Jerry Fishenden's Weblog Archives - Feb 2005

February 24 2005

At the Foundation for Science and Technology Meeting last night the topic of Identity Management (for which read 'the UK National Identity Card Bill') was debated. Held at the Royal Society, the invited speakers included Home Office Minister (Des Browne), Ian Watmore (UK Government CIO) and Ed Mayo (Chief Executive of the National Consumer Council). However, Des Browne had to drop out at the last moment, replaced by Katherine Courtney, Director of the Identity Cards Programme from the Home Office.

It was good to hear a recognition that they realise identity is more complex than as currently represented in the Bill and that mechanisms need to be found for enabling the legitimate separation of identity relationships where necessary. For example, I wouldn't want my medical records to be accessible off the same identifiers as my council tax (or worse, associated with some e-commerce site). There are good reasons why we have historically separated out aspects of our identities with the State and we need to find ways of balancing this legitimate need with the ability for government to deliver services in more joined-up ways - and for the legitimate needs of law enforcers and investigators to have appropriate access to necessary information when it's needed too (children at risk/child protection being an obvious category). The main conclusion was that there had not been sufficient consultation across the public and private sectors yet - and that we should pull together our best 'identity brains' to really help ensure that developments around this Bill are as well designed and implemented as they can possibly be.

This was better than previous sessions I have been to and all the speakers came across as open and candid, which helped foster a good level of debate and interaction in the main session and over the dinner that followed. It was also good to see old acquaintances such as Lord Renwick: and to find myself seated with Sir Robin Ibbs. The "Ibbs Report" was one of the most influential modernisation catalysts when I worked at the Houses of Parliament and one of the main reasons we managed to get the whole Parliamentary data and video network rolling in the first place.

February 18 2005

Iain Thomson writes in VNUnet on Feb 17 about the Linux fan at the RSA conference who has admitted his surprise at finding that Windows is more secure than Linux. Thomson quotes Dr Richard Ford, from the Florida Institute of Technology as saying:

"Vulnerability counts are much higher with Red Hat than with Microsoft," said Dr Ford. "I am a huge Linux fan, and I have a Linux server in my basement. The first time I saw the statistics I thought someone had mucked about with my database."

Which only goes to substantiate the point I made about the factual updates gathered through CERT/UNIRAS on Jan 6. I’m still looking forward to the day when we can have a good, factual and grown-up discussion about different approaches to software development and can move away from this much-hyped and somewhat Punch and Judy view of the software world. There’s a wide variety of software development models in existence and they all clearly have a role to play. The idea that’s it’s some sort of Microsoft versus OSS battle is another simplistic myth: a large number of the open source projects in repositories such as sourceforge.net are for the Microsoft platform. There still seems to be a great deal of confusion in many minds about distinctions between operating systems and applications – and how valuable access to source code is for the majority of users, particularly once projects run into millions of lines of code.

I was trying to explain this to a journalist recently. The closest analogy I could think of that would resonate with her was this:

Take a look at news. Despite the fact I can now get my news entirely free – courtesy of the Internet and television news – I still choose to buy a daily newspaper and periodicals. I choose to pay for my news sources because I want something that is both more authoritative and which provides additional comment and insight. Likewise, in the software world, I continue to use many commercial and “proprietary” pieces of software even though in theory free equivalents exist. It’s a matter of choice.

As we discussed the broader applicability of Open Source ideas (they’re by no means limited to software), the journalist did not seem terribly keen on the idea that she should give her work away for free instead of being paid. But it’s surprising how many journalists write articles about software without considering how the whole open source approach applies to their own specialism. But Open Source ideas and principles are just as likely to be applied to many other subjects as the movement matures. I think this is a debate that is only just beginning.

February 15 2005

I spent last week out in Redmond, talking with colleagues, including fellow National Technology Officers from other countries, and some UK customers. We met with various Microsoft product groups and had good discussions about the next wave of products and technologies. I’ll be posting some thoughts and comments on these as they get nearer to release and I can talk more openly about them and their significance.

February 3 2005

I attended an event yesterday evening organised jointly by the IPPR as part of its “Digital Manifesto” project and the All Party Internet Group. The topic was copyright and digital rights management. Whilst it was an interesting meeting (which included speakers from Olswang, the Music Publishers Association, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, the BBC and IBM), it had all the feeling of an event where everyone had decided in advance what their views are – and nothing was going to change them. Not so much a debate as a rehearsed set of statements of position.

On one side were those wishing to ensure that creators’ rights are protected – and on the other, those who wanted to be able to take another’s creation and use it ‘freely’. There seemed to be a lot of contradictions inherent in what some said: the BBC speaker, Paula Le Dieu, for example spoke about the aspiration to put the entire BBC archive online and for people to be able to ‘mix, rip and share’. Whilst the sharing of knowledge and information is clearly an admirable aspiration, this somehow overlooked the fact that actually the BBC is largely a publisher – and that the rights in most of its creative material rest with the creators. Bodies that represent professional creators – such as the Writers Guild of Great Britain – believe the whole Creative Commons initiative is little more than a ‘new age’ attempt to take other people’s creative ideas without due payment and acknowledgement.

There is, of course, a bigger underlying debate here: about the role of intellectual property. And what types of rights creators should have and for how long. But this session did not really get as far as getting its teeth into what to me are the topics at the heart of this debate. The key here is the balance between helping encourage and foster creativity and providing appropriate access to material with the need to respect and reward creators. What was apparent from this IPPR/APIG session was that no-one is yet able to articulate a model that will achieve the right balance. I expect to see more debates on this type of topic: and hopefully some of them will indeed be true debates, not a series of prepared statements. And, as Will Davies the Chairman seemed to imply in his closing comments, hopefully at future events people will come with a somewhat more open mind and engage in a more forward-looking discussion.