‘Appy in the NHS?
A question was asked from the floor at DH’s National Information Board in September: “The Government has banned apps that replicate websites. What does that mean for the NHS?” I don’t have an answer,...
View ArticleAirbrushed from History? public registers, private registers, and the...
or, why it’s important that registers involving personal data are both immutable and privacy respecting, which requires great care from the architects of the first system. Bearing in mind, I’m looking...
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Investigatory Powers Bill, IPv6, Crypto, and (no) cookies for you.
Last Tuesday, I went along to the Science and Technology committee’s hearing on the IP Bill (see endnote for why). There were some good questions. Given my past work on the draft Communications...
View ArticleParliamentary Podcasts of all committees
One of the nice things about the new HTML5 committee hearing player for Parliament, is the audio only feed is now an MP3, which is rather convenient. The last annoying step is remembering to download...
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Possible Futures of Power (part 1)
‘Tis the season for blog posts on the future of institutions, which is basically the future of power. Spending day job time dealing with the NHS, it is also clear that institutions matter less than...
View Article#datasharing2016: A new weak lock on a data-sharing back-door?
Just before Christmas, the Cabinet Office hosted a short-notice meeting about their data sharing plans. The meeting topics reflected a continuation of the different streams from the data sharing work...
View ArticlePrivate Registers and The Jackal Run? (aka Government Blockchains part 3)
That a technique is considered an abomination by civil society has never been seen by the Home Office as a reason not to use it. The “Jackal Run” is the process by which Home Office/Police staff find...
View ArticleWho is responsible for legal entities?
Unsurprisingly, a meeting in Shoreditch was not going well. Someone was trying to convince me (and others) that there needed to be a privacy and data protection exemption for data about organisations...
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A question on the Cabinet Office update on the data copying consultation
The recent Cabinet Office blog post on their data copying consultation says: In the Troubled Families programme, for example, this created a catch-22 situation where government wanted to offer...
View ArticleThree types of blockchain projects: Ukraine, on a Blockchain
Ukraine is investigating running its election on a blockchain, which is an entirely rational thing for them to do. They have a credible fears of a stolen election, facing a hostile nation state actor...
View ArticleBaconchain
The last ODI lunchtime lecture was on blockchains, and included an interesting slide. ODI has been working with DEFRA on some form of blockchain for full accountability of the foodchain. A very welcome...
View ArticleHow many teslas would it take to clean london’s air?
It’s almost an aside in this week’s Tesla piece about their “biohazard mode” air filters: “it began to vacuum the air outside the car as well” The Model X in the air safety test has an internal...
View ArticleDistributed ledgers of semi-structured organisational information
(Half* of this is likely indistinguisable from horse exhaust. I’m just not sure which half…) In several talks, Vinay gave a brief overview of the evolution of databases from clean rooms to blockchains....
View ArticleData and informed consent for a modern world
Doteveryone has a call for suggestions following brexit under the banner “never let a crisis go to waste“. That applies to data usage and transparency too – the changes ahead will be good for the...
View ArticleFirst thoughts on a new macbook pro with touchbar.
My 6 year old macbookpro died a death with (minimal) notice this morning. I had a backup, but it was a clear hardware failure that was going to take time to repair. So, instituting “oh fuck procedure...
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Some interim innovations enabling future deployments of verify infrastructure
These are not ideas for Gov.UK Verify, but other conversations on the side where reuse of that model may be being considered – that service is referenced here as “Verify”. The Principal consideration...
View ArticleThe UK’s Digital Economy Bill – failure of an Act
It seems to be a cross-party consensus that anything called a “Digital Economy” Bill will demonstrate how out of touch with digital the authors of Government policy can be. Especially when they have an...
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Puntcon 2017 – Sunday 9th July
Conferences are fun, but don’t have ducklings. Or champagne. Many years ago the legendary Geek Punt Picnic morphed into PuntCon, the Cambridge leg of the alternative conference circuit. And after the...
View ArticleNo AI tool that makes logging optional should be expected to operate safely.
If “safety” is something you have to turn on, any tool will be used unsafely. Today, unsafe yet powerful AI tools are made available for anyone, for free – tensorflow, openAI, et al. Even America has...
View ArticleAI in the school playground
Buried in Apple’s Developer Conference last month was the release of “a PDF format for AI”. Build a model on one system, and open it identically on another. As PDF did for document sharing, this will...
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