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Government Digital Service Design Principles

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Re: Government Digital Service Design Principles

#61

Post by mpyne »

Nursie wrote: post #54
hnriot wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just sounds like a paranoid rant. If you have a problem with it, either don't visit the site or block the analytics. The reason they are using it is pretty obvious, like everyone else that builds digital services, they want to look at how it gets used. It is a non issue, that's not pretending, it's just putting on a rational hat and taking off the silly rhetoric of paranoia. Personally, as someone who left the U…

>> It is a non issue, that's not pretending, it's just putting on a rational hat and taking off the silly rhetoric of paranoia. I'm glad you're happy to publish all the details of your interactions with government services to an advertising company in another country with far less in the way of data protection law. I'm not.

So you're back to "Block the Analytics" and everyone is happy!

Or are you saying instead that you should impose your own personal choice on everyone else?

Re: Government Digital Service Design Principles

#62

Post by snowwrestler »

piqufoh wrote: post #26

Great idea, lets hope it catches on. Unfortunately it seems like parts have been translated into 'trendy' - for example > Government should only do what only government can do. uh, what?

What is "trendy" about that? I don't see a single buzzword and the meaning is very clear to me.

Re: Government Digital Service Design Principles

#63

Post by chestnut-tree »

Nursie wrote: post #28

If anyone from gov.uk is reading this, do you fancy answering the question I posed when the site was launched but never received an adequate answer to? Why does gov.uk, a site all about allowing the British public to interact with the British government, use google analytics? You are shipping all the data about all my interactions with my government off to a third party in another country. Another country that we kno…

"Why does gov.uk, a site all about allowing the British public to interact with the British government, use google analytics?"

I'd like an answer to this too from the .gov.uk team.

Ironically enough, their service design manual (which is excelllent and a fantastic resource) has a very good section on analytics tools [1]. Some quotes:

"When deciding which analytics tool is most appropriate for your service, you should consider the following...who owns the data (it should be your organisation!)

Does the solution meet the EU privacy directive and the European Commission’s Directive on Data Protection?

- where is collected data held?

- do data centres meet EU/British data security standards?

- how long is data held for?

- what will happen to the data on termination of the contract- can you export it?

- what access your vendors employees have to your data"

Did they evaluate Google Analytics based on these guidelines?

[1]https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/making-software/analytics-...

The full list of topics in the service design manual https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/browse

Re: Government Digital Service Design Principles

#64

Post by johneth »

itneverends wrote: post #39

This typifies the problem with the web. This website purports to be about data. But is it? Seems like lots of rambling about presentation of data. A true open data initiative would start by providing an ftp link. People can argue all day about how to present data. That's not about data. That's about something else. First, just give us the data. Raw. In an open format (e.g. plain text). From there it can be massaged i…

Here's some raw data: http://www.data.gov.uk/

They're working on releasing more, plus APIs, etc. It takes time.

Re: Government Digital Service Design Principles

#65

Post by chestnut-tree »

itneverends wrote: post #39

This typifies the problem with the web. This website purports to be about data. But is it? Seems like lots of rambling about presentation of data. A true open data initiative would start by providing an ftp link. People can argue all day about how to present data. That's not about data. That's about something else. First, just give us the data. Raw. In an open format (e.g. plain text). From there it can be massaged i…

"First, give us the data"

Here you go

http://data.gov.uk/

Re: Government Digital Service Design Principles

#66

Post by Nursie »

mpyne wrote: post #61
Nursie wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It is a non issue, that's not pretending, it's just putting on a rational hat and taking off the silly rhetoric of paranoia. I'm glad you're happy to publish all the details of your interactions with government services to an advertising company in another country with far less in the way of data protection law. I'm not.

So you're back to "Block the Analytics" and everyone is happy! Or are you saying instead that you should impose your own personal choice on everyone else?

I'm saying I'd like to know what sort of privacy analysis was done here, whether it's in compliance with EU and UK privacy and data laws, and whether it's a good idea at all.

Just because I know how to block analytics doesn't mean everyone else has a clue they even exist, nor that we should allow our government to export data about us in this way.

Re: Government Digital Service Design Principles

#67

Post by [deleted] »

piqufoh wrote: post #41
anu_gupta wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had continued to read the rest of that paragraph, you would have seen this: > If someone else is doing it — link to it. If we can provide resources (like APIs) that will help other people build things — do that. We should concentrate on the irreducible core.

I had continued reading it, and I maintain that single sentences must make (at least logical) sense by themselves. This is marketing jargon trash, and should not be encouraged in a web standards document!

[deleted]

Re: Government Digital Service Design Principles

#68

Post by lifeisstillgood »

Nursie wrote: post #48
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should one part of the UK government be informed about your interactions with another part? We have no framework for digital privacy, and until we see an emergent consensus there will not be one. Here, on this site, we have informed, reasonable people disagree on fundamental definitions of online privacy. I am unsure where to begin.

Right, so because we haven't got a full and complete legal framework and associated consensus driven moral framework in this area, we should just relax and give up on the whole idea? We already have data protection frameworks in the UK and at the EU level. I would like to see them adhered to in spirit, and I would also like to know that someone involved in the gov.uk has at least given this a moment's thought.

Clearly not give up. But we should have at least a clear idea of where we want the debate to go to. You say you want the DPA adhered to in spirit - great. It is adhered to in the letter of the law, and there are many interpretations of the spirit of that law.

My view is that the spirit of the law needs to be codified for a new world, and it is healthier to have that clear (and so open for debate) than to say someone is violating my idea of what the law should be.,

My starter for 10:

* Privacy is merely a politeness, and does not actually "exist". The expectations of privacy are the expectation for data to not be exploited without our consent.

* All digital communications and associated metadata are made in a public domain, and should have very limited expectations of privacy.

* If digital communication is encrypted, or marked as anonymous, then it should be legally viewed as having an expectatin of privacy and similar penalties applied for interfering with that as with post.

* Any monitoring of digital activity that can be linked to an individual human must be publically acknowledged by the monitoring organisation and the data released / published unless the individual has given consent for identifying data to be stored and processed to that organisation.

Its a thought in progress.

Re: Government Digital Service Design Principles

#69

Post by lifeisstillgood »

chestnut-tree wrote: post #63
Nursie wrote: post #28

If anyone from gov.uk is reading this, do you fancy answering the question I posed when the site was launched but never received an adequate answer to? Why does gov.uk, a site all about allowing the British public to interact with the British government, use google analytics? You are shipping all the data about all my interactions with my government off to a third party in another country. Another country that we kno…

"Why does gov.uk, a site all about allowing the British public to interact with the British government, use google analytics?" I'd like an answer to this too from the .gov.uk team. Ironically enough, their service design manual (which is excelllent and a fantastic resource) has a very good section on analytics tools [1]. Some quotes: "When deciding which analytics tool is most appropriate for your service, you should…

To be quite honest, a month ago any of use would have said yes to all those for google analytics

Re: Government Digital Service Design Principles

#70

Post by lifeisstillgood »

Nursie wrote: post #50
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot upvote you as much as I want. Yes, yes, yes. The only time we should consider these attitudes is when real keep it from everyone security matters (you know MI5 style security, not pentest security) And frankly my view on that is now: want to keep a secret? Keep it away from computers.

What if I don't want everyone in the world to know everything about what I do with a computer? They're more and more part of everyone's life and not everyone is of the mindset that it doesn't matter if corporations and governments get to look at every little detail of their online interaction. Car tax, criminal law, the weekly shop at tesco.com ... all going to the profilers. I know this is happening. I know how to s…

yes, I know - but there is a difference between privacy and secrecy.

Privacy is the things anyone can work out by looking at me, secrecy is the stuff I actively hide.

The cost of breaching privacy on mass scale has dropped simply because now everyone publishes everything about themselves.

Breaching secrecy is still a manual intensive effort as it eve has been.

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