I think the site is great, for much the same reasons as have been discussed already in numerous blog posts about both the alpha and the beta — unrelenting focus on user need, simplicity in design, appropriate formats for different kinds of content, and so on. But I did find some fun things while I was poking about, so I thought I’d write some of that up.

Firstly, and excitingly, the site has structured data baked in. This is the first example I’ve seen of a government website that really lives up to the “Your website is your API” principles of restful design that were all the rage a few years ago, neatly explained by Jeni Tennison in 2009. You can take just about any page on the beta, append .json to the URL, and get the page’s content in nice, structured, reusable form.

So, if I want to display the current VAT rate on my website, I can grab a JSON file from https://www.gov.uk/vat-rates.json:

{
"slug": "vat-rates",
"updated_at": "2012-01-31T17:06:00+00:00",
"alternative_title": "",
"body": "{::highlight-answer}\r\nThe standard VAT rate is <em>20%</em>\r\n{:/highlight-answer}\r\n\r\n## VAT rates for goods and services\r\n\r\nRate | % of VAT | What the rate applies to \r\n- | - | - | -\r\nStandard | 20% | Most goods and services\r\nReduced rate | 5% | Some goods and services, eg children's car seats and home energy\r\nZero rate | 0% | Zero-rated goods and services, eg most food and children’s clothes\r\n \r\n^Some things - eg postage stamps, financial and property transactions - are exempt from VAT.^\r\n\r\n*[VAT]: Value Added Tax",
"overview": "Check the current VAT rates for goods and services",
"title": "VAT rates",
"type": "answer"
}

This could be improved. In the case of VAT, for example, it would be very nice if there were some extra fields that just contained the current rate. Something like this at the bottom of the data given above:

"standard_rate": "20%",
"reduced_rate": "5%",
"zero_rate": "0%"

I’ve put this up on Get Satisfication as an idea, so follow that answer if you want to see what the team think.

I was also curious to see what sorts of content are on the site. I had already scanned most of the site to look for 404s and other errors, so I had the titles of (almost) all the pages on the site already. So I put them through Wordle to get a quick-n-dirty visualisation of the subjects it covers:

Click the image to get a bigger version. For the most part, this is more or less what I’d expect: the most prevalent things are things users will often want to do (apply and pay for stuff, report things) and topics that people will often want to know about (driving, tax, work).

I was interested to see “test” show up so prominently — in fact, almost all of those references do relate to driving tests (theory and practical), with a couple of other references to drugs and alcohol tests. Similarly, almost all the references to licences relate to driving, with a few about alcohol and fishing robs. When you combine driving, test, licence and vehicle into “cars”, the Wordle looks like this:

It’s immediately clear that “cars” overwhelms everything else. This is, obviously, not reliable or meaningful without combining keywords that apply to other topics as well. But at a glance, it might indicate that a great many of the top user needs apply to vehicles — something which might be backed up by the fact that the very first thing on Direct.gov’s list of topics is motoring:

Make of these totally arbitrary wonderings what you will! Curious to know what a wordle for the whole site would look like? Me too. I made this one out of a hacked-together word list from all the .json files I could find:

Photography, film and protest in Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square Gardens

Dear Carl,

I’ve just seen the draft byelaws for Traf Sq and Parliament Sq, which have been blogged about, and widely reported on Twitter.

On my (admittedly amateur) reading of the draft byelaws, it appears that they would require any person to obtain permission before protesting or taking photographs or filming in the squares. Surely, such a sweeping restriction cannot be possibly be proportionate.

Please could you consider making these rules more permissive (for example, by not requiring permission for photography/filming/protest other than when there’s a reasonable chance that it will cause disruption), or, at the very least, make available some explanatory notes that give context to the proposed regulations?

Many thanks.

Harry Metcalfe
(Concerned amateur photographer)

CC: The Mayor, the National Union of Journalists, The Association of Photographers, Amateur Photographer

Why not take a moment to send an email as well? The more, the better:

Any objection to the confirmation of the Byelaws may be made by letter addressed to Carl Schnackenberg, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2-4 Cockspur Street, London SW1Y 5DH, or by email to:Carl.Schnackenberg@Culture.gsi.gov.uk.

I’ve never worked as a civil servant, and I’m not a legal expert. The only experience I have of procurement is that of a small supplier to Government trying to get things done. So, this post is neither comprehensive, nor a solution. More a statement of principle.

There are many problems with the contracts under which Government currently works with SMEs (at least, all the ones I’ve seen). They’re too long. They’re not really being used for the purpose they were designed for.

But, on a much more practical level, they’re so long and abstruse that no one reads them. I really mean that: neither the client, nor the supplier, nor, I often suspect, the procurement staff. They are universally regarded as an unavoidable bit of bureaucracy on the route to starting a project. They are almost never challenged, because they have existed throughout the aeons, having been handed down from on high.

These contracts contain lots of detail that — theoretically —  defines the working relationship between government and it suppliers. And I suspect that they do exactly that when Government takes on big projects with big suppliers. But those processes are totally inappropriate for a working relationship with an SME — and the smaller the SME, the less sensible they become. For a company like dxw, they’re absurd.

We very rarely deal with change requests, serving written notices, purchase order amendments, management information, audit requirements, getting permission for staff changes, or any of the myriad other things that these contracts tend to require. Because when we’re working on a project, there are generally two or three people at dxw working with two or three civil servants. And the biggest project we’ve ever had was worth about £30k.

When you’re talking about that number of people, and that value of contract, most of the working arrangements in these contracts become ridiculous. Because they’re designed for much bigger teams, working on much bigger things.

When the teams are small, these arrangements are worse than a waste of time. If we were to follow the letter of these contracts, we’d spend more time on management than on delivering useful things. We’d have to charge lots more money to cover all that time, and the client would get next to no value out of that extra spend.

So, we don’t. And the client doesn’t ask us to. And we all play out the charade, going through the motions of a procurement process that everyone knows is overcomplicated, and that no one intends to think about after the project starts.

Strangely enough, this is ok, in practice. Because in practice, these projects involve a small number of people who are like-minded, and who share a common understanding of a project and its goals for success. The contracts we all agree to aren’t ignored out of malice. No one is being duplicitous. It’s just that they’re obviously unnecessary, and everyone gets by just fine without thinking about them.

Most of our clients no longer even require us to write a formal proposal. Instead, we write a short letter explaining what we’re going to do, by when, and what it will cost. This works best for everyone, because it’s short, readable and useful. But it still sits within a framework contract and a procurement process that aren’t fit for purpose. That are designed to shape a complex working relationship that doesn’t exist, and to facilitate litigation that will never happen.

Because of the efforts of right-thinking clients who just want to get the job done, and who understand the relationship, we’ve ended up with day-to-day working practices which are quite good. But they’re not formally recognised, or enshrined in any process. And that’s a missed opportunity: because the civil servants who need to commission a digital project for the first time, or who work within a more traditional government department, will turn to the process for guidance. As they should. And the process is maddeningly, hopelessly wrong.

So, I think there should be a new process. Since I only know about digital and SMEs, I’ll say that that’s what the process should be for. But these ideas probably apply more widely. I think we need a new framework contract and process which:

• Values brevity and simplicity above comprehensiveness, ignoring unlikely scenarios in favour of increasing usefulness and readability
• Has a primary, core purpose of leaving all the parties better informed about the project, what they’re supposed to do and what’s expected of them, and what success looks like
• Is written for the benefit of the staff actually delivering the project (SME and government), and not for lawyers, procurement staff, or as a tool for litigation
• Is written using language and styling that makes it likely that those people will actually read and absorb it

At its root, the process needs to recognise that in digital projects (and probably other ones too) success far more often emanates from the close and effective personal relationships of people acting in good faith than it does in detailed specification of process, requirements or outcomes.

Those bullet points accurately describe what almost every project we’ve ever worked on has ended up smelling like, despite the procurement process and legalese.

For dxw, procurement will be “fixed” when the process we follow is designed to facilitate and enhance that relationship. I hope we get there soon.

Since writing this, I’ve also found this post from the BJP, and Stefan has kindly posted a link to a post by Bruce Schneier. Also, the BJP have filed a Freedom of Information request asking for information about the policy. All good stuff!

I visited Aldwych tube station recently. I had been looking forward to it for some time, and turned up camera-in-hand, ready to take some interesting photos — which, frankly, was most of the reason I went.

When I got to the queue, my bag was searched. And my suspicions roused by a security man who said I couldn’t take my camera in, because it had a zoom lens. I thought this was rather odd. I offered to put on my 50mm prime (non-zoom) lens, and he said that was fine. But I was still suspicious.

Then, when we got into the station, one of the London Transport Museum staff said “No digital SLRs” — and there were signs dotted about, to the same effect. Suspicion started to turn to irritation.

Eventually, I managed to ask one of the LTM volunteers about the rule, and he said it was because they wanted to “limit the amount of high-quality footage of the station” — a statement later confirmed by others. At this point, irritation turned to outright anger. And I took this picture, as a minor act of rebellion.

So: what on earth do the London Transport Museum think they’re doing? It seemed a odd rule to begin with, and its justification, even stranger. Why would they want to limit high-resolution pictures? And even if they had a good reason to do that, why would they think that banning DSLRs accomplish it? Does. Not. Compute.

I had a look about, and found LTM’s mission statement:

By conserving and explaining the Capital city’s transport heritage, London Transport Museum offers people an understanding of the Capital’s past development and engages them in the debate about its future.

We adopt the highest standards of curatorship and communication, and aim to be the world’s leading museum of urban transport.

So. Do LTM really think that restricting the availability of high-resolution pictures of Aldwych accords with the highest standards of communication? Do they think that preventing people seeing and learning about Aldwych is the kind of thing the world’s leading museum of urban transport should be doing?

Is it not more likely that their role as a museum should be to encourage more people to see Aldwych? To engage with it, photograph it, learn about it, share it, discuss and understand it, spread the word about it and generate interest in their mission and their subject?

I am utterly baffled that in the digital age, there  still appear to be museums who think that these kind of restrictions are necessary. Or sensible. Or even, heaven forfend, good.

Museums are the guardians of our cultural heritage, not the owners of it. Museums should want photographs of their collections coming out of their ears, and getting in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

If you agree, why not send them a message, and let them know?

As promised we want to keep our stakeholders up to date with the latest progress on the Public Data Corporation project.  You may well have seen the Chancellor’s announcement within today’s Autumn Statement but I thought that it would be helpful to set out what this means in practice.

The Government has today announced that:

To support the growth of high-value data businesses and make access to data easier for startups, the Government is making available for free a range of core reference data sets.  In addition it is announcing the creation of a Data Strategy Board and a Public Data Group which will maximise the value of data the public sector buys from the Met Office, Ordnance Survey, Land Registry and Companies House.

What this means in practice:
Delivering on its commitment to establish a Public Data Corporation, Government has announced the establishment of a Data Strategy Board (DSB) which will seek to maximise the value of data from the Public Data Group (PDG) of Trading Funds for long-term economic and social benefit, including through the release of data free of charge.

Sending a clear signal of the DSB’s mandate, Government is announcing the release of additional core reference datasets for unrestricted use from the PDG, including, for the first time, weather observation and detailed weather forecast data and core data from the Companies Register.

The PDG currently includes Ordnance Survey, Met Office, HM Land Registry and Companies House. The Group will identify and deliver efficiencies and synergies to reduce the cost of data for users and re-users of data and provide additional funding for making data freely available.

This change clearly separates the commissioning and provision functions of public data, rebalancing the incentives to release more data for free, as well as strengthening the capability of Government to commission data for its own needs.

This announcement signals a significant step towards making additional core reference data from the Met Office, Ordnance Survey, HM Land Registry and Companies House available and free at the point of use.

For further information on the wider announcement please see the following link:  http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/news/open-data-measures-growth-review

I do hope this is helpful and we will of course keep you informed of further progress.

There’s some more detail from page 10 of this PDF — sadly, though, nothing very substantial from Ordnance Survey.

I think we’re a short way into a process of redefining what “privacy” is and means, and which parts of it are important, and which are less important.

I think that the benefits of a more open approach — where things that once would have been considered private no longer are — are widespread, in all sorts of ways — from personal convenience to companies figuring out how to sell us more stuff.

Ultimately, most people value some aspects of their privacy so little that they are willing to let Facebook pillage their address book, for the convenience of it, or just out of curiosity. And because there are lots more of those people, the rest of us are going to be pulled along with them.

And while it may be the case many of those people only make that decision because they are ignorant of its consequences, not all of them are. And many will put the risks into the same kind of category as leaving their bike unlocked outside the corner shop, or hiding the house keys under a pot-plant — small risks, but with potentially big consequences.

I’m certainly in the group that is concerned about data privacy, but I don’t see a way out of this. All the “education” in the world is unlikely to help, because it’ll sound like nerds preaching about pedantic trivialities.

And even when really bad things happen really publicly, people won’t change their behaviour — at least, not beyond some initial hand-wringing and media panic. Because human beings suck at making rational decisions where the taking of a series of small risks for a series of small rewards carries with it the potential for big bad consequences… later… maybe.

So, since I’m going to be dragged along with this croud anyway, I feel like I may as well leap in feet-first and enjoy the benefits.

Because I’ll be exposed to the risks either way.

It’s true. Ok? I did it. I stopped at a junction 3 metres in front of a stop line. Not in the junction, of course, and without upsetting any crossing pedestrians.

I did it because the opposing traffic often turns across the road dangerously quickly in an attempt to turn right before our column of traffic gets going.

I did it because people who do dangerous things dangerously quickly often don’t notice cylists.

I didn’t wait for the dangerous people to go first because to do so would obstruct the traffic on my side of the road by preventing them from turning left.

So, in order to substantially reduce the chances that I’ll die on the road, and to reduce the extent to which I obstruct busy traffic, and while having due regard for the rules of the road, and for the safety and convenience of other road users, I will occasionally stop in front of a stop line. Or turn left on a red light. Or use the pavement. Or anything else that I, acting in good faith, think is safer.

Because, frankly, the prospect of getting a ticket from you on a sunny Thursday morning doesn’t seem terribly important when stacked up against the possibility of becoming dead.

ttfn,

Harry

In fact, Honeycomb is leaps and bounds beyond Gingerbread generally. The interface is seriously shiny, as well as being quick and responsive. They’ve dumped the physical buttons in favour of on-screen buttons in a bar across the bottom of the screen, which also incorporates a notifications area. There’s a new button for accessing recently-used apps as well as the normal ones for the home screen and back button. The built-in apps are lovely too — web browsing is pretty much the same as Chrome on the desktop. And Email is considerably improved.

The camera is decent, and video is really nice – 720p, and looks great in full-screen playback. I’d love to have tried the front camera with a video call on Skype but Skype for Android still doesn’t support video — seriously! Wtf?

So far, I’ve been able to do everything I knew that I’d want before I got it: show PDFs and documents to people, check email, write quick documents & browse the web. So as far as the essentials go, the app support is great. But it is certainly the case that there are fewer apps for the Xoom than there are for the Android, and that some of the apps that are designed for Android phones don’t work terribly well on the Xoom. But I’m fairly convinced that that’s temporary. In fact, I distinctly recall iPhone apps running in a teeny box in the middle of the first iPad’s screen — and it didn’t take long for that to change. And before anyone gets too much into on the Xoom vs iPad2 argument, I’ll just say that I installed Flash as soon as I got it, and it works great. And also that Hitler was an Apple fanboy, so Android must be better. Man it’s easy to win arguments on the Internet.

There are some downsides: One serious annoyance is that the Xoom has its own charger. It doesn’t charge from USB. This may not matter if the battery can withstand heavy use, as it wouldn’t then be necessary to carry the charger around. It’s been fairly widely reported that the battery life is excellent, so I have high hopes, but I’ll wait to see for myself.

Another irritation, though very minor, is that the power button is on the back of the tablet next to the camera. So when it’s lying on the table, you have to pick it up to turn it back on. It’s also a little heavier than I expected. I’d be curious to know how much the iPad2 weighs. The Xoom is 730g — not exactly heavy, but I suspect that’s a little heavier than one might like if you had to hold it on a long train journey.

Overall — it seems like a lovely bit of kit. I’ll be putting it to the test over the next few weeks, and we’ll see if more experience bears out my first impressions.

Which, really, I seriously love.

But all my subsequent attempts didn’t really produce anything as good. This was the best one:

Now, I took both of these in London. So light pollution will certainly have reduced sharpness, and it’s entirely possible that the atmosphere was a bit clearer for the first shot than it was for the second.

But actually, I think it’s more to do with the position of the sun. The full moon is much flatter and duller than the waxing moon, which is rather to be expected — relative to the camera, the sun illuminates the waxing moon from the side, and a full moon from behind. If I was shooting people with flash, I’d expect much the same thing to happen. So — if it’s not too much to ask — it would be excellent if the universe could contrive to stick gigantic remote flash in high orbit around the moon.

Or, failing that, all practical suggestions on how to do a better job for the next supermoon (14th November 2016) gratefully received. Already on the list:

• Longer lens, or an extender
• A thermos, a warm jumper, and a nice hill in the middle of nowhere

I’ve now had a chance to read it. I’ve heard a number of opinions on the project over the last few months — I have to say, mostly not very complimentary ones — so I was glad to see what they finally decided.

On the whole, I think it’s quite good, as far as it goes. It’s definitely saying the right kinds of things about the sort of change that’s needed: notably, choosing commodity options when they’re available, and using agile processes to innovate and develop bespoke solutions when they’re necessary. Good stuff. The report includes a now very-well-rehearsed explanation of the problems with government’s traditional approaches which is spot on, and some good recommendations for Government – it will be interesting to see how they respond.

On a minor point (at least, for me) it is very technology focussed and doesn’t much discuss the wider social context that technology needs to serve.

More importantly, I would have liked to see more detail, in general. There’s a lot of discussion of open standards, buying commodity services, and coordinating activity between departments. But it feels a bit like the report skips over the fact that these things are really hard.

Agreeing standards is hard, as is implementing them correctly. Standards for the web have taken >10 years to develop and mature, and in many respects are still not very well embedded: Microsoft have really only just got there with IE9, and that remains to be seen. And this is in an industry where the incentives to make everything work are huge. I’m really not at all sure that the incentives to use open standards for the NHS spine and people’s tax records are even nearly as strong, where suppliers may be reluctant to facilitate the involvement of others.

Commodity services can of course deliver immense value, and the success of Amazon’s Web Services is a testament to their usefulness. But even the private sector is only just getting there. Computing resources are now effectively commoditised, as is — perhaps — the purchase of hardware… and that’s… it. There’s no commodity market for VOIP services that I’m aware of. There’s no commodity market for payroll, workflow management or document storage. For all of these things, we’re still in a world of competing products which are mostly not interoperable. The report actually highlights Microsoft Word as an example of a commodity application, which made me choke on my coffee: it’s quite the opposite. In fact, it’s a dominant product in what is all but a monopoly, and — as anyone who’s tried to use OpenOffice in anger will know — it’s a long way from being interoperable with anything.

Sensibly coordinating activity between departments has been advocated as good for so long that it’s practically axiomatic, and we still aren’t anywhere near it.

Perhaps more importantly still, the report really doesn’t address procurement nearly carefully enough. It does present some interesting suggestions about how to squeeze agile projects though existing OJEU and OGC processes. But I think procurement is at the root of the whole problem, and needs wholesale reform. The main reason that Government’s incumbent suppliers are so dominant is that the barrier to entry for new businesses is immense. And procurement constitutes a very large portion of that problem.

The report even advocates the use of framework agreements as a cost-cutting measure, when — in fact — the use of framework agreements is one of the prime culprits for the lack of any agile suppliers in the market able to compete for the large projects that are currently solely delivered by the Usual Suspects.

In summary – I think this is a good start. The direction of travel is spot on, and I hope it is warmly received and acted upon by government. But it does skim over some terribly difficult problems which we’ll have to confront if we want this to work.

But today I thought I’d spend 5 minutes seeing if they could be improved — as it was a cheapy point & click camera hired from the dive company, and all the pictures were really flat and horrible. I am amazed how much better they are after a few minutes clicking about in picasa. Here’s a before & after:

Before

After

Click through for bigger versions.

I made some progress just using the I’m Feeling Lucky button, but what really made them come alive was the Tint effect: using a white tint and dragging the bar almost all the way to the top really made everything pop out nicely.

If you have any similar tips, I’d love to hear them…

This story provoked a rather predictable outburst on how Government spends far too much money, and doesn’t get value for money*. It’s a perspective that’s expressed frequently — most recently for the police.uk’s £300k price-tag.

Often Government does pay too much. We all wonder why BusinessLink costs £36m a year. But this isn’t one of those cases. Reading Room charged £585 for the ICO’s favicon, and most people seem to be objecting to that figure on the basis that it would have taken them 5 minutes to do it, and therefore, that Reading Room must have charged £585 for 5 minutes work.

But, as anyone familiar with the delivery of actual government projects will know, absolutely nothing ever just takes 5 minutes. Not when you have the client, two government organisations and two or three other contractors to deal with. Not when you’re working within a delivery framework that requires multiple levels of approval before anything goes live. Not when government has deliberately taken a “belt & braces” approach to contracting — ironically usually done to aid accountability, but which invariably creates procedural bloat and extra cost.

There’s a huge difference between making a favicon and making one for a big organisation, with lots of people who need to give input and approval. There’s a huge difference between making an informational website that you think is good, and making one for an entire country, maintained by an entire government. There’s a huge difference between your website and your Government’s website: because in any activity, time and cost increase with the number of people who are involved.

The real question here isn’t why this specific favicon cost £585. That’s pretty clear: Reading Room charge £600/day (which is competitive), spent a few minutes making the favicon, and the best part of 7 hours making sure everyone was happy with it. Which, I strongly suspect, is exactly what they were asked to do by their client.

We absolutely need to work on making government more agile and getting better value for money. And it is starting to happen, as dxw’s success over the past three years illustrates. But blind invective won’t accomplish that.

Suppliers need to help government understand the true (small!) nature of the risks that online technologies present. And we need to show government how it’s possible to do things quickly and cheaply on the web.

And I think that practical help and understanding will get us there much more quickly than premature outbursts of uninformed anger.

Edited to add: @threedaymonk has an excellent writeup on this too.

*I have to admit to partaking in that in a small and light-hearted way.

In fact, having now spent 20 minutes staring at those two sentences, I’m finding it a bit hard to know where to begin. We spent quite a lot of time on the plane, but in between, we met a sparkling array of very interesting people from all sorts of backgrounds, visited places from the firmly affluent to the strikingly poor, and learned some valuable lessons about technology, democracy and civic engagement.

My bit of the trip was the hack day that we did at Google with some Indian developers. Rohan Silva, Liam Maxwell, Edmund von der Burg, Tim Green, David McCandless and I turned up at Google India, not quite knowing what to expect. After a very delicious curried breakfast we piled into a meeting room for a big chat with lots of Indian developers. I’ve written about the hack day separately, and David’s also done a piece on the Guardian Data Blog.

The Prime Minister

After a hurried lunch, we all piled back on to the plane for our flight to Delhi, which took several hours. Upon arriving we were briskly sent off to an evening reception, where the PM did a short speech (and where I just-so-happened to wander over and mention Dextrous Web, which he seemed excited about). The reception was fairly short, and we were soon back at the hotel, where — after a brief spell in the indescribably humid Delhi evening — we all went off to bed.

South Asia Foundation

The next morning, we went off to learn about the Panchayati Raj. It’s a system of elected village assemblies which receive money from the Indian government to spend on local services. It’s an interesting approach, and embodies many of the current government’s Big Society principles: radical decentralisation, with local decision-making and accountability. After a briefing from the British High Commission and a panel session at the South Asia Foundation, we left the city to visit several village Panchayats and see the work that they do.

Paved, with gutters

For me, this was undoubtedly the highlight of the trip. We visited several villages, saw how people there live, met elected Panchayat members and saw the improvements they were making to their villages. One had managed to pave all its streets, with proper gutters, and had built a school. Another was making a proper dirt road between their village and the next. We visited the workers as they were leveling the ground, and the difference between the completed road and the rest was remarkable — I doubt our minibus could have traversed the lumpen, muddy path that they were following.

Periodic Table

More than anything else, though, I was moved by the extraordinary welcome that we received. Every village gave us garlands and flowers, and sat us down for tea, water and spiced nuts. One processed us through the streets with music. They were warm, generous and proud. At one village we were drinking Chai in the local school when I spotted a periodic table on the wall and took a picture. The principal of the school came over and told me about how it had been made by his 11-year-old students. The chief civil engineer for the district accompanied us and told us all about the roads and schools that they were building. In the first village, we walked past an incongruously well stocked pharmacy, and one of the kids came over to tell me about it.

Of course, my impressions are skewed. I’m sure it’s unusual for westerners to visit these villages, and that that provoked a certain level of excitement — especially with one of the PM’s senior policy advisers leading the group. I would like to know what day-to-day life is like in these places. One of the officials we visited later said that he thought 80% of Panchayats probably experienced some degree of fraud or embezzlement, which I don’t doubt. But the improvements in these villages were clear, and the villages’ sense of pride was palpable. So fraud is, perhaps, an acceptable cost of doing business.

Eventually, and reluctantly, we got back on our minibus and headed for home. Upon arriving back in the city, we went to a plush reception thrown by BBC Worldwide at the hotel — wherein, incidentally, a 24-hour wifi pass cost the same as 7 days’ pay for one of the labourers building the dirt road we’d been standing on not two hours earlier. It was a stark contrast. India is definitely a country of extremes.

At the South Asia Foundation, the Minister leading the Indian delegation said that Indian governments had a history of promising people the world, and then failing to deliver. That India is just so big, and so populous, that central government couldn’t even make most of the people happy, most of the time. It’s this reality that he said the Panchayati Raj are there to fix. He said that radical decentralisation is the only system that can work in a country as big as India, and that it is vital to make it work to prevent people losing faith in democracy as a system of government.

This argument seems plausible to me. But it made me wonder how the UK could learn lessons from India, given that we don’t have the same problems of scale. We also don’t have the same degree of engagement in civil issues — or anything even close to it. But that is, perhaps, to be expected. India has more to do. And in fact, I suspect that the motivations for Indians to become involved in civil issues are much the same as those of Britons. You can bet that if London had no roads, schools or hospitals, a vast number of Londoners would be doing things about it. And, in fact, most people do get involved in some way when things happen that affect them directly: like school and hospital closures, or objectionable planning applications.

And that, I think, is the lesson. In these villages, everyone knew the Panchayat members. And when the members walk down the street, people go up to them, and air their concerns. As more than one person told us, politics in India is very personal. People know who to ask, and how the system works — primarily because it is simple, and they are close to it. At least, when it comes to Panchayati Raj*.

But that is the polar opposite of the UK, where almost no one knows their Councillors, and where engaging with local government means climbing a nigh-impassable mountain of tedious bureaucratic complexity. Where, unsurprisingly, most people decide it’s not worth the effort. And whence the chattering classes are born: that particular breed of people who enjoy traversing the peaks and valleys of big bureaucracies.

If that’s the problem that the Big Society is supposed to solve, I’m all for it. And I think the Indians are probably lighting the path.

*The rest of Indian government is notoriously bureaucratic!

Hoffman Voltameter Mark II (it's a bit better)

This version has smaller bottles, reducing the amount of electrolyte needed, and goes back to using silicone sealant to attach the PEX piping to the bottles.

The glue gun was just too leak prone. Although it was much quicker to work with, the glue is very rigid when dry, so handling the apparatus (eg when filling or emptying) tended to create leaks. So I decided to be patient, and use sealant, which is much more flexible when dry. I also sanded the area around the holes in the bottles, and the ends of the PEX pipes, so that the sealant would adhere more effectively.

This version works much better! It’s leak-free, and I succeeded in generating about 100ml of hydrogen and collecting it by releasing the clamp and using a makeshift gas bubbler. I passed it over a flame, and heard the squeaky pop — perhaps the best one I’ve *ever* heard, considering the effort it took!

Unfortunately, I had a little less luck with the Chlorine. A small quantity of gas was generated at the anode, but I could not discern any particular colour. Conversely, the electrolyte in the anode bottle had a definite green tinge. I suspect that the Chlorine is largely dissolving in the water, and that the gas I collected at the top was probably a small amount of Oxygen. This feels more plausible than it otherwise would given that the electrolyte was not a saturated solution. I’ll test this out later.

However, this version isn’t without its problems. There’s some visible corrosion around the join between the electrode and the wire, which I tried to insulate using heat shrink. As it’s clear that the steel connection is being oxidised, that’s obviously not working. I also don’t like that the electrodes are dangling from cables. It feels… bad. So, I’m going to take the plunge and mount them permanently to the bottles from the outside, which will remove the steel connection from the electrolyte entirely as well as making it all a bit neater.

Another very strange problem is that the water level in the three containers is not always the same, even when the tubes are open to the atmosphere. This is a bit baffling, to say the least. I think that the tubes are probably at fault: their internal diameter is very small (about 2mm) and I think there’s some kind of capillary effect at work. I’m going to replace these with some normal 5mm PVC tubing and see if that solves the problem.

This version is much better than its predecessor, and I’ve experienced some success. But I think there’s better to come.

Anyway. For a fun project, and to start understanding electrochemistry better (which, as soon as you scratch the surface, becomes rather complicated), I’ve been building a Hofmann Voltameter. They’re made for electrolysing things, typically water, in such a way that one can easily collect the gases. The proper ones look like this:

A Hofmann Voltameter

And are rather expensive. I figured I could make one. So, I set about it last weekend, and this was the result (forgive the clutter!):

My Hoffman Voltameter, Mark I!

The two bottles at either side are 500ml diet coke bottles. They’re joined by a push-fit T-junction and some PEX pipe to the central bottle, an M&S orange juice bottle, which is used to add the electrolyte. The base has a shaped grove to hold the bottles in place with a pole at the back to support the central bottle so it doesn’t swing forwards and spill. The lids of the coke bottles each have a tube which is used to collect the gases, and a cable to which is connected the electrode. The electrodes themselves are made of carbon fibre — somewhat cheaper than platinum and, unlike graphite, does not readily fall apart. Unfortunately, this didn’t work so well. There were problems:

• This leaked, quite significantly, where the pipes enter the coke bottles. Eventually I managed to get the major ones but even when it appeared to have stopped leaking it would grow new ones.
• The gases were not effectively collected. The electrodes sat at an angle and tended to produce a circular current within the electrolyte which drew a large proportion of the bubbles back into the bottle rather than letting them rise to the surface. The bubbles were also very small, which — combined with the textured surface of the bottles — tended to make the bubbles stick to the inside of the bottle.

The combination of a slowly leaking system and a relatively small amount of gas reaching the top meant that no gas was ultimately collected at all. To compound the problem, my glue gun broke, so I couldn’t deal with the leaks. At this point, slightly frustratedly, I decided that it wasn’t really worth fixing anyway — as it would take a very, very long time to produce a usable amount of anything.

So, on to Mark II: I’ve built a new version using square 330ml Copella bottles. These are much less textured, and as they’re square they’re easier to glue to the pipes than the round coke bottles. They’re also smaller, therefore requiring less electrolyte than the 500ml coke bottles, and allowing the height of the central bottle to be reduced. As I write, the Mark II is bing leak tested: sitting in my kitchen full of bright red water on a bed of white tissue paper!

I’ll post again when I’ve had a chance to test it.

Jeremy Corbyn (Lab, incumbent)

Pros

Corbyn is an excellent constituency MP. He is responsive and personable. We seem to agree on most of the issues I’ve written to him about — primarily civil liberties things. He voted against the Digital Economy Bill. Though Labour, he is an arch-rebel: so I trust him to vote with his conscience rather than his party, most of the time.

Cons

I’ve been looking forward to voting against Labour for quite a long time. ID cards, Blair, wars, etc — Labour haven’t been all bad but they’ve been on the wrong side too often for me. Also, Corbyn is very old labour: a hard left socialist. Though I’ve been grateful for his votes against some of Labour’s worst legislative follies, I suspect we’d disagree more often than not.

Rhodri Jamieson-Ball (Libdem)

Pros

I’ve been very impressed with Clegg over the last month. I think he’s really held his own. If we could vote for a head of state, he’d have my vote in a flash. Unfortunately, though, we can’t. So Jamieson-Ball is my only choice if I want to support them. He’s been a councillor for some years, and is clearly active on lots of local issues. I do think it’s about time someone else had a go — since neither the Conservatives nor Labour are terribly inspiring — and the Liberals seem a natural choice.

Cons

I swing wildly from one extreme to the other with the LibDems. Sometimes I think they’re wonderful (Clegg in the first debate, good civlibs rhetoric) and other times, awful (utterly incompetent web-blocking amendement on the Digital Economy Bill). I do get a general sense that they just aren’t very organised (as I do with the Greens).

The thing that’s annoyed me the most, though, is a graph from this letter delivered last week:

This graph is a lie. The numbers are correct, but they bear almost no relation to the heights of the bars. It gives the impression that Labour and the Liberals are very close in the running. The text is also bigger and more prominent in the Liberals’ bar. I’ve produced a corrected version:

Which tells a rather different story.

If these people can’t even be honest in an election leaflet, why should I trust them to be honest in government? This is leaflet is deliberately designed to deceive people. And I think it’s cost them my vote.

Adrian Berrill-Cox (Con)

Pros

I am very impressed by the Conservatives’ technology policies. They’re saying the right things about the web, reforming procurement and making government IT better. But that’s about it.

Cons

Well. They’re the Tories. I remain to be convinced that “Progressive Conservative” is not a contradiction in terms. I’m not at all convinced by Cameron. Marriage incentives make me want to barf. And, if recent revelations are to be believed, they still shelter a veritable menagerie of homophobes. Not to mention people who still rue the demise of the British Empire. I don’t think they’ve changed much, no matter how hard Cameron has been trying.

Emily Dixon (Green)

Not really a possibility. I would probably vote Green tactically if I was in Brighton Pavillion. But I’m not, and their manifesto continues to contain “mad things”, like totally unworkable emission cuts, the mother of all tax rises and the abolition of nuclear power. No thanks.

Dominic Lennon (UKIP)

Lol. No.

So: what do you think? Very grateful for your thoughts!

You need to write to your MP, and ring them up, and ask them to attend the house to vote against this bill. Go. Do it. Now!

Dear Mr Corbyn,

I’ve just called and left a message, but I thought it would be good to follow up by email.

This afternoon, the Digital Economy Bill will receive its committee, report and third reading stages, all in two hours.

Some of the most damaging parts of the bill — clauses 10-17 — remain unopposed by the Conservatives, and are still supported by the Government.

These clauses have not been properly scrutinised by the Commons, may be very costly and damaging to the digital economy and to the digital civil liberties of your constituents and should not be passed without full and proper consideration.

I hope that you will attend the house this afternoon to vote against this bill at third reading. It can easily be reintroduced after the election, and given proper consideration, if the new Government so wishes.

Online copyright infringement has been rife for over a decade. It can wait for three more months. The sky will not fall down.

Yours Sincerely,

Harry Metcalfe

Today marks a critical day for the UK’s creative industries, as the House of Commons will debate the Digital Economy Bill. If passed, the Bill will provide urgently needed support for our creative talent and the businesses which have made the UK one of the leading creative economies in the world.

Indeed. A day where, after an afternoon’s discussion, a bill will be voted through the Commons for a committee stage lasting just a few short hours — the wash-up. Where the outcome will be pre-determined by the party leaders and whips, making back-room deals, out of sight of the public. This in place of a detailed process of scrutiny which usually takes days.

The digital age and high-speed broadband have brought a host of exciting new services, but what is holding us back is having to compete with illegal file-sharing conducted on a vast scale.

Is it? Really? Online sales of music now exceed CD royalties. Spotify gained 9 million users in six months last year. An 800% increase.

At what point will legislators and the general public look at the numbers and conclude that the record industry is just wrong, or lying? You cannot on the one hand claim that the Internet is a fundamental threat to your business, and on the other, report increasing revenues and massive growth. The two cannot be reconciled.

Considering that all this money is being made in spite of the record industry’s crippling conservatism and onerous demands upon innovators, it’s hard not to wonder how much more money they could be making if they’d just get with the programme.

The Digital Economy Bill is a sensible approach to tackling online piracy, focusing on education of consumers through notifications which must include advice to the internet account holder together with information on legal services. Only if technical measures are found to be necessary and are subsequently introduced would they be applied to the accounts of those who repeatedly ignore notifications warning them to stop illegally file-sharing.

Letters and education are positive things. I don’t think anyone objects to them. It’s the technical measures that are unacceptable. The CCC disingenuously insert an “if” into that paragraph (emphasis mine). Given that the Government have set an unreachable 70% target for reduction of unlawful file-sharing, it’s beyond doubt that they will be found to be necessary.

And then what? Hidden behind comfortable words like “technical measures” and “applied to the accounts” are serious extra-judicial sanctions; collective punishments that will be debilitating. Is it right to disconnect entire families from the internet because someone in the household persistently downloads Metallica albums? What if that connection is used to run a business? What happens to their income? What happens when the kids can’t do their homework and the parents can’t pay their bills?

I no longer have a cheque book. Do you? I no longer have a yellow pages. I no longer receive paper statements for my bank accounts or utilities. The Internet is a critical utility, as vital as electricity and gas. So says Gordon Brown. We don’t disconnect the water supplies of people who flout hosepipe bans, or the electricity of people who grow weed in the attic.

Of course, as part of this process alleged infringers will have access to a fair, fast and effective appeals process. Surely, this is a much better outcome for consumers and reatives than the current sanction of court actions against individuals for damages?

Fair, fast and effective? That’s a bit of a reach. A fair system does not presume guilt, strip you of due process and then restore bits upon payment of a fee. A fair system cannot be established on the back of dubious methods for collecting evidence that have been comprehensively rubbished in other jurisdictions.

The UK’s creative businesses now contribute economic output of at least £60 billion per annum and account for 1.8 million jobs in the UK; however, according to a report launched this month by TERA Consultants, more than 250,000 jobs could be directly at risk if immediate action is not taken against the huge growth in online piracy.

Again — this doesn’t gel with the reality that online revenues are rising, despite the record industry’s remarkable lack of nous in failing to create an environment that encourages new and innovative services to arise. That same report, highlights a 1130% rise in digital revenues between 2004-2008, and a 49% drop in physical sales. And a 228% increase in video on demand. In total, there’s a 13% fall in revenues — due, apparently, to a drop in filmed entertainment revenues.

So, why haven’t they made an iTunes for TV, and seen a 1130% rise in revenue there, too? God knows. I don’t.

We must not let this opportunity pass.

A telling line. What opportunity is that? The opportunity, perhaps, to squeeze this bill through the legislature while the majority of MPs aren’t paying attention?

Opponents of the Bill have tried to block its progress through a campaign that distorted the truth about the Digital Economy Bill.

I don’t think so. I think the lies and spin are blowing in precisely the opposite direction. Hopefully, people will be able to tell the difference. Hopefully, this is one battle that corporate lobbyists won’t win.

In reality, however, the Bill is a sensible and much needed response to what has become an unacceptable situation for those whose livelihoods depend on the success of the creative industries.

In reality, the creative industries have long been making their own bed, and are now lobbying for laws that stop them having to lie in it. It’s Sony vs Universal all over again, but bigger. Why they and our politicians are unable to see this is mystifying. As usual, I suspect a heady mix of groupthink and ignorance is to blame.

In any case — we, who can see, need to fight the good fight. So go and join the Open Rights Group, and help fight for a Digital Economy Bill that makes sense.

Updated to add: And, on the very day that the bill has its second reading in the Commons, this press release from the BPI arrives in my feed — about how great things are and about how their wonderful online services are making so much money. I shit you not.

They put a pledge on Pledgebank a while ago, seeking regular donations from supporters so that they can go on doing more splendid things. Unfortunately, the pledge failed — but I don’t think that really matters. I’ve signed up anyway. They deserve your support — can you spare them £5 a month?

Donate to the OKF

Dear Ms Harman,

I am writing to you as Leader of the House of Commons.

As I’m sure you’re aware, the Digital Economy Bill is shortly to be discussed in the Commons, and I am very concerned that it is not going to receive the scrutiny from MPs that such a complex bill demands.

This bill is complicated, and could have significant (possible unintended) affects if passed as drafted. Much of the bill is clearly drafted for the benefit of commercial entities, in ignorance of technological realities and contempt of the public interest. Recent revelations from Dispatches seem to confirm that the ability of wealthy special interests to influence our legislative process is alive and well.

In any situation such as this — where commercial and public interests are competing, over a complex and nuanced problem — it is vital for proposed legislation to be scrutinised diligently and comprehensively. To attempt to rush such a bill through in the last weeks of a Parliament is deeply inappropriate.

In its current form, the Bill strips away human rights to due process, establishes collective punishments and establishes an infrastructure for state censorship of the web.

All in the name of protecting an industry whose history is both littered with attempts to secure protectionist policies when threatened by technological developments, and success stories of growth, adaptation and increased profitability when those attempts fail.

This is a complex problem with no simple solution. I urge you to give it sufficient Commons time for a full and proper debate, or to allow the bill to fall and bring it before a new Parliament after the election.

Yours Sincerely,

Harry Metcalfe

Feel free to crib bits. Please do send her a letter — and why not send it to your MP too?