William Heath has another example that even when governments set out to do a Good Thing, it’s not necessarily worth it.
Europe’s governments, freaked out by how good and free Google is, have knee jerked and spent a pile of money launching an online Euro-library. “We’re engaged in a global competition for technological supremacy”, said French President Jacques Chirac about this. “In France, in Europe, it’s our power that’s at stake”. Let’s show them what an intergovernmental steering commitee can achieve, when backed up by a series of working goups.
Predictably enough this was no contest.
Well, Google print is unbelievable. I never asked for it, it cost me nothing, it works very fast and I’m delighted. Euro-lib didn’t find anything for me, just crashed my browser (Mozilla).
Euro-lib sounds a bit sleezy, doesn’t it? Anyway, William then picks on the Euro efforts to develop a search engine called Quaero widely seen as a potential competitor to Google. (!) Oh dear.
Nobody has ever heard of it (although Google turns up several Quaeros, of course). What next? EC-funded Euromaps? Euromail? Euro-Earth (perhaps just restricted to Europe, and called Euro-Euro)?
Would it be too Anglo-centric to ask: “Can I have my tax back now please?”
We hear you…
Note: William has started another Ideal Government project, this time about Europe, Ideal Government Europe. I meant to blog about it and others already beat me to it. In the sidebar blurb William asks:
Public sector computerisation will cost Europe €88bn in 2005. But did we ever say what we wanted? Are e-government projects designed for citizens? Do we use them? Will they make life easier and meet our needs? Should we trust them? Unless we ask, how can they give us what we want? Thinking and saying what we want is more fun than griping, and more constructive too.
The answer to his questions is a resounding NO from where I am standing and I am not holding my breath at William’s or anyone’s chance to affect anything to do with the EU, however, can’t blame the man for trying to voice his objections when he gets the opportunity to make them to the EU audience and add the bloggers voices to his own.
“Are e-government projects designed for citizens? Do we use them? Will they make life easier and meet our needs? ”
The answer is basically yes to all of these in Britian, anway. The UK took an early lead in the computerisation of public records, and it has been very successful.
Things like this are obviously useful :
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/
The e-gov initiative was started by John Major, and has so far been very successful. Not least because the gvt managed not to ‘outsource’ the job to some horrible IT conglomerate. Now, if only they get rid of Crown Copyright…
J, you’ve got to be kidding! Both URLs are links to projects that were set up by volunteers, not by government initiatives, which is what William is asking about and I criticising.
Adriana – He’s not kidding – he’s propagandising. In a short post, he used the word successful twice and useful once. This in around 50 words.
It’s a testament to the power of liberty that resources as useful as publicwhip, theyworkforyou and faxyourmp can be put together for next to no money. If the government had tried to do the same I’m sure they would have ended up spending millions and producing worse results.
Off-topic and deleted by admin.
Dear “Hey Guys”,
This isn’t really a very new story – I’d read about it on Spyblog a while ago.
Given the general security situation (this happened on 28 July) and the details given in the article I don’t think that it is necessarily wrong that this guy was detained. He was released and the police concerned appear to have treated him in a dignified way and apologised.
He should get all of his property back (including SIM card) and his DNA, fingerprints etc. should not be stored.
P.S. Women contribute to this blog and your suggestion that we respond “like men” hurtfully excludes them. Also, please don’t call me a “craven little wanker” it’s upsetting.
I am extremely hurt and insulted that you write “respond like men”! Not only am I not a man, but I find your phrase “Merrie Olde England” so sad I would laugh ’til I wept, except that isn’t manly. Oh, what to do!
“Merrie Olde England”! In which old cupboard do you people find your 400-year old phrases? Do you honestly think anyone in Britain today has any connection with this ancient sobriquet? I’m just a woman, and therefore not able to respond to your post, but would you mind my mentioning you’re a trite prat?
Also, it shocks me to conclude that by bruiting about the phrase “Merrie Olde England”, Hey Guys has excluded the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish, leading me to the unavoidable observation that he is not only sexist, but racist.
leading me to the unavoidable observation that he is not only sexist, but racist.
Can’t a guy be just a fool ?
Does he always have to be also “sexist” “racist” and other such fine things ?
Jacob: “Does he always have to be also “sexist” “racist” and other such fine things ?”
Sorry, non discrimination on the basis of your coulor creed gender and/or sexual orientation are mandatory in the modern UK (aka ZaNu Labour’s brave new world).
Somewhat OT, but speaking of Google Print.
Merrie Olde Englande seems a harmless irony for this miserable country.
You come across it occasionally in US mags.
I’d have thought the French had had enough of government-sponsored Interweb initiatives. If you want a stark example of what private enterprise can achieve compared to government-sponsored cleverness, the Internet vs. Minitel is a good example.
Minitel was with us a bit quicker, I suppose – I remember the idea of booking train tickets on-line from home in 1990 seeming impossibly exotic – and it didn’t have friendless teenagers in Dortmund and Seattle writing viruses for it, but apart from those considerations it’s not much of a contest. Although interestingly, even its primitive character display didn’t stop its main use being for, erm, rude purposes.
” Let’s show them what an intergovernmental steering commitee can achieve, when backed up by a series of working goups”.
I haven’t laughed so much in ages…
Has to be quote of the year, so far, for me.
Somewhat OT but here in NI the govt are selling off( and the winning company buys the leased buildings too!) all their buildings to a PFI initiative which will save us taxpayers money. So they tell us.
Jacob – Did you forget to take your irony pill?
Robert Alderson: He should get all of his property back (including SIM card) and his DNA, fingerprints etc. should not be stored.
Unfortunately, this is a little naive in today’s NuLabour Utopia. Under legislation passed by Blunkett, anyone arrested will have their DNA and fingerprints taken and stored regardless of whether they are eventually convicted or even charged.
Agent Smith,
I was using “should” in the sense of expressing what I think should happen. I agree that this is not likely to be what actually does happen.
Are you sure that being arrested (without being convicted) for ANY offence results in DNA and fingerprint evidence being retained? I thought that was only the case for terrorist offences.
I wonder what will happen to Blunkett now the Za-NuLab journalists are turning against him. His biographer Stephen Pollard has given a damning account of how he lied and claimed he didn’t say things that Pollard has from taped interviews. Pollard says that, because Blunkett is blind and couldn’t see the recorder’s little red light blinking to indicate that it was recording, he reminded Blunkett several times during each interview that the tape recorder was on.
He also lied to Times columnist and former fan Mary Ann Siegal, although again, she had his words on tape. He apparently also lied to The Telegraph’s Alice Thomson, who had taken his words down in shorthand. He has categorically denied saying things that he said in his own voice, on tape and in the shorthand notes of a reputable journalist. He even said that Thomson made up some of her quotes, which is beyond outrageous. Making up quotes is a sackable offence. But as always with this sleaze bag, it doesn’t matter who he wastes, as long as David manipulates his way into the driver’s seat. He wrecked the life of that kid Kimberly Quinn had and is demanding visitation rights, although she and her husband just want to be a family. He doesn’t give a crap about the kid or anyone else; he just wants to chalk up another mean spirited little victory.
How absolutely Za-NuLab control freakery. Obsessed with power and absolutely no substance behind the facade.
Robert Alderson asks
Are you sure that being arrested (without being convicted) for ANY offence results in DNA and fingerprint evidence being retained? I thought that was only the case for terrorist offences.
This is the case for all police forces (or ‘services’, as they now prefer to be called) in England and Wales.
Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 – Section 82.
Upheld by the Law Lords last year.
Whoa. Lively comment space 🙂 Back to the original story – – library systems expert Richard Wallis has now looked at EuroLib and explains what’s behind it, and what we really wanted. The hyped and politically wishful comparison to Google Print was invalid, he explains: see
http://www.idealgovernment.com/europe/index.php/euroblog/comments/606/