The Times: Tech column - E-democracy fears/Segway/Stegdetect
By David Rowan
A TERRIFYING buzzword is doing the rounds in Whitehall: e-democracy. Meaning anything from online voting to electronic public consultations, the term has that magical ability to turn normally cautious politicians into wide-eyed techno-visionaries. So when the Government launched its consultation document on making e-democracy a reality, it opened the door to yet more huge IT projects that you just know will fail to work as planned. Democracy is too important to leave to a Government that cannot get IT right.
Just look at its track record with computer projects that arrive late, over budget and, in some cases, not at all. The 1901 Census website will not be searchable until next month at the earliest, and the Child Support Agency's new system, due to be ready last April, is still some way off. Then we had flaws with the new air-traffic control system, the Inland Revenue self-assessment website that had to be taken offline and delays to the Criminal Records Bureau's system for vetting staff. From the Lord Chancellor's Department to the Home Office, the lessons of the 1999 Passport Agency fiasco appear not to have been learnt.
"It is not all doom and gloom," says the e-Envoy's office protesting that government IT success stories "never get reported" - although a spokeswoman was hard-pressed, without further research, to give examples beyond NHS Direct Online. The e-Envoy, Andrew Pinder, is working hard to push government departments towards providing a better service online, but he faces the obstacle of a Whitehall culture that is apparently designed to make IT projects fail. "The bigger projects are run by ministers and permanent secretaries, so when things go horribly wrong, the bad news is filtered out and doesn't end up with the people who can solve problems," says Tony Collins, Computer Weekly's executive editor. "At least the private sector learns from its mistakes and understands that you need to welcome constructive criticism on a daily basis - computer projects are about problem-solving, after all." Such an attitude is the antithesis of how government works: the possibility of failure cannot even be considered.
Technobabble's response to the "e-democracy" consultation, which runs until October, is simple. Forget about it, Mr Pinder. The voters are not ready for it, and your colleagues in Whitehall certainly do not have the track record to deliver it. And do not listen to those private IT firms lobbying for the prospective contracts. They know that, whatever goes wrong, they will get paid.
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REMEMBER the Segway Human Transporter, the much-hyped scooter launched last December that was going to "change civilisation" as it solved the world's transport problems? Despite all the hype - and yes, we fell for it too - it seems that the £6,000 lawnmower-lookalike is just not moving. Federal Express was apparently going to buy a fleet, but changed its mind. Other forward-thinking clients such as Amazon.com and Michelin are still claiming to be "testing" them and have yet to sign any cheques. Some American postal workers are about to try them, but early police users have abandoned them for bicycles. In other words, "brand footprint", as PR coverage was called in the dot-com boom days, has nothing to do with success.
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I WAS hoping to bring you an exclusive message from al-Qaeda this week, now that intelligence agents have discovered the websites it is using to exchange encrypted orders. The process involves hiding its messages in text files, and its images on pro-jihad websites such as azzam.com and, bizarrely, that haven of Islamic extremism, eBay. According to US Intelligence, supporters in Pakistan have been uploading message-filled images from internet cafes and, thanks to a program called Stegdetect, I have been directed to a few likely picture files. Maybe I'm just slow, but I've been searching for those hidden messages without success. And the number of eBay pictures of baseball cards one can stare at before wishing the terrorists would stick to e-mail is finite.
(The Times, July 17 2002)
A TERRIFYING buzzword is doing the rounds in Whitehall: e-democracy. Meaning anything from online voting to electronic public consultations, the term has that magical ability to turn normally cautious politicians into wide-eyed techno-visionaries. So when the Government launched its consultation document on making e-democracy a reality, it opened the door to yet more huge IT projects that you just know will fail to work as planned. Democracy is too important to leave to a Government that cannot get IT right.
Just look at its track record with computer projects that arrive late, over budget and, in some cases, not at all. The 1901 Census website will not be searchable until next month at the earliest, and the Child Support Agency's new system, due to be ready last April, is still some way off. Then we had flaws with the new air-traffic control system, the Inland Revenue self-assessment website that had to be taken offline and delays to the Criminal Records Bureau's system for vetting staff. From the Lord Chancellor's Department to the Home Office, the lessons of the 1999 Passport Agency fiasco appear not to have been learnt.
"It is not all doom and gloom," says the e-Envoy's office protesting that government IT success stories "never get reported" - although a spokeswoman was hard-pressed, without further research, to give examples beyond NHS Direct Online. The e-Envoy, Andrew Pinder, is working hard to push government departments towards providing a better service online, but he faces the obstacle of a Whitehall culture that is apparently designed to make IT projects fail. "The bigger projects are run by ministers and permanent secretaries, so when things go horribly wrong, the bad news is filtered out and doesn't end up with the people who can solve problems," says Tony Collins, Computer Weekly's executive editor. "At least the private sector learns from its mistakes and understands that you need to welcome constructive criticism on a daily basis - computer projects are about problem-solving, after all." Such an attitude is the antithesis of how government works: the possibility of failure cannot even be considered.
Technobabble's response to the "e-democracy" consultation, which runs until October, is simple. Forget about it, Mr Pinder. The voters are not ready for it, and your colleagues in Whitehall certainly do not have the track record to deliver it. And do not listen to those private IT firms lobbying for the prospective contracts. They know that, whatever goes wrong, they will get paid.
++++
REMEMBER the Segway Human Transporter, the much-hyped scooter launched last December that was going to "change civilisation" as it solved the world's transport problems? Despite all the hype - and yes, we fell for it too - it seems that the £6,000 lawnmower-lookalike is just not moving. Federal Express was apparently going to buy a fleet, but changed its mind. Other forward-thinking clients such as Amazon.com and Michelin are still claiming to be "testing" them and have yet to sign any cheques. Some American postal workers are about to try them, but early police users have abandoned them for bicycles. In other words, "brand footprint", as PR coverage was called in the dot-com boom days, has nothing to do with success.
++++
I WAS hoping to bring you an exclusive message from al-Qaeda this week, now that intelligence agents have discovered the websites it is using to exchange encrypted orders. The process involves hiding its messages in text files, and its images on pro-jihad websites such as azzam.com and, bizarrely, that haven of Islamic extremism, eBay. According to US Intelligence, supporters in Pakistan have been uploading message-filled images from internet cafes and, thanks to a program called Stegdetect, I have been directed to a few likely picture files. Maybe I'm just slow, but I've been searching for those hidden messages without success. And the number of eBay pictures of baseball cards one can stare at before wishing the terrorists would stick to e-mail is finite.
(The Times, July 17 2002)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, July 17, 2002
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