Backup, don't mash up
Was humoured by the headline at BBC online “Government launches data mash-up” and the associated story: “The UK government has launched a competition to find innovative ways of using the masses of data it collects”.
They are inviting applicants to give the government some free consultancy on how it can best use the masses of data that it hasn’t yet left on a train or lost down the back of the sofa along with 12p and a dead spider. Actually, it’s not quite free, as Golden Gordon is offering £20,000 via the Power of Information Taskforce for the best ideas (another great use of my tax…)
How about, just for instance, a joined up work and pensions database, rather than two separate, monolithic applications? A single citizen database, instead of one or more per department? A single criminal database so that sex offenders and kiddie diddlers can be registered in one system?
Scrap all these redundant databases and two problems are solved: firstly, it is less information for civil servants to leave on public transport; and secondly, turning off all those databases and their associated CPUs and disk drives will save a fortune in electricity bills, thus cutting carbons and reducing the cost of government. And as an added bonus, it might just make government more effective too. Now that’s got to be worth 20 large.
They are inviting applicants to give the government some free consultancy on how it can best use the masses of data that it hasn’t yet left on a train or lost down the back of the sofa along with 12p and a dead spider. Actually, it’s not quite free, as Golden Gordon is offering £20,000 via the Power of Information Taskforce for the best ideas (another great use of my tax…)
How about, just for instance, a joined up work and pensions database, rather than two separate, monolithic applications? A single citizen database, instead of one or more per department? A single criminal database so that sex offenders and kiddie diddlers can be registered in one system?
Scrap all these redundant databases and two problems are solved: firstly, it is less information for civil servants to leave on public transport; and secondly, turning off all those databases and their associated CPUs and disk drives will save a fortune in electricity bills, thus cutting carbons and reducing the cost of government. And as an added bonus, it might just make government more effective too. Now that’s got to be worth 20 large.
