Jason Kitcat

e-democ / e-gov

Links 16-12-2004

Post author By Jason Kitcat
Post date December 18, 2004

MP Richard Allan's blog continues to be a pleasure to read. He's spot on with his recent post on how we want it both ways with politicians – seriousness and 'real' personalities
http://www.richardallan.org.uk/index.php?p=287

Over at Swing Digital we've just completed two Christmas games for clients. Try Snowballing with builders for COINS or complete the great Inhuman Resources for Courtenay HR.

I've finally found a fairly good summary of how the Indian electronic voting system was run.
http://techaos.blogspot.com/2004/05/indian-evm-compared-with-diebold.html

The Irish Commission on Electronic Voting have released their first report
http://www.cev.ie/htm/report/download_first.htm

Good overview of the Lenovo's purchase of IBM's PC business
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1106.cfm

Bizarre political strategy of the week goes once again to the Tories who have decided not to oppose the ID cards bill on the grounds that they don't want to send mixed messages on law and order. They don't half make it easy for the LibDems to keep claiming they're the true opposition. Letting through the government's most controversial bill since Labour came to office is just extraordinary.
KableNET

voting

E-voting pilots, no. All-postal pilots, yes

Post author By Jason Kitcat
Post date December 11, 2004

That's basically what the Government has said in it's very very long awaited responses to the Electoral Commission's hard work.

Kable have a good summary of the situation with some extra quotes. I would love to dissect the Government's reports and report on the Kreminology of the whole affair but I'm moving at the moment and really can't spare the time. Ikea wardrobes don't build themselves you know!

The Times has a good article on the Government's obsession with boosting turnout hence their continuously trying to force postal ballots. As many of the people they quoted comment, it's a bit odd to undermine confidence in the electoral process in favour of a few extra percentage points of turnout.

Louise Ferguson has links to a Radio 4 piece on all-postal voting which I haven't had a chance to listen to but I'm sure must be good if Louise recommends it.

PublicTechnoloy has an article on the reports which leads on the need for a centralised electoral register. This project was once called LASER but now is known as CORE, if it ever happens then it will be another national ID database of sorts. Oh joy. The key point is that while e-voting is on hold CORE could re-awaken e-voting pilots once completed. Oh more joy.

The two government reponses are on the Department for Constitutional Affairs' website here and here

voting

UK Parliamentary inquiry on e-voting

Post author By Jason Kitcat
Post date December 9, 2004

A bit unexpected but good news I think… there will be a Parliamentary inquiry into e-voting early next year. It will be run by the House of Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee with a sub-committee of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Hopefully it will be an open and frank exploration of the issues. Submissions can be made until 14th January 2005 to odpmcom@parliament.uk

Reports: Industry Standard and TechWorld

notes from JK

Transport that just works

Post author By Jason Kitcat
Post date December 9, 2004

I've just hopped off a tram in East Croydon and now I'm on a slam door train which is crawling towards London. The tram was cheap, quick, clean and reliable. The train is none of those. I'm going to be late to a Voxpolitics do at Westninster grrrr. Bring on the trams!

Bonus thought In Lublin, Poland they have electric buses powered by tethers just like trams are. They look odd but there's no need to lay track. Why do we need track for trams? Isn't road enough?

technology

That syncing feeling

Post author By Jason Kitcat
Post date December 5, 2004

Last week I managed to finally get me a Blackberry. They're much harder to get hold of then one might think… Anyway eBay came through for me and I settled down to learn the ins and outs of this extraordinary device. The interface is not of iPod simplicity but it is very good when put next to my last experiences of Palm and Symbian interfaces. There really is no good need for a touchscreen in simple PIM applications.

Unfortunately Research in Motion (creators of all things Blackberry) do not support the Mac. So I had to buy some 3rd party software, PocketMac to get synchronisation working. It works great but it felt like going back 10 years when I realised I had to use a docking station and a Windows PC to update any software on the device. Why is syncing still such a fragmented higgledy-piggledy affair? I thought SyncML would sort this mess out but no, we still need to use the software equivalents of duct tape and string to get data in and out of these devices. We should should demand much more from the suppliers.

e-democ / e-gov

Interchange of Data between Administrations

Post author By Jason Kitcat
Post date December 2, 2004

The European Commission has an incredible service called IDA (Interchange of Data between Administrations) which rounds up all sorts of great e-government news from across the EU. You can receive very detailed weekly emails on e-goverment and also Open Source in government.

Highly recommended.

IDA

notes from JK

So busy

Post author By Jason Kitcat
Post date November 29, 2004

Well I haven't been posting as often as I would have liked to recently. But I notice that many other of the blogs I enjoy are in a similar situation. It's that pre-Christmas crazy period when we all try and cram as many projects in as possible.

I spent three days in Antwerp last week and found the city to be quite wonderful, way above my rather low expectations. It's a beautiful place and I was struck by how well old and new buildings were integrated. I kept turning the corner and thinking “why can't we do that in the UK???” Our lack of wide avenues is a major problem but somehow architecturally we don't get 'there' very often. For example on the station development in Brighton they are proposing the most massively inappropriate 42 storey tower… more on Keith's site. It's all wrong, on the top of a hill, very unimaginative design. Pants.

I'm trying to a squeeze an article on e-voting out. It's looking at the US election and I'm surprised at how little there really is to grab a hold of, some glitches and cock-ups but nothing concrete. Did it all run so smoothly? We have no way of telling, which is the point really. I'm very keen to move on from e-voting so once I file the article it will be my last for a while unless something very dramatic happens.

technology

Link Tidy-Up

Post author By Jason Kitcat
Post date November 22, 2004

Here's a bunch of links I've been meaning to post for ages…

Stop juggling! How do we deal with the demands of modern-day life? The “Information, Silence and Sanctuary” conference in Seattle explored the issues. The organiser, David Levy, is a fascinating guy – I met him in Brighton last year. More…

Cute Mac t-shirts by Susan Kare (of Mac icon fame)

The TouchGraph GoogleBrowser. You want it to be useful, but it isn't. It just looks cool. If site mapping rocks your boat check out this rather dated Cybergeography site. Also see the OPTE Project which has some incredible Internet maps.

If you think that most people abuse PowerPoint then see Gettysburg done in PowerPoint, then Edward Tufte's book The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint before reading this article in LinuxUser magazine [PDF] which reveals PowerPoint's origins with Whitfield Diffie and the Mac.