WRITTEN ON Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Uncategorized

A rational approach to personal-data logistics in education would not simply rely on centrally held databses. It would also build on the individual’s personal portable education record.
Like other services, education needs an online bridge between the individual and the service provider. But to date we’ve only built the organisation’s end of the bridge.
The [...]

WRITTEN ON Thursday, August 5th, 2010 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Uncategorized

Tomorrow 6 Aug sees the shutting down of the ill-advised ContactPoint database.
Why was it such a dumb idea? Because you dont need a database of 12m children to focus on the relatively small number of children at real risk. Because you can’t keep the data on a huge database which is accessible to hundreds [...]

WRITTEN ON Sunday, July 25th, 2010 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Uncategorized

Getting government IT right isn’t my job – it’s John Suffolk’s job. It’s not even my job to opine about it. So now IdealGov has had that terrific burst of activity and energy getting an ideal government IT strategy during the election period * thank you all involved!!* let us chill for a bit. I [...]

WRITTEN ON Sunday, May 30th, 2010 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Uncategorized

In 2008 I made the rash promise that when the benighted ID Scheme was cancelled I would perform a celebratory “Dance of the Intellectual Pygmies”. Well – here it is.

The idea is we can all do it en masse at various celebratory events.
Choreography is by Aliya Saleem, filming, editing and captions by Richard [...]

WRITTEN ON Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Ideal government IT strategy, Uncategorized

First presentation of our crowdsourced “ideal government IT strategy” #idealgits work was yesterday to Rt Hon Jim Knight MP, Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform.
Jim is tasked with all digital aspects of the Smarter Government policy.
Ideal Gov Pres
View more presentations from William Heath.

He couldn’t have been more welcoming, attentive or delightful. [...]

WRITTEN ON Monday, January 18th, 2010 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Uncategorized

Jerry Michalski runs regular conference calls on emerging tech issues called Yi-Tan. I took part in one on participative medicine in December and learned loads. It feels great to dial into a conference line and share thoughts with world experts in a respectful live exchange.
Next Tuesday, Martin Luther King Day, Jerry’s Yi-Tan is about open [...]

WRITTEN ON Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Ideal government IT strategy, Uncategorized

Let’s focus first on the big picture: the shape and role of the CTPR Ideal Government IT Stategy (Twitter hashtag: #idealgits).
Jerry and I are proposing an emerging shape which looks like this (links are to the wiki pages. None is finished; all are started):
1. Statement on the role of contempory technology in government [...]

WRITTEN ON Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Design: user-oriented, Foundation of Trust, Identity, Uncategorized

At the invitation of IPS and Intellect I gave a Ctrl-Shift talk about the role of the individual in future public services. It’s material that will be familiar to the IdealGov posse, but I was apprehensive because this is a close-knit community very focussed on large contracts and not known for welcoming alternate views.
We [...]

WRITTEN ON Sunday, December 6th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Government Procurement, Political engagement, Save Time and Money, Uncategorized

From The Times
Francis Maude, the shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, has written to Sir Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, calling for a moratorium on the £100bn of government IT contracts in the pipeline.
This raises a load of questions. What’s the list of contracts? Is it complete and definitive?
One can imagine suppliers are lobbying [...]

WRITTEN ON Sunday, November 29th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Uncategorized

Funny what happens when you set up a competition to write a better IT strategy. I’ve had three comments offering me drugs I’ve never heard of, plus one offering zoo sex. The new Wordpress deals quickly and efficiently with spam, but I’d better tune up those filters.
Then I hear that ther may be a [...]