The use of cookies on websites has become an increasingly hot topic over the past few months. A new EU law – specifically The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011 (PECR) – requires that websites ask for consent before setting cookies that aren’t “strictly necessary” for the operation of the website. We’ve put together this post to give you an overview of how we are approaching this law on the beta for the Single Domain.

Over that time, we’ve worked to make product recall information more useful and helped to make it easier to reduce cold calls and junk mail. I’ve been able to work with Consumer Focus’ energy team to publish complaints data on energy suppliers, the Wales team to publish performance data for the Royal Mail, and Passenger Focus to help open up rail performance information.

There is still a lot more to be done, however shortly I’m going to be taking a break from Consumer Focus and embarking on a new challenge.

I’m delighted to announce that from the end of this month I’ll be joining GovUK – the team in London working to produce a single website for government.

GovUK has already put together an initial prototype for the website (AlphaGov) – but they are now working to produce a much more in depth second (beta) phase.  Over the next few months, we’ll be putting together a public beta of the main citizen-facing aspects of Gov.uk.  We’ll also be developing a private beta of a shared  ’corporate’ publishing platform (for government departments) and a draft Global Experience Language for all government sites. The Cabinet Office has built up an impressive and extremely talented team to put the site together and I’m honoured to be able to join them.

If you want to know more about the project, take a look at the project’s blog and the initial prototype.

I’ve been a regular user of trains for nearly 10 years.  When I was in college, I had to use the train to get to classes.  Before I moved to Cardiff in December, I commuted to work by train every day.  Now, I travel by train to meetings in London on a pretty regular basis.  I like to think that I’m a bit of an expert at train travel.

One of the things that always intrigued me is the rail performance figures that are published every few weeks. Somewhere in a secluded corner of a station will be a poster, sometimes titled “Passenger Charter Figures”, that is supposed to tell you how many trains run ‘on time’.

Normally (at least every time I’ve ever looked), the train company seems to have achieved its targets.  I always thought this was quite strange given the number of times my train was delayed or didn’t show up at all.

It turns out that there are numerous loopholes and tricks* they can use to make their figures look good.  For example, on time doesn’t mean on time, it actually means the train arrives at its destination no more than 5 minutes late (10 minutes for intercity travel).  Note the use of ‘destination’.  The train could depart 30 minutes late and drop me off at my stop 25 minutes late; but as long as it reaches its destination less than 5 minutes late (which for my journey could be nearly 5 hours later), the train is classed as ‘on time’.  Timetables have lots of padding built in which helps with this.

Luckily, last year I got to work on a joint project with Passenger Focus (the rail passenger watchdog) on ways of making these figures more useful.  We produced a basic HTML prototype to show how more detailed performance figures could be used by the public to hold train companies to account.

Unfortunately, even though much more detailed performance information is collected (the time a train passes each monitoring point on the network is recorded by Network Rail), it isn’t published, let alone open for re-use.  It’s generally considered ‘commercially sensitive’ – which is ridiculous.  Even if we wanted to use the, in my view, crap existing figures we wouldn’t be able to – it isn’t open.

We demoed our prototype and our ideas to a few people including the Office for Rail Regulation (ORR) – the public body that sets the terms of rail company operator licences – in the hope that they would either force the rail companies (or Network Rail) to open up the data.

We are, of course, not the only ones who have been trying to get this data opened up. Many other individuals and groups have been campaigning to the plethora organisations involved. Some of them have been campaigning for a lot longer than we have.

Last week the government announced a huge number of public datasets to open up.  Amongst these, two important elements stand out:

• Office of Rail Regulation to increase the amount of data published relating to service performance and complaints by May 2012
• Rail timetable information to be published weekly by National Rail from December 2011.

Obviously, everyone involved in the various campaigns have managed to get the issue to register on the radar of ORR!  Publishing this data is a huge & welcome step forward.  Everyone involved deserves a pat on the back.

But, we’re not there yet. We now need to make sure that the published performance data is detailed enough to be useful to the public.  Then, once it’s published, we need to make sure there are tools available that use it, so that the public can finally start to hold their train companies to account.

* the train companies would say that their figures are independently audited and there are no tricks and loopholes.

Photo Credit: AndrewHA (Flickr CC)

Edit: added a few links.

December 2011

In early December we launched a directory of post offices owned by and operated for communities across the UK.  Consumer Focus commissioned the Plunkett Foundation and Social Enterprise Coalition to compile the data which CF Labs then presented through this site.

The site allows users to search for community post offices in their area, find out where they are located and see what services they provide.  The site also provides some statistics on core activities and the data is exposed in JSON format.

A few days later we launched a service to publish ratings of how energy companies handle complaints.  We’d worked closely with our colleagues in the Energy team at Consumer Focus to design and develop a meaningful way of showing this data.  We produced a number of prototypes which were refined through several stages to a shortlist of 3 possible options.  These were then independently tested by TNS-BMRB in September which helped us to pick the final option.

The system ranks each of the ‘Big Six’ energy suppliers using stars – 0 for the worst performing companies, 5 for the best.  The site publishes a snapshot of the data (the last quarter) and also a more detailed historical view.  All the data is also published using JSON and CSV formats.

October 2010

In October we completed the second phase of the new Consumer Focus website.  Earlier in the year we made the move from an external proprietary content management system to a WordPress system managed in house by CF Labs.  The second phase of work involved a complete restructure of the content and a refreshed website template.

As with the new CF Labs in September, we used WordPress 3.0 and built new templates for each of the Consumer Focus Nations (GB, Wales, Scotland & Northern Ireland).  New areas were created for advice, policy work and publications.

We launched the site just in time to hear rumours that Consumer Focus was to be abolished in the Government’s “bonfire of the quangos”.  It turned out that the rumours were true.  The intention is to transfer some of our functions to Citizens Advice and Citizens Advice Scotland.  Even now, 4 months later, we still don’t know exactly when or how this transfer will happen.

November 2010

November was a quiet month – mostly spent finalising work on three projects that were due to launch before the year came to a close.

At the end of the month we launched the second phase of the Consumer Focus Energy Price Comparison (EPC) Service.  The EPC acts as a mini-price comparison system and gives you a rough idea of the price to expect when shopping around for an energy supplier.  Consumer Focus inherited this system from our predecessor Energywatch.  Earlier in 2010 we’d shifted the system to a new data supplier and rebuilt it so we could manage it in house to save money.

The second phase of development involved producing a brand new front end to make the system easier to use.  We gave it the CF Labs treatment and integrated it with the Consumer Focus website design.  We cleaned up the code, added a bunch of features and created bookmarkable URLs for every search.

Coming up…

• Community post offices
• Rating energy suppliers

As this recap covers such a long period of time, I’ve split it across several posts. First up is July, August & September.

July 2010

Throughout July I spent time working on the recently launched StayPrivate.org website.  As users sent in feedback we evaluated and tweaked the interface to reduce problems.

August 2010

As with July, plenty of time was spent evaluating and implementing changes to StayPrivate.org following user feedback.  Late in the month we blogged about some of the issues users were having and the reasons behind them.  We also launched a revamped FAQ to answer as many of the common questions as possible.

A large number of other projects also took up time during August –all of which launched before the end of 2010.

September 2010

In early September we launched a new website for CF Labs to showcase our work and host our blog.  The existing website included a heavy focus on ideas for potential future projects but we decided to change the focus to projects that had already been completed.

As the CF Labs site was built using WordPress, we developed a new template to take advantage of all the new features added into WordPress 3.0.  We used Custom Post Types to provide a page for each of our projects which includes an introduction to the work and associated images. We also used tags to show the latest three blog posts related to each project.

Also in September I stumbled across a fantastic open-source tool (Tweet Nest) for creating a searchable archive of a user’s tweets.  In the past, I’d used various methods to create such an archive but none of them worked as well as this.  You can see a working example using my tweets at http://tweetnest.daibach.co.uk.

I’m considering using this tool to create an archive of tweets from the various Consumer Focus twitter accounts.

Coming up…

• Launch of new Consumer Focus website
• Consumer Focus is abolished
• Comprehensive Spending Review
• Comparing energy prices

There are lots of different opt-out services that exist, all of which have separate sign-up forms and require you to fill out the same details (such as name, address, email address), over and over again. We felt there was a better solution, and so we built a site that combines the forms into one and does the hard work of submissions for you. The initial version of StayPrivate.org incorporates the Telephone, Mail & Baby Mail Preference service offered by the Direct Marketing Association.

I’ve been working on this project on and off for the past seven months (although most of the work has happened in the last two months or so), so I’m really pleased to see it launch. Since we flipped the switch early on Thursday morning, we’ve had over 4500 registrations and submitted over 6500 applications to the DMA opt-out services. This is many more than we were originally anticipating for the first public release.

The day of launch was amazing. We had to respond to issues quickly – sometimes within a few minutes. We pushed out nearly 30 fixes through out the day and switched off parts of the site to reduce server load. Since then we’ve been reducing the queues of submissions to ensure that everyone who registered has been processed.

The next task is to go through the site and look at where we can make improvements. I-ll be spending the next few days reworking parts of the site and implementing some of the suggestions we-ve received.

If you want to know more about StayPrivate or want to keep track of my work on this project, take a look at the CF Labs blog.

Update: fixing a spelling mistake pointed out by @keeran.

Since day one it’s been a non-stop rollercoaster. After my previous role, I wanted a challenge – something I could really get my teeth into. You certainly can’t say the last 12 months haven’t been challenging!

Our first few months were spent getting ourselves set up and figuring out our role. I made the switch from Windows and ASP.net to Linux and PHP. We built the Recalled Products website as our first project. We talked to all sorts of people and attended events in London and Cardiff.

After a while, we realised that although some colleagues understood what we were doing, many didn’t have a clue. They had a vague idea that there was a “web team” based in Cardiff, but not much else. This was exasperated further when they found out that we were a “web team” that didn’t work on the organisation’s own website but did this other stuff that they didn’t understand.

We found that this lack of understanding was creating barriers to our objectives, so we refocused our efforts within the organisation. We continued on some of our original ideas, but looked at how we could make people aware of our way of thinking. This led to us taking over the corporate website and removing some of the issues that were causing confusion. Since then we’ve talked and talked and talked to anyone that will listen; we’ve gotten involved in policy discussions; and helped with producing reports.

Now, a year after starting, we are starting to see things falling into place. We’ve got teams regularly asking us for advice and suggesting things we can do. We have a huge number of projects underway and we’ve got more work than the two remaining team members can shake a stick at. Over the next few months we will hopefully start to see the benefits of our change in focus.

Looking back, it’s amazing how far we’ve come. It may not seem like much to most people, but we’ve made huge strides forward. It’s been frustrating (very frustrating) at times, but at the same time very rewarding.

In the last 12 months, the whole innovation & data agenda has moved on rapidly. We’ve seen the appointment of Tim Berners-Lee, the launch of data.gov.uk and the creation of the Institute of Web Science. The Greater London Assembly has released its own store of data, Ordnance Survey data is being opened up and people are finally starting to recognise the benefits.

Of course, we still have a huge way to go. A few people still don’t understand the concept – some might even feel intimidated or threatened by it, but we will get there eventually.

So did I make a mistake jumping to public service? I don’t think so. If you’d asked me this afternoon I’d probably be giving a different answer. I have bad days like everyone (today was a perfect example), but overall it’s fantastic. I love the job – I get to build websites, design systems, go to events and meet interesting people, but most of all I get to influence the way people think about technology, the web and data. It’s frustrating at times but challenging.

What advice can I offer to any organisation wanting to set up a similar team?

• Start small but give them a wide remit – let them figure out what is achievable and the best way to go about it
• Give them their own computers and internet connections – tying them down with corporate network security will just frustrate them and make it more difficult to do the job
• Reduce the paperwork – there will always be an element of paperwork, but look at how you can make it simpler or they’ll spend all their time doing that rather than what you want them to do
• Look inside before moving outwards – it’s no use having this fantastic team if people inside the organisation don’t understand what they do. Look for projects they can do internally first.
• Go to events – the more events the better. Talk to other people in the industry, get yourself known
• Don’t be afraid of failure – teams need to learn from their mistakes to do a better job.
• Be fluid – never plan more than a month or two in advance, by the time you get there, the plans will be out of date and useless
• Don’t be afraid to ask advice. There is a huge community out there willing to support you, make the most of it.
• Finally, and most importantly, if you want an innovations team you must provide the right supportive environment to allow innovation to occur. Restrictions and procedures will stifle free thinking and make your team useless.

Sometimes I come away from the office and struggle to see what we have actually achieved. When you are stuck into day to day work, it is quite easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.

This isn’t helped by the fact that part of our team’s aim does not have a tangible outcome. We spend a sizable portion of our energy on promoting our open principles within the organisation and converting people to our way of thinking. It isn’t an easy task, as I’m sure other people in this field will confirm but I’m starting to feel like we are making some headway.

The first report (of which I hope there will be many) has just gone online, in a format allowing the public to comment on each part of the document. The Consumer Focus website is now powered using the open source WordPress Content Management System (joining the likes of bis.gov.uk and number10.gov.uk). Other developments are also in the pipeline for the next few months and all have stemmed from us ‘spreading the gospel’.

This sort of work is going on across Government on many different levels, but recently there seems to have been a bit of a breakthrough. There is lots of things happening at the moment which you might find interesting. I’m going to briefly run through them.

Data.gov.uk

This is the UK version of the USA’s Data.gov and has been operating in a restricted beta for a few months. Government departments have been posting raw datasets for developers to use for free in their open projects. From sometime in January, the site will go live with over 1100 datasets from central government.

Ordnance Survey, NHS Data, Office of National Statistics Data

Work is underway to open up more datasets and make them freely available. These include health data from NHS Choices, mapping data from Ordnance Survey (OS) and statistics from the Office of National Statistics. Consultations are planned for early in the new year with aims to open them up by April 2010. There also seems to be some movement on publishing data of how the money allocated in the 2008 Pre-Budget report has been spent (possibly by spring, with further data released in the summer).

More information about the data releases can be found in the Government’s recent strategy ‘Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government‘ and on the Government’s Digital Engagement blog.

Crime Maps

The various Police forces around the UK have released crime statistics using their new mapping service. I’ve had a bit of a play around and it looks pretty good. You can see lots of information about your local area and download the data in CSV format.

More information about the Crime Maps can be found on the Directgov website.

Post Code Data

A few months ago I wrote about the issue of post codes after ErnestMarples.com was forced to shut down by the Royal Mail. Since then, a campaign has been ongoing to set the post code free. Well, it looks like someone might have listened. As part of the opening up of OS data above, a consultation will be taking place shortly on the opening up of post code datasets, which could see the data released by April 2010.

More information about the release of post code data can be found on the Ernest Marples blog.

Digital Economy Bill

The Digital Economy Bill has recently been introduced to Parliament and is due to go to committee stage shortly. This bill contains a large chunk of the actions and recommendations from the Digital Britain Report earlier in the year (with a number of strange and scary additions). There is a lot of talk about this at the moment and the effect it will have on the digital life and innovation in the UK. You can follow the progress of the bill on the Parliament.UK website, or on twitter using the #debill hashtag. If you want more information on the bill and how it might affect us, there are a large number of blogs and websites dedicated to the issue.

Directgov

This brings me to one of the last bits for this entry, and I make no apologies for the shameless self-promotion here.

Direct.gov.uk is the UK Government’s official website for the general public. It aims to collect all the public facing information into one place and make it easy to find. Unfortunately, its usefulness and ability to achieve this aims has been called into question. Personally, I’ve never liked the website and can never find information I want from the site (in fact, I tried several times to find information relating to bits in this post but gave up).

Consumer Focus has recently published a report on the website that analyses how well it delivers on its promise. As I alluded to earlier, this report is available online in fully commentable format. We are encouraging everyone and anyone to send us their thoughts on Directgov, what the problems are and what can be improved. Similarly, if you think it is doing something right, we want to know that too. You can find out more about the report at http://directgov.consumerfocuslabs.org.

I believe there will be a series of workshops planned for early in the new year to identify ways of engaging people in digital public service development. You can sign up on the site to be kept informed (and I’ll no doubt be publishing the information here as well).

Looking back at everything that has been achieved and everything that has happened in the last nine months, I’m actually quite excited at what we can do by this time next year (election permitting of course!). I have my fingers crossed 2010 will continue making leaps towards open government.

Karoo disconnects file sharers
Hull’s only internet provider – Karoo – has been disconnecting people accused of file sharing without the right to appeal. Although they’ve now changed their policy, as a monopoly provider, they have a greater responsibility to provide connections to all residents of hull.
Source: BBC News

Government departments are sticking with IE6
Aside from the fact that web developers (myself included) hate IE6 because of its complete lack of standards support, there are big concerns over its security. IE6 is over 8 years old and has been superseded by not 1, but 2 versions. Despite this, a number of Government departments/agencies (including MoD, DCSF and others) have no plans to upgrade to newer browsers.
Source: Kable

London – Swansea to be electrified
The train line between London and Swansea is to be electrified at last. Fantastic news for South Wales and about time it happened.
Source: BBC News

Publicising product recalls
Consumer Focus Labs has launched its first project (and several major revisions since). You can now sign up to receive notifications by email and RSS for product recalls from the EU.
Source: CF Labs Blog 1, CF Labs Blog 2