Government 3.0 coming to a browser near you?

Last week, the Prime Minister in his speech, Building Britain's Digital Future, announced the government's plan to help in making the semantic web (commonly called Web 3.0) a reality for citizens in the UK. There are three strands to this plan:

1. The roll out a 'superfast' broadband network network to all of the UK (funded in part by the 50p levy on landlines)

2. The creation a new Institute of Web Science, hosted by Oxford and Southampton universities, to lead on research into the next generation web.

3. Making government's non-personal data available to us to use without restriction.

In his speech, the PM responded to the invitation issued by Sir Tim Berners- Lee in February 2009 at the TED conference for help in making the semantic web a reality. Berners-Lee asked TED delegates to give him their "raw data now" to enable this data to be linked and shared openly across the web

How is Gordon Brown going to provide raw data now? His answer in the speech was this:

"I can confirm that from 1st April, we will be making a substantial package of information held by ordnance survey freely available to the public, without restrictions on re-use. And I can also tell you today that in the autumn the Government will publish online an inventory of all non-personal datasets held by departments and arms-length bodies - a “domesday book” for the 21st century. he new domesday book will for the first time allow the public to access in one place information on each set of data including its size, source, format, content, timeliness, cost and quality. And there will be an expectation that departments will release each of these datasets, or account publicly for why they are not doing so."

Wow! We, you and me, will have open access to government data to use as we will on websites and in apps. The government's first tentative steps towards this can be seen on the data.gov website. This site features several apps that have been already developed by IT developers. My current favourite is the Facebook-based Crime Statistics quiz (partly because as a young systems analyst my first project was helping to develop the South Yorkshire Police Crime Statistics system).

It's easy to get carried away thinking about the move from Web 1.0 through Web 2.0 and now to the web of linked data, or Web 3.0, from a technical perspective. Any organisational, governmental or social change that is driven by technological advance is open to the criticism of technological determinism.

Nicholas Carr makes the case for a more holistic approach to change. It is too simplistic to suggest that a 'good' new technology will necessarily lead to an improved organisation, government or society:

"the impact of any new technology, even an extremely powerful one like the Internet, is filtered through existing geopolitical, economic, social, and cultural structures and norms. "

The blogger, the Public Strategist, considering the impact of Web 3.0 on governments, echoes this sentiment:

"Governments are not websites or software releases. They change in slow and sometimes mysterious ways."

That may be the case. If the PM's digital domesday book is going to take off, it will require strong leadership and cultural change to remove the potential barriers that might prevent the data sets being shared inside and outside of government 'silos'. The change might not happen at the speed that technologists might wish, there may be blockages and laggardly behaviour by some politicians and government officers, but for those of us chomping at the bit to 'hack' government data sets and present them in new ways, it will still be fun on the way!

Managing projects

Everybody gonna stamp their feet, everybody's gonna feel the beat!

A few days ago, the Times published an obituary for Andrew Booth, an English scientist who played a pioneering role in the development of the computer.

Booth invented the magnetic storage device, using the magnetic properties of a nickel coated drum to store data. He first demonstrated the capabilities of a rotating magnetic drum in May 1948.

The drum in the first computer he developed had the following characteristics:

"The main memory was a rotating magnetic drum with 32 tracks. Each track held 32 words of 32 bits each. Ten bits were enough to address any word in the memory. The machine was serial. Each revolution of the drum took 32 `major' cycles, and inside each major cycle there were 32 minor cycles or bit pulses. A simple data operation such as a 32-bit addition took 32 minor cycles. However, the number of cycles actually used for any operation was controlled by the counter field, which specified a six-bit starting value. The operation would be halted as soon as the counter overflowed. Since the memory did not have random access characteristics there were obvious advantages in being able to place successive instructions in the `best' place on the drum. This implied that each instruction needed to carry the address of its predecessor." (Collin, 1993).

The magnetic drum became a key component of early (upto late 1970s) commercial computers. The ICL 1900 series mainframe used by my first employer, South Yorkshire County Council, in the 1970s, featured a magnetic drum supplemented by several exchangible discs (EDS 8 and EDS 20) which, to my recollection, had a capacity of 8 and 20 megabytes.

Booth assembled his first computer at Birkbeck College in 1952. This was a small-scale project, with a team comprising of Booth, his programming assistant (and future wife) plus an engineer. The engineer was his first Masters student, Norman Kitz, who later designed the world's first electronic desktop calculator (Johnson, 2008).

In 1957, Booth established the first university department in the UK dedicated to the study of computing. This was originally known as Department of Numerical Automation. Today it is the School of Computer Science and Information Systems.

Finally, he also played a leading role in the establishment of the British Computer Society. In 1956/7, he chaired the committee to set up a national computer society (Johnson, 2008).

Notes:

Collin, A (1993) Andrew Booth's Computers at Birbeck College, Computer Ressurection Issue 5, Computer Conservation Society http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/CCS/res/res05.htm#e

Johnson R (2008) Birkbeck School of Computer Science and Information Systems: A Short History http://www.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/50years/50yearsofcomputing.pdf

The title of this blog is a quote from Paul McCartney's song Dance Tonight which appeared first on his 2007 album Memory Almost Full.

Lord Berners-Lee of the World Wide Web?

There is a rumour circulating around the Internet that the man who invented the world wide web, Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, is going to be given a life peerage if the Conservatives win the next General Election (1).

It was only yesterday that Murad Ahmed, writing in The Times suggested (2):

"Many have argued that he would have been awarded the Nobel Prize had his discoveries been spun out of traditional sciences"

Which honour would you rate as the higher of the two I wonder - Life Peer or Nobel Lauriete?

Notes

(1) The Local Democracy Blog http://lgiu.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/democratise-the-house-of-lords/ accessed 15 October 2009

(2) M Ahmed (2009) A worldwide waste of time...web creator admits those double slashes were a mistake, The Times, 14 October 2009

The free digital content debate goes on - draft

Libby Perves, writing in a recent edition of The Times (12 Oct 2009), argues that "the internet generation has grown up believing it can enjoy other people's hard work for nothing." She suggests that this must stop. She points to the 'backlash' that is underway in the music and newspaper industries. This backlash has been documented over recent weeks in The Times newspaper.

A major move in this direction was the plan announced by the Government to strengthen the measures outlined in the Digital Britain report to reduce illegal file-sharing. Creative industry chief executives backed this plan (The Times 1 Sept 2009), stressing the economic implications (just like Purves):

" as our film, television, publishing, music, sports and entertainment retail businesses go digital, their ability to invest in creating high quality content that millions can enjoy is fatally undermined by illegal filesharing. This has a direct impact on current and future employment opportunities for the British creative workforce, the promotion of emerging talent and on innovation in new digital content services."

Musicians, such as James Blunt and Lilly Allen sent letters to The Times supporting the proposals:

Musician James Blunt wrote a letter to the editor of the Times offering support to this viewpoint (The Times, 21st Sept 2009):

"I want to put my hand up in support of Lily Allen (Thunderer, Sept 16). She's asking British musicians to galvanise over a serious crime: the death of a great British industry - our music business.

The world over, people are stealing music in its millions in the form of illegal file-sharing. It's easy to do, and has become accepted by many, but people need to know that it is destroying people's livelihoods and suffocating emerging British artists."

Let us examine their argument. File sharing is rampant. As a consequence it is destroying the music scene and stifling innovation. Musician Tom Robinson (The Times 16 October 2009) counters both of these assertions. He feels it is 'derailing the gravy train' of the record companies, but songwriters "operate in a far more favourable environment...."

Is there evidence of innovation and creativity in the digital free economy? He thinks so. "You now need little more than a laptop and a good pair of ears to produce high-quality recordings at home...distribution on iTunes [costs] £30 ....Best of all, music and visuals can be 'broadcast' worldwide on Myspace and Youtube at no cost at all. You'll no longer make afortune but you'll certainly earn a living."

The best things in life are free

In Free: the Future of a Radical Price (2009), Chris Anderson predicts that games will soon be 'free'.

He writes (p 145):

"Games are one of the last digital products that are mostly sold [in stores] and that model is nearing its end. Just as music and software is becoming primarily an online market, so will games. And once you move from shipping atoms (plastic boxes and discs) to transmitting bits, free becomes inevitable. Over the next decade, this $10 billion industry will shift from primarily a traditional packaged goods business to an online business built on entry prices of zero."

The first step towards this zero entry price was reported yesterday in The Times[1]. The latest version of the football game, Championship Manager, has been made available for a month online for as little as 1p. This is an adaptation of the innovation introduced by Radiohead last year, when they invited their fans to pay what they wanted to download their "In Rainbows" album.

How can this make economic sense? The business strategy being employed by Eidos, the supplier of Championship Manager, is what Anderson has called "Freemium". The basic game is available at 1p+ for anyone who wishes to use it. But, those who wish to keep up-to-date throughout the season will have to pay £5 for the six downloadable updates containing "all the latest statistics, scores, competition standings, player transfers, player stats, bookings and major injuries plus much more from the 10 leading countries in Europe"

The marginal cost of distributing digital product approaches zero. The costs are all associated with producing it. But by giving the game away for nearly free will probably boost the take-up of the game and, correspondingly, the number paying for the premium service. It is also likely that there will also be cross-subsidies. Enticing players to use this free game might encourage them to purchase other products from the company. This is was how Radiohead made their money from Free.

According to Anderson (p 154), In Rainbows became Radiohead's most successful album. It sold 3 million copies (some of which were physical copies); they made more money from the downloads than they made from the previous one; it was followed by their best-selling tour with 1.2 million tickets sold.

Notes

[1] King I (2009) Honesty is the best policy, The Times, August 18 2009

[2] The title is a quote from the song "Money (that's what I want)" released by the Beatles on their 1963 LP, "With the Beatles". The full verse is: "The bset things in life are free, but you can keep them for the birds and bees, now give me money, that's what I want".

Love is free, free is love

Chris Anderson, in his new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, argues that people under the age of 30 no longer expect to pay for news, music, TV, films or social networking. He suggests two models for digital media businesses to adopt if they are targeting this age group: 'freeconomy' and 'freemium'.

Businesses operating the freeconomy model, such as Google, provide content for free and generate revenue from advertising on the site. However, Anderson acknowledges that this model has lost its appeal since the onse of the credit crunch. He states "From the middle of 2008, it became clear that advertising was going to be limited. It was not going away, but it was not going to float all boats."

The other 'free' business model is freemium, in which the basic service is free and subscibers are encouraged to upgrade and pay for additional services. Fickr, the photo sharing site, adopts this model. Basic subscribers can upload images for free, but they are restricted to 100mb storage a month and access to smaller-sized images. Premium (pro-account) subscribers pay approx £17 per annum to store an unlimited amount of photos and are able to download images in their original resolution.

Spotify, which has been discussed in this blog twice previously, is an interesting case as it mixes both models. Subscribers can stream music for free, with ocassional adverts between tracks. But, by paying £10 per month, they gain access to the premium service and can listen to the music uninterupted by adverts and can also use Spotify on mobile devices.

Of course, the major battle that has raged over recent years, as a result of this changing social demand for free digital media, has been between the companies who own the rights to popular music and the generation which is using BitTorrant sites to share free copies of the music. Pirate Bay, with 20 million users, has been at the forefront in this battle. In April this year, its founders were jailed for breaking the music copyright law. Would this event signal defeat for free file sharing? It appears not. Pirate Bay has just been bought by Global Gaming Comapny for £4.7 million and has devised a new free business model. More of that next time.

Note:

The title is a line from the John Lennon song Love from the Plastic Ono Band LP (1970)