It is nice to know that debates and questions in the House of Lords have an impact in the outside world.  In June 2005, I asked the following question in the House of Lords:

“Whether the time spent preparing the e-Government Unit’s document, Tomatoes are not the only fruit: a rough guide to taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies and the like, represents value for money.”

This was not, of course, entirely serious, although it did seem to me to be a particularly jargon-led approach to promoting e-government and the wrong approach to making e-government easy and accessible.

I haven’t thought about the matter since then, so I supposed I should be flattered/embarrassed to discover it appearing yesterday in a blog hosted by the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama.  The blog has the catchy title: “Metalogues from the Delta” (I wish I’d thought of that one first) and is subtitled “A Bama SLIS student’s weblog on all things metadata”.

The blog’s first paragraph is a classic:

“While reading Heather Hedden’s “Better Living Through Taxonomies,” I couldn’t help but be reminded of a brief article on taxonomy that circulated about Dr. MacCall’s LS 500 class during my first semester in the MLIS program. Really, how could anyone forget a title like Tomatoes are not the only fruit: a rough guide to taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies and the like?”

And the blog then refers to another earlier blog entitled 

025.431: The Dewey blog

Everything you always wanted to know about the Dewey Decimal Classification® system but were afraid to ask …

Clearly, there is a big academic market out there for Lords debates.

For those who want the original exchange here it is:

e-Government Unit

11.22 am

Lord Harris of Haringey asked Her Majesty’s Government:

Whether the time spent preparing the e-Government Unit’s document, Tomatoes are not the only fruit: a rough guide to taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies and the like, represents value for money.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, yes, the document was published in 2002 by the Office of the e-Envoy, at the request of technical users in government who were new to the subject. It was produced in-house at an estimated cost of less than £100.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that information. I ask him to congratulate the civil servants concerned on the diligence and speed with which they must have produced 12,000 words and four charts on the subject of Tomatoes are not the only fruit, containing such gems of information as:

“How long has it been for many of us since the primary meaning of the word ‘mouse’ has been ‘a small furry mammal that frightens elephants?’”,

 or the information that carrots can be either salad or root vegetables. That will no doubt come in very helpful in promoting e-government.

Can we also congratulate the authors of the Guide to Meta-Tagging with the Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary, which gives another eight pages of valuable advice and information? It includes the information that the phrase “common agricultural policy” may appear under the phrase “European Union” or under “Farming” but will mean the same under both.

Given the diligence of the civil servants in the unit, can the Minister assure the House that the same energy and effectiveness is being applied to delivering information security throughout the public sector? Are such arrangements susceptible, or likely to be susceptible, to external challenge?

Lord Bassam of Brighton:

My Lords, I shall of course pass on my noble friend’s congratulations. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that civil servants are, as we speak, listening carefully to his kind congratulations and warm words.

As to my noble friend’s second point, there is an important issue at root here—I said that with a straight face. The Government are paying careful attention to those information security issues. The document, although it has attracted a certain levity, is, I am sure, most useful to those who work in government IT services.

Earl Ferrers: My Lords, can the Minister not pass on congratulations to the civil servants on producing a document that is completely incomprehensible to a normal person and really does not make any sense at all? Why cannot they learn to write English?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, having looked at the document, which has a modest number of words, I disagree with the noble Earl. I believe that IT users in the business will probably find it very helpful and useful. Certainly, when I read it, I began to understand notions relating to taxonomies, thesauri and ontologies.

Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, although the use of what the Civil Service calls “controlled vocabulary” may operate as a disincentive to get online  
to the Government, can the Government say whether there has been a significant improvement in access to e-government over the past two years? It was made clear in June 2003 that only one-tenth of the population was using the online e-government services, as compared with 50 per cent of the population in Canada, with its single portal.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, there have been improvements, and I am sure that the e-Government Unit is aware of its role and responsibility in ensuring that those improvements continue. There is an increasing number of visits to government websites and increased participation—as I understand—in www.govtalk.gov.uk. So I believe that people are learning their way around the system.

Lord St John of Bletso: My Lords, would the Minister comment on how successful the OGC has been in implementing Sir Peter Gershon’s e-government efficiency review?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I can only at large and in general say that I believe that there have been improvements. The work of Sir Peter Gershon has been widely welcomed throughout government, and our IT record is one of continued improvement and success.

Viscount Eccles: My Lords, is the Minister aware that if he were unfortunate enough to have cancer of the bladder, medical advice would be that he should eat no more tomatoes? Is that information on the website?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, not that I am aware, no.

Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, I really wonder whether the noble Lord is aware of the extent to which he has attracted to himself this morning the wholehearted sympathy of the House at the appalling ordeal that he has had to go through in not giving a single answer to a question and really fluffing what he has said beyond the limits of comprehension.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, the noble Lord always makes generous remarks across the House, and I suppose that I have to be the beneficiary of those remarks on some occasions.

Fanatical followers of this blog (and you both know who you are) will be aware that – as is my habit – I posted a short tongue-in-cheek piece from the Metropolitan Police Authority meeting at 11.06 on Thursday 25th February.

This poked gentle fun at the man I call the DCiC (Dog-Catcher-in-Chief), Kit Malthouse, and his sensitivity about the nit-picking from the Green’s Jenny Jones at his attendance record.  I referred to his boast that he had attended 46 meetings since the last session of the MPA and this Stakhanovite work-rate was even more impressive given that he had been on holiday for a week of that time.  I also mentioned his nickname: “HoT” – a reference to his Hand on Tiller fixation.

Sometimes I think my sense of humour is rather esoteric and unlikely to be shared by anyone else, so it was gratifying to learn that some three hours later at 2.02 Ross Lydall posted his own thoughts on the same subject on the Evening Standard web-site.  He even has his own nickname for Kit – he calls him “The Tillerman” and he linked to the same article as I did to illustrate the nitpicking.

My cup runneth over – I am not alone.

We clearly are thinking the same.

Ross Lydall, under the headline

Met chairman Kit Malthouse: Tea for the ‘Tillerman’ at so many meetings

said:

“Kit Malthouse began his first meeting as chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority by revealing he had attended or chaired 46 meetings since the MPA last met (on January 28). What’s more, he had squeezed in a week’s holiday to boot.

Why this inconsequential start to proceedings? Because the Greens made quite a fusson the eve of his confirmation hearing as MPA chair (he succeeds the fleeing Boris, who has obviously realised what hard work it is) by revealing that Kit had failed to ever attend all three key MPA sub-committees of which he is a member in the 18 months since the Tory takeover of City Hall.”

And I said (just three hours earlier):

“The Metropolitan Police Authority is in session and the DCiC*, Deputy Mayor Kit “HoT”** Malthouse AM is in the Chair.

And the DCiC was showing his sensitive side.  He has clearly been hurt by the criticism that he is too busy to fulfil the role of MPA Chair and the nit-picking about his attendance record at MPA Committee meetings.  So the item on the agenda for his oral report consisted merely of him telling the Authority that he had had 46 meetings in the last month – and as he was away or one of the weeks concerned that works out as a productivity rate of around 3 per working day.

He promises to keep us informed of his work rate at future meetings, but that will not satisfy Jenny Jones AM.  She wants an indicator measuring the “quality” of the meetings.  No doubt those meeting HoT in future will be asked to fill in a form afterwards asking “how was it for them?”

However, HoT is clearly alive to this danger: he assured the Authority that he prefers what he calls “action” to meetings.”

Now isn’t that nice ….

I should declare an interest:  “Twelfth Night” is one of my favourite Shakespeare plays – mainly because it is the play I know best, having studied it for my GCE O-level (what would now be GCSE) in English Literature (I got a Grade 2, since you ask)  at the same time as my English teacher directed it as the school play. As a result, I approach every production I see with a very critical eye. And I am pleased to say that the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production, currently at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London, very much met with my approval (I am sure this will be an enormous relief for the RSC).

The production gave a proper weight to the different characters and the quality of the acting meant that even the more minor parts had a vitality and wholeness that is often missing.  Thus, Fabian, played by Tony Jayawardena, seemed to have a real role in the action with his own separate motivations, rather than being a makeweight character created when Shakespeare realised that he couldn’t have Feste appearing so frequently at both Orsino’s Court and in Olivia’s household without having him absent some of the time (thereby requiring an additional character for a number of the scenes).  And Feste, played by Miltos Yerolemou (adding an additional frisson when Sebastian calls him a “foolish Greek”), himself was excellent, capturing the viciousness implicit in some of the clowning and the fool’s own insecurity.  Pamela Nomvete’s Maria was also fine with a clear hint at the end that she ultimately rejects Sir Toby (Richard McCabe).

The main set-piece scenes were well handled.  In particular, the second embassy scene where Olivia’s desire for Viola/Cesario (Nancy Carroll) was marvellously conjured up by Alexandra Gilbreath and the letter scene where Richard Wilson’s timing as Malvolio and the reactions from the box tree were impeccable.  (I was relieved there was no “I don’t believe it” moment to placate the many Richard Wilson groupies of a certain age in the audience, although had there been it would have no doubt completely baffled the equal number of Americans).

Enjoy!

I have been reading “Torture Team: Uncovering War crimes in the Land of the Free” by Philippe Sands, Professor of Law at University College, London (he is also a practising barrister at the Matrix Chambers and an Arsenal fan – although neither of these should be held against him).

The book describes in detail – on occasions meeting by meeting and memo by memo – how the use of “aggressive interrogation techniques” came to be authorised against detainees at Guantanamo Bay.  This overturned existing US policy dating back at least as far as 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln issued the instruction that “military necessity does not admit of cruelty … nor of torture to extract confessions”.  Along the way, it was asserted that the Geneva Convention does not apply to those detained as part of the so-called “war on terror”.

The specific techniques included “water-boarding”, deprivation of sleep, maintenance of stress positions for long periods (the then US Secretary for Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, entered a caveat on the memo approving this, saying that he thought the restriction on standing for more than four hours was unnecessary as he personally often stood for much longer than that during the course of a day), humiliation, nudity in front of female soldiers, and exposure to extremes of room temperature.

In at least one instance, these techniques were repeated daily for more than seven weeks with a detainee who had already been kept isolated for many months.  It is apparent that no new information of any substance was obtained from this individual as a result of this “aggressive interrogation”.  (This echoes the remarks made to me by a former senior official of the Secret Intelligence Service: “Not only is torture illegal and morally wrong, it doesn’t work anyway”.)  The Bush administration eventually charged the individual with a list of terrorist offences including murder, only to withdraw the charges a few months later, admitting that the way he had been treated “met the legal definition of torture”.

Indeed, that admission of torture is significant.  Eventually, the Bush administration was constrained by proper legal process.  In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo detainees were subject to Common Article Three of the Geneva Convention and had to be treated humanely.  And by then the various documents authorising “aggressive interrogation” had been revoked.

However, the process by which those documents had originally been produced is fascinating.  Legal advice was obtained, so that those acting on the authorisation could be assured that “aggressive interrogation” was lawful.  However, as Sands points out this advice was not authoritative and bypassed the proper channels (in particular, those lawyers within the military who would have challenged what was being suggested).

Sands draws a distinction between lawyers offering advice and those providing advocacy for a point of view.  The former must present the law clearly and indicate if their advice would be commonly accepted or is likely to be accepted by the Courts.  The arguments used as part of the advocacy of the latter is not the same as advice.

Sands concludes that the lawyers involved in the decisions to authorise “aggressive interrogation” are just as culpable as those who actually made the decisions.

Whether or not any of this leads to charges in the US or elsewhere for war crimes is one thing, but the lessons about advice are relevant to all politicians whatever the level of the decision being taken.

I remember as a local council leader often seeking advice on the legality of policies proposed.  While a legal opinion that supported the proposed action provided protection to those councillors making the decision, it was much more important to know whether the decision was sustainable (rather than arguable) if the matter was ever challenged in court.

Those who know me will be aware that I am one of the world’s most modest individuals, have absolutely no self-aggrandising tendencies and would never under any circumstances seek to blow my own trumpet ……

So it goes without saying that the only reason I would want to draw attention to the statement, referring to me, in the Guardian last week (in its “Metropolitan Lines” newsletter) is to correct one small inaccuracy.  What the Guardian said was:

“Blogosphere
There are now quite a few good blogger-politicians. Lord Toby Harris is one of the best.”

The error, 0f couse, is that I am not a “politician”, but – to use Al Gore’s phrase – a “recovering politician”.

I hope that’s clear.

I have probably spoken at more than fifty meetings of Tottenham Labour Party over the years.  However, until tonight, I had not done so for about a decade.

It was good to be back.  However, as I looked around the room at a pleasingly large number of familiar faces, I was worryingly conscious how little most of them seemed to have aged.  By contrast, I know I look and certainly feel all of ten years older.  What have I done wrong?

Technology Guardian reports that the London Assembly has agreed that the votes in the 2012 Mayoral and Assembly elections will as in the three previous GLA elections be counted electronically.

I have to admit that I am rather ambivalent about this.  There is something that brings home the reality of the electoral process with traditional manual counts: the ballot boxes being opened up and emptied in front of observers appointed by each of the candidates; the ballot papers being unfolded and counted to verify that the number of papers issued matches the number in the box; the separation of the papers into piles for each candidate; the piles being counted into batches of fifty; the batches for each candidate being placed together on trestle tables; the adjudication of disputed papers; the candidates and their agents being summoned by the Returning Officer; and finally the declaration of the result itself.  It looked and felt transparent.  The votes themselves were tangible and real.  The process was being scrutinised and checked: the result becoming clear as the bundles piled up and when it wasn’t clear the wait for the final tally (and possibly the request for a recount).

Electronic counts do not feel the same.

I remember my count in 2000 in a sports hall in Harrow.  The promise had been that the electronic count would be quicker – with results declared three or four hours after the polls closed.  I remember the count dragging on – and on – and on.  There was nothing to do.  The machines churned away, but you couldn’t see the ballot papers themselves, as they went through the machines face down.  By 2am, the heating had gone off.  By 3am the refreshments (only tea, coffee and biscuits anyway) had run out.  By 4am most people had gone home – leaving a small core of supporters around each candidate.  At around 6am the Returning Officer summoned the candidates and agents to say:

“When I press this button, we will find out who’s won.”

I had been confident throughout (although having by then been up for 24 hours I was virtually catatonic as well).  It wasn’t until much later that I discovered that my agent had notified Party headquarters eight hours earlier that, on the basis of the turnout and canvass returns, her assessment was that I had probably lost.  In the event, I was elected – but by a margin of less than 1% of the electorate.

It also turned out that the Brent and Harrow count had been the quickest of the fourteen GLA divisions.  The final results (and therefore the Mayoral result and the outcome of the top-up list) took another six hours: ten hours later than predicted and fully fourteen hours after the polling stations had closed.

Four years later, I instinctively knew that I had lost.  The count was held over until the Friday and I spent the morning packing up my office in City Hall.  Again the Brent and Harrow count took about eight hours (although inexplicably the machines in some of the other divisions seemed to run rather more quickly this time, so my result was not the first).  As before, there was nothing to do and nothing to see.  (The count – along with those for two other divisions – was held in Alexandra Palace, so at least there were refreshments this time.)  If anything, the process was even more anti-climatic than four years earlier.  No button was ceremonially pressed.  Instead, the Returning Officer simply appeared with a print-out in his hand – and this time the margin was less than 1% of the electorate the other way.

I wasn’t present at the 2008 count.  I gather this time the machines were programmed to produce running tallies.  While these were not publicly announced, the net effect was to remove whatever dramatic tension there might have been.  The turnout was higher, so the counts took even longer than in 2000 and 2004.  I think the Brent and Harrow count took about eleven hours and the final Mayoral result was not available until nearly midnight – 26 hours after the polling stations had closed and rather beyond the bedtime of the youngest children of the new Mayor who had been kept up to watch their father’s acceptance speech at City Hall.

Electronic counting is – as I have described – not any quicker than traditional manual counts, provided enough tellers are engaged.

In my view, electronic counting is less transparent.  Everyone has to take it on trust that the machines are scanning the ballot papers accurately – if the machines were programmed (or hacked into) to count every fortieth vote for candidate A for candidate B, it would not be apparent to those present and would be hard to detect.

I want to emphasise that I am not for one moment suggesting that this might ever be the case.  However, the point is that in an electronic count there would not be the army of people, like those who are involved in and take part in scrutinising a manual count, to ensure and be seen to ensure the electronic count’s transparency and accuracy.

Above all, some of the election drama is lost by electronic counting.  And that drama is itself – at least as far as I am concerned – an essential part of the democratic process.

A few years ago, the Guardian was famous for its typographical errors.  I was reminded of this when I ran into Anita Pollack, the former London MEP, at the Foreign Policy Centre fringe.

She has a book coming out: “Wreckers or Builders? – A History of Labour MEPs 1979-1999″.

I can never see her without remembering the Guardian error.  This was in the European Election results issue in (I think) 1989.  At a late stage, the editorial team had clearly decided that they should refer to the “turnout” rather than the “poll” in each euro-constituency.  They used the then cutting edge technology of “Find and Replace”.

The result was that one of London’s MEPs suddenly became – the hitherto unknown – Anita Turnoutack.

I was interested in Sean Fear’s analysis on Political Betting of how the London Borough elections will pan out next May.  His predictions (bear in mind he is a Tory activist) give the political map of London Government becoming:

• Conservative  16  (he calls Ealing, Kingston, Merton and Sutton as Tory in what will be close contests)
• Labour  8 (he calls Islington as a Labour gain from the LibDems)
• LibDems  1
• No Overall Control  6
• Too close to call  1 (Haringey – between Labour and the LibDems)

I’ve not done my own calculations yet.  However, his analysis looks reasonably plausible, although I would want more information from a number of places before taking a firm view.

In July 2005, I was asked by John McTiernan, then Political Secretary to the then Prime Minister, for my assessment of what would happen in May 2006 in the London elections.  I gave my view Borough by Borough (which subsequently turned out to be almost exactly correct).  This was dismissed as “much too pessimistic” and was told “what you are forgetting is that by next Spring the situation in Iraq will have really improved and we will have got the ID cards legislation through and that’s going to be seriously popular”.  I make no comment on the political judgement expressed ……

Dominic Grieve has published a Conservative Party policy paper that promises to “reverse the rise of the surveillance state.”  Much of it is inevitably about ID Cards, DNA samples and the like.

There is also the usual stuff about repealing the Human Rights Act.  This, of course, is the Act that has given the citizen all sorts of legally-enshrined rights to protect him or herself against the power of the State – notably that any action by the Government which impacts adversely on an individual has to pass a proportionality test in relation to the supposed benefits that are intended to flow from it.  This can be tested in the Courts – as successive Home Secretaries have discovered to their cost in respect of Control Orders etc.  So why the repeal of the Human Rights Act is going to protect the public is not clear.

And then there is the strange (if you are Tory who normally fulminates against such politically-correct notions) proposal that a Privacy Impact Assessment must be prepared for new laws and regulations.  This is no doubt modelled on the requirement for Equality Impact Assessments – a requirement that as far as I am aware has not received universal approval from most Conservatives.

However, tucked away in the paper are a number of proposals on improving information security that I have to acknowledge are eminently sensible.  I have to acknowledge it because they are things for which I have been calling for years.

So I welcome proposals to strengthen the role of the Information Commissioner.  Not only have I been saying this for the last six years or so, but it also formed part of the report of the House of Lords Select Committee (I happened to be a member of it) on Personal Internet Security published in August 2007.

Likewise, I welcome the proposal for industry-wide kitemarks on data security best practice – another recommendation of the Select Committee.

And the proposal that a Minister and a senior civil servant in each Government Department should be designated as having personal responsibility for data security in that Department is also welcome (and again has a familiar ring to it).

I have long argued that requiring individual Ministers to champion information security and senior Whitehall mandarins to certify that they are personally satisfied with the information assurance processes in place would concentrate their minds wonderfully and lead to a real improvement in security.  (In a similar way, I am introducing – through the Committee I chair on the Metropolitan Police Authority, a system whereby senior officers sign off the health and safety arrangements in their commands.)

Dominic Grieve’s paper sets out an eleven-point plan.  I am happy to say that I can give three of the points my whole-hearted support.  It  would be churlish of me not to do so.  They were my ideas first.  (I’d accuse the Tories of pinching them from me, but I suspect it would be fairer – although why I should be fair, I don’t know – to accuse them of pinching them from the same person I did, if I could remember who it was.)

I do, however, have one concern about their/my proposal on Ministerial responsibility.  The difficulty is that most Ministers stay in particular jobs for too short a time for that responsibility really to mean anything.  Most Ministers are reshuffled every year – often far too short a time for them to make a real difference to anything.  Perhaps the answer would be for legislation saying that once appointed Ministers would have to stay in the same job for at least three years (unless sacked, in which case they would be banned from taking another Ministerial position until the original three years was over).  That would be good for the quality of administration in general.  I offer this to the Conservatives (or indeed anyone else) free, gratis and for nothing ….