Category: IT

Crisis helplines move online; why Bletchley Park couldn’t happen now

Guardian Voluntary Sector Network has published my piece on crisis helplines moving from telephone to online: the NSPCC’s ChildLine now handles half of its contacts online, the Samaritans receives 18% of contacts through text messages and emails and BB Group, which runs advice services for young people, is entirely digital.

The Samaritans, which has just turned 60 – see also this BBC News report, which covers its use of new channels – finds that those asking it for support through SMS or email are more likely to have suicidal feelings (almost half, compared to one in six of those calling). Elaine Chambers of ChildLine said the NSPCC helpline sees something similar, although it depends on the individual:

There is some evidence that the more high-risk things come to us online, because it can be easier to express yourself about the really difficult things in your life online. Continue reading “Crisis helplines move online; why Bletchley Park couldn’t happen now”

e-Borders: still over here, still a mess – article for The Register

Last week, The Register published my review of e-Borders, a government IT scheme that deserves more attention than it gets. Presumably politicians’ wish to sound tough on immigration stands in the way, but the UK’s system for tracking international journeys has big problems that it is hard to see anyone solving. Continue reading “e-Borders: still over here, still a mess – article for The Register”

An independent Scotland’s tough government IT choices for The Register

One year ahead of the referendum, The Register last week published my assessment of the choices an independent Scotland would face on government IT.

It’s a mixed picture. Some sections of the public sector, such as the NHS, education and the emergency service, are already run by Scotland on a devolved basis, and so is their IT. But the UK-wide ones that would need to be unscrambled are also the biggest: HM Revenue and Customs, Department for Work and Pensions and secret (leaving aside Edward Snowden’s cornucopia of stories) surveillance. Continue reading “An independent Scotland’s tough government IT choices for The Register”

Recycling print vs digital and paperlessness into rightpapering

Scene one: an office in the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead. Will Smart, the hospital trust’s director of information management and technology, considers whether the NHS should go paperless, the policy of health secretary Jeremy Hunt. His answer: “I think paper is just another device. I don’t think we will ever lose it.”

Scene two: a bar near Tower Bridge. A high-flying digital executive, freshly returned from a foreign trip advising one of his employer’s subsidiaries on optimal social media usage, is introduced to the handsome paperback version of my ID card book Card declined. “Ooh!” he says, lovingly flicking through its pages. (I don’t think Ben was just being polite.) Continue reading “Recycling print vs digital and paperlessness into rightpapering”

For The Register: is the government smart meters plan clever or dumb?

It’s great, unintentional timing to have an article about smart meters published in the middle of a heat wave. One of the justifications for putting smart meters in every home is that they manage demand, both by charging variable rates depending on time of day and also by turning down some appliances when demand is high. Doing this can dampen spikes in demand, stopping brownouts (a reduction in a local grid’s voltage) of the kind that have hit parts of the US during heatwaves.

The thing is, the main reason for US brownouts is the use of air conditioning. And as many people in Britain will be aware after the last fortnight, we don’t generally have air conditioning, at least not in homes (and although it has not felt like it during the last fortnight, we don’t really need it given our usual climate). This, I write in a piece on the subject for The Register published last Friday, is among the reasons why the UK government plan to put a smart meter in pretty much every home by 2020 may be flawed:

Firstly, many houses use gas for their big adjustable power needs, such as heating and cooking. Secondly, Britain’s clement climate keeps domestic power needs relatively low, whereas Norway (say) uses four times the electricity as Britain per person through heating, and Texas using five times due to air-conditioning. Continue reading “For The Register: is the government smart meters plan clever or dumb?”