Blog posts

360 days from now the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force. Anyone handling personal data from an EU citizen or subject (and the Information Commissioner has been clear we should assume that includes Brits regardless of what happens around EU exit) will be held to new standards in how they obtain, store, process and dispose of that data. I was asked to speak about compliance at Salford Centre for Professional Development’s event on GDPR, and used it as an opportunity to try to encourage everyone to think beyond compliance. ...

It’s been nearly two months since I left GDS. It’s high time I talked a bit more about what’s next for me. I was really pleased with everything we got done in my last few weeks at GDS. Alongside the inevitable handover tasks, we made a big announcement about the future of government networking), began to share a draft policy about APIs and expanded the guidance around the “Cloud First” policy. I remain very grateful to the many brilliant colleagues who helped get all that done. ...

In my last post on Cloud-native organisations I said: “we should be clear about the principles that apply and help our people understand what we need to watch out for when choosing technology.” As the responsible people in an organisation we need to be thinking about things like: We need to be confident that when people leave our organisation we retain access to information on the work they’ve been doing We need to be sure that the sensitive information we handle in our organisation can only be accessed by authorised people Where we have time-sensitive business commitments, we need to be confident that third-party software will be available for us to use when we need it The specifics like how important that is, what types of information, etc. will be context sensitive. ...

I spoke recently at the OpenGov Leadership Forum in Manila and at Cloud Expo Europe. At both I started to explore a theme from my final GDS blog post: cloud-native organisations. //speakerdeck.com/assets/embed.js “Cloud” is a nebulous term. At the start of both talks I explained that, while there are formal definitions that I’ve found useful, for me it’s just a useful term for starting a conversation about what’s currently happening at the collision point of “the internet” and “computing tools”. Most of the time for technology, I don’t draw a distinction between the impact of cloud, agile, devops and a number of other inter-related movements. ...

This was my final post on the Government technology blog The government technology landscape has shifted significantly since we made our commitment to Cloud First nearly 4 years ago. Departments have become more mature in their uptake of cloud services and with this maturity comes a need for further guidance. To support this need, we’ve added further clarification to our cloud guidance and policy and we’ll continue to expand this content in the coming months. ...

This was originally posted on Government Technology Back in November Emma Pearce blogged about using big data following the first in a series of data seminars we’re running. We’ve now held our second session, hosted by Facebook, which focussed on trust and privacy. Stephen Deadman, Deputy Global Chief Privacy Officer at Facebook, welcomed us for a talk and Q&A. Facebook is often held up as an example, both positive and negative, due to their profile and size. ...

Originally posted on Government technology When different parts of the public sector share services and exchange data it’s important that we can rely on the basic security of each other’s technology, and that the data will maintain its integrity as it moves around. It is an important part of ensuring that there’s a clear layer of trust between everyone involved in the interaction. For the past few years a lot of government (and wider public sector) services have relied on the Public Services Network (PSN) to provide assurance of that IT security. As a high-performance network operated by multiple vendors, the PSN provides assured connections for a wide range of public sector organisations. ...

This was originally posted on Government technology At the Open Government Partnership (OGP) summit last week in Paris, the UK government joined a new international collective action that recognises the role that Open Source Software has to play in increasing transparency and harnessing new technologies to improve governance. Our commitment We committed to sharing what we’ve learnt over the past few years about bringing open source and related working practices into government, to working collaboratively with other governments to develop common practices and policies, and particularly to making sure that open source plays a big role in our growing international collaboration around Digital Marketplace and procurement reform. ...

This was originally posted on the Government technology blog. It’s been slightly edited here. Recently a small group of technology leaders from across government gathered for an informal event to discuss the role that we play in developing user-centric services and their impact on wider society. It was one of a series of events we’re hosting as we refresh the cross-government Technology Leaders network, and experiment with different types of events to strengthen the community. ...

In February it will be six years since a small group of us gathered in a scruffy room in Lambeth to work on what we called alpha.gov.uk. Matt had introduced me to Tom Loosemore who, over coffee at the Book Club, had persuaded me to put the company and products James and I were developing on hold and take a leap into government. Over three months, the various forces that had been pushing for a new approach to digital government began to coalesce into what we now call GDS, and a public prototype of how government could be presented online. I was the first developer in and had the privilege of laying the groundwork for much of what was to come. ...