The Cheshire Cat State

Yup, I've been thinking again....

It's been thirty five years since Michael Aldrich demonstrated the first online shopping experience and gave birth to eCommerce and channel shift in one fell swoop. Since then the shift to digital channels, first for B2B ordering, then B2C shopping and finally to G2C services has gathered pace. This shift is one of the largest areas of discretionary spend for global public sector clients. It is of interest to citizens, governments and IT providers because it’s pretty obvious that this move to a digital default model for the delivery of public services to citizens will deliver vast benefits to both providers and consumers of those services. From more efficient processing to quicker delivery times, the channel shift to digital will transform the way citizens and public service bodies interact and free up resources to deal with new priorities but that shift doesn’t come without risk.

When a printer is a gun

Scaramanga's career in hairdressing was short lived

You remember the scene in “man with the golden gun”? Christopher Lee, who plays the assassin, Scaramanga, is having a terse conversation with his corporate backer and whilst he talks he plays with his lighter, pen and cigarette case. The conversation draws to a close and Scaramanga, who has assembled his golden toys into a gun, resigns from corporate service in a brutally abrupt manner. A work of fiction and one with no small degree of panache perhaps, but a not quite a useful insight into the dangers of emergent technology. 

Clever investment, cool stuff and why bigger isn't better

I use this when I want to get out of doing the dishes.

There are times when one despairs of sensible investment in the UK. The talk of throwing over £40 billion into HS2 and the ongoing debate as to the best location for airport expansion in South East England can easily lead one to think that all politicians are obsessed with big dumb investments and value posturing in front of vast steel and concrete white elephants above prosperity and opportunity for all. Then you read about some under reported but very clever investments HMG has made in UK high tech industries. Like the £36m various bodies like the office of the Mayor of London and SE development agencies put into Inmarsat ( read more here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23380147 ) or the £60m HMG Treasury put into the SABRE engine ( more here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23332592 ) which are two or three orders of magnitude smaller than the grand gestures proposed for UK transport infrastructure, but have the potential to deliver vast benefits for the UK in terms of wealth, opportunity and advancement.

Records management, risk and cricket.

WG Grace makes everything relevant so he does.

W G Grace once said some very fine words about doing the obvious thing no matter what the circumstances are, in essence bat first, no matter what, if you can. 

‘When you win the toss – bat. If you are in doubt, think about it, then bat. If you have very big doubts, consult a colleague – then bat.’ W G Grace.

Under Pressure

Whoops....

As worthy engineering projects go, stabilising a lethal natural booby trap and providing power to an under-developed part of the world rank pretty highly. Solving lethal problems and providing infrastructure to people are high in the civil engineers motive drivers, well that and “oh waay cool” and “blow it up again” of course and as lethal problems go, this one is a corker.

The art of risk management, Cthulhu and aeon long death

The secret thoughts of every SharePoint architect

"The nethermost caverns are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific.”– The Festival – H.P. Lovecraft

It’s reported today in the Washington Post and the ever fascinating IO9.com that the latest attempt to explore Lake Vostok is a mere 40ft or so from breaching the ice cap which has sealed the lake off from the rest of the world for the last twenty million years, you can read about it here exploration of lake Vostok and here Russian scientists prepare to enter sub glacial lake. Lake Vostok is the largest Antarctic sub glacial lake, it’s the size of Kuwait and it’s been buried under four kilometres of ice for between fifteen and twenty mega-years. This is a pristine and potentially utterly alien environment. The ice cover keeps it dark yet heavily oxygenated and the pressure and insulating qualities of the sheer volume of ice above it keep it liquid even though the average temperature of the water is below freezing point.

Peace and quiet

Is your data really as complete as you think it is?

Today is one of those quieter days, which generates rather mixed feelings, on one hand I can get on with a tonne of stuff and finish off this nightmarish proposal but on the other hand the reason the place is quieter is that my daughter has gone back home to her mother’s and the place feels a little too quiet.