Lots to digest in this summary of evidence on the effects on children of increased home computer availability. Two key points:
- Mathematics and reading test scores drop a little with the growing use of home computers
- Introduction of broadband internet widens racial and socioeconomic development gaps
As the study says, the skills highlighted in reading and mathematics tests may not be as valuable in the workplace as others learned with home computing.
Big question: how to track whether this effect is present as we roll out computing and the internet to all (which I am still fully in favour of, by the way). We must avoid digital engagement that leads to societal exclusion or leads to digital inclusion that is slightly damaging for the included.
Some similar conclusions to ours in the CTPR report released in May.
- Processes need radical reworking, not extending
- Culture change is critical
Lovely reporting by El Reg. Good news that Lane Fox is continuing to lead the good work being done in this area.
Give me less information and more data! Good call from the development aid community (here the World Bank) to get the data out there first and spend less time up front trying to second guess how people might use it and what questions they are going to ask.
Needs further digesting, but this looks like a slightly more solid approach than the PwC one from 2009.
Lots to digest in the new speech by Gordon Brown on the digital economy. Helen isn’t sure that there is much new there. Neither does Michael Cross. I remember one of the e-Envoy’s team telling me with delight that the last conservative government’s flagship digital project was called gov.direct. Plus ça change, etc.
Not much good to say about this “interactive” history of the Treasury. The initial diagonal view is designed to make the information difficult to read, and the sizing of balls is clearly pointless. There is some interesting information in there, but I don’t think it is well presented and may even obfuscate versus a well organised html site. I have a feeling someone demoed it really well to some relatively non-tech savvy people.
Checklists in surgery should be mandated given the extraordinary error improvements they bring. The interesting question is where else checklist thinking can be used.
Will Perrin asked for some thoughts on what data councils should release. He then summarised the results in a useful fashion, very rapidly. Wibbi government allowed its civil servants to do the same thing?
Lots to digest in the Smarter Government report. Headlines: another £12bn in savings over the £26bn from Gershon and £35bn from OEP. In all, that’s approaching 10% of government spend. [NB Steph rightly counsels caution on the numbers.]
Good to see that they have published a broad set of back office benchmarking data allied to the information that we worked hard on collecting during the Whitehall shared services forum days.
Here’s Kable’s take on the publication.
The Institute for Government calls for greater central coordination of government IT. John Suffolk will be delighted.