wear a jumper). And you know what, child 2 stopped the ventilin on the day we moved in. We are getting sick from and should be sick of this random atmospheric cocktail that is our everyday lung filler.

Which brings me back to GMOs. You can't put the genie back in the bottle once its out there (rather like option 2 of the OS consultation) and (again like the OS options) in the interests of a powerful lobby (CBI, big pharma et al) (or in the case of OS, GB's awe of TBL) the interests of the many are sacrificed on the back of some phony economic orthodoxy. We're all cycnical and informed enough to buy Andrew Leonard's line yet still they 'get away with it'.

Governments are and will be responding to the recession in quasi-Friedmanesque ways with regulation being slashed (red tape must be bad right!), public spending likewise (quangos are useless and expensive right!) and asset sales (OS anyone?). A throwback to the ways of that mad scientist 'Thatch'. No right thinking chemist would carry on randomly adding one complex substance to another and not be expected to observe and measure the consequences. Yet we blithely sit by and let big business do this in the 'interests', in the case of GMOs, of the worlds poor farmers. We know their first duty is to their shareholders so those of the farmers are bogus in the first place.

I like a good simple cocktail, a margharita or a caparinha perhaps, but any time spent following one of these with a variety of others is generally felt the next day. The trouble with GMOs is, its not the next day, the cocktail if felt forever. Ouch.

Outing the OS "policy options" 'consultation'

2010-03-23T18:48:00.027Z

Apologies for so much grammar in the title but those of you who have been following this since November 17th will know exactly whence the implied skepticism comes.

In the intervening months you may have observed (as I have not been 'anon') various comments I have made to various posts and other blogs (I can't remember them all now so no links!) correcting factual errors and establishing a soap box of sorts from which to contrast and/or challenge in a "you can't prove that your emperor has any clothes" kind of way some of the statements, demands and assumptions of the 'georati' (?).

Now of course you may argue that I, on behalf of emapsite, have an agenda of my own, what with being an OS Premium Partner (that's value adding reseller) and all. You may be right and I am not going to be sharing corporate information here so you'll just have to speculate but on the whole you won't find me hiding behind some smoke-screen of nobility and social good. Actually, on the one hand I am 100% behind the release of data sets under some kind of OS Free in support of these kind of activities, mashups etc, unhindered by the derived data nonsense. On the other hand I give short shrift to a number of things:

- that data (in this context OS data) is 'expensive'
- that large scale geographic data has a high price elasticity of demand
- that there are businesses going out of business or not come into business because data is so 'expensive'

After all we're a commercial concern, employ people, pay tax etc in delivering services to our customers.

But in the wake of the ludicrously quick announcement on Monday, by the PM no less (in amongst the big stuff on the digital and information economies), to assorted digerati that a policy option had been worked out and that it included a "substantial package" of data under the OS Free banner, the 'community' (that is neo and paleo - the alleged will to stop this squabble in a tea cup expounded at fora such as AGI apparently forgotten in the rush to claim the leadership of this not so new zeitgeist) have been quick to cheer, deride and second guess various aspects of the forthcoming announcement.

Whoops, that is a long sentence......feel a rant coming on.....

Sage voices, false prophets, various trolls and those who you might think would know better have saddled their various donkeys. It's all so undignified! But then again dignity is hardly what you would ascribe to the decision (presumably taken by December 23rd when the consultation was released) to announce a preferred policy option just three, yes 3, days after the consultation closed, with barely time to download the PDFs, rip open the envelopes and digest the contents, let alone assimilate, evaluate, reflect, ponder, revisit etc the wisdom of the community (from end users to software sellers, integrators and resellers, competitors and contractors, fans and detractors, old business and new et al) and convey that in measured form up the chain of command in line with the standard consultation protocol, upto 87 additional days later. Yep, take it as read that industry submissions have received short, if any, shrift. Indecent cry some, stitch up others, foregone conclusion? Why did we all bother? Why indeed?

It was evident from fairly early on (and arguably from the way in which the 3 options were positioned) that CLG, Cabinet Office, LEK et al were 'hedging', looking at option 3 as a stepping stone to option 2 within an unspoken timeframe. It was also evident that the consultation would count for nothing given the hostage to fortune of the original announcement, unencumbered as it was (and is) by recognition of the legal OS operational framework.

You would think that such a well respected consultancy as LEK would diligently dissect the various strands available to them and the limited material in support of a given direction. Not the case here as any decent assessment of the available literature on the economics of geographic information reveals. Prof Nigel Shadbolt of this parish was quick to acknowledge in January in the wake of criticism of the assumptions of the so-called Cambridge Study that there was a need for greater research on this subject. The reason: Pollock and friends are entirely unchallenged on the evidence-free assumption that the demand for large scale data (i.e. OS MasterMap) is highly elastic and their numbers are repeated ad infinitum without question. I would not argue that such products are perfectly price inelastic but, as one of the few businesses with a decade of evidence to hand, I can with confidence say that those who 'need' large scale data need large scale data, not perhaps at any price but at just about any price short of going and collecting it themselves. That is one measure of the value of large scale data.

Picture the use cases:

- house extension requires planning application requires 'plan' - cost of plan from about £12.99 depending on supplier and area; cost of extension from about £15,000; benefit of extension from about £25,000. Mmmm, %age cost of essential, useful 'plan' - paltry.

- decent size urban regeneration (few 10s or even 100s of hectares) - cost of detailed digital mapping for use across the multiple companies involved? Maybe upto £3,000 or so; cost of development in the millions; benefit of redevelopment - economic and social - massive. Mmmm, %age cost of vital, core data - paltry again.

And now we have the claim that 'markups' are 'wrong'; watch out for 'profit is evil' or 'do no profit' branding on a search engine near you soon. First duty to shareholders and all that.....can't see costs to customers falling and of course out of profit do UK taxes come (if UK domiciled of course!).

And yet there are those claiming, even this week, that the private sector finds this data too 'expensive'. Our customers don't - they know the cost and risks of the alternatives and the benefit of instant availability. Have there been errors? Of course! Are transactional charges for B2C websites (those that want to use OS data) too high? Yes. Should the third sector have specific use rights and charging waivers - if the distinction of non-profits, charities etc was not so blurred, of course.

But all these bleeding hearts....get yourself a business case, really. And please don't say LBS or even LBMS or 'ad revenues' or 'donations', it don't wash. If the target ain't paying your bills, by whatever means, you're going to blame the one thing you knew the cost of? Tell that to your Board, sell the Maserati, whatever....too difficult, scapegoat required, doh. Different of course if costs were put up without warning or rationale.

I am mostly interested in large scale data (as is OS as it provides 80% of their revenues); in all the 'noise' it seems to have been overlooked that Free Our Data and almost everyone else concurs that this should not be in OS Free (they don't want option 2 either). In the clamour for 'free' the point has been lost - how is an inefficient organisation with an outdated mandate to be recreated for the 21st century as a streamlined entity with a tightly constrained public task that will deliver long term geoinformation integrity at a declining cost to users in real terms?

And another thing....next some will be claiming that other infrastructure should be run as a government asset and thus be free at the point of consumption. It was never thus, government always got receipts from nationalised industries, now utilities, charging to cover for delivery of the next unit and the one tomorrow and also for the unit in 30-50 years time, the maintenance, update, investment bearing considerable parallels, albeit at a much smaller scale, with databases. I worked in Mongolia and saw and benefited from (when working) the centralised free hot air heating systems - they're great - but are we to truly anticipate and relish a return to nationalised this and that?

btw, anyone can be an OS 'partner', there being no protection per se and the costs, like 'em or not, are transparent, making a cost base and business model 'easy'.

Of course OS has done stuff it would have been wiser not to down the years (we've been quick to tell them, they're no angels) and could have moved more quickly in a number of areas - sorting out derived data, consolidated consumer licensing and pricing, OS Free, click use licensing, cutting costs, not competing with the private sector being notable - but have you tried dealing with the others? And as I say it isn't that hard to change the cost structure and mandate and resolve these issues. This consultation is the opportunity to do just that but has signally failed to identify, let alone drill down into and resolve, these fundamental issues. Opportunity missed #FAIL.

On competing with its channel.....OS has continually moved up the value chain over the last decade and there are signals already that concerns over short term revenue 'hits' on the back of this consultation are contributing to more of the same, and at significant cost (£10m), at a time when OS should be looking at slashing its cost structure.

I've always been for the broader social good and OS Boundary Line (everything from parishes and wards to euro zones), Code Point (that's postcodes, a right royal (ha) pain), addressing and various gazetteers should be unleashed on the third sector, charity, mashup, academic, bedroom hacker and any other kind of user to produce stuff and present stuff (that be Gary's secret sauce) to people that wish to 'consume' it and the benefits it confers. emapsite would benefit too. These are the framework geographies by which most public data (data.gov.uk and all that) can be assembled, aggregated, analysed and visualised. And what is used for that visualisation? Well, it ain't OS mapping (that's the 1:25 000 scale Explorer and 1:50 000 scale Landranger equivalents) - too dense and rich cartographically to provide a useful contextual backdrop for most applications (as the low take up of OS's own OpenSpace service kind of demonstrates) - most are using OpenStreetMap (OSM) (and should be eternally grateful to SteveC and all the 'VGIers') for its clean visual style, flexibility (if you have the inclination), spherical global projection (another issue for another time!) and licensing or GYM.

And please please, mashup some social and economic value and not the high profile kind of guff that has been first out the traps - ASBOrometer anyone, has anyone actually looked at that and been prepared to make a genuine decision about anything and I mean anything at all; safer cycling anyone, you'll know where I am on that already; potholes, ditto. Me? There be value in them thar data hills.....

Did I mention the third sector? I did? Diversion? OK! Unrehearsed argument this.....Bit like PPP and PFI only with a nobler defence, they've become a critical part of the service delivery fabric in our transformed nation state, sucking taxes directly from government and indirectly from the public at large (charity and donations as indirect broadly regressive taxation anyone - you know about the U-shaped charitable giving profile of course - for another time perhaps), providing fertile ground for parallel commercial and lobbying activity and duplicating existing institutional infrastructures. On the latter, I worked in 'development' through the late 80s and most of the 90s and have first hand experience both of the awesome, wonderful work of the likes of SCF, MSF, WaterAid et al on the one hand and the staggering costs of administering both these and especially the supra-agencies such as the UN (where anything up to 84% of receipts go on admin) on the other. BandAid set out to demonstrate among other things, and by most measures successfully, that it needn't be so but they remain the exception rather than the rule at that scale though more of a model at the micro voluntary and community scale. Those that come in their wake are these days more adroit at leveraging the 'third sector' appellation in different ways - an exemplar of 'freemium' for some and a Trojan horse to others. I have witnessed at first hand the credibility from that association, annointed by piety, used as a tool to convey entirely inaccurate 'facts' to duped credulous high level audiences. Chatham House rules preclude further revelations but for want of a good soundbite it pays to do your research.

For some reason the city of Tempe (AZ) just popped into my head as an exemplar (if I recall correctly) of what goes wrong and what costs there are to the dilution of quality (and hence, as night follows day, trust) in large scale mapping. I believe there are now 10 or more large scale vertical market or use case specific data sets for this one small city, most of which contain the same data but none of whoch have been collected to a common standard. It may look good in GDP terms with lots of declared economic activity but it sure as hell ain't efficient or re-usable or linked (or even accessible). Rumour has it that there are those in the crowd at WhereCampEU last week (sorry, had to duck out but Justin, Ian and Richard all put in appearances) who have suddenly woken up to the idea that you can't have two definitive large scale maps.....

Which in a very roundabout way brings me to what happens next....there are plenty of factors that could inform the outcome.....

- the idea that the public sector should pay more (a small part of option 3) is naturally laughable; as is giving away large scale data or nothing changing (options 2 and 1 respectively).

- the fact that prices have gone down more than 30% in real terms in recent years (with no significant increase in uptake) has for no apparent reason been ignored, though it disproves the case for option 2.

- that the thriving community of businesses in the sector (that employ upwards of 10,000 people (yes, employ, that's taxes folks, at both ends) according to the AGI) has received scant attention - why is that when the information economy is our future?

- the fact that beneficiaries of collective purchase agreements are saddled with unworkable derived data regulations is as sorely overlooked as the fact that so little is done with the data these organisations actually pay for (all options).

- the myth that LGA members contribute data to the OS for free that is then licensed back to them for a fee; the CODES process has been quietly dropped owing to the need, following field trials, for OS to go and resurvey the as-built real world features for which LAs provide pre-built/planned information.

- the fact that the public task for OS and the parallel opportunity to re-cast OS in a different mould while retaining its self-financing integrity in difficult economic times (when the alleged benefit to the Treasury through increased tax take from start ups and non-dom companies is as comical as it is scary) received little or no attention except from respondents (most of whom made this point in some form, all of whom are set to be ignored).

...but they (and others) won't - if I were a gambling man I would even bet that most of these are news to CLG.

So, having ruled out large scale data and raster backdrops and ruled in all that reference data, where exactly is the squabble? Is there even one! We'll know soon enough as the various models are run, fiefdoms are fought over, sacrifices and accommodations made, budgets re-run in time for All Fools Day.

Ian Austin, MP is Minister of State for OS at CLG and a very close ally of the PMs. With the latter in thrall to TBL (to the tune of £30m - wonder where that Institute will be - in one of those closed down University departments or MIT perhaps?) the (rest of the) money has to be on an OS Free that satisfies a small coterie of vocal technocrats while leaving a far larger swathe of often innovative, risk taking, entrepeneurial anything-but-Cnuts with proven markets and business models to re-think their propositions. It's one thing to fail to invest in tools and technologies to more effectively meet new challenges, it's another to have your business model overturned by a competitor but that is not the case with government edict.

Hey, life ain't fair, geddoverit, this is a slow train that has been a long time coming (and may take a while to pass)....best be on the side of the angels (and not Harry Angel - you may have to look up the reference and decide who is who too) and may it be profitable and popular...

Sport Relief 3 Mile boy

2010-03-21T20:45:00.006Z

Well, technically, boy 2 (aged 9) and my better half. Rather a last minute decision (last week) saw the rapid creation of a team (of 2) - http://www.mysportrelief.com/jedstars?SID=118239
and a modest fund raising target. Delighted and grateful for the immediate response.

And today was the day, at 1030am allegedly - I say allegedly....the school car park was home to what appeared to be an amateur motorcycle display team; happilty we did have the right day, just the letter and original website time had been wrong and the whole thing was scheduled for 3pm.
Not content with running 3 miles later boy 2 then played football and tennis for over an hour. Back at the school and self consciousness took over during the 'warm up'. But come the off and boy 2 was running 4th of some 200 souls after the first 400m as they left tarmac for grass and mud. Each circuit a mile with many finishing after one circuit boy 2 strode on, revivified after 2 miles, as the picture shows,

to finish the 3 miles just inside 26 minutes and in the top 10. A fantastic effort you'll agree (obviously doesn't burn it all up in defence on a saturday!).

And the reason I tell you this? You will most likely have got here from the link in the email seeking further sponsors - so a short tale of the day a a quid pro quo. And a reminder of the link...
http://www.mysportrelief.com/jedstars?SID=118239

Anything you can give greatly appreciated....

Did I mention...the better half came in on 30 minutes - bravo!

What the kids do with your iphone

2010-03-12T21:10:00.003Z

Had the iphone a month now and am a total convert - how can anything else be so difficult and lacking in intuition!? Still not done much in the way of Apps for myself - SnowReport, WindGuru, TideApp, GPSLite, Ship Finder, Eurosport, Palringo, Twitterific, Skype, Trainline, TubeMap, Tube Status and mashup ASBOromoter demonstrating a combonation of interests if nothing else. On that note, what is the excitement with the ASBO thingy? As with the bike mashup it begs the asking of more, serious questions than it can hope to answer. Perhaps that is the point, go and look at it yourself, examine the metadata (its not s**t by the way, it is just worthy and dull and, per a discussion of the use of digital signatures, vital to provenance, confidence, trust, re-use etc). All for that but in the meantime it certainly doesn't provide social value or as the contrarians might have it, create/perpetuate ghettoes.

Anyway, back to the iphone.....yes, I have a password, no the boys don't know it but they do ask me to enter it for anything they find of interest. Compared to the inanities of YouTube and the like (not to mention the language in the comments) and the hassle of multiple logins (roll on a laptop/netbook for each of us) vs. appropriate cross-user content filters the App Store offers a veritable treasure trove of 'safe' little, well, "apps".

With exactly no tuition they have installed all manner of mostly smile making stuff....starting with a local radio station and including:
Paper Toss
Imbecile Test
Bubble Wrap
Impossible
iMarioLite
JellyCar
You vs Wall
BigRedBtnFree
kinetic
iPint
Toobz-Free
Mood Pad
Glow Hockey
Dots
Bump
Red Ball
Traffic Rush
Waterslide
Shrek Kart
Shotgun Free
Finger Sprint
Aqua Moto
Labyrinthe
SKiJump Lite
Shaker
Jurasic
Angry Birds
CatchTheEgg
Sling Cowboy
SpotDiffFree
Lego Photo
Soosiz Lite
Icy Escort
Cluck It! Lite
Fish Frenzy
SnowBalls
Drum Kit Lite
Foghorn!
MyGuitar
Harmonica
Dog Piano Jr
JellyfishJam
Glow STick Free
Buzzer!
Framed Lite
Cat Piano Jr
Bouncedown
TableTennis
Spikey Lite
Hamburgers
Electroracer
Maze
Mazes
SnailMail Lite

Blimey. Go on, you know you want to...

A decade on.....

2010-02-22T14:28:00.008Z

You regular readers will know that I don't put much public relations related material on this blog; however, I do think you will be interested to know that our mapshop now has a plug-in free map interface for the first time.

Back in 2000, yes 10 years old this week too, so we see it as a kind of celebration, ERMapper's Image Web Server and the underlying ecw format and its accompanying protocol (ecwp://) opened up the possibilities of an e-commerce data delivery platform. Yes, it required an ActiveX plugin but boy did it change the way in which geographic data, particularly mapping and imagery, could be viewed and obtained. Then 5 years or so ago we launched a Java based solution for viewing large scale (notably OS MasterMap) data online and for completing planning applications and similar things for PDF output. More developments here shortly too.

Although IE remains the de facto browser across the vast majority of users in the enterprise space this is changing, fast in some cases, and the need to provide a solution to the growing legions of Firefox, Safari and Chrome users as well leveraging our OGC compliant data stack could wait no longer. The OpenLayers framework (you were going to ask I know, and if I didn't tell you a quick look under the hood would provide the answer anyway) has proven a powerful, flexible friend in this continuing evolution and you can expect more in the coming weeks....

Did I say, we're 10 years old this week....

Data, Doubt and Dissent (Part 3, enough already)

2010-02-12T13:52:00.014Z

Statistics was compulsory when I studied geography, maybe it still is, but it is dull, worthy, grey and complicated which means that few labour over the minutiae of sampling methods, aggregation units, timelines, confidence intervals, error and so on. Too many shades of grey for politicos, lobbyists, media and the hobbyist too.

So what happens in the mashup, in the creation and consumption of information, the thirst for knowledge and some degree of certainty? Both producer and consumer can define and divine intelligence in their mashup and the chosen analytical methodology (though few would think in those terms). And so we have it, a few producers, a myriad consumers, a willing public, a naïve one, ripe for gulling. It is an interesting area….

We are in the arena of filters, choice architecting, framing effects and the tools of cyber balkanisation - data through a lens, information of the providers making, online. The often self-referential, self-reinforcing nature of this information and its blogosphere, contributes to a kind of tribalism or ghettoism and narrow world view, wittingly or otherwise; we use recommender systems, profiles/preferences and other tools to make sense of the volume of information available to us online. We have to, to slow it down to an intelligible level. As one of my colleagues put it, the consequence is that we sometimes appear to be on the threshold of a return to medieval mores and customs in the descent to the lowest common denominator/maximum attention.

Once I started trying to frame some of this stuff for myself, and having read Anderson, Shirky and others, I stumbled across Sunstein who has had plenty to say over the last decade on these subjects, though not the medieval part!

And, while I am writing this a piece appears on similar themes only in the context of religious extremism. But right there is a similar argument about the frictions that mediation creates; it seems that without friction we couldn’t function – historically we were limited to the number of relationships we could sustain around the parish pump and would filter those through common interests and now, while the opportunities are limitless, it is impractical to endeavour to exploit them without filters of some kind. My own blogroll and my usage of Twitter and the delivery of that via Twitter Times are indicative of the issue and the paradoxical challenges it throws up.

Am I living in my own cultural cul-de-sac while believing that that through my apparently unmediated interaction with it I am participating in the ‘global’ (well, as the 1 in 4 who is) village? This narrative of individualism disintegrates on the anvil of community solidarity as a mechanism for giving purpose and creating cohesion for otherwise fragmented causes and those who would espouse them. Some of the traditional boundaries of community may have dissolved but they are being re-created in cyberspace in part to restore the friction we need to make sense of our individual environment.

And into that space step the ‘internet commentators’. But not just ‘people like me’ even if you believe who I am! Surveillance, overt (you did agree to tell everyone where you are didn’t you, what planes you’re catching, hotels you’re staying in, when your house will be empty etc) and covert is ubiquitous. Personalised adverts, recommender systems, blogrolls, Twitter lists, forums, ANPR, CCTV (did I tell you we have 20% of the world’s CCTV cameras in the UK!), loyalty cards, cell-ID, memberships to name but a few – you (and your community of interest, worn clearly) are ‘out there’ so let the trolling begin, let loose the dogs of doubt.

‘Guiding opinion’ online whether through social networking tools, ‘formal’ information exchange or publishing for or against a given community of interest is the (not so) new spin and engenders a corrosive form of ‘followtics’, witness political soundbites, mainstream media’s publicising of the climate change denial agenda and the vaunting of the particular at the expense of its milieu.

The natural direction of this is stoning, hanging and the ducking stool, a descent to medievalism, the dilution of all that a liberal multi-cultural society aspires to. A corresponding paralysis in decision making and law giving will spawn a new era of plunder of the worlds natural and human resources. That’s a dim analysis that I don’t share.

The world is too inter-connected to allow this to happen but is also dependent on often distant institutions to ensure that it remains so. Our new ‘hyper’local virtual communities, whether narrowly identified or with broad allegiances, represent the opportunity to hold the wider networked world to account.

To do so requires two (at least) things:

First, a fundamental shift in the interventionist nature of the political landscape to one that is more responsive, in the national and global context, to and supportive of, in terms of reframing the relationship between individual, third sector, business, families, interest groups and wider community affiliations, multi-agent solutions (where the agent is not an 'agency' but rather a (human) instrument for effecting change). That is I accept a bit of a rambling mouthful - key words - responsive, supportive government. However, no government should respond to, support or galvanise such solutions on the back of narrow agendas, however presented.

So, second, back to PSI….it is essential that the agents of change and the solutions they develop understand the context in which a particular issue is invoked. This is where hyperlocality and the virtual community of the internet helps in reframing the relationships that can power that change. Potholes or pensioners, social housing or cycle lanes - limited budgets, resource constraints, hard choices - context, analysis, action, communication.

So, and here is the really big but…….once we get past the easy sniping and the shallow agendas that will be the low hanging fruit of the vexed and the vicious, what are we into…..essentially we are into a world of comparisons, greener grasses and fences, difficult decisions, conflicting agendas and the yah boo politics that follows. Oh yes, and statistics. The question is, are we big enough to get past the one and chew on and make sense of the latter…..

Data, Doubt and Dissent (Part 2, middle bit maybe)

2010-02-11T14:27:00.006Z

At a recent presentation a slide was put up using PSI made available through the MPDP initiative that ranked local authorities according to the %age of potholes (again, I know) repaired.

So Torfaen, with 3 reported holes, all fixed, came out 'top' and then the slide changed. Does that make Torfaen the best council in Britain? Does it mean they have fixed all the potholes? Does it mean the repair will last? Did we know where Torfaen ranks in the passenger kilometre travelled per day charts (I made that one up but you get the idea)? Flipping that table around does it make whoever is at the bottom the worst? Of course not.

Where does our money go indeed, and on what justification? What are the underlying statistics, the hard facts, that drive decisions, be they central, local or further devolved? Are there any (think WMD here!)? What process has been used to say yes to potholes and no to something else? What problems are we trying to solve? How do we measure the relative values of those choices? How do we influence those choices (other than at the ballot box if we have one, or if that makes a difference)? How do we reward or stigmatise the decision makers?

Policies, or projects of policies if you get me, such as the New Deal for Communities, Invest to Save Budgets and the like as well as the rise in citizen and hyperlocal news (some of it 'journalism', some not), location centric applications, the interest in maps and mapping (cf the decline in geography?), the reinvigoration of parish and town councils in some areas and the increase in local advertising expenditure, all point to other ways in which influence on these choices can be voiced.

Nevertheless identifying the problems, their causes and the options for their solution are hard enough and take time, energy, commitment and money; this is hard enough to sustain in a wealthy liberal society, however much we may decry existing mechanisms for delivery (typically 'centralised' or imposed by will of local and central government and related actors in the third sector). This is already muddied by lobbyists and pedallers of mystery but could become infinitely harder (or not) when the PSI-empowered citizen or vested interest wields their 'investigative power'.

The idea that the the public is able i.e. qualified to "root out wasteful spending and poorly negotiated contracts" is as appealing as it is absurd. It is one thing to 'track' a PFI programme but altogether another to identify 'wasteful' essential service contracts such as hospital cleaning or pothole filling or anti-aircraft missile design. BATNEEC was a widely ridiculed approach to acheiving a similar thing but did so almost exclusively in exchange for a loss of quality. RMSA and recurring potholes are a manifestation of the same 'Walmart' mentality, in an attempt to commoditise services to 'free'. Pay peanuts.......

Of course we don't want wasteful contracts and an extension of PPP/PFI without greater transparency and validation of the approach or contract. And of course it is ludicrous that £6.5m be spent on 80 people to provide such services to track expenses for IPSA. We bemoan regulation and red tape as either being too intrusive or not strong enough (its never suitably 'light touch', responsive, symapthetic or concilatory - maybe it is but we don't get good news stories!). Every time we try to cut it away we require (unconsciously it seems) that someone somewhere takes responsibility but they won't, don't or can't usually for fear of liability and litigation.

Into this fray comes the contrasting memes of political self-protection and manufactured doubt.

The former gives us knee jerk reaction to good and bad ‘news’ – the something must be done/it's risky/isn't it terrible/here is our solution type tirades are the stuff of the daily political media flow. Unfettered by the real world challenges of the impacts, social, economic, environmental, humanitarian, whatever, of imposing ‘solutions’ into whatever inevitably far more complex subject happens to newsworthy today, such pervasive flow is increasingly tarnished and seen as nowt more than a cynical ploy.

The latter foments (and liberally funds) controversy in areas where the broader public is ill-equipped to differentiate the implications of complex models, data sets and the requisite analysis. FUD – fear, uncertainty, doubt – generated billions for the tobacco industry over a 50 year plus period (oh yes and for governments as they kept increasing the tax take). Think tanks, research units, "independent" 'institutes' and 'respected' academics combine to create the type of uncertainty into which politicians, hacks and citizens can either exploit or fall for. Climate change being the most recent example.

This stuff (establishing a solid basis for decision making, as well as monitoring and evaluation of outcomes) is hard and pedalling narrow agendas is easier than ever. If it needs to be better understood it needs also to be made more interesting and accessible and the consequences, impacts and arguments credible.

Part 3 will try to look at that.....

Data, Doubt and Dissent (Part 1, probably)

2010-02-10T12:43:00.008Z

This may end up being a multi-part piece as various strands come and go in the struggle to create a coherent thought piece on a topic that has been nagging away at me for some time. Yes, it has relevance to geography and location and even to free data and mapping but the underlying motivation derives from a wider philosophical question on the use and impact of data in a hyperlocally enabled globally interconnected world…..bear with me!

So, where to start without being glib or contrarian or wading in the soup of euphemism, the pejorative and the broad brush……

Whether we like it or not, and personally I do, in Britain we live in an incredibly diverse and broadly tolerant society. And yet, and yet…..the manufactured doubt brigade (typically in a ghetto of some kind, whether of the mind, the middle class or the migrant), the furious ignorati and their cohorts in the media, willing and otherwise, chip away at this diversity and tolerance.

We also live in an inter-connected and inter-dependent world where isolationism (or ‘islandationism’?) is denial.

The rallying cries are for political ‘democracy’, transparency, accountability and increasingly for ever more devolved powers. To a huge extent I am in accord with this and I think that the liberation of public sector information has the potential to support the reframing of the state-citizen-third sector relationship (that at one level appears to be emerging) in a positive manner and in a way that accords with these broad ambitions.

I support the idea that 'governments (local and central and their agencies) should establish the principle that the public services should publish in reusable form all the objective, factual, non-personal data on which the public services are run and assessed and on which policy decisions are based or which is collected or generated in the course of public service delivery' (Prof Nigel Shadbolt at the launch of the government's data portal www.data.gov.uk). There is of course dispute about the bounds of such a broad demand and about what mechanisms could be deployed to bring this about, how much it would cost (to government and to commercial enterprise that has to date interceded in such provision), what the benefits would be and how the impacts might be felt and delivered. A discussion for another piece.

I guess the concern or issue that I am trying to give voice to relates to the questions “what do people want this data for”, “how are they going to use this data” and similar. It is easy to concur as I do with “we don’t know, let a thousand mashups bloom, our society and the economy will benefit in ways we can’t even guess at” though this was not quite how Sir Tim, Nigel Shadbolt and others have more eloquently expressed it!

The most quoted recent example, but there are many others at www.data.gov.uk, is that of bike accidents in London. The data was released and in short order a mashup of accident blackspots was available that allowed cyclists to change their routes. All well and good and no doubt reducing cycle related injuries and deaths, related NHS costs, lost working hours, emissions, police time and so on, in theory.

However, as a cyclist I wonder whether this isn’t a cheap anti-cycling gag....as a cyclist what do I ‘know’ (or think I know)?:

Cycling is or can be ‘dangerous’ or ‘risky’
I get hot and sweaty just getting on a bike
Cyclists almost always come off worse in collisions with any other road user
Risk/danger increases with traffic density
Urban roads have a ‘typical’ set of dangers
Rural roads have a different set of dangers
Riding without suitable identifying gear increases danger (lights etc)
Riding on pavements pi**es people off and gives all cyclists a bad name
Jumping/not stopping at lights does the same
As does riding across zebra crossings and down footpaths
Road edges have glass, nails, cans
Road edges crumble
Roads deteriorate with cracks and potholes at random
Pedestrians often don’t look
Cycle lanes and bus lanes are blocked
Cycle lanes are not contiguous
Cycle lanes rarely go all the way to my destination anyway
Drivers don’t look, don’t think or don’t care
Diesel fumes are worse than petrol fumes
I know my route
I prefer to take the shortest route
I take the same route
Most accidents/risk areas are at junctions

So, this mashup does what for me?

Makes me go further
Increases my time to destination
Adds more junctions and stop/starts

So I have to leave earlier to get sweatier to be exposed to more risks? Yeah, right. This is no fault of the mashup nor am I taking pot shots at this example. I do get uncomfortable with the idea that such sites could, owing to their prominence, inform policy and decision making and the investment that flows from that.

This mashup and the ‘solution’ it offers is analogous to claims about football hooliganism having decreased at grounds when in fact all the added deterrents had done was push those who wanted some ‘action’ to take it to places where those deterrents had yet to be put in place, outside the grounds. The moves didn’t seek to change behaviour at all and it was only a wide ranging shift in tactics (plus of course more surveillance) that has brought about welcome longer term change.

The blackspots will follow the cycle flows; cycling will not be inherently safer - arguably fewer motorists will see cyclists and become ever more oblivious to them.

It would be interesting to get all RTA information involving bikes and cyclist admissions to casualty departments for the same area since records began and start to look at that in the context of frequency of bike use (rising), cause of accident/injury (a relation broke both shoulders when a pothole sheared her front forks – not reported as an RTA or accident blackspot), increase in pro-cycle measures such as cycle lanes, introduction of the Congestion Charge and so on. What makes cycling safer is behavioural change in other road users and by those responsible for the roads.

Of course we want to reduce bike accident rates, of course PSI should be used to help achieve that and hopefully this example is the beginning of a shift in the use of such data to inform policy and investment. However, the broader themes of this now definitely mult-part thesis are only really hinted at...more coming in Part 2.

A tale of two mother in laws, Part 2

2010-01-04T20:56:00.012Z

Meanwhile out in rural Berkshire at Gran #2, my own mother's Fiesta sits abandoned. And, apparently there are similar Fiestas in the same situation all over the UK with some 20+ in one dealership in the Borders if sources are correct. The problem? An "EAC fail" message is the electronic accelerator control system fault warning but it can often flag a code in the main engine management self-diagnosis system too.

Once you work out what to type into Google you get loads of results (for example, honest john #1, honest john #2, ford_fiesta_common_problems_and_solutions, askabout #1, SA Ford Owners, another one, just answer #1, just answer #2,
just answer #3, just answer #4).

It is possible to deduce from this jumble that Ford or at least Ford dealers appear not to have a clue about this issue and its impacts on owners; where information may have been circulated to attempt to deal with it they appear incompetent in either finding that information or working through the logic. Anything from cleaning the contacts below the pedal to full ECU replacement and worse. To the extent that Parkers publicise the fact on their on-line vehicle guide).

Did I mention, my mother's oh yes 75, an independent, trusting 75 mind, strong enough in spirit to demand, and eventually get, a courtesy car, at least initially, and now every second week a discounted hire care despite initial unwillingness on account of her age. “The part is on back order from Germany” is I think the latest variation of a solution to this problem. Date for next attempt to fix it is we think this month. Cry “bull**it” I say.

The car (1.4 Zetec for those interested in that kind of thing) came from the same main dealer as is offering the “advice” and “solution” and despite the fact that she has had it 5 years it has been carefully maintained on its very low mileage, always garaged and serviced by the same main dealer. Someone, somewhere - take responsibility, take ownership!

My own view is that they should ideally fix it immediately and for free using one or more of the known solutions and warranty to continue fixing it immediately and for free in the event that it goes wrong again (as so many of the websites document) or, failing that, replace it with similar make/model at their own expense. In addition they should refund all costs incurred so far, republish on as many sites and to all past and present dealers and independents as possible the unfindable bulletin that was allegedly issued on the EAC failure and give a huge donation to Help the Aged.

Oh yes, and fix the myriad of EAC failures piling up around the country.....for free.

We know that the elderly can sometimes be less willing or able to find the words or mechanisms to fight their corners and I will confess to being slow on picking this up – as they say first impressions were actually quite good, putting all parties on the back foot.

Obviously, this position should be reversed and the suppliers (as well as their shareholders most of whom remain ignorant of their shareholding via unit trusts and the like even when treated so abominably as customers themselves) ought themselves to proactively take the lead; they are not generally accustomed to standing up and being counted though and trying to make contact with senior personnel is fruitless. Traditionally the 'little man' could do little and perhaps that still is the case.....direct action and viral comms, who knows.....

As per Pt 1 I am already planning on changing insurers at policy renewal time - much of this is little more than gesture I know......and I did own a Ford once (Cortina Mk III GXL rather like the one in Life on Mars actually) and the other half had a great Focus too but frankly my 20 year affair with Alfas continues (the electronics have been far less of a problem!).

Smaller businesses listen, they have to; question is, will the big ones?

If you read this do feel free to tweet, blog, moan, link to, tell your story, change your policy, talk to your broker.....

A tale of two mother in laws, Part 1

2010-01-04T20:48:00.005Z

When these things happen to you or those you hold dear you somehow hope that they will turn out differently and that the anonynous powers that be that hold the health, security, wealth and happiness of your nearest and dearest in the palm of their hands will turn out not to be as in so many conspiracy theories, consumer magazines, fellow blogs et al. You hope, with no great confidence it must be said, that the reassurance offered by these global brands will deliver your relatives from the frustration, undated and anonymous letters, obfuscation, contact ping-pong and other quasi bureaucratic devices deployed to delay, depress and deter those who are actually their customers. The architect of Sears-Roebuck's rise to become a great retailer was Julius Rosenwald, who once remarked, "My ambition is to stand on both sides of the counter at once." We strive for that; would that these others would do the same.

The overlapping stories of the mother-in-laws begin aorund the same time in the late summer of last year, 2009. For one, their car, a Ford Fiesta (the model that has just been replaced so hardly aged) stuttered to a halt on the A4. For the other they returned home in outer south east London to find their door literally smashed in and home ransacked for, or so the police reckoned (yes, they at least did show up and record the crime), the keys belonging to a smart new car (believed to have been an Audi) that had been parked outside.

Both are 75, both have worked hard all their lives, paid their appropriate insurances, taxes etc etc and had relatively little contact with officialdom of any kind owing to their more or less blameless and in the eyes of their suppliers (be they state or commercial) and uneventful lives (they might argue with my interpretation of those very lives as they have of course been full of momentous events!). Both collect small pensions, watch their expenditure, look forward to seeing their children and grandchildren, wish they could get out more and so on, poster grans for the grey generation.

So, how do you think the respective suppliers have performed? Well, of course you know the answer to that because few are those who would write about a satisfactory interaction with major corporates, it just doesn't happen. Yes, sadly, Halifax Insurance and their Crawford - the world’s largest claims and risk management company - loss adjusters have behaved with abject disregard for anything regarding the circumstances of the break-in, robbery and subsequent claim. Recently insurers have taken to making utteraces in the press to the effect that the financial crisis has resulted in so many fraudulent claims that many more claims are being rejected. That smacks to me of PK Dick's 'Minority Report' with actuaries beavering away in place of the pre-cogs to predict pre-insurance-crime and eliminate such claims. OK, a bit of a stretch perhaps but evidently the hand off from Halifax to Crawford provides adequate distance for the former to wash their hands and the latter to do the former's bidding.

Gran #1, upset and likely a tad confused (she was after all on a life support machine barely 9 months previously) makes a police report, contacts the insurers and submits a modest claim, for the door, a watch, a laptop and some jewellery. You would think that the primary priority of the insurance company would be make their customer secure once again in their house. Not a bit of it. It is not unreasonable at all for the loss adjuster to request details and where sensible/practical etc proof (of existence certainly and if possible purchase and even receipt) for very recent items. Despite the genuinely understated nature of the claim the loss adjuster was despatched. Their sole objective seemed to be to dismiss the claim by seeking discrepancies, however minor, between police report and claim. For a 76 year old with a temporary fibre-board door there was no attempt whatsoever to deal with the security of the property – the door and the contents were part of the same claim and with the loss adjuster demanding ever higher burdens of proof regarding the jewellery the door and the associated security was ignored.

When my wife lost her engagment ring (for the first time – don't ask) down a sewer in Portsmouth (again, bets not to ask) we were lucky enough to have the receipt then only 2 or 3 years old. My mother in law was born in Mumbai and grew up there and in Pune until the late 1950s when together with her twin brother she embarked for England and for her husband to be leaving behind various siblings and extended family. Many will be aware that family and nuptial wealth as well as heirlooms and subsequent gifts frequently take the form of high carat gold – necklaces, ear-rings, rings, pendants, brooches, more necklaces. It may not appeal to everyone, with its high gloss yellow gold apearance and often overly ornate form but there is no doubting the inherent value. But receipts? RECEIPTS? Are you mad. Photos? As if! In fact , pretty sure she's never had a camera.

I can be absolutely and abjectly certain that my mother in law under-declared what it is that was lost to those random transgressors in search of car keys but Halifax and their Crawfords nay sayers will not countenance a claim without every last receipted detail for every item thereon.

Gran #1 is now on the threshold of calling it quits and getting the door paid for. Score 1 to the insurer - tragic, wrong, scandalous? You decide. Me, I'm changing insurers. And, if you're reading this Insurance people you know how to get hold of me and rectify your shortcomings....if you do I will blog and commend you accordingly.....

Benchmarks - the return of

2009-11-11T10:32:00.009Z

As regular readers will know I tend not to use this blog as a vehicle for emapsite related happenings and offerings and to a broad extent this post continues this approach.

However, as someone who almost ended up a surveyor - it is thanks to UCL for putting me on hilltops in Wales and the subsequent opportunity to look through a theodolite for 6 months in the desert that brought me to my senses - I have something of a paleotard fondness for related features in our landscape, notably Trig Points and benchmarks.

I am equally aware that the arrival of GPS signalled the ultimate demise of such man made features; we simply don't need them. Try telling that to the legions of surveyors, chartered, engineering or other, who it seems from the flurry of requests, enquiries and complaints we have received, following the withdrawal of benchmarks from OS MasterMap, expect to see benchmarks on their mapping.

It would, indeed is, easy to make the case for ignoring them - benchmarks are not maintained and in fact most have had little consideration for more than 30 years, the site has been redeveloped or a road widened, the physical site has eroded, they are sometimes deliberately moved, ground heaves or collapses etc. In other words they (there are around 500,000) simply can't be trusted any more.

Benchmarks and trig points do seem to have a hold though on the psyche of those that ostensibly have no use for them - part luddite perhaps, part emotional symbol of a technocratic past perhaps, hard to tell.

Benchmarks (BMs) are the survey marks made by Ordnance Survey to record height above Ordnance Datum. BMs are usually found on buildings and other typically man-made features. They take the form Benchmark image on the ground with similar cartographic representation; strangely the recorded height had to be purchased from OS but is recorded on many maps too.

Most benchamrks that we see still are lower order benchmarks derived from an original network of nearly 200 Fundamental Benchmarks to create a physical manifestation of our national height system, the Newlyn Daturm (or Ordnance Datum Newlyn).

Various organisations ioncluding the RICS have published guidance on how to adapt to the GPS world, for example the Virtually Level guide is the latest in a new series from the RICS Geomatics Mapping and Positioning Practice Panel (MAPPP).

Being a smart business these are not of course removed from the database just tagged appropriately and it is a simple matter to reinsert them into the various products and services that we offer. After much discussion and muttering about how their reinstatement presents risks to those who would utilise them it was decided that we would reflect customer demand both from the professional community (who should be educated as to their lack of utility) and to the broader consumer market seeking information about their communities.

So there it is and there they are - enjoy, get steamed up, find your local one....

Watching the Detectives (pt 3)

2009-10-22T14:16:00.014+01:00

I used Elvis Costello circa 1979 and a Cory Doctorow cover, Jerry Fishenden starts with Jeremy Bentham (godfather of UCL if I recall correctly) and continues so much more eloquently on the issue of data driven dystopia and the understanding required by citizens of the role and purpose of IT as envisaged by political parties. This is the domain in which those of us in location IT (and all that it encompasses, from the geoweb to the GIS, from spatial operations in the database to sensor webs) need to make our voices heard......

Watching the Detectives (pt 2)

2009-09-29T16:17:00.006+01:00

Can't believe a month has gone by since last post but then been busy as the world wakes up to new possibilities - can't talk about those obviously!

What I can talk about follows on from a theme in my presentation on the geoweb stream at AGI last week in which a call was made for the 'community' to become more relevant not just by talking amongst ourselves - "we're all geo" after all - but by talking to others, by engaging with them and becoming integral to their communities of interest. I prefixed this call with, what may have been seen as oblique, references to data driven dystopias and the surveillance state. But methods/madness etc....

And here comes the link to Elvis Costello (used at AGI too). There I was on the M3 on Friday, mid-morning, half empty, breezing southwards (for once not particularly swiftly) and lo and behold, a hidden speed cop (behind the bridge before the services), then a speed bike cop (Winchester services), then an overhead speed van (bridge at Junction 9 I think), then 4 speed cops lined up together on the slip road hard shoulder.

What are we to think - the M3 at midday on a Friday is full of crazies, the Lib Dem leadership is under terrorist alert coming the other way up the M3 or its nearing the end of the month and they haven't reached their targets? This is surveillance gone awry and while we can watch them watching us and can possibly make FoI calls to find out more this flagrant waste of police resources (not to mention the resulting increase in fuel use, brake dust, CO2/NOX/SOX emissions, increased risk of shunts etc from excessive braking etc) there is little debate under whose authority they are watching.

The link to AGI? If we are part of the wider dialogue and not still struggling to be mainstream (which despite protestations to the contrary we are not) then we have a voice of value not just in the enterprise (global, national, local, whatever) but in the wider debate about the sacrifices and freedoms that come with the information age, its sensor webs and ubiquitous presence and the transparency and democracy (or otherwise) and critically language that accompany them.

Geo is pervasive and is increasingly embedded in the data cornucopia available to governments and the commercial sector alike; with the analysis tools that support the mining of these repositories now in the database it may be that geo is mainstream but that the GI and geoweb so vocal in our own company at geo events are not. We need to be for if we are not we will forfeit the right, the freedom, best expressed by Marlene Dietrich, 'to be alone'.

And to think I held on to that rant for 72 hours....

Summer's ending - where have I been?

2009-08-31T18:16:00.005+01:00

I reckon I have spent more time away from the office this summer than in any time since leaving someone else's gainful employ back in 1993 - reflects strength of and confidence in team and business despite the recession. As ever time away from the office is thinking time, which will please some people (you know who you are!).

Plenty of time taken up pondering the dreaded school selection procession for Son #1 and now everything focused on filling in forms correctly by October 23rd - horrible, necessary.

Wakeboarding (just, boys waterskied better), swimming and tennis in Menorca ; should have gone sailing given the incessant wind and what was coming next.....

The real 'excitement' has been the practice for, build up to and participation in the RS400 Nationals at Mounts Bay Sailing Club this last week. Towbar fitted - check, quality camping - check, surfing lessons for boys - yep, wave sailing rehearsal - whoops, excellent weather forecast (means F2-3 gusting 4) - oh dear oh dear. Without going into detail, it was too much for your flat water light weight team and while we did finish 6 races we retired on the final day having scared ourselves rigid (repetitive rolling of boat, trapped underneath, exhaustion, big swells and so on) - living with demons. Ended up 64th of 66 -very disappointing to say the least as the flat water stuff had been going so well......Inlands next, Queen Mary.

Along the way had to produce a 'stack' and paper for AGI - job done - and keep a weather eye on spatial 'stuff'. Is it just me or has it been quiet - I read the Location Strategy stuff that seems to have crept quietly out and am looking forward to taking renewed energy into the office tomorrow!

Where, to their (and my) surprise they will find me at the top of the fantasy football league - sadly kids football has also already started - Son #2 runner up yesterday after ....6 hours! The autumn is all but upon us....

Neologism?

2009-07-28T15:58:00.008+01:00

Interesting to see that Wikipedia considers the neogeography entry to be a candidate for removal owing its potentially neologistic nature - despite use of the term dating back in one context or another to 1922 - not so neo after all!

Recently the term has founder common currency more as the rather more web 2.0 corollary to the implicit term of (generally rather gentle) upbraiding of those not aligned with its certain actually rather broad sensibility - the 'paleos' - in that 'if you're not with us...' etc.

I'm not going to endeavour to (re)define these terms or to broaden the scope out to include GIS or geoweb or cartography or spatial analysis or, remember this one, remote sensing. It's an irony of the internet's amateur publishing paradigm that the implicit polarisation of different schools that sustains the debate is on the one hand an illusion (in that most commentators are sufficiently familiar with the subject to recognise the shades of grey on the ground) while on the other a meritricious tool in leveraging a given perspective. You would have to be from a flat earth not to recognise the sometimes less than nuanced devices lobbed onto this field of play.

Coming over all pacifist (again!) the 'problem' with all this navel gazing and grandstanding is that the real opportunity continues to pass by on the other side, tired and neglectful of the squabbling and desirous of someone who speaks their language to solve their problems. And we know this too!

On these terms perhaps Wikipedia is correct and geography (cf Michael Goodchild) is eating itself?

Baby/bathwater - two tribes

2009-07-27T09:03:00.009+01:00

Following Steven's post (http://giscussions.blogspot.com/2009/07/digital-paper-divide.html) and a recent LinkedIn discussion topic on web 2.0/social networking tools (I think you'd have to be a member of the ASPATech Discussion Group), we are becoming better I think at articulating the 'digital divde' though not necessarily at bridging it.

'Yoof' culture is entwined with converged digital tools in a way that remains baffling to many over even 35; the blogosphere is allegedly already in decline as bloggers migrate to the instant 140 characters of Twitter; the digital literati to a great extent exist in their (our) own self-fulfilling worlds of filtered, customised content streams; 'free' is the future and our right; a new supplier is just a click away....and so on and so on.

On the other hand, news stands, bookshops, DVD rental and even music shops continue to exist (but for how long I hear some holler); 140 characters does not a valid opinion make; everyone has a right to eat; businesses are hungry to employ people with ingrained technical literacy; loyalty and inertia do not a fluid market make.

As ever, it is always far more complex than the black and white often painted by both conventional and online mediarati. And this is what I think is beginning to change. With time as polarisation dissolves so a greater understanding emerges and from there social, economic, cultural and political models will evolve and adapt to the opportunities and mitigate the threats. This is not to say that the private or public sectors have sat idly by far from it; whether you like the current government or not their efforts at digital engagement across many areas will not be unravelled by whoever comes next. And the mushroming of innovation in business, from the rightly maligned City to the now connected rural fringes (our office is by a trout stream on the Hampshire borders - and why not?!) to the 'always on' bedroom coders, underpins our digital economy.

We really don't have the time to wait for the 'digital natives' to transmogrify into conventional 'leaders' and we can't leave the 'don't get it' leaders to continue as they are. Different communities and interest groups have a great deal to learn from each other - this is not a one way street. Recognition is a key step, language another vital key - dismissive commentary and noises off are unhelpful - dialogue is essential, familiarisation breeds confidence, barriers are lowered, rapprochements are made. Its not that hard, requiring curiosity and an open mind.

PSIHs - a change of tack required?

2009-07-16T11:18:00.009+01:00

With all the clamour over PSIHs in recent months, one TF has been in the spotlight. One can debate the reasons for this - another time. This has rather 'allowed' others (of the PSIH ilk) to carry on apparently regardless or oblivious to the changes going on around them. Say what you like about OS but this is far less true of them and they should be priased where praise is due.

But, wherefore the others; if I were them I would be sharpening my channel engagement, developing more attractive licensing and pricing terms, honing my knowledge of social media, looking at metadata dissemination and generally trying to mitigate future onslaught of interest in my behaviour.

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places but I sense a head in the sand approach by most - channels are being undermined, licence development is out of kilter with licence agreements, screen scraping has become the modus operandi of choice for many fed up with the vacuum and social engagement is limited to 'contact us'.

I really think it is about time that vocal proponents of 'libre' data turned their attention to the '000s (Cameron said more than 10,000 - he should publish the list for starters!) of PSIHs large and small (from local government to executive agencies) that actually represent the true value of tax funded data. The demand should be for mandated metadata capture and publishing - there are a number of exemplars already that provide effective levers with which to acheive this goal. Value can then truly be in the eye of the beholder.

ps As I said I love maps and they are the best contextual tool and have their own value in relation to the use to which they're being put; but, generally that use and therefore value depends on the other data being contextualised/hacked/mashed and the scale at which that is most effective. The evident need is for other data....

Activate09 - wow - some musings

2009-07-06T11:16:00.012+01:00

Thought it best to digest the day and reflect on what was almost (sorry Adam, that was the second time I've watched you read a prepared script, off the cuff humour not withstanding, iti all felt sooo 'qualified') without exception a staggering succession of speakers with topics and ideas to match.

Others have already done an excellent job in 'reporting' (for example, http://rooreynolds.com/2009/07/01/guardian-activate-09/) so will confine myself to stuff close to my heart, personal and professional.

The stand out piece for many would have been Gerry Jackson's harrowing account of broadcasting under repressive, hostile and down-right life-threatening circumstances in Zimbabwe. Having been caught up in two mostly unreported civil wars (I am lead to believe that one of them had one paragraph in The Times once) before the rise of the digital age (there was short wave radio and one telex machine in Hargeisa!) when reporting such things required genuine 'Salvador' type commitment to want to go, get in, get a story and then get out again, Gerry served up compelling, brutal, ugly, essential reasons why and how the convergence of 'genuine' journalism, crowd sourced messages and media, social networks and information systems present such a threat to political systems, good and not so good, and why we should support and enable them.

Hot on the heels of John Simpson's throw away line about how few journalists there were in Tehran (all the 'serious' ones were leaving and 'the crowd' still seems to have to earn its place in some areas of the media) it reminded us that however liberating the tools and technologies that we usually take for granted can be, it ultimately takes a combination of nerves, cojones of steel and that very familiarity that we take for granted to apply them.

Ironic too because of Obama's intervention to ensure Twitter access for Iranians while Google is busy trying to get services accepted in China and the level of intervention or 'web filtering" governments and their agencies already make to 'secure' us from digital threat - Green Dam is only the most visible.

Apposite then that indirectly many of the key speeches of the day were about education and the challenges faced in defining and bringing that education to those most in need, both formally and, where community, social networks, the cloud and the crowd collide, informally. The capture, sharing and dissemination of information and knowledge whether by peers round a 'hole in the wall' PC, through retirement age blogging (great presentation by Will Perrin), taking advantage of open education initiatives or through the ability to mashup data from official sources (I think there was only one mention of metadata on the day) provides both armour and weaponry for the citizen in equipping us to enjoin governments and international agencies to better reflect our will.

Of course, 'followtics' is a blind alley and we should expect our leaders to, well, lead. Some of the red top headliners are no more than a sop to the hang 'em high lobby but are doubtless monitored by the masters of spin for their own ends. If you build it, they will come and may we reap the whirlwind. While it could be argued that even others, such as FixMyStreet afford 'digital natives' greater 'volume' in the already noisy political lobby, the way in which the agency responsible acts in response reflects a more rational and tangible democracy. On this note, and slightly off topic, there is a corner on a hill near us where I have seen a contractor literally lobbing spadefuls of wet tarmac into a hole and letting the traffic flatten it, before driving off to the next one. One shower of rain and the hole is back, followed by the contractor - if they're being paid for holes fixed they must love it; if the council awarded a fixed price contract to the lowest bidder no one wins. Given that unsurprisingly government regards such contracts as commercially sensitive (e.g. http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2009-06-24b.279322.h&s=%22commercially+sensitive%22#g279322.r0) the whole £25k expenditure transparency spin is moot. More to the point it reminds me of unmetalled roads across much of Africa where the local young men and boys are often to be seen with basic tools filling holes in the tracks near their willages and asking passing drivers for a shilling for their efforts. Only difference is that what you give at the 'go slow' goes straight to them.

If I have one constructive comment to offer, with Chris Anderson's new book 'Free' launching this week, it is a pity that so little was given over to the economics of this envisaged digital universe. However you look at it, the world of volunteering (essentially it is about time given, whether that spent distributing food or writing and distributing open source code) is finite, dependent on the largesse of citizens, HNWIs, corporations and even government (through the regimes and incentives they offer). Ultimately we all have to eat and no one is suggesting bartering - LETS were all the rage a few years back - or that a model can be created whereby advertising pays for everything.

In fact, the throw away line of the day from Bradley Horowitz, VP Google Apps, juxtaposed a world in which, if we accept ads at all they have to be exactly what we want when we want with that of a world hostile to anyone knowing any more than we want it to know. The world is hostile enough to Phorm already but the ad platforms want deep citizen knowledge to target high value ads while the citizen wants to take back ownership of 'their' data - what, the ad model doomed or preparing us for more paid for Google Apps? In a world where marginal cost of (re)production of digital products is (very) close to zero, an examination in one of the plenary sessions of emerging and tomorrow's business models would have been welcome. Andy Baio and others touched on key areas such as usability with respect to customer retention and customers are willing to pay for 'whole product' services but there didn't seem to be an undercurrent saying that future digital economics were a 'given'. I look forward to the Activator events where doubtless such things will be taken up with gusto.

Hopefully at those events a proactive approach to delegates will ensure inclusion (if not attendance) of key individuals from the sectors seemingly absent last week - the procurers and deliverers of what are suppposed to be citizen centric services. Civil servants paralysed by indecision, inertia and buck passing need to be involved, as do the commercial entities at the heart of current service provision. The latter not because they are entitled to anything from a paradigmatic shift in delivery model but because we as citizens are entitled to challenge, educate and inform to speed the shift and because whoever is in power the PPP/PFI model at the heart of much existing provision is unlikely to be thrown out or dramatically reshaped. New models require new partnerships and perhaps the Activate banner will become that under which such teams are forged.

In the meantime all credit to the Guardian team that thought this up, put it together and underpinned it with a top class delivery team. Roll on........

ps for those awaiting a 'data' review, may blog separately as time allows

CPS - Our Data, Big IT - another missed opportunity

2009-06-29T14:02:00.008+01:00

The entry of the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) into the "free"/"open" debate is not surprising (http://www.cps.org.uk/cps_catalog/it). It feels though like another missed opportunity to move the debate on hampered as it is by political point scoring.

Varney has it that the government needs to hold “...a ‘deep truth’ about the citizen based on their behaviour, experiences, beliefs, needs and rights”; the CPS report argues for something they call "Government Relationship Management" at whose heart lies choice in the location of your personal data and access to it based on standards (and, not mentioned, rights). Whether or not data "belongs" to the individual, that data should be exchanged using open standards - the web services and metadata chestnut. Hence my interest.

The report focuses on cost, ownership and security and that the solutions to this lie with a change to the model. From the perspective of opening up access the report actually offers little in the way of new ideas above and beyond the central thesis that who holds our data should be our choice.

Of course many private sector entities hold data about each of us. Are they any more trusted (fallible humans account for most mistakes) or cost effective (consider the long run case for PPP/PFI and that government will have to run the same infrastructure anyway before answering!)?

Innovation with new tools and technologies is generally far more rapid in the private sector and there are good lessons and cost savings assuredly for government IT regarding all manner of these from the cloud, to SOA, APIs, usability etc.

The report bemoans data replication (as it is easy to do from an armchair) but storage costs continue to tumble and techniques such as automated de-duping provide further savings. It also bemoans data sharing which is in part the flip side of the same coin. This is not where major cost savings lie either and suggestions of 50% are “vague” anyway admits the report?

But cost savings there can be for sure; mechanisms that drive value to the citizen and ease service provision should be at the core of the debate not point scoring phraseology and impossible to substantiate claims. So where might that value derive?

The CPS report rightly endorses (increasing) adoption of SOA and the cloud to spur efficiencies and the big providers are on this already. We are beginning to see ‘vertical market’ and ‘localised’ interfaces for a range of ‘use cases’ from citizen through service provider to analyst. Private sector experience is that these approaches deliver significant downstream IT savings whilst embracing outsourcing, providing greater flexibility and speed to market for service providers. At their heart lies adoption of authentication and authorisation standards and technologies that deliver rights based access to data and functionality depending on the user and other factors. All power to that elbow as it deals with both the replication and sharing arguments when implemented correctly.

Government would point out it needs access to a consistent data set so that government's (presumably outsourced) analysts could compare apples with apples - without a level playing field what hope for the postcode lottery? A fertile imagination will see risks in an online privatised ID!

Like other recent reports (including POIT, UK Location Strategy) those close to Whitehall (which policy wonks, analysts, civil servants etc inevitably are) sometimes appear reluctant to recognise what distributed architectures bring to this debate - it doesn't actually matter where the data is held as long as it can be discovered, accessed, exchanged and so on.

There is of course a debate to be had about what data should be held, who should collect it, who should have access to it, where it might be stored, what rights management apply and in what circumstances and so on.

However, what has got lost in the wash is some definition or acknowledgement that what is in essence under discussion is ‘data for the “public good”’, be it through aggregation or for the individual citizen.

Under this world view ‘public’ would be defined as discoverable or searchable and to be those things you need openness, interoperability, web services and above all a mechanism that integrates authentication and authorisation into the solution via the construct of metadata and rights management. Mandating metadata capture and discoverability (publishing) would provide much of the enabling framework and dissipate the faux concern over whose data it is.

It is easy and correct to point the finger at ineffective and poor value government IT projects (I'll give you some less familiar - £50m for RPA's SPS so far, £7.2m for planningportal architecture alone over 3 years). But to intimate that a vague and unpalatable solution offers some panacea for these failings is an incoherent leap based on a narrow philosophical outlook and narrow technical thinking. The promise of the distributed discoverable semantic web fits far better with the sought after vision but has been mostly missed.

ps Attracting advertising spend requires the advertising portals (sorry, search engines) to harvest ever more granular data about their users in order to 'segment' and then 'target' the adverts accordingly to garner the greatest revenues. They seek a ‘deep truth’ about the citizen based on their behaviour, experiences, beliefs and needs and how to get click-throughs for advertisers.

Sounds suspiciously familiar no? Only difference is the absence of rights - a consent easily given and hard to wrest back – the government has been notable for its ‘light touch’ regulatory environment with weak regulatory, governance and compliance - you would likely be astonished at the permissions you have given the business to whom you have in effect licensed yourself. ‘Minority Report’ was an exemplar to Dubya not the savage warning that Mr Dick intended.

Geo (Digital) Rights Management - love and hate, love to hate?

2009-06-29T11:56:00.005+01:00

I would have liked to have gone to last weeks OGC event about which Adena (http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=3202) and Ed (http://www.edparsons.com/2009/06/the-tla-nobody-likes-drm/) have recently reported/blogged. Didn't go to Glastonbury or Hyde Park either but Springsteen honouring Strummer worth the nod of the title I think.

As you can imagine as a geoportal understanding licensing, sub-licensing and licence management, provising licence advice and so on are key competitive advantages for emapsite. However, we all know that getting to grips with licencesis something of an on-going challenge, be they public sector or commercial licences. We like to think we're on top of it and have worked very hard to provide appropriate components to the control module of our 'emapsite inside' web services platform (http://www.emapsite.com/corporate/Solutions_and_services-emapsite_inside-Overview.aspx).

Talking over the years with Graham Vowles, who heads up OGC's GeoRM activity, is always interesting if often conceptual and I do think that the work being done and published to date offerrs something of a road map for GeoRM implementation be it by geoweb specialists as part of their own services, by integrators, by technically literate mashers or even as stand alone on demand services in their own right.

Licences are essentially a set of rules - whether one likes them or not, if the licences are drawn up unambiguously (and they often aren't) they will (or should) be robust as far as the licence holder is concerned. The degree of ambiguity determines whether or not the legal 'encoding' can be formally computer 'encoded'. Thus, and as long as all the other licence dependencies (rules) are also captured in the licence then, as these details are effectively metadata, in a perfect world it should not be very difficult to deploy tools/technologies in a licence 'engine'. Such an 'engine' can for example ensure that users understand the implications of agreeing to obtain (and comply with) the rights they seek; even better a licence engine can advise users as to the 'correct' licence for a given scenario.

With web services (WMS or WFS) then implementation of the agreed licensing can be seen as a metadata conformance tracking (provenance is key for both licensor and licensee) component and can be reported equally unambiguously (enforcement always a dirty word in this arena).

In an other than perfect world, it is where licences are ambiguous or disingenuously linked to other licences that life becomes more difficult, legally and formally.

(Automated) rights management is essentially about ensuring that the mechanism by which a resource is processed into a deliverable (input-action-output) is 'permissible'. If any part of the request is not then there is no deliverable - by geography, by time, by user, by use or usage, by platform or by some other measure the request does not pass a series of comparisons relating to rights (ISO 21000 defnes 5 broad sets of rights that such tests would cover) within the agreed licence.

Sounds so simple! Especially as much of this can be built into user profiles associated with the authentication and authorisation integral to enterprise solutions. And GeoRM has a rights expression language (REL) to do this already.

This document can seem intimidating - http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/as/geodrmrm - but bears sticking with because as Adena says its not easy but it is not beyond the comprehension of anyone who is truly interested and I would argue is essential to anybody who is. Not understanding licensing and the options available for implementation is no excuse for abuse.

The licence holders set the rules; few yet see the licence/rules as metadata so there is ambiguity in public and prvate sector licences so it can be difficult to offer any kind of dynamic licensing mechanism. This is a challenge for mid/small scale data provision but as this is the kind where most of the pressure for 'simpler' licensing falls, unambiguous licensing should eventually prevail and would allow licensees to implement along the lines of the GeoRM model.

I think Ed's cart/horse reference must relate to ambiguity in geodata licences undermining the GeoRM model. My own take is that the vital need to formally encode geodata licences that a GeoRM model demands means that those drafting the licences need to ensure incorporation of unambiguous rights within the licence. The same might be said of all those 'catch-all' terms of use licences though! Paid for or otherwise users need to understand their rights - licence engines (in and beyond geo) based on formal encoding and clear language have the capacity to offer much needed clarification of a relationship between licensor and licensee that is oft mired in rhetoric.

Compromise in the air?

2009-06-28T23:44:00.003+01:00

Started off rebuffing belief that shapefile is proprietary but then went a bit deeper into the article and re-read Mr C's speech - then had to filter to end up with something that linked (my) data (awful pun, apologies to Sir TBL); so worth cross-referencing here - http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/?p=449&cpage=1#comment-120970

"better meta data now" in Digital Britain

2009-06-16T16:36:00.011+01:00

Think we might be seeing some joined up thinking in government? Consider the OEP, the still unpublished Trading Fund Review, the OS Revised Strategy, the appointment of web-founder and Linked Data evangelist Sir Tim (as well as Martha LF in another parallel advisory capacity) and the Digital Britain report - consistent references are made (and this is my shorthand interpretation admittedly) to the value of digital content, both in its creation and its distribution and consumption, to UK plc.

As the economic profile of the creative industries rises and advertising revenues and the financial services sector suffer, there is creeping recognition that just because you can (copy and distribute digital content for next to nothing) don't make it right. File sharing and DRM are inevitably at the forefront of this debate for the consumer but, in business, enterprises value their integrity to the point of making such copying or use a dismissable offence (I've seen the noticeboards, believe me, compliance is a competitive advantage).

This has a serious edge because the search engines and ISPs are using tools and technologies that harness both private and corporate information, with and sometimes without your direct consent, combining it with third party data to aid, amongst other things, their advertising services where narrowly targeted highly granular adverts are of highest value. This is creating an opportunity for advert-less solutions based on open source tools. Often start-ups, bedroom coders and the third sector (that includes some so-called not for profits alongside genuine charities) are the key innovators in this area in the search for maximum bang for buck.

Which leads us to public sector information holders, seeing as they collect (sometimes in much the same way as search engines) reams of data about people, places and business that may (or may not) have utility and value to citizens, consumers, corporations and charities. Local authorities, government departments, trading funds, executive agencies, regional assemblies and their agencies, PCTs and SHAs and more, there are 1000s of possible sources of PSI. And for most we know little about what they collect, can discover less about what they publish and can't thus value or use.

Those that we do know about have attracted a great deal of attention over the last 3 years and following the OEP we now have a slightly less muddy idea of where they might be heading - down the principle of the user should pay (and Digital Britain has followed this what is in effect a a £6 levy on fixed lines to bring broadband to as many as people as possible over the next decade). These developments are not to everyone's liking and the devil as ever will be in the detail; the reality is that as the Digital Britain report acknowledges but which so many others have overlooked, developments in technology have already, and will continue to, lead to falling unit costs for access to, and for content carried over, digital communications networks.

Taking one area as perhaps the most visible and contentious example, technology investment has resulted in a near 40% fall in real terms of the price of the most detailed digital mapping product in the world, called OS MasterMap, over the last 8 years. Further investments will likely see this real terms unit price fall further, in part to demur to (very vocal) critics, in part as government negotiates a better deal for access to such data, in part due to new competition (re UKMap). It is entirely conceivable that the creator of this data (the much pilloried but changing Ordnance Survey) could find themselves in a position where they could "give" data to their colleagues across government and charge everyone else and still make a return on capital employed, eliminating the charge of "subsidy" and providing the much needed consistent location database on which UK plc can build (and charge for and pay taxes for) its services.

Already, users from consumers paying £15 or so for a map based planning application for a £40,000 extension to consulting engineers paying £000s for multi-million pound developments see both the necessity of such location information and the incidental nature of the cost of it to the activity in question. The acknowledged thorny issue of 'derived data' is set aside for now!

The current government's message seems to understand this and to promote the idea that digital data and content does have value, that those that collect it should be compensated and that those that use should pay for it. New business models are the order of the day - consider the "all you can eat" subscription deal from Virgin announced today.

The latter (alongside recent changes in PRS terms for example) aims to ensure that amongst other things way we can be sure that our creative industries are nourished and sustained while the former aims to ensure that digital content backbone upon which UK plc depends is itself guaranteed.

The missing part of the jigsaw as I have commented on other blogs stems not from an appreciation that standards should be used or that data shouldn't be available but rather what that accessibility might mean to its creators and consumers alike. Political parties of all persuasions are attracted by the term "with rights come responsibilities" (or similar) and the same applies to digital content. Recognition and in some instances reward are expected.

But, and here's the rub, unless and until digital content creators either choose (commercially) or are mandated (by executive order) to publish information about what they collect and can distribute and on what terms then we are all, as consumers, blind. Metadata, data about data including the rights and responsibilities associated with its use, is central to the thesis that we are an information economy and it is sorely lacking (as any screen scraping hacker will affirm) from all these reports and from most commentaries on the subject - please no more mention of central repositories, it ain't necessary and will cost a fortune.

So, "better meta data now" has a handy alliterative quality to it and I commend this phrase as an enabler for a digital britain.....as Ben Bradshaw didn't, sadly, say!

To be or not to be a cadastre

2009-06-03T17:10:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Bob Barr to his tweet alerting me to Ms Spelman's question and the DEFRA written response - http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2009-05-19a.275782.h .

I had the pleasure of working on a number of land information systems development initiatives in emerging economies back in the 1990s where the establishment of rights in land (and property) were (and remain in some countries we are involved in as I speak) a key plank in the transition from centrally planned to "western" economy. The focus tended to be on the creation of what mainland european counterparts would recognise as a cadastre - land demarcation and subsequent registration - recording, protecting and securing rights in land and providing a stepping stone for investment, entrepreneurial activity, sustainable land use practices, improved yields and farm-gate incomes and a market in land and property.

To this day I find it ironic that it was often British organisations with British personnel who were widely regarded as having world leading expertise in land registration in particular but also in LIS and boundary dispute resolution, despite the fact that the United Kingdom does not have its own cadastre.

The 2007 eurographics survey report (at http://www.eurogeographics.org/eng/documents/finalreportaugust20073pdf_000.pdf) kind of ducks this fact - to be fair I think their approach to the 5 baseline parameters mostly works - with England, Wales and Scotland being notable for their differences from other Member States in key 'areas' - pardon the pun (if you read the report you'll get it!).

In this context Ms Spelman's question looks a tad better conceived than at first sight - after all HMLR does use OS data to underpin its won transition to e-business. And the answer from DEFRA is technically correct - until these definitions are in place (and one can conjecture as to the lobbying going on in Brussels) any affirmation as to what data will be covered by the transposition and thus the organisations responsible would be less than judicious.

One final thought - to what extent are land parcels a necessary element of a European wide spatial data infrastructure whose initial motivation was for improved cooperation in environmental issues?

Malaria anyone? #2

2009-06-01T13:52:00.001+01:00

Prescient or what - malaria is the coming story after all - swine flu "pandemic" dissipates in the heta of election expenses while the malarial parasite is revealed as becoming immune to one of the major prophylactics. And, one can only assume that because this was broken on BBC, ITN News for whatever reason chose to ignore it (this was last week in France and this was what was on!) - more brucisation of news, only from the opposition - very disappointing.

The time has (finally) come

2009-06-01T13:44:00.000+01:00

It always happens - the gestation period, the testing, the iteration, the collateral...and finally, the release - it all takes longer than you think!

emapsite has been a 'dynamic' site, adding new content and functionality and altering usability to reflect new norms, embrace emerging standrads, assimilate feedback and so on. As such we haven't majored on new "releases" of the website.

However, on this occasion I do think that something more is merited as the site update includes a re-branding of the business, enhanced usability and a little lifting of the lid of our services platform - at this juncture in marketing and communications terms only but if you are interested to learn more you can....

So, if you are interested in or use digital mapping or if you are a user of broader digital geographic content or if you wish to embed location content within your business there are even more reasons to visit www.emapsite.com.

Absent friend

2009-06-01T13:32:00.000+01:00

Just back from a fantastic 9 days away in La Vendee. Some who know me will know that good friend, co-boat owner, man who got things done and enjoyer of life Marcus passed away very suddenly in January leaving a vast hole in the lives of his family. The same friends with whom we have just had our holiday in the sun, sand and swimming pool (well the sea was a little cold still!) - I am not alone in missing a friend but I really really don't know how they do it - much loved, sorely missed.

Once more unto the breach.....

2009-05-20T14:22:00.000+01:00

After a couple of years away I am returning to the OS Partner event this year, partly to present (of which more anon) and partly to participate in a community for the most part silent on the challenges and opportunities likely to emerge from the OS's new business strategy.

Far be it from me to lift the skirts on my presentation but if you were at the MapInfo User Group you'll have a sense. Somehow I have ended up in the technology innovation stream but as technology presentations tend to err on the dull side (or the "look at me" side which can be just as irritating) but that will only be the jumping off point to endeavour to link partners, strategy and technology.

As has been said this week on GeoReport (currently the site is down but typically found at www.geoplace.com) responses to the survey over whether government should fund geographic data collection specifically yielded some (to some) surprising comments of the kind that feed the debates that will I am sure in some instances rage over the next day and a half in of all places St Albans.

Wet and windy - two short tales

2009-05-20T14:17:00.001+01:00

Last week, Force 7 in the Solent, Sunsail 37 underfoot and a scratch crew - sounds like things could go wrong - far from it, with a 4th in one race (12 starters) - and a great time had by all and but for a few salt splashes pretty dry all things considered - credit to the skipper there.

Roll forward to sunday just gone and as you may have noticed it has been a windy old week and their were white horses on the lake at Theale. Enough to bring a smile to a sailor's face, 5 ears now in (on?) the RS400, the good ship "Yellow Peril", should be quick and fun. Oh dear - great start, lousy decisions, huge gust - swim. It didn't get any better in the afternoon and were soon ensconced in the bar.....

LBS - Location Based State?

2009-05-01T09:17:00.000+01:00

Is it just me or does there seem to be a flurry of geoweb and overlapping cultural-political goings-on?

Some of the more visible ones:

- reports into our surveillance society - http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/detailed_specialist_guides/surveillance_report_final.pdf
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmhaff/58/58i.pdf
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/practical_application/surveillance_society_full_report_2006.pdf
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/practical_application/surveillance_society_appendices_06.pdf
for the brief versions: http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/practical_application/surveillance_society_public_discussion_document_06.pdf
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data_protection/practical_application/surveillance_society_summary_06.pdf

- Firefox 3.5 chooses Google LS (Latitude) over Skyhook's Geode (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/30/google-becomes-default-location-provider-for-firefox/ for example)

- LBS "is going to be huge" (lots of people very frequently for more than a decade)

- Home Office's "communications consultation"
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/cons-2009-communications-data?view=Binary

- phorm's behavioural advertising service and associated shenanigans (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8021661.stm)

Until really quite recently we and our governments have typically thought about the data held about us as being something that might be interrogated "after the fact" for any number of reasons - marketing, health risk, "behaviour" and so on. Many of the real time data that we value (for example, intelligent traffic systems) are about place and not the "beneficiary" as an individual (yet).

However, it is clear that location is playing an ever more important part of every data architecture; location information of one kind of another exists within 80% or more of all data by some measures, a fact that can increasingly be exploited at the level of the database (Oracle, MySQL et al).

Only the other day my plastic card (with the same name as that stamp in your passport you need to get into lots of countries) was stopped in Milan airport - 40 frustrating minutes later I could get my euros - apparently we all have to call them before we go anywhere, for our own security! Like to see how their customer service teams would put up with the volume of calls if that were even partly true - I had used it in Italy not 3 weeks earlier.

Anyway, "they" knew where I was and used it in real time; they do the same in 24 and Spooks and Enemy of the State if you are looking for conspiracy. Plugging into calendars, booking systems, Dopplr et al and "they" could have known where I was going to be, I would have my Euros in seconds and be none the wiser as to the underpinning data flows and analysis.

The Home Office wants ISPs and others to "record" all communications for later retrieval where reasonable grounds exist to do so. It is not a very big stretch to see this as extending to every "presence" technology including those location enabled by Geode, Latitude etc .

The jury is still out on whether there is a genuine pot of gold at the end of location based services rainbow - most of the people most of the time are in locations that they know perfectly well; if they are not lost, we know they are not willing to pay you to let them now where is the nearest whatever or known unknown (sorry, social networking "friend") however targeted the advert. Question really is how big is the pot who are (willing to pay)?

But just imagine what government and their agencies and Ballardian proxies (i.e. private security structures - and with identity theft taxing the financial industry that includes them too) would make of a real time locational infrastructure........with apologies (of sorts) to Kitchener, "your country really could communicate with you"!

Insurance companies already offer reduced premiums if you install certain technologies in your car and are seen to adhere to the various "rules"; all kinds of commercial and control scenarios open up:

- "Betty, don't go near there" (from Good Morning Vietnam but equally applicable for public safety - floods, cliffs, old mineshafts etc though goodness knows where liability lies - and for conspirators everywhere for "public safety" - protests, festivals, queues)
- SMS alert "this is your private health insurer advising you of a rise in your premiums owing to your continued purchase of XXXX" (select your dietary/other habit)
- automated call "we believe you are on your way to an unlawful gathering"
- "you are going to be late for your train" (the next train button almost does this if you know where you are in relation to the station and your current mode of transport).

They would even pay for those messages to be delivered ..... making LBS pay!

Would of course backfire, think Minority Report - but I wouldn't get my card blocked so why would I worry.....

Or maybe it's all just a bit of friday lunch-time frivolity?

Malaria anyone?

2009-04-29T18:05:00.000+01:00

The site of Fiona tut-tutting on the 10 o'clock news is bad enough at the best of times but over swine flu - 2,000 suspected cases globally, 5 on our shores, 7 dead in Mexico, 1 (child) in the US - is off the scale. Three million or so people, many of them children, most of them far from airports and cameras, die every year from malaria - oh yes, and with climate change we can expect that one (and others) to spread. We even went as a family into a malarial area on holiday in East Africa last year, shock horror! We can't give malaria to each other directly, mosquitoes are the vector, but we can get a mild form of flu from another human - oh dear, let's wheel out "pandemic" and watch the stock market shudder. It's not as if the world is short of bad news stories, some even related to preventable diseases.....Desperate Housewives saves me from further fury tonight!

A thought before leaving the office to watch football training and prepare for the big match.....

Given up on waiting

2009-04-29T14:05:00.000+01:00

This looks like a first post but really it isn't it's just that what I've been offered from the backroom hasn't done what was expected and while I'm waiting for a replacement (that particular room being somewhat busy for reasons that will become apparent at some point) decided to take bull by horns.

Am sorely tempted to post retrospectively over many issues that have caught my eye on the water, the slopes and the web. However, I think that is probably not the right "tarteeb" (a word I use occasionally being a "Holmanism" from the late Mike Holman, adventurer, Marine, Arabic speaker, originally from the Arabic where it refers to "the correct order of things", specifically the order of the Nazool (sometimes translated as the sending down) of the Holy Qu'ran). I suppose (n)etiquette is an alternative but carries different baggage both old and new, so tarteeb it is!

No doubt many of the things I am interested in, from snow and wind conditions to the public sector information debate will not go away just because I've opened up a blog!

Written and posted from my desk while eating cold quiche!