It's easy for me to offer examples of women in technology as, for some reason I don't understand, there are plenty of women involved in (mostly opposing) electronic voting. Here are some of the leading lights in no particular order, I apologise in advance for any omissions:
Rebecca Mercuri: One of the first people to study electronic voting in computer science terms. Her PhD was on e-voting and she's been a vocal opponent ever since.
Barbara Simons: President of the ACM for two years, a former IBM researcher she is an influential critic of electronic voting and was a co-author of the SERVE report which stopped the US government pursuing Internet voting.
Margaret McGaley: One of the key activists against e-voting in Ireland and recently completed a Computer Science PhD on electronic voting.
Bev Harris: A leading force behind the BlackBoxVoting activist group in the US, a key player in the Diebold security scandals and lead character in the documentary “Hacking Democracy”.
Becky Hogge: Becky was until this January the Executive Director of the Open Rights Group and so played a critical role in the past two years of their campaigning against electronic voting.
Louise Ferguson: Louise is a leading usability expert who has played a major role in opposition to e-voting in the UK. She has also contributed to work on both sides of the
Atlantic in improving the usability of the voting process. She also chaired the Open Rights Group through much of its e-voting campaign.
Lorrie Faith Cranor: Lorrie was an early researcher of e-voting who over time has become more critical of the technologies. Her early work on 'Sensus', an e-voting system, was pioneering at the time and probably informed her subsequent caution.
Of course none of these one liners do justice to these women, but by flagging them up here I hope to emphasise the huge role women can and do play in technology.
Ada Lovelace was an extraordinary woman and widely considered the first programmer, more on her life at Wikipedia
I was delighted to be invited onto Radio Reverb’s “The Tea Room” programme this past Wednesday to discuss maternity care. Since my daughter was born three years ago I’ve had a strong interest in maternity services, I read a huge amount around the subject in the run up to her birth.
Now being on the Health Overview & Scrutiny Committee I get the opportunity to take this interest a bit further, and a recent report on services to the committee made for interesting reading. I press released the finding that 94% of women weren’t being cared for in labour by a midwife they had previously met, an experience we too had. Continuity of care is so important so I hope the proposed changes to remedy this situation come forward soon.
I received two contrasting emails today. The first was Geneva's Chancellerie d'Etat confirming that a citizen referendum has approved the permanent use of Internet voting with a 70% majority. The email goes on to report that other Swiss cantons are also looking at adopting the technology sigh.
But don't worry, Germany brings good news. Ulrich Wiesner and his dad took the law permitting voting machines to the constitutional court, and won. Ulrich presented his work on this at ORG's February 2007 e-voting workshop (PowerPoint slides) but the details on the court result aren't available online in English yet. Rop Gonggrijp (Dutch e-voting activist), summarised the result as:
Today the court ruled that the German “Bundeswahlgeraeteverordnung”,
the law that deals with voting machines, is unconstitutional and void.
Much more importantly, they gave German citizens the constitutional
right to see al phases of the voting process (in its entirety) happen
before their very eyes. They strongly rejected the notion that
'delegated trust' can ever be a replacement for trust that comes from
(the possibility of) direct observation or that observers can be
required to posess any kind of specialised technical knowledge.
Whilst the ruling is specific to the German constitution it's yet another country turning away from e-voting. What will it take for the British government to rule out e-voting for the foreseeable future?
What if Harry Markopolos had had a blog
Fascinating discussion on Harry Markopolos, an investor who in May 1999 submitted the results of his personal investigations into Bernard Madoff to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Markopolos identified that Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme and pointed out many of the 'red flags' only now emerging in the media — we was spot on a decade ago. Naughton explores whether Madoff would have been outed earlier if Markopolos had blogged his findings, and concludes that he probably would have been shut down by expensive lawyers before any damage to the Madoff empire could be done. Maybe, but Markopolos could have caused a fuss as they took him down which might have leaked out.
Steve Ballmer's speech to Democrats
Like John Naughton I'm not a big Microsoft fan either but the text of MS CEO Steve Ballmer's speech is definitely worth a read. Some very interesting threads there especially on Microsoft's dedicated avoidance of debt. Amen to that.
In the rush of all the council meetings of the past few weeks I haven’t had the chance to blog about the activity I’ve been doing regarding the terrible conflict in the Middle East.
On Sunday 18th January I spoke at a very well attended Arab/Israeli peace walk through the middle of Brighton. Thankfully I spoke first as some of the speakers, particularly Paul from Jews for Justice, were very good! I hoped to have a video of some of the speeches but my camera let me down, still I found a bit of video of the walk on YouTube here.
Then after the BBC and Sky News outrageously decided against showing the DEC Gaza humanitarian appeal I took part in and spoke at a small vigil outside the BBC’s Brighton offices. Part of my speech was captured by a bystander and has shown up on YouTube, see below. The picture above was one of the banners created by the very hardworking activists who got the whole vigil setup including finding 300 candles to represent all the children who lost their lives in the conflict.
The bone-headed nature of the BBC’s justification for refusing to show the appeal just infuriates me beyond belief. They have done their reputation far more damage by their refusal than showing it ever could have possibly done. When innocent people are starving this is about getting them food and medicine — because we can — regardless of who started it and who did what when. We have a moral duty to help one other in times of need.
Having had concerns over the Conservative’s communal bin scheme from when it was on the drawing board, I haven’t been surprised to receive a flood of emails and phone calls once the bins were installed in Regency ward this month.
I’m welcoming photos of problems on the Bin Files Flickr group and took the opportunity of this week’s council meeting to question Cllr Theobald, the cabinet member responsible, on who he’d consulted on this scheme (like the last minute removal of the foot-pedals), whether money had been effectively spent and what future plans there were.
The webcasting pilot lets me provide for you clips which I think are more telling than a transcript would be. The webcasting system won’t let me link directly to certain points in the meeting so I’ve extracted the clips onto YouTube. I reproduce my initial written questions below along with Cllr Theobald’s written responses.
As you’ll see the whole process was quite unsatisfactory as, intentionally or not, Cllr Theobald rarely answered by questions or misconstrued them. There’s a bonus clip at the bottom of this post which may answer why. Perhaps my favourite response is Cllr Theobald explaining that the city’s waste strategy is two years late because he’s been “very, very busy“!
The question and answers:
Bonus clip which might explain things:
(e) Councillor Kitcat
“Could Cllr Theobald provide details on any consultation held with emergency services over the type and location of communal bins being introduced to Regency Ward? In particular were individual bin locations discussed, particularly with regard to ensuring safe access and preventing fire hazards?”
Reply from Councillor Theobald, Cabinet Member for Environment.
The City Council would not usually consult the emergency services for placing objects, or indeed determining the locations for cars to park, on the public highway, unless they form part of a safety scheme or traffic calming proposal.
The specific locations of the communal bins to which you refer have been determined with Highways and Traffic engineers who fully consider road safety issues as well as access for emergency services and delivery vehicles, on this basis we have not asked the ambulance service, the fire or police authorities also to view the location of each bin.
I am pleased to mention our strong and positive links with the East Sussex Fire Authority. Cllr Ted Kemble as the Vice Chairman of the Authority discussed the communal bin scheme with the Chief Fire Officer sometime ago and they are satisfied that they do not pose an additional fire risk.
(k) Councillor Kitcat
“Can Cllr Theobald provide any details on any plans for communal collection of recycling in the city centre? If so when does he expect these plans to be implemented?”
Reply from Councillor Theobald, Cabinet Member for Environment.
There are no plans to implement communal recycling in the city centre. We are looking at a range of options to improve recycling rates and these will be set out in the waste strategy. The first draft of this will be brought to Cabinet in April this year with the intention that residents are consulted on its proposals.
(p) Councillor Kitcat
“Can Cllr Theobald provide the costs incurred by the council in printing and sending notifications to residents for:
The changes in bin collection schedules,
The introduction of communal bins in some wards and discontinuation of bag collections,
And the changes in recycling collection schedules?”
Reply from Councillor Theobald, Cabinet Member for Environment.
The cost for the communication including designing, printing and posting the materials is budgeted at £98,000. This works out at approximately £0.47 per communication. Given that all the changes result in annual savings just short of £1m I think this is money well spent.
(q) Councillor Kitcat
“Can Cllr Theobald provide an estimate on the number of people who have taken up the assisted waste collection service since the introduction of communal bins and what number of users has been budgeted for at what cost?”
Reply from Cllr Theobald, Cabinet Member for Environment.
Communal bins are generally easy to use as they avoid the need to carry a weekly supply of refuse in big black bags, and in many cases taking these down 22 into basement bin stores. Instead small bags of rubbish can be deposited in the bins on a daily basis if need be. However some people are unable to use communal bins and Cityclean will provide assisted collections for these residents. 17 people currently have an assisted collection for the existing communal bin collections that cover 6,600 households. To date we have received 35 requests for the new communal bin roll out covering 24,000 households, which are currently being considered against criteria set with the FDA (Federation of Disabled People) to ensure a fair and consistent approach to agreeing assisted collections.
Given our past experience it is highly likely that these numbers will reduce as residents understand the system and those who have negative views of the bins get use to and accept the scheme. Assisted collections are picked up by the driver of the communal bin truck and thus are provided within the budget for the communal bin service.
Last night’s full council meeting was a busy one for me with plenty of questions, motions and amendments to speak to.
Jointly with a Labour colleague I proposed a motion highlighting the gross unfairness of our poorest citizens being forced to pay surcharges on the energy bills due to their use of pre-pay meters. The Conservative Group proposed an amendment which the Green group agreed with and so supported. The bizarre result was that after the amendment passed the Labour group voted against their own motion, which was carried anyway by Greens and Tories. Below the video clip if my speech I have copied my speech notes, the full motion, as amended is available in the press release.
Speech seconding Notice of Motion on pre-pay meter surcharges 29th Jan ’09:
On 11th December 1990 John Major’s government privatised what once were the area electricity boards. In the 18 years since then, neither the Conservative or Labour governments have acted to protect our poorest citizens from the surcharges applied to pre-payment meters.
Those with the smallest incomes whether they be benefits, pensions or minimum wage employment often have no choice but to use the pre-payment meter for their energy needs. It is an outrage that they also are faced with higher prices than those able to afford billed metering.
Energywatch found that pre-payment users could be paying up to £567, 42%, more a year than affluent customers using Internet tariffs. The Independent found that energy companies charge pre-payment users ten times more than the companies “give back” with their so-called “social tariff” schemes which are poorly publicised and difficult to access. National Energy Action calls these schemes “random acts patronage”. The LGA has found that the big six energy companies paid their shareholders an extra £257m in dividends in 2007, an increase of 19%, equivalent to £75 per household. We know the utilities can afford to change their billing.
It is a failure of conscience by the energy firms to have let this situation stand for so long. Clearly corporate social responsibility still has a long way to come. But it is a huge regulatory failure that the successive governments of John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have not taken action. Surely at some point in the past 18 years time could have been found to simply require that pricing per unit was the same regardless of the meter used? Perhaps they were too busy privatising other public services like the trains, parts of the NHS or now Royal Mail.
The National Housing Federation estimate that over a million people in fuel poverty would benefit from changes to pre-payment charges. We know change is not beyond the realm of possibility because within our United Kingdom solutions have been found: In Northern Ireland pre-pay customers actually receive a 2.5% discount and can top-up over the phone 24/7.
With, according to National Energy Action, 5.4 million households in fuel poverty and about 1,000 people a day being forcibly put onto pre-payment meters because of debt this is a growing crisis. For Ed Milliband to only threaten to take action against these companies is astonishing. The utilities have had 18 years in which to mend their ways, they don’t need any more second chances. Immediate action is needed now, today.
You could do a lot worse than read the IHT's excellent article from last week “As the pound falls, so does the mood in Britain”. Its authors Julia Werdigier and Nelson D. Schwartz put together many of the factors I believe are critical to understanding the current quagmire. Key facts:
Household debt as a percentage of disposable income in Britain hit 177 percent in 2007, compared to 141 percent in the United States.
As in Iceland, banks, real estate and other financial services boomed in London in recent years, even as other swaths of the economy withered. In recent years, this sector has been responsible for about half of total job growth in Britain even though it accounts for only about 30 percent of the economy, according to Peter Dixon, U.K. economist for Commerzbank in London.
Traditional industries [in Britain] like manufacturing have faded in recent decades, unlike on the Continent where they remain a relative counterweight to the outsized problems in the financial sector.
People spending way beyond their means was always going to come home to roost at some point. And relying on an economic model's dependence on continual 'growth' in a simplistic “more is more” sense is also a recipe for a crash at some point. Growing spending when much of it is debt must halt when finally the banks realise they need to get paid back!
But the UK's banks, so often cheered as a strength, are also a huge vulnerability. They have created disproportionate job growth and make up fully a third of our economy – that's astonishing. Banking is necessary, of course, to support commerce and personal finances. But banks should be the lubricant for the wheels of commerce – they shouldn't be the main event themselves. And herein lies the problem, the banks were creating economic growth based on models which many of their own didn't understand. The actual value produced was, in my view, very low. This was false productivity and economic success.
Banks need to step away from the centre stage, bankers need to be more humble and remember they are there to support innovators, inventors and investors who want to build sustainable long-term businesses that employ people and give back to society through steady returns, decent salaries and by paying their taxes — not dodging them.
Not until we have a diversified, sustainable economy with our eyes firmly set on the long-term can we hope to emerge from these dreadful downturns.
I've set up a Flickr pool to let you submit pictures of your local experiences with bins, especially communal bins. Submit your photos and I'll present them to the cabinet for their consideration.
Quarter of polyclinics privately run
So far a quarter of new, government mandated, clinic will be privately run. This is part of the broader 'marketisation' of the NHS which troubles me very deeply. Also good to see the Independent ensure we aren't distracted by the government's terminological switch to 'GP-led health centres'.
postnote: E-Democracy [PDF]
I was asked for my thoughts and feedback on this note by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology which references the e-voting campaigning work I led at the Open Rights Group. It's a decent summary but that it took about 10 months to complete and publish raises questions as to how relevant POST advice can be for parliamentarians.
Jason Kitcat 