Firstly I need to make a few disclaimers. Obviously the views expressed here are my own and not that of my employer – Consumer Focus (if you want the organisation’s view, you can see it here). I’ve also not read every paragraph in the 240 page report – some parts nearly sent me to sleep, so I skipped past them to some of the more interesting sections.

Overall, I can’t help but feel a little bit disappointed with the report. To me it doesn’t seem to go far enough - although a guaranteed 2Mbps broadband connection to every home in the UK makes a good headline, it’s poor compared to other countries such as South Korea (which is rolling out 1Gbps connections). It also skirts around some issues such as copyright fair use and leaves a lot to chance.

The report outlines 2 phases of broadband development in the UK. The first is the Universal Service Commitment (USC) which aims to provide a base to the whole country; the second is the Next Generation Broadband Network (NGB) which will provide for the future.

Universal Service Commitment (USC)

Digital Britain outlines its intention to provide every home in the UK with a minimum of 2 Mbps broadband by 2012. This will be part funded by the production of the NGB networks, with the rest funded through the underspend in the Digital Switchover budget. Initial thoughts are that this is great – everyone in the UK will have broadband of a ‘satisfactory’ quality. However, things soon start to fall apart.

Countries like South Korea are currently achieving 50 Mbps as a minimum, with some places getting as high as a 1 Gbps connection. When put in this context, 2 Mbps is exceptionally poor. Also, when you delve into a bit more detail, it turns out that this speed is actually optimistic.

Some homes will not be able to get broadband though traditional means, and so the Government is going to rely on mobile networks and satellite to provide the USC in these areas. The report suggests that 2 Mbps is unlikely for these houses, and connections of between 1 and 1.5 Mbps is more accurate. So actually, a 2 Mbps USC isn’t really correct.

Next Generation Broadband (NGB)

This is the next phase in broadband development and aims to provide broadband speeds of around 50 Mbps by using technologies such as Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) and Fibre to the Home (FTTH). Digital Britain expects that market investment will fund this deployment and anticipates that it will reach approximately two thirds of the population.

Assuming BT and the mobile networks do reach this target, that leaves about a third of the UK back on the not quite 2 Mbps USC broadband. This quite obviously is not acceptable, so a fund is being set up to provide NGB to this final third (called The Final Third Project).

The Final Third will be funded by a 50p per line per month levy on all fixed lines from next year. Contrary to some reports, this includes residential copper lines (like your BT phone line), business copper, ISDN and cable telephony lines (like those provided by Virgin Media). You will not have to pay this levy for mobile phones as they already pay license fees for network upgrades.

After all of this, it is expected that 90% of the population will be covered by NGB, leaving a poor 10% with USC speeds.

Illegal file sharing

This is of course a big bone of contention among many people. The interim report issued in January suggested the creation of a Digital Rights Agency which would be responsible for tracking illegal file sharers. This final version has moved away from this proposal and aims to stick with an industry lead effort, although supervised by Ofcom the industry regulator.

The report outlines a commitment to reduce illegal file sharing by 70-80%. This is a huge commitment, so they aren’t just leaving it to chance. If the industry effort of writing letters to account holders does not reduce numbers significantly within 12 months, Ofcom will be able to force ISPs to introduce ‘technical measures’. These might include blocking of sites, protocols, ports, bandwidth capping (speed and data transfer), bandwidth shaping and content identification and filtering.

However, for this to happen, Ofcom will need to ask Parliament to legislate.

Copyright fair use

Unfortunately this important issue gets all of a one paragraph mention in the document which makes no commitment to resolve the situation. As a result, it remains illegal to copy music you already own to your mp3 player.

Conclusion

As you can see, it is a bit disappointing. The USC isn’t quite the 2 Mbps they promised, NGB relies on the market to do the right thing, no clear direction on illegal file sharing and no movement at all on fair use.

I’ve not gone though everything in this post; there are a lot of other planned actions including the digital radio switchover, tax relief for video game makers, and the digital public service programme. Maybe next time!

Image courtesy of Media Guardian and Wordle.

Twitter is going crazy with (i reckon) an average of 700 tweets a minute regarding the problem which appears to be affecting the whole world.

More coverage at TechCrunch and Twitter Search.

Update: All seems to be fine now - problem lasted around 20 minutes

Following his election in November, his team continued their use of aspects of social media to keep people informed during their transition to government. Visitors to their Change.gov site were encouraged to submit their ideas and join in the discussion.

As he was being sworn in at the official ceremony, the new White House website was launched, featuring the new, clean look we have come to expect, simple navigation and the all important blog. This website is perhaps the best website from a government I’ve ever seen. I can only hope that this trend continues not only in the US, but here at home in the UK.

Throughout this week, social media has been making the headlines – and one site in particular has been getting a lot of attention. It is of course, Twitter – the addictive micro-blogging service which allows you to post 140 character updates about what you are doing, and things that interest you. The site has finally hit the mainstream, being discussed on radio, in newspapers and on TV. Various figures show that UK visitors to Twitter have skyrocketed in the last few months.

Not only are we now starting to see a proliferation of celebrities on the service, but also MPs, and members of local government. A fantastic site called Tweetminster has been set up to allow people to locate members of parliament and prospective parliamentary candidates (PPCs) who are using the service.

I think it’s brilliant to see government start to use social media. I feel that it is important for government and the people that are supposed to represent us connect with the country, listen to us, and respond to our ideas. I believe that the use of services like Facebook and Twitter will help reinvigorate politics and get people involved in how their country is run.

I hope that this trend continues, and if it does, 2009 could turn out to be the year government finally ‘gets’ the internet. In the meantime, I’m going to do all I can to help it along.

During the day, there were five sessions, each with four talks on different subjects, from building a scalable web application and server virtualisation, to ASP.NET MVC and how to develop .NET on Linux.

Unfortunately, due to the limited amount of time, it wasn’t possible for me to go to all of the talks; but luckily, each one was filmed for us to watch online later.  The day was really worth the early start to get to Reading!  I came away with lots of useful information that we can utilise to make the products we produce better, and a very good insight into the way the platform is going to progress over the next 12 months.

The organisers did a fantastic job getting everything sorted for the event and making sure it all went so smoothly.  Microsoft was also great for hosting the event, providing tonnes of free food and drink and looking after us all day.

This was the first technology event I’ve been able to go to – but definitely won’t be the last.  I’ve already bought my ticket for Future of Web Apps (FOWA) taking place in Dublin next March.  I’d also recommend that anyone interested in .NET development look out for tickets for next year’s developer day.

According to Michael Arrington, owner of TechCrunch, they are working with a supply chain management company who believe it is possible and can have a few prototypes ready in a short period of time (within a month).

I’ve been considering buying a UMPC for quite a while as I no longer have a need for a fully fledged laptop.  I do however still want a portable device, so I can sit down in the evening in front of the TV, browse the web and reply to emails.  If TechCrunch pull this off – and I really hope they do – I will definitely be investing in a unit.

Something like this is right in Apple’s territory – they already have the thin MacBook Air and the fantastic touch screen interface of the iPhone, but no tablet PC.  If TechCrunch get this device out quickly, Apple will have been caught asleep at the wheel.

What is the government thinking? The BBC and The Times are reporting that the Home Office are planning to put together a national database of all phone and email communications. It is another of the schemes proposed to combat terrorism and improve national security - but like all the others, it is just a disaster waiting to happen.

I have a number of problems about introducing a database such as this from the point of view of both a service provider, and an email user. In my opinion, this is a step too far (but then again, so are some of the other schemes).

From a service provider’s point of view, I do not see how it is going to be possible. I operate 2 mail servers (3 if you include the one I use for testing). The company I work for operates 4, and my internet provider has loads more. If you think that a small operation like mine is using 2 servers, how many mail servers must be operating in the UK? This is a hell of a lot of data! How are we expected to pass this information along to this national database?

If it is going to be compulsory to provide this data - and I suspect it is or there wouldn’t be any point having the database in the first place - then how is it going to be policed? How would the government know that I am running a mail server at home and not putting the data into the database?

Any tech person with half a brain knows how to set up a mail server, so this could become the standard way for those acting against the national security of the UK to communicate (if it isn’t already). When you consider that hundreds of thousands of computers are sending out SPAM emails without their owners realising, how would the government check that these weren’t being used for terrorists to communicate? On the other hand, what would stop them setting up emails servers in another country? For that matter, there isn’t anything stopping me from moving my servers to another country to avoid having to comply with the law.

Another more worrying thought is that the government could attempt to ban the use of mail servers other than those that are registered with them and provide them with the data. Again though, it would be impossible to police. However this would cause significant financial hardship on a lot of small businesses that operate their own systems. These companies would either have to move their servers out of the country, or pay whatever is required to comply with the law.

From a more personal point of view, why do they need the information? They already force phone companies to keep records of my calls for 12 months; they already keep details of my tax payments, capture me on CCTV countless times a day and even store records of where I’ve driven. Now they want my emails as well?

Bearing in mind how well the government has looked after my data in the past, I’m not sure I trust them with this amount of data. All it takes is for someone to burn off a DVD of the data and sell it to the highest bidder. If systems like Phorm become more widespread, how long will it be before the websites I visit become the next part of this database? It certainly makes sense that it would be next on the list.

Luckily, the Information Commissioner has suggested that this is a step too far. We can only hope that this idea is stopped before it gets much further.

Edit: I suppose I should mention that under current legislation, email providers are supposed to keep this information already and hand it over when the police come knocking on the door.  However, these plans would involve all the data being held in one central place rather than with the provider.

Over the last few entries, I’ve looked at some of the websites used by county councils to provide details of the 2008 local elections. Some of these websites (mainly Monmouthshire County Council) were just plain irritating, whereas others were really easy to use, but didn’t provide enough information (Swansea). Cardiff’s site was somewhere in between.

Overall though, none of these sites provided the level of detail and usability required for the age of the Internet. It is becoming less and less acceptable for councils to avoid providing this information online.

It is, however, encouraging to note that the 3 councils I have covered actually provided live information online. A number of councils I looked at during election night did not provide information at all (for example Neath Port Talbot and Torfaen. What is even worse – and completely unacceptable – is Powys County Council, who still did not have results of their elections available 4 days after the election took place!

The next set of council elections in Wales take place in 2012, I sincerely hope that by then, every council gets its act together and produces live systems that not only comply with the UK’s accessibility laws, but are also easy to use and provide the level of detail expected.

Will this happen? I don’t know – we will have to wait and see.

Cardiff Council’s local election website is produced by the same software as the site from Monmouthshire County Council, although with one major difference. MCC’s website acts like a PowerPoint slideshow, cycling between each ward, whereas Cardiff’s acts like a normal website.

Links to each ward are shown on the initial screen allowing the user to jump straight to the ward they are interested in. This makes the website much more user friendly.

The election pages themselves are built into the standard Cardiff Council site, making it easy to locate, and removing the use of frames the causes many of the problems with the other implementation I’ve seen.

From an accessibility point of view, the website also behaves better than the equivalent MCC site – table captions and summaries are completed more often, although some are still missing.

In general, this website is much better than the system operated for MCC, and avoids many of the same issues; however, there are a number of improvements that could be made. For example, use of a geographical map would help users locate their ward – a problem solved by Swansea Council’s website.

Rating:
Ease of use: 3/5 – Direct links to each ward makes it quicker and easier to locate details quickly, although a map would make it even easier.
Level of detail: 4/5 – Good detail of information and use of graphs.
Accessibility: 3/5 – Summaries of tables still missing on some wards, although lack of frames improves the score

Overall: 10/15

Swansea City Council has taken a very different approach to that of Monmouthshire County for their live election results. When you visit their election site, you are presented with a graphical map of the county, showing each ward with different coloured dots indicating each seat available. As expected, the colour assigned to each dot shows the party which has secured that seat for the next four years –red for Labour, yellow for Liberal Democrat, black for independents etc. This allows the visitor to very quickly gain an overview of which party has won in each ward.

Further information can be gained by hovering over one of the dots (if you have JavaScript enabled) – which provides the name of the ward and the name of the elected representative. Clicking on a dot loads a page showing each of the candidates that stood for that constituency (ordered by the number of votes received). I feel that this is a much better way of displaying the results as it allows you to easily tell who has been elected (especially in wards where there are more than one seat available). It also helps those who know where they live, but not the name of the ward in which they are represented.

The only disappointment is that the ward information pages lack the details of spoilt ballots and number of registered electors. However, this is a very minor complaint and could easily be fixed next year.

From an accessibility point of view, I was initially concerned that the graphical map might pose a problem, however after inspecting the code, I discovered that it was developed using normal unordered lists, absolutely positioned on the page. While this is not an ideal solution, it far outweighs other options such as image maps and flash.

Turning off CSS shows just a normal list of linked wards leading to the full information page – proving that even when using a screen reader, users would still be able to find out what they wanted to know.
The site is let down by the lack of captions and summaries for the tables on the ward information pages. Using these captions is a must to comply with accessibility legislation. However, I am sure that this is an easy fix for next time.

Without a doubt, this is the best local election website I have used this year – it is easy to use, clear and provides a good level of detail. During my research, I was unable to find information about who developed the site for the council, leading me to believe that it was produced in-house – a fantastic achievement. However, I believe there are a number of improvements that could be made – firstly added accessibility, and secondly enhanced information about the results (e.g. spoilt votes, number of registered voters and possibly graphs of the results).

Rating:
Ease of use: 4/5 – Graphical map allows users to locate their area quickly and coloured dots provide a good overview of the current state of play.
Level of detail: 3/5 – Good level of information about each ward but let down by the lack of extras such as graphs and ‘meta’ information
Accessibility: 4/5 – A good attempt at accessibility. Turning off JavaScript and CSS does not break the site, however, it is let down by the lack of captions and summaries for tables and links.

Overall: 11/15

MCC made use of a piece of software by Associated Knowledge Systems Ltd to show the results from each ward. The website acts like a PowerPoint presentation with a slide for each ward, automatically cycling between them. This of course is not really appropriate for the web – if you missed your ward, or didn’t finish reading the slide before it moved on, you had to wait for the site to cycle through all the others – taking anywhere between 20 and 30 minutes.

Although this was particularly annoying (my ward was located towards the end of the list) – not helped by the fact that the website regularly crashes and forces you to start again at ‘A’ – the slides provided a good level of detail. The slides allowed you to see a list of candidates, their political party, number of votes (with percentage) and which one was finally elected. In addition to this were the number of registered voters in the ward, number of ballot papers, spoilt papers, turnout and winning majority.

This was further helped by the use of a number of graphs showing some of these figures.

I have no problem with Monmouthshire using a system like this for someone who just wants to see every ward – or even to display results in the counting rooms, but why did they not make links available to jump to an individual ward? This would make it much easier for other users who don’t want to wait around 20 minutes just because their ward happens to be at the end of the alphabet! I suspect that this is a limitation of the software they purchased and something they should have considered.

The annoyance factor of having to wait for your ward to be displayed is nothing compared to the fact that the website was inaccessible to disabled users. Any points the site recovers are quickly lost when you start to look at accessibility. To start with, the site was displayed in frames – a very common problem for screen-readers for those with poor (or non-existent) eyesight. Further accessibility problems could have been caused by incomplete captions on tables, and the use of tables for the design of the site – a big no in the age of CSS and style sheets.

I find it hard to believe that Monmouthshire County Council is still refusing to produce accessible websites even though it is a legal requirement in the UK.

Rating:
Ease of use: 0/5 – There is no reason for making users wait 20 minutes to see information about their ward
Level of detail: 4/5 – Good level of information about each ward and good use of graphs
Accessibility: 1/5 – An attempt was obviously made to include captions and summaries of tables, but the use of frames, tables for design, inline CSS styling, and incomplete captions let it down badly

Overall: 5/15

Next time, I’ll look at the election website for Swansea City Council.