I’ve loved living in that house and it’s been a wonderful place for us to spend the first years of marriage but a wise man once told us that York moves in five year cycles and this is our tenth year and the timing is right for us to leave.

We absolutely adore York but we’ve spent a lot of our married life travelling to and from work rather than being able to belong to this local community. We’ve had great times at university, with friends and in church but the last year has seen several people leave and the Conversations community disperse. And the last 12 months has also seen us doing this crazy split living with my being away in London.

Some marriages might claim to cherish such a lot of time spent at opposite ends of the country but we’d much rather start, and finish, every day with one another. Over Christmas we spent almost three weeks together. It was the longest time we’d been under the same roof since May and it gave us time and space to talk, think and pray about our priorities for 2013.

We knew the year ahead was the least mapped out since we met: that Christine’s job was ending in April (she finishes 12/04) and at that point that my GDS contract finished at the end of March (it’s now 19/04 for me). We also knew that we needed to find a way to be under the same roof and it was also evident that my wife deserves (and needs) a chunk of time away from work.

In spite of the uncertainty it has been clear that we should leap at what might be a once in a lifetime opportunity. So in four weeks Christine and I will have wound up our current roles (at least for the time being) and we’ll leave York.

We aren’t certain where we’ll end up eventually or what we’ll be doing when we come back [ed 19/04: we now know that I'll be coming back to GDS in August] but we’re heading overseas for three months. We’re taking the opportunity and visiting some places we may never get a chance to go back to: we first head to Japan for 12 days, then on to New Zealand for 9 weeks and finish it off with 16 days on a Cook Island beach.

We’re back at the end of July and then we’ll be starting life somewhere new. At the moment that’s looking more like the South than North (as you can imagine I’m deeply troubled by this change and the prospect of losing my Bradford City season ticket).

It’s pretty reckless to take a three month break, spend a chunk of money and come back homeless and unemployed but whilst we’ll build a new home, get new jobs and find new community, we might not get another opportunity to go and see a far flung pocket of the world.

It is the right thing to do and it is the right time to do it but that doesn’t stop me sitting here shaking my head with sadness at the stupidity of our selling our brilliant home and leaving one of the best cities in the world.

Maybe one day we’ll come back…

Leaving - bm.wel.by - Thinking, thinking, always thinking

It’s not the only perfect moment I’ve known in my life, and I hope it won’t be the last but when I take my seat at Wembley this afternoon I’ll know that it’s a notch on the timeline of history to savour.

It’s not the only perfect moment in Bradford City’s history. Jimmy Speirs’ winner in the 1911 FA Cup final might have been the first; in 1999 Stuart McCall got so lost in our promotion to the Premiership that he fell off a car; David Wetherall’s header against Liverpool; the saving of the club in the years that followed. Moments of joy.

But that joy is set against the pain of perfect moments turned to nightmare. May 11 1985 changed our club and our community for ever but it started with the delight at our league title. Those men, women and children will be remembered today.

A decade later we had a great day out at Wembley. I wasn’t there to see Des Hamilton and Mark Stallard secure play-off victory against Notts County (who, strangely enough, were our victims in this remarkable cup run). I bet that was a special afternoon.

I’ve never been to Wembley old or new but today I’m there. And I’m there in all seriousness. It’s not a joke. It’s not for the Paint Pot. It’s not for a playoff. It’s for a proper bit of silverware – this year even Arsene took it seriously.

Today shouldn’t be happening. It defies all logic. It’s common nonsense. It’s absolutely ridiculous. And I get to be there.

I’ll confess to being something of a glory supporter when it comes to this competition – I’m hardly the first person not to take it seriously. But I didn’t go to a game until the 4th round. I chose to listen to the Notts County game at home on the radio; I was on a train from Scotland when we turned 1-0 into 1-2 in the 84th and 94th minutes at Watford; I don’t remember anything about the Burton game so maybe even forgot about it and I sat tensely on my bed watching text updates and Twitter for the Wigan penalties. Perfectly good moments.

Noone thought it could get better than that but then we had that freezing night in December when we humbled the Arsenal first team. Being able to put tongue in cheek and sing to one of the greatest managers of the Premier league era that he’d be getting sacked in the morning was pretty special. Leading for 70 minutes was amazing. And then the penalties. What a fairy tale, what a famous night in BD8, what a perfect moment.

But thoughts of going one better were madness. Even when the draw was made and we got my preferred opposition few of us went into the first leg of our semi-final expecting to wake up today with Wembley tickets in our pockets.

Except then came January and putting Aston Villa to the sword. A new perfect moment? Not for me – this time it was different, I wasn’t as giddy as I was on the morning of December 12th as my train passed the Emirates, the chapter was only half complete – now we had something to lose.

We gave ourself a good chance but a Premier league side should comfortably beat a League Two side 2-0 at home so Benteke’s early goal was just what they needed. Game surely soon to be over. This perfect moment would come gracefully to a close.

But actually nothing had changed – we’d always needed to find a goal, and then the snow started to fall and as if it were his cue James Hanson, the world’s most famous Co-Op alumni, gave Vlaar the run around to bury that header. At the whistle, I stood as one of thousands who’d dared to dream, scarves aloft and singing the cup finalist’s anthem. We’re the famous Bradford City and we’re going to Wembley.

A new, more perfect moment. But not the last.

As Duke, Darby, McArdle, McHugh, Good, Jones, Doyle, Reid, Hines, Atkinson, Thompson, Wells, Hanson and the rest of a squad assembled for £7,500 go through their pre-match preparations they do so 90 minutes away from European competition.

It’s the biggest game of their careers and they have nothing to lose. Their glory is already assured. Even before they step onto the hallowed turf we know them to be legends. Irrespective of the result they, and we, will remember this competition and their performances with a warm glow for the rest of time.

But the perfectly perfect moment is at 1559.

Mark and cherish that minute. Consider how lucky we are to be there and remember those Bantams who aren’t. Mark and cherish this once in a lifetime flash that is more myth than reality. In that minute we’re witness to the legend of the 2012/13 League Cup with everything that has gone before, with the atmosphere generated by 90,000 people and pure possibility still in the air.

Notts County, Watford, Burton, Wigan, Arsenal and Villa were outdone by skill, passion and outrageous fortune. We could add a seventh scalp to that list but the likelihood is that we’ll be crowned runners up. If so then that means thousands of Jacks get to celebrate an incredible chapter in their brilliant narrative. It certainly doesn’t mean we’ll find it a bitter pill to swallow or see our dreams crushed.

Sunday February 24th 2013 will forever be etched into sporting folklore. A day for the underdogs. A day invoked for seasons to come. A great day. A day that I’ll always remember for the most perfect of moments: the beautiful possibility laden moment immediately before a ball was kicked when we dared to dream.

And now, deep breath, calm down, there’s only a few hours til kick off. Savour it, enjoy.

CTID

A perfect moment - bm.wel.by - Thinking, thinking, always thinking

Movember began with a focus on prostate cancer, a cancer that’s affected people close to us. It’s the 4th most common cancer in the UK and the most commonly diagnosed cancer amongst men: 1 in 9 of us are likely to face prostate cancer in our lifetimes (this is comparable to incidence of breast cancer).

Movember is no longer about a single cancer, it’s about getting us men to face up to our mortality and talk about our health by introducing comedy facial hair. Being serious is always better when there’s laughter. And laughter punctures pride and gets us talking and maybe prompts someone to see a doctor instead of thinking “I’ll be alright”.

Laughter also raises money (if you’d like to send some our way you can donate on the Movember website).

I enjoy this time of year but you can’t blame Christine if she doesn’t. Look at what she’s had to put up with over the last few years:

2007

2009

2010 - in honour of Ambrose Burnside

2011

The question is, what style to go with this year – I still have another few hours to make up my mind. Am I going to repeat something I’ve done before or am I going to go for something new and unknown?

Mo number 5 - bm.wel.by - Thinking, thinking, always thinking

Sierra Leone is holding elections very soon and I was alerted to a fund raising campaign by  the Canadian NGO Journalists for Human Rights via Anthony Zacharzewski‘s post on the Demsoc blog. That’s an appeal to raise a not insignificant amount of money with the aim of supporting local media in order to prevent a return to violence.

Two things strike me about this.

Thing One

Compared to other post-conflict states Sierra Leone’s peace has been placid. Whilst there were tensions in 2008 this is a country where small arms ownership is low and a country that is no longer bordered by destabilising forces.

But the pattern of activity over the last 12 months suggests that something more serious could be brewing ($5m worth of heavy weapons is particularly disquieting).

This is more serious than NGOs trying to maintain their programmes by appealing to the spectre of conflict. This is not a lazy belief that ‘once a failed state, always on the brink of failing again’.

Thing Two

In 2007 I spent six weeks in Sierra Leone preparing the research for my dissertation. In it I wrestled with the relationship between localised, relational peace building and more formal, centralised activity and how that can turn ‘peace’ into something consumable rather than an ethereal idea. I was encouraged by what I saw.

…six years on from the conflict and with successful domestic elections behind them, the people of the country have shown they are capable of building a sustainable ‘peace’. Their next challenge is to tackle the difficulties of development… (Bridging the ‘peace gap’ in Sierra Leone (PDF), 2007)

Fives years later peace has persisted. The last election saw a peaceful transfer of power. This will be the third time the country goes to the polls. That’s a long period of post-war stability. At the same time there has been international attention, goodwill, focus and money.

If there is a genuine prospect of violence the country slipping back into conflict then what good all of that?

During the course of Hull City Council’s work with Freetown City Council (of which more soon) I saw a city struggling to keep its head above water. Infrastructure, logistics, waste, sanitation, water, etc were undermined by poor decision making (often by external forces). The recent cholera epidemic has been exacerbated by a failure to tackle the bread and butter of infrastructure. Sierra Leone is smaller than Scotland – those challenges should not be insurmountable.

If violence returns I don’t believe it will be part of any Civil War related grievance. If violence returns it will be because of a dissatisfaction with the fruits of peace. Because the promise of ‘peace done come’ will not have been met by a reality of transformed circumstances for its victims. If the fears of JHR are realised then serious, serious questions need to be asked about how we handle post-conflict development.

If it’s not possible to build lasting peace through development in a country this size then what has been going on for the past decade?

Sierra Leone and the spectre of electoral violence - bm.wel.by - Thinking, thinking, always thinking

We fall short of those standards, all the time, and it’s unreasonable to hold those on the outside to a higher bar than we set ourselves. Nevertheless, the rhetoric that says Christianity and Science are at odds and completely divergent is, bluntly, either casual ignorance or wilful misrepresentation.

This week it’s the free schools that will fill the minds of impressionable children with the not-worthy-of-the-word ‘science’ of Creationism. And when that word rears its head then most people instantly associate it with the Young Earth beliefs (that I don’t share) lampooned to good effect by Ronson, Theroux, Gorman et al.

I’m not going to rehash what The Church Mouse has written, suffice to say it’s a massive +1 from me over his concerns with the presentation of this story and the treatment of known fact (rather than future, paranoid conjecture).

What Mouse doesn’t get into but what strikes me about the ridicule levelled at Christian Creationists is how it undermines Christianity’s delight for you as who you are.

Mainstream, orthodox Christians are all creationists. Whatever our beliefs about how the world came into being we all believe that God is more than simply interested in who we are and our potential in life but that he knows us because he’s been at the heart of our design.

The Bible’s plot is the God of creation seeking relationship with those whom he has made. It’s a book littered with creation stories far beyond Genesis 1 but Genesis 1 provides a scene setting backdrop.

Whether you take it literally or not the natural world that sets the scene is the backdrop – one to prod and pull, to investigate and expriment, to care for and steward but it’s scenery. The actors to this story of creation are you and I, not in a corporate sense but as individuals with names, personalities, foibles and flaws.

If you attempt the exploration of Christianity without presenting a personal God who knows us as individuals, who fashioned us to be in relationship with one another, who put passions on our hearts and genius in our heads then all you do is make it about relic and ritual. Now that’s misrepresentation.

When Jesus was in the midst of his ministry he said this

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full (John 10:10b)

That’s not about dogma, it’s not about structure but it’s about freedom, relationship and being you. You’re no accident, you don’t need to lose yourself to find yourself, you’re not insignificant. You are created.

Frothing at the mouth, this time it’s Creation - bm.wel.by - Thinking, thinking, always thinking

I started the day on the wrong foot – way too near the start of introductions line. Even though I knew it was coming I couldn’t marshall my thoughts into giving my single word about why I was there. All I could think of was Nick’s (@psfnick) profane suggestion from the previous night.

The words I should have chosen

Relapse. I didn’t go to UKGovCamp because I’d begun to feel like a fraud. As much as I’d contributed beyond my job title in Hull my roles had never gone hand in glove with unconference conversations. So I’d go along and hear great things, maybe contribute an opinion or two of my own but then return to work and be unable to execute anything. When the next event rolled round I wouldn’t have anything to share, or any progress to report.

There is something recharging about being exposed to a collection of brilliant minds with a blank canvas invited to share and think and plan and do but as much as sectoral camaraderie is a great thing there’s little point if it ends up as talking and not doing. And that’s all my contribution felt like.

First-love. Nevertheless I had missed it so made sure to nab a ticket early on so at the very least I could give it to a colleague within Hull City Council. And then when I got this role at Government Digital Service giving away that ticket looked all the more appropriate – is this a localgovcamp for local people?

I’m glad I didn’t give it away because whilst my time working on GOV.UK is exciting, challenging and fulfilling it’s local government that I love. This is where public services become tangible and real people get involved. Whether my involvement with GDS extends beyond these 5 months or not I’m on loan to the centre, not permanently transferred for ever more.

So  I was at LocalGovCamp in my own personal capacity, not on behalf of GDS and nor are any of my opinions about local government digital reflective of any land grab from central government.

Sessions

Hacking Culture

I kicked off the day hearing about Monmouthshire. They’ve done some things that have had external attention – MonmouthpediA, opening up social media -  but Esko (@Reinikainen) was sharing the hidden stuff about internal culture change and radically rethinking the working environment for local government. It’s no panacea and they’re not there yet but the picture he painted of their vision is exciting and the kind of place where people would thrive – and so would the services the public can access.

Esko has used Storify to collate comments and content related to this session. It’s well worth your time – Culture Hacking session at #localgovcamp – Esko Reinikainen.

Building perfect platforms

Then I joined James’ (@jacattell) session about the work he’s part of in Birmingham to build an open data platform. This was a session that I wish Adam (@adamjennison) or Eddie (@pseudograph) could have made because of what they’re planning along the Humber. Two observations:

• The InstantAtlas data observatory might be a helpful data catalogue for local authority research teams it is not fit for purpose as an open data platform.
• Open is about internal value just as much as external accountability and scrutiny – Warwickshire have a beautiful approach in thinking less about open platforms and more about open systems. It’s the same philosophy that underpins Adam’s work with APIs for Hull City Council.

Lunch

During the perfect platforms session I met Giuseppe (@puntofisso), Mark (@markiliffe) and Matthew (@Skinner_M) and we continued our discussions over the best govcamp lunch I’ve ever had. It was really good to hear about a project called Taarifa which Mark and Giuseppe are involved with for the World Bank in mapping Dar-es-Salaam with slums and toilets. The approach they’ve taken is laying the foundations for open data in Tanzania.

Project Maple

Blogging about the single government domain and its implications for local government are part of the reason I’m now at GDS. So when Matt (@mafjohnson) made the suggestion of having a single local government platform I knew there would be one fixture in my schedule. He led the session with Stuart (@pezholio) stating the obvious truth that too much time, effort and money is bound up servicing local infrastructure and local platforms doing the same stuff with small enough difference as to make sharing impossible.

I read of one authority who was enthusiastically budgeting £40,000 to build a mobile version of their site. When you bring the Local Government Multiplier into play (x436) that’s a potential £16m market just to duplicate a website with a mobile front end and not even get into the underlying architecture preventing local government from being digital by default*.

They want to do something about that.

Bins are always the first place our thinking turns but Vicky (@vickysargent) highlighted care home services as needing this same treatment. Were the whole 45 minute session handed over to a wall and post-it notes I think we could probably come up with plenty of different needs that are handled in similar ways across local government. As a starting point,  GOV.UK has 124 ‘local transactions’ that will be handing people off to a local website in order to complete their visit.

A component approach provides a platform but it requires the focus to be on datasets and standards rather than technology (it’s all part of local open data). So Project Maple suggests that instead of curating and managing a local bin day collection checker thing councils publish datasets according to a common schema, present them through the same platform (hosted on the G-Cloud) and built as an open source community that will encourage people to develop new features that are contributed nationwide at a stroke rather than having to wait for the next round of procurement.

It’s ambitious but my opinions on this are obvious

I look forward to where the group of people in that room take Project Maple.

* that doesn’t mean abandoning analogue channels and forcing everybody online through a smart phone.

Taarifa

I really wanted to go to the session about this but ended up spending the whole session talking but if you pitch up at an unconference expecting to have planned out your day from beginning to end you’ll be disappointed. This goes on the pile of things I want to investigate further.

What next for #lgovsm?/#wewillgather

I’ve dipped in and out of #lgovsm since its inception by Lou (@loulouk) a couple of years ago. I found its original Friday lunchtime suited me a bit better than its current Tuesday evening slot but Tom (@tomsprints), James (@jacattell) and John (@johnpopham) have done an excellent job at picking up the baton and it’s a very valuable resource for the sector – having 6 chief executives and a chief constable participating in such an open forum is a brilliant endorsement of the concept – get involved if you haven’t already.

I dipped out part way through that session because I was also interested in hearing from Lloyd (@lloyddavis) about another hashtag – #wewillgather. Inspired by the self-organising that took place in the wake of the riots, working with V-Inspired and building on previous attempts at doing something similar,  like FlockLocal, this is a platform to help people come together in a place to do some good. It’s brilliant. Keep an eye out for it when it launches in September.

Booze

Any mind filling day should always end with space to carry on chatting over drinks. It was great to make real life contact with those I’d only ever known virtually and to do that thing of meeting someone you hadn’t previously ‘known’ via social media. It was also fantastic to see familiar faces again and share life and laughter with them.

This year seemed to be something of a transition with many of those who have inspired and encouraged me over the last 3 years absent for a whole host of reasons. There are others but I want to mention Al (@al_osaur), Andy (@abeeken), Carl (@carlhaggerty), Hadley (@hadleybeeman), Ingrid (@ingridk), Liz (@Liz_Azyan), Ken (@keneastwood), Kev (@kevupnorth) and Sarah (@sarahlay) because my love for localgovcamp is in large part down to these guys who I’ve enjoyed learning from and who I missed yesterday.

Final thanks and all the kudos has to go to Dave (@davebriggs) for pulling off a fantastic event again.

I Love #LocalGovCamp - bm.wel.by - Thinking, thinking, always thinking

My final six months put that right. I got to work in a team on the front line of service provision – the private housing team. They’re the people responsible for protecting the interests of private tenants and challenging unscrupulous landlords. It’s an important job.

Quite often tenants don’t know their rights and won’t realise that their landlord can be held to account. Equally they might not understand how their behaviour might be impacting their home (causing damp for example). And that’s particularly acute when English isn’t a tenant’s first language, or Britain their first home.

Until recently the council operated an entirely reactive system waiting for people to report a problem. But that could mean that issues facing a vulnerable tenant stuck with a dodgy landlord it may never come to the attention of the council.

To combat this the council launched the Proactive Housing and Environmental Action Locally project (referred to as the PEAL project for short). It’s not a good name but it’s a brilliant project with the council and our partners working with landlords and tenants to train both parties, reiterate their responsibilities and create an accreditation scheme.

That helps but it’s still an approach that’s done to people, often involving information that’s dense, specialist legalese dealing with nuance: there are different kinds of damp, and there are different responsibilities for it. Damp, and other housing problems are not necessarily straightforward.

We decided there needed to be a way of visualising themes and communicating issues without them getting lost in wordy, complicated documents (bad enough if English is your first language, let alone if it isn’t). We bid for, and won, some funding to create a virtual ‘Hazard House’ on the HCC website.

I had the pleasure of going out to the creative agencies in Hull to get things started and communicate the vision for the project. We prepared a simple brief for the 9 key areas (avoiding complexity and nuance as far as possible) and it was interesting to see how different people responded to it. I was really impressed by those who had done their homework to understand the wider issues and got what it was we were trying to do.

After one of the meetings we got a mocked up interpretation of the brief and with that Harry Hazard was born.

Because six months is an exceptionally short time in localgov I was firmly embedded within BSF by the time Eon Media got the nod to bring Harry Hazard to life. Maybe a year ago now it launched, very quietly. and I wanted to blog about it but held off in the expectation that it was going to appear on the HCC website. I’m not sure why but it still hasn’t.

So I’ve dusted off this long-drafted post to share Harry Hazard because looking at how many people have viewed them, he’s not been that successful. We had hoped that the materials would be used in schools and that they might be used by any, and every, local authority to communicate these same complexities (because the need is identical for everyone).

Electrical

Security

Collision

Falls

Structural

Cold

Damp

Fire and Flames

Hygiene

Harry Hazard - bm.wel.by - Thinking, thinking, always thinking

‘Geek meet and greet’

Underneath the Bridge by Vaidas M

I attend the regular geek meets run by Hull Digital as often as I can, not only to be able to geek out without the usual look of disdain but also to see how people on the ‘outside’ are working, how they are managing and what they see as the future..

Did I not mention that I am on what the media portray as the ‘darkside’?  I am a public sector worker.. and worse than that I am a back office public sector worker, I work in ICT supporting front office workers… Yes I know I am lower than a snakes belly etc.. but hear me out for I feel, nay I believe that we can do good and also help local businesses lead the way.

I asked John Polling, the organiser of the Hull Digital Dev Group if I could follow up on a talk by one of my colleagues titled ‘Open Data’ with a talk of my own titled ‘RESTful APIs am i doing it rite?‘.  This would centre around the problems associated with integration, data (vast amounts of data) and open data.

I started the talk off with a quick background to some of the issues that face public sector ICT and how it differs from private sector ICT.  Asking for a show of hands from those who had ever worked in the public sector brought just one hand…I thought then that this would be a hard sell to get them to see beyond the headlines..

Discussing the statutory needs that the average Council has to provide along with the evidence/information they need to collect juxtaposed with the constant political pressure (both local and national) that weighs like a strong North Westerly on a unfolded sail I described the massive number of different systems that are present in most Local Govs.

People were shocked.

Most private companies are vertical players, they focus their business on a couple of key systems, they specialise.  This makes total business sense, spreading your effort thinly means you are not very good at a lot of things instead of being good at a few.  When I pointed out that we can not back out of our commitments to the elderly, to business, to schools, etc etc they’re statutory requirements that we need to fulfil regardless of money pressures, the audience were starting to see the dilemma about public ICT provision.

‘Public Sector Data’

You may ask where am I going with this conversation, well be patient! By providing this overview I set the scene to talk about not only the number of systems we have to overlord but also the MASSIVE amount of data that flows into, around and out of these systems.  I have argued for a very long time that the public sector in general is very data rich but information poor.

As a business I would want key information to be available in near real time to be able to make informed, evidence based decisions that ensure my business heads in the right direction. If you can imagine it as akin to a salty seadog skipper making micro adjustments of the wheel of his vessel, feeling the water constantly flowing past the hull: he can feel the current, read the waters and keep his craft [business] from hitting those rocks.

If I were dealing with one, two or even three systems then this information collation would be difficult but doable because the metrics I’m reporting on are relatively limited: cash flow, manufacturing, leads, prospects, etc.

Trogdor (the Burninator) by Joey Day

But multiply those systems by 50 and you start to see the usual demand for the average Local Authority. Metrics ranging from number of children in care, allotment demand, street naming and numbering, dog fouling, monitoring of river flow, etc they all need reporting on.

How to build a dashboard for all this information, how to integrate it and how to make usable information from such a depth of numbers is where the real difficulty lies, as the old maps used to say – ‘DANGER – here be dragons.’

‘Integration – a different way?’

I spoke at length on integration, how the majority of integration was done as an integration ‘path’ with complexity included throughout the process from system A to system B (c,d,e etc). I chatted about how most integration is usually how system A speaks fluent ‘Klingon’ while system B speaks ‘Olde English’. What we do is add a Babel fish in the middle that converts these languages for each other.  Adding to the public sector’s dilemma is our requirement to spend the public’s money carefully, this means every xx years we need to go to the market and ask – is this still the right way of solving this problem?  Can it be done cheaper/better/differently?

Most of the time the answer is yes…but when you take into account the unravelling of any integration the project costs start to outweigh any improvement.

I proposed a RESTful style wrapper that would help reduce the complexity of integration and allow decoupling of systems from the integration path, well actually I argued you can never remove complexity just reduce its footpath to that of the API wrapper.

090827 Day 68 facts by dabblelicious

If system A can be wrapped with an API that publishes its resources in a standard way (using standards such as ISO date format, BS7666 for address data, etc) then if we replace system A with a new system all we need to do is recreate the API wrapper, test it and then switch it on.. The decoupling of the systems from the integration would allow public ICT to be more reactive to systems design, it would allow us to go to the market and actually get best value for the tax payer.

It would also provide a publish/subscribe model of data flow. This could be human readable (browser based) simple information presented as an automated integrated dashboard to replace the various reports etc that are hand built at great effort.

My proposal is to create complexity out of simplicity. Start small, build up API calls that call other APIs, add in business logic and suddenly you have a system that is intelligent, maintainable and scalable.

Building it on REST methods means that all calls are via http and are therefore cacheable. One of the main demands of REST principles is for the transfer of the state of the resource to be complete and therefore cacheable. This could reduce the load on our main systems whilst still providing up to date information.

The whole concept of RESTful wrappers would require a new mindset and a large investment of effort and commitment but it can be done. One of the main reasons for putting on my talk was to get critique from the audience of private sector developers.  These guys live and die by their code, their businesses have to be responsive and their code/applications have to be efficient. Anything less means their business will die. It’s the nautical equivalent of placing Homer Simpson in charge of the ships wheel with a crate of Duff and sharp rocks ahead – something bad WILL happen..

I presented my ideas and asked for their opinions; luckily I’m heading in the right direction and got quality feedback on the difficulty on attempting to introduce a ‘pure’ RESTful setup.

All I have to do now is convince my bosses…

‘Advantages and opportunities’

Which brings me to one of the advantages of moving towards a more open publish/subscribe model of data flow. Not only could we decouple the applications from the integration path but we could decouple any integration hub from the path. And, as a direct result find Open Data at its very heart. It wouldn’t need to be an after thought; it wouldn’t be ‘something we are forced to do’ taking precious resources away from business as usual; it wouldn’t be a waste of time on a vanity project. It would be part and parcel of connecting systems together.

By making Open Data easy to create we could start to gain the advantages that I feel will flow from Open Data usage. In the next section of my talk I described how Open Data could be provided with examples of datasets that show once data is open it can be used by anyone for anything, even to make money – great. #winning

Local Authorities are there to improve the lives of the populace, they are there as a net if people fail but they are also there to support and help business and innovators. Open Data could be a big winner with the latter while helping the former.

Broke by Johnny Grim, on Flickr

Explaining the concept of Open Data took a little while, my audience asked about funding; the response: NO MONEY. We give data, you use it. If you create something others will use that improves their life then great, we have social return. If you make money on the back of it then great, the social return is doubled. At the end of the day – the data is yours, it’s public data for the public.

More importantly, what you create, what you mash together is up to you. If you can make something that is innovative and makes you, I and everyone else stop and think, then that is brilliant, that is one of the drivers for Open Data – innovation. Innovation leads to new ways of thinking, new ways of working and new ways of looking at the World. We all welcome innovation, its full of win.

BTW a big note here for anyone who’s ready to jump down my throat – we are talking about data that’s NOT person centric. Releasing data that contains individual names, address details etc flies in the face of the Data Protection Act and all recommendations on Information Security so will never be released. I hear strange and wonderful variations of the Data Protection Act quoted all the time and through my job have had to understand it very well. I and all my colleagues take Information Security very seriously, in fact we even put away our Sponge Bob coffee mugs when discussing Information Security…it’s that serious.

So what data could we provide?

Well within my talk I used an example of trees. Did you know that we, Hull City Council have all the trees geo-coded within our asset management system, this includes their exact location and the type of tree. It may be a little out of date as we don’t have the funds to keep counting trees.

We also have geo-coded datasets of listed buildings, toilets, public buildings, schools, etc you name it and we will most probably have it.

And most of it could be issued easily and simply, which takes me back to the RESTful wrappers, once they are in place around an internal system it wouldn’t take much effort to create an API ‘OpenData’ resource that GETs the required information on a regular basis.  This could then be fed into an automated externally facing system that presents the data in all the formats geeks/nerds love (JSON/YAML/XML/etc) while also being available to humans in something akin to CSV.

‘Hackathon anyone?’

As part of the way forward I suggested that the council jump on the bandwagon and organise a hackathon in conjunction with the local devs where they could use data supplied by us…Pizza to go with the coding would be mandatory.

Pizza Craving. by ecsuecsu, on Flickr

The response was overwhelming, I suspect it had something to do with the offer of free pizza but I also felt my talk hit a nerve. Not because it was awesome, that goes without question , but because it addressed a need at the right time – data has become the life blood of the population.  We live in very changeable times but having the right information presented in the right way at the right time allows us to navigate the treacherous waters a little easier.

Providing Open Data in partnership with local developers could be a perfect example of  Public/Private partnership and I feel that one without the other will not work.  Shouting the mantra of OpenData in a similar way to Steve Ballmers’ notorious ‘Developers, Developers, Developers…’ rant will provide nothing for the public.

It may be open but not in any real way.

For it to be open it has to be accessible and more importantly understandable, it has to have context.  We (the public sector) are not the best people to provide that context, we provide the fuel for the vehicles, let the mechanics and engineers create the vehicles, let them build apps.

If in doubt look to Google – search for Open Data, look at data.gov.uk, look at the London datastore, look to dados.gov.br, look to the future.

I look forward to the future with optimism and know collective knowledge is the way forward, the more we learn the more we understand and the less we destroy.

Hull’s Hackday will be announced in the not too distant future, keep an eye on the HullDigital website.

Hull’s open data future - bm.wel.by - Thinking, thinking, always thinking

This morning I saw Emma Langman tweeting the talk that was being given at from a Business Breakfast in Bristol about the example modelled by Nehemiah from a project management point of view. I really liked that angle so captured it using Storify.

Credit to Aidan for the talk and Emma for posting it. Today I’m just nicking other people’s content

Nehemiah on Project Management

Spotted Emma Langman tweeting a talk given by someone called Aidan at a Business Breakfast in Bristol, thought they were worth capturing.

Storified by Benjamin Welby · Fri, May 18 2012 05:10:47

…Approaches the King of #Babylon for the resources he needs. Great example of #ResourceManagement! #cbbbEmma Langman

Nehemiah was also hot on #benefitsrealisation. His attention to detail makes Prince2 look a bit fluffy #cbbbEmma Langman

Nehemiah on Project Management - bm.wel.by - Thinking, thinking, always thinking

That was quite the momentous week. Probably needs two separate blogs for the two separate events.

May 11, 2012 3:55 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@bmwelby

Benjamin Welby

Momentous event number 1 – handing in my notice.

When opportunity first came knocking this wasn’t the plan – that was to take a career break and return to Hull City Council when the offer came to an end. But because the work has nothing to do with my day job and coincided with the busiest period in Hull’s BSF programme it caused headaches.

So despite my love for local government, and despite being conscious of how hard it might be to return, I’m walking away. I’m ditching the security of a contract with 16 months left to run and my ‘gold-plated’ pension. I’m leaving the relationships I’ve built over the last 3.5 years. I’m even choosing to spend part of every week in #thatLondon.

And I’m doing all of that for six months’ work. Risky? Cavalier? Unwise? Perhaps, but I think the opportunity is worth it.

You might have read my thoughts about the significance of the single government domain on those of us in local government (Alpha(Local)Gov, Government as a local platform?). They’re proof that blogging is worthwhile because they prompted an email and a phone call and an invitation to spend the day at the offices of the Government Digital Service with the team responsible for the business bit of GOV.UK (that which is currently handled by BusinessLink).

So three weeks ago I took a day off work and travelled south. I’d asked Louise Kidney (who has swapped localgov for GDS herself) what I should expect from her new colleagues. Nothing she’d said prepared me to finish the day using a wall as my canvas to present back work I’d been set a couple of hours to complete.

Prepared or not my scrawl did the trick and I start as a Business Analyst on May 28th.

Exciting.

Opportunity Knocks - bm.wel.by - Thinking, thinking, always thinking