John Hudson

The government’s latest incarnation of its one-stop internet portal - directgov is now online in a preview version. Using the fabulous internet archive wayback machine links are available to the original portal open.gov.uk (this version from 2000, but running from 1994) - which was little more than an A-Z listing of government organisations - and its successor a UK Online your life (this version from 2002, but running from 2001 and still live in 2004) - in which the key innovation was the organisation of information around ‘life episodes’ such as having a baby or learning to drive.

BBC carried a report/interview with the e-envoy about the switch. In it, Pinder offered an analogy to outline the difference between directgov and UK Online:

The e-Envoy, Andrew Pinder, likened the UK Online site to a travel agent that was suggesting destinations for a holiday.

By contrast, he said, Directgov was a purpose-built resort, though he admitted that not all of the rides were built yet.

Mr Pinder illustrated how the different sites handled queries using the example of a parent with a young disabled child trying to find out about sending their offspring to a mainstream school.

Using UK Online, a parent would be directed to all the sites of the government departments involved such as the Department for Education and Skills and the Department of Work and Pensions.

Mr Pinder said tracking down all relevant information can be tricky as the government maintains more than 2,500 websites, few of which share formatting or search terms.

By contrast, he said, on Directgov everything a parent needs to know will be collected on one page and individual government websites were invisible to the end user

“We are really trying hard to be customer-focused,” he said. “It’s something that government has not done very well in the past.”

ID cards were on the agenda of the Home Affairs select committee again last week (see Kablenet for a report - the Home Affairs committee website has yet to catch up). Ross Anderson - who helped the BMA sink plans for NHS networking and electronic patient records in their mid-1990s incarnation - gave a generally critical appraisal of the plans. Then his argument was that a national, networked system presented too great a security risk: the probability of hackers gaining access to confidential information was 100%. This time his worries seem similar: that a single national database of biometric information would be a target for those wishing to threaten the security of the nation.

Manuel Castells has a new book out soon: a cross-cultural perspective on the network society. According to the blurb:

Manuel Castells – one of the world’s pre-eminent social scientists – has drawn together a stellar group of contributors to explore the patterns and dynamics of the network society in its cultural and institutional diversity. After presenting a theoretical discussion of the network society, the book analyzes processes of technological transformation in interaction with social culture in five different cultural and institutional contexts: Silicon Valley, Finland, Russia, China and the UK. The conviction that the network society takes very different forms, depending on the cultural and institutional environments in which it evolves, lies at the heart of this book.

And contributors include: ‘S.K. Acord, W.E. Baker, T. Bates, C. Benner, N. Bulkley, M. Castells, A. Chatterjee, K.M. Coleman, I. Díaz de Isla Gómez, K.N. Hampton, P. Himanen, J.S. Juris, J.E. Katz, J. Linchuan Qiu, R. Pinkett, R.E. Rice, T. Sancho, L.J. Servon, A. Sey, I. Tubella, M. Van Alstyne, E. Vartanova, B. Wellman, R. Williams, S. Woolgar, C. Zaloom’

Schröder’s woes continue with a resounding defeat in the Hamburg city elections - an area that was solid SPD territory until recently. This is where Blair has an easier time than his German counterpart: fewer tiers of government means fewer proxy-referrenda on his performance. (See earlier post on his recent troubles.)

However, Schröder has vowed to continue with his controversial welfare reforms (including increasing the stratification of the university system, the introduction of new health care charges and cuts/freezes in some benefit rates).

The EU are stepping up the drive for accessible e-government, following on from a recent report that considered usability.

They have also just published an interesting report examining progress in implementing online services in EU nations. It ranks the UK as 6th in service availability and 8th in sophistication.