hacking the government, the British way

[Ori Idan]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 12:21 PM, Oleg Goldshmidt <pub at goldshmidt.org> wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> We have elections on the horizon and a bunch of NGO members, from
> Hamakor down, up, and sideways, on this list. And we often see - and
> complained about - cluelessness in government IT, software, websites,
> etc.
>
> So, it looks like the UK government is trying to do something that
> sounds on the face of it, vaguely intelligent about IT projects, cf.
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/02/cabinet_office_open_principles/
>
> I am not trying to say this is going to be brilliant or workable or
> not prone to subversion by "Sir Humphreys"[*], but given how gov.il is
> always keen to look abroad to justify doing or not doing stuff, maybe
> someone should point it out to some politicians looking for votes in
> January?
>
> If ths generates any heated or prolonged discussions may I suggest
> conducting them on the appropriate NGO lists and forums? I am not a
> member of any, so it was easier for me to post here in the belief that
> it is on topic. How to best influence the politicians, however,
> probably isn't, unless someone hacks up a Linux-based AI to run the
> country.
>
> [*] Some of the younger list members may need, e.g.,
>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister to understand who "Sir
>     Humphrey" was. The rest of us may well be reminded that the
>     fictional Minister whose efforts to reform things were so often
>     thwarted by Sir Humphrey was called Jim Hacker.
>
> --
> Oleg Goldshmidt | pub at goldshmidt.org
>
>
The people behind gov.il think that .doc is an open standard since after
all it can be opened by every computer they know of.

-- 
Ori Idan
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