Warehouse Deals by Amazon NOT

Copy of an email sent today to www.which.co.uk

note the words: by Amazon (with logo)

I am writing to suggest that you investigate the legitimacy of a third-party seller on Amazon.co.uk.

I have always assumed that the Amazon Warehouse Deals section of the Amazon.co.uk is a part of Amazon itself because  they trade off the Amazon name, use Amazon logo, paperwork, packaging and use the same returns address as Amazon.

I tried to order a new TV today but when I tried to go to checkout, it said they couldn't deliver to my registered home address.  There was no plausible explanation for this as far as I could tell and there was no useful help available on the site so I called Amazon to try and get it sorted out.

Doesn't look like a 3rd party does it!

The first shock was that I was told that Amazon Warehouse Deals is a third-party seller and isn't part of Amazon.co.uk.  Putting that aside for a second, I continued with the enquiry regarding the delivery address.  We did some tests including adding a 'regular' Amazon product through to order which proved my registered address was working (this order was subsequently canceled). I also tried adding another Amazon Warehouse Deals item (A Panasonic TZ7 camera) which also went through to order without a problem.  I also tried a similar Panasonic 42" Plasma TV to see if it was anything to do with the size or weight of the delivery but that went through to checkout as well.

Amazon said they would raise an internal inquiry to work out what the problem was because all Warehouse Deal items are shipped from the Amazon warehouse and therefore are automatically valid to be dispatched to any UK address.  This also revealed that the 'Third Party' seller is shipping items stored at the Amazon main warehouse!

I asked for Amazon Warehouse Deals' phone number and email address but neither of these were available to the calltaker.  I found this incredible considering all third party seller must surely have to register with Amazon - at least their basic detail like phone, emails and trading address.

I was told to wait 24 hours and try again, after which time, Amazon would have resolved the matter.  I was annoyed because that could mean someone else making an order on the TV.

So, my original issue is - how can Amazon allow a third party seller to act as though they are Amazon themselves by using their logo, paperwork, packaging, returns address and dispatch from the same warehouse as Amazon?  I think it is reasonable to assume that Amazon Warehouse Deals is a returns arm of Amazon which processes returned goods and makes then available at a discounted price - just like it says on the Amazon website:

'Warehouse Deals by Amazon' but it is a third party seller? Deception rather than honest sales practice.

Update - 4:47pm

Amazon sent me an email - To Mr Jones . . .  My feedback  rant reply below.
Email to Mr. Jones.  I am Mr. White! Otherwise, the call was dealt with as well as can be expected BUT

1. I think it is a deception that Warehouse Deals 'by Amazon' complete with the Amazon logo, paperwork, packaging and returns address can be a third party seller. I and many other 1000's of people will think Warehouse Deals is a part of Amazon and therefore feel confident in buying from them.  I don't like buying from third party sellers on Amazon and always stick to Amazon only.

2. I find it incredible that Amazon have no basic contact details for 'Warehouse Deals by Amazon'- even an email address or phone number. I even found out as part of the phone conversation that they dispatch all their items direct from Amazon's 'actual' warehouse.  This is hardly third party is it!

Also I would like to comment on the feedback form which insists on an order number before it will submit.  This is fine if you have an order number but no good if the original issue is because you couldn't order what you wanted!!!!!

Suggest you make this field optional so I don't have to bung in an old order number just to get it to send.

Updated 6:24pm

I just found this on the Warehouse Deals by Amazon web page:

About Seller
Warehouse Deals is a trading name of Amazon EU Sarl, and is part of the Amazon.com Group. We offer open box, customer returned and warehouse damaged merchandise at reduced prices with the benefits of Amazon.co.uk fulfillment and customer service.

Please note that, due to the nature of Warehouse Deals' items, we cannot replace your item, nor can you return items for defects which were disclosed in the description of the item in Warehouse Deals' Marketplace listing.

Warehouse Deals will deliver only to UK mainland addresses.

Update 7:16pm

I have just emailed Warehouse Deals by Amazon to inform them about my inquiry with Amazon:

I wanted to inform you that I have raised the following issue with Amazon regarding a problem I am having trying to buy an item from Warehouse Deals from Amazon.

I cannot complete purchase because the system will not accept my UK delivery address.  The item is a Panasonic 42" Plasma G10 TV priced most recently at £407.89.

I have also questioned why Amazon refer to you as a third party seller despite the fact that you use Amazon's logo, paperwork, packaging, returns address and dispatch from the same warehouse as Amazon?  You describe yourselves as follows: "Warehouse Deals is a trading name of Amazon EU Sarl, and is part of the Amazon.com Group". How can you be a third party seller and also part of the Amazon.com Group?

Finally, is there a way you can reserve this TV while this issue with the delivery address is sorted out.  Amazon has asked that I don't try again until September 1st, 2010.  I am concerned that this item may be sold to someone else by then.

Many thanks
David White

Aubioboo embedded

Just trying an embedded version of the latest Essex Police Audioboo:

Facebook Alien

I have spent the last month or so researching social media sites and I have set up many without an issue.  All except one.

Flickr, Blogger, WordPress, YouTube, Twitter, AudioBoo and many others are all fairly straightforward.  They are intuitive to set up and easy to understand but Facebook leaves me stone cold.

I have tried several times now to engage with Facebook but it is confusing, unintuitive and throws me at every turn. I now have three books which I hope with help me understand the basics.  The worrying thing is that those who regularly seem to use Facebook seem blissfully unaware of how it actually works.  They just seems to ignore all the buttons, links and tabs and just use the bit they are familiar with.  I all sounds a bit like the way people generally use Word and Excel.  Just get it to print a page of text or add up a column of numbers and ignore 98% of the functionality.

I would be happy to treat Facebook like this but with concerns about privacy and data protection, you cannot afford to ignorant of the many buttons, settings, links and tabs on offer.  It is a design and interface nightmare - surely it is time for someone to design something much better, without all those awful adverts and which can incorporate powerful features but still retain an elegant and simple design and interface.

Facebook then is a bit like SMS texts. Awkward and badly designed but both destined to become massively popular despite the flaws.  Once a monster is rolling, it is difficult to stop however scary it is!

BluRay - the saga continues

Having now borrowed 16 ex rental Blockbuster BluRay discs, I am now going through them, trying to see how many of them throw a fit in my BluRay player.

So far, We have played 2 discs and they both played 100% perfectly.  This compares to a series of 5 rentals from LoveFilm which have all been faulty.  If I get through all these Blockbuster discs without an issue I will leave LoveFilm and try somewhere else but I have a long way to go yet.  We'll see what happens.

While I talking about faulty goods, I had to send back my 'Pebble' mobile device charger this morning because the button wouldn't work after just one use.  Amazon were fantastic and it was sent back with a pre-paid label this morning with a new replacement upgraded to first class delivery in the post back to me.  What fantastic service is that!

Brilliant HTC

Here is the answer to an enquiry I made to HTC yesterday regarding a charging issue when using GoogleMaps Navigation.  I have to say a first class service.

David This is likely to be the 3rd party charger not allowing the device enough current to charge and make use of the application at the same time. The Navigation software uses more current as it uses more processor power to run. I would recommend replacing the in car charger with the Official HTC charger to see if this resolves the issue. Please also test the charge of the mains charger to see how long the device will hold charge for under normal operation to see if the battery is behaving ok. Here is a little HTC Tip too, Dial in the phones dialer as you were to make a call when connected or disconnected to the charge source *#*#4636#*#* to obtain the secret menu were you can see battery status and information. Please let me know if you are able to resolve this issue?

Good HTC tip in there - dial  *#*#4636#*#* to see lots of secret technical stuff!

Photo from the HTC.com website - I hope they don't mind me using it!
http://www.htc.com

GoogleMaps Navigation

This is a copy of an enquiry about the GoogleMaps Directions/SatNav application which I submitted to the HTC.com website today.

When I have used the HTC Desire as a SatNav using the Google Maps Navigation, I have had a power issue, details of which are described below.

The phone starts at full charge and is then plugged into the car cigar lighter socket and it starts charging (amber flashing light).  I then set Google Maps to navigate and started my journey.  At the end of the journey, I expected the phone to be fully charged but it showed less than half charge.

The following day I plugged the phone in for the return journey and it was at half charge.  At the end of this journey, the phone had lost so much battery charge that it immediately switched off.

I expected that all functions of the phone should be able to operate whilst on charge whether by mains or via car socket.  I can only deduce that the power consumed when GoogleMaps Navigate is on (i.e. screen, GPS and voice commands) is more than can be supplied by the charger.

My expectation was that even after a long journey using the SatNav functions of the HTC Desire, the phone should charged up fully at the end, ready to be used at the destination.

Can you comment on these issues and suggest a solution?  I am particularly keen to know if this phone has been tested on a typical car journey for power consumption and if the consumption exceeds the input charge.  I do not have an 'official' HTC car adaptor but I would be very happy to buy one if I can be convinced that the input charge would overcome this issue.

Perhaps there could be an update to the app which can be applied which causes it to consume less power and allows the phone to charge up?

I abandoned GoogleMaps navigation for the next journey and just left the phone to charge normally during the journey.  The car adapter fully charged the phone during the 3 hour journey from flat which at least proves the car adapter works.

Savoury stuffed marrow

Something for Natalie to do with her spare courgettes . . .

Ingredients
1 marrow (or large courgettes)
2oz butter
2oz plain flour
¼ pint milk
4oz cheddar cheese grated
1tblsp freshly chopped tarragon or thyme
2tblsp chopped parsley
Salt and ground black pepper
8oz cooked chicken diced
1oz white breadcrumbs

Method

1. Peel marrow, cut in half lengthwise and scoop out seeds.
2. Bring large pan water to the boil, add marrow and simmer for 4-5 minutes. Drain and arrange cavity side up in lightly oiled, ovenproof dish.
3. Preheat oven gas 5, 190C.
4. Melt butter in saucepan, stir in flour and cook for 1 minute. Gradually stir in the milk, bring to the boil and simmer until thick and smooth.
5. Remove from the heat and stir in most of the cheese, most of the herbs and the chicken. Season to taste and spoon into the marrow cavities.
6. Mix breadcrumbs and remaining herbs. Season and sprinkle over the marrow filling. Bake for 25 minutes until golden. For extra crunch, place under a hot grill for 1 minute before serving.

Serves 4

Tescos v Police Stations

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7957168/Twice-as-many-Tescos-open-247-as-police-stations.html

This prompted some twitter conversation this evening so I thought I'd blog a bit about it.

For a start, I didn't believe there were more Tescos open 24 hours, seven days per week than police stations in Essex so I did a bit of research of my own.  I even plotted the results in a Google Map:


View Tescos v Police: 24 hours servcies in Essex in a larger map


Red - 24/7 Police Stations
Blue - 'nearly' 24/7 Tescos
Purple - 24/7 Tesco (Brentwood)

The results were quite interesting. There are 15 '24 hour' Tescos in Essex but only one of these are genuinely open 24/7.  All the others are open 24/7 for 5 days of the week, normally Tuesday - Saturday with regular hours on Sundays and Mondays.

In contrast there are 11 police stations open 24/7 out of a total of 49 station which are open to the public.
I think Richard Edwards, the Telegraph Crime Correspondent may need to dig a bit deeper into the Tescos stats and check those '24/7' claims again.  If there is only 1 genuine 24/7 Tescos in Essex, it is likely that there are more like 50 - 75 nationwide, not 394 as reported.  Unfortunately, the storefinder on the Tescos website offers many options to filter stores but there is no 24/7 filter!

This leads on to another debate.  Can you really compare a public service paid for by the tax payer and a commercial business driven by profit?

How many people need to go shopping (and how often) compared to those needing to visit a police station?  We visit Sainsburys 3 or 4 times a week and spend several hours in there in total.  I don't think I have ever needed to visit a police station except for my job (and that doesn't count).  If every family in the UK had a need to spend several hours per week in a police station, there would be many more and they would probably be as big as your average Tescos or Sainsburys.

I have had a need to use an airport more often in the last 25 years than I have had need of a police station.  However, I think it is OK that there is only 1 airport in Essex and only three international airports in the region. I'm not demanding that there should be 15 airports in Essex so why should there need to be 15 24/7 police stations?

LoveFilm - HateFilm

I Hate LoveFilm.  No I don't really but we're not currently on friendly terms.

Not only have all the last 3 Blu-ray discs been faulty to the point of unwatchable, we now have an ordinary DVD which doesn't work either.  This one is the 1932 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde.  Tested in two different DVD players, it jumps and skips at exactly the same point and you have to skip to the next chapter to clear the fault. We also have the last Indiana Jones film at home on Blu-ray and I am almost dreading watching it for fear of wasting another 2 hours.

LoveFilm have been in touch via email and Twitter to stress that their rental discs are exactly the same as the retail ones and that they get regularly checked and cleaned.  They also ensure they give me back the credits for the damaged films but I still feel annoyed about wasting 2 hours to find out.

AudioBoo - more clips

AudioBoo official button

AudioBoo is a good tool to distribute audio clips and seems to work in a similar way to Twitter and YouTube.  I'm not sure if it will catch on as a mainstream social media outlet alongside the giants of Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube etc but it seems to be unique in the market place.  I have added some more clips and will now upload any new audio added the the Essex Police website.

The only problem is that out of 4 browsers, I still cannot upload a clip from work.  Being on IE6 doesn't help but Firefox, Safari and Opera all couldn't cope. Chrome is a no-no apparently because it has to be installed per user and it generally is too modern and forward thinking.  Firefox almost made it but failed at the last minute.  It decided Flash player wasn't up to it and threw some kind of error.

Would be interested to see if anyone else is considering using it.  It does offer comments which you cannot pre-moderate but it is supposed to send an email if anyone comments or if anyone follows you - similar to Twitter.  So far nobody is following and nobody has commented so I can't test to see if the emails are actually sent or not!

AudioBoo success

I have added 5 audio clips to audioboo.fm this evening.  This is in effect a trial for a suitable outlet for our audio clips alongside YouTube for our video clips.



You can even embed it into a web page!  You only have control over the width and height.  It needs to be fairly wide otherwise the title text bunches up a bit.  Not bad though.

Twitter stats

Police forces on Twitter - August 2010

This is a graph to show the forces who are using Twitter.  The force with the most tweets on the left and the forces currently not using twitter on the right.  Everyone else in the middle! Interesting to note is the range of tweets (red) compared with the followers (blue).  Also, it seems not many forces feel it is important to follow those people who are following them.

This map shows the forces (blue) who are currently using Twitter with those not yet involved in yellow.

It would be interesting to know if any of the 10 forces not yet on Twitter are planning their introduction or have already decided against it.

If I have this wrong, of if any forces join Twitter in the coming months, please comment and let me know.  In six months time, it will be interesting to see if there is a difference in the coverage on this map.

I'll aim to do a similar blog entry for forces on Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.

And finally, has anyone discovered AudioBoo yet?

http://audioboo.fm

This site is a perfect complement to the social media sites.  Audio can be uploaded in a similar way to Twitter and there are close links to Twitter, Facebook and podcasts with iTunes.

ukpolcamp, crowdsourcing and npwmg

I went onto Wikipedia to find out more about crowdsourcing after it was mentioned on Twitter.

"Crowdsourcing is the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call."

I like this idea a lot.  It appeals as a compromise between continuing development in isolation within an organisation where innovation can become stilted and soured (see institutional memory), and the outright waste of money by passing everything into the commercial environment where money has to be more important than anything else.


I would like to explore the dynamics of mixing the desires of the various police web managers to work collaboratively; the wider scoping of a barcamp and the ultimate public collaboration of crowdsourcing.  Maybe a group like the web managers would be better engaged in providing organisational support and momentum in creating the appropriate environment for effective police barcamps and crowdsourcing (and then taking part) than trying to work together initially on their own.


This leads to to considering how an open environment which includes the public can work in developing resources to improve police IT and web systems.  Public automatically includes criminals and those others who would love to disrupt developments.  This aspect can be taken positively or negatively and I would hope that the potential benefits would outweigh the overly protective attitude police forces traditionally have to all things new (see institutional memory again!).


What would the environment look like?


I see two separate areas to consider.


1. The places where people discuss ideas, present concepts and agree policy both in meetings, barcamps, blogs, websites, Twitter etc.


2. The point where code and graphics are created, databased and where web projects are incubated.


The first is just words and ideas and something anyone can already freely get involved in anyway but my concern is when the words start turning into prototype sites and real development.  How can access to developing code and sites be both open and accessible and also controlled and kept safe from rogue code and scripts?  I think this is the key area the web managers could assist in - the gatekeepers of the code, controlling the interface between the experiments and proposals from the wider collaborative communities and the secure, safe environment where the development is tweeked, tested and perfected prior to first release.


This is an area where Google or Mozilla can surely assist us?  They manage the fine line between mass collaboration which includes the public and the end products.


Got to stop now - ITV4 is showing the Touring Car Championships from Snetterton in Norfolk where the two boys have been taken for the day by Peter our next-door neighbour. I need to be fairly clued up with the races, drivers and general terminology for when they come back later on. 


Jason Plato has won the first race - who's he then?

More Blu-ray

Watched Casino Royale last night.  It was the 2006 version, not the original!

The good thing was that it played back without a glitch from beginning to end unlike the two LoveFilm rental discs.  I am now convinced that the problem is with the way rental discs differ from retail discs so I have sent back the LoveFilm discs again.

The Casino Royale disc threw up another issue though.  It features a BD Live feature which accesses stuff from the Internet.  I connected the Internet but the disc told me that there was insufficient disc space to download the content.  This bit I do not understand.  For a start, what if my Blu-ray player were just a player and not a recorder?  There would be no storage or disc space at all so how would there be any space for the download it wants to perform?  My Blu-ray machine is a recorder and there is over 18 hours of free space left which is surely enough to download several full length feature films.  I need to find out exactly what it wants to download and why it thinks there isn't enough space - maybe it wants an empty SD card in the slot - or a USB stick?

I'll just have to read the instructions if all else fails.

Update:
Read instructions, inserted SD card - it worked but it is rubbish.  Took ages to download content and the content was just trailers which took even longer to download. Not impressed.

Looking on Amazon now for some bargain basement Blu-ray retail discs.

Update - best value offerings on Amazon:

Matrix Trilogy in a boxed set for £16.99 making each individual film about £5.70 each! I've only got one of the three on DVD so this seems a good buy.

Harry Potter films 1 - 6 for £32.99

Wallace and Gromit - Complete Collection - £9.93

Blu Ray play?

How do you solve a problem like this.  Here's my Blu Ray story so far.

Received a rental copy of 'Sunshine' from Lovefilm.com and settled down to watch it on Wednesday evening. About an hour in and the picture started to freeze, jitter and generally play up. It got to the stage where it was impossible to watch any more so we stopped it, ticked the 'damaged' box and sent it back.  Lovfilm to their credit, sent another copy straight away, along with the next film called 'Into the Blue'.

Wanted to be sure the first problem was a 'one-off' so stuck in 'Sunshine' and played it through.  It had playback problems just like the previous copy so I switched to the other one and the same problem happened with that too.

At this point I thought it must be the Panasonic Blu Ray recorder at fault.  I sat up for hours trying the same two discs over and over, looking up fault reports on the Internet and trying ordinary DVD discs.  Eventually I managed to get the machine to update it's firmware from 1.2 to 1.3 and then went to bed.

This morning I checked the two discs again - still the same faults.  I took them to a friendly PS3 and tried them in that - they worked fine so I concluded that it must be the machine and started proceedings to try and sent it back to Amazon where it came from.

I then tried Thompsons of Great Baddow and they were very helpful.  They suggested I turned it off at the mains and then reset, and also to try a lens cleaner in the machine.  Sam had done some serious dusting all around the TV in the week and we thought that may be what the problem is.  I went straight to Thompsons to buy the lens cleaner and I took the rental discs along to try on their players - just to see.

They hooked up another Panasonic Blu Ray player and we tried the 'Into the Blue' disc.  To my dismay, the same problems happened, in the same places only worse than at home.  We then tried it in a Sony player and the same thing happened although not quite so pronounced. I had to get home but was now totally confused - is it the discs or the player or both?

We went to collect some 'pre-recorded' Blu Ray discs and I am now spending the afternoon playing them to see if this is an issue about rental discs and the way they are created.  I'm 30 minutes into the BBC epic 'Planet Earth' at the moment - no glitches at all so far.  I have 'Bleak House' and 'Casino Royale' still to go through after the other 4 discs in 'Planet Earth'.

The only conclusion so far is that the PS3 is a fantastic Blu Ray player which starts very quickly, whizzes through chapter points and plays the discs faultlessly, even these rental copies.  Mr Thompson suggested that PS3s may well have additional error correction in them to cope with the rougher treatment they are expected to get being a games machine and not a standard home player destined to sit in a rack and stay put.

I have a suspicion that rental discs are cloned for the rental market and maybe more prone to errors and dropout than the proper retail versions.  My next step is to try and find someone who can lend me a copy of either 'Sunshine' or 'Into the Blue' so I can directly compare and see what happens.  I'm thinking of asking on Freecycle to see if anyone is willing to lend me the discs for a few days and let me take them back again.  Otherwise, I may have to buy them!

Into the Blue - £8.73
Sunshine - £9.97

Still got to try resetting to factory settings and cleaning the lens but based on the experiences in Thomsons, I don't hold out much hope that this will make a difference.

Update: 4.30pm
After a few hours of 'Planet Earth' the first three programmes have played without a hitch and the menus are very quick to navigate too.  However, I have noticed that there is some digital interference on some of the shots.  Typically on fast tracking shots from a helicopter which is following a subject like the wolf hunting or the birds flying.  It isn't much but there is a very small amount of digital 'wobble' just after the animal being tracked.  /next question then - is this on the disc (probably not) or is it the limitation of the player, the HDMI lead or the TV? Maybe its even more complicated and its an incompatibility issues but both the TV and the player are Panasonic manufacturered  in the same production year. I think I'll be taking a trip back to Thompsons for a more details look at these discs on other equipment.

A very Special Special

David Cameron's live Q&A session in Hove today.

Special Constable Christine Smith

I Read with delight that Sussex Police webgirl and Special Constable extraordinaire, Christine Smith a Special Constable with Sussex Police managed to get the vital role of the Special Constabulary on the map today.


"A question from a long-serving special constable, who gives 800 hours a year on top of a full-time job. She's telling Cameron that this role should be recognised. She wants to know how the government intends to involve people like her in the planned reforms of the special constabulary. Cameron asks for a round of applause for her 800 hours of service. He says special constables are part of the police family. On some nights, you need extra officers on the beat, and he wants her to contact his police minister, Nick Herbert. Our lady is not having it. She's had difficulties getting her views across, despite all the experience she has to offer. Cameron promises to get her email address, and promises her an audience with Herbert in the next few weeks. Result."


From Guardian.co.uk

Fantastic result Christine.  Here is a Tweet from Nick Herbert MP shortly afterwards:

@sc2221 Well done on your question to the PM today! Look forward to meeting up and talking about boosting the Specials - huge opportunity.

V Festival success

http://www.vfestival.com/

Today we launched 5 pages of advice and tips for people who are coming to enjoy the V Festival in Chelmsford this year.  Nicola has done a fantastic job in gathering together all the content for these pages including an excellent video which is now also available on www.youtube.com/essexpoliceuk

The key to the success is due to Nicola's efforts to liaise with the V Festival promoters and getting our first tweet about the pages retweeted on their channel and also their Facebook page.  @vfestival has about 13,000 followers and their Facebook page has over 106,000 fans.  Because www.vfestival.com promotes their twitter channel on their homepage, our tweets are also showing up there too.

In just 6 hours, we have exceeded the visits to the Essex Police homepage with nearly 2,000 visitors. It is clear that the path to extending our message is to target relevant social media communities.  The next step is to step into the heart of social media and get involved in the conversations rather than just firing in corporate messages from the sidelines.

The whole team is excited by this success and is keen to move forward.
www.essex.police.uk/festivals

A day of npwmg stuff

I have spent the day trying to sort out various online bits and pieces for the National Police Web Managers Group.  Although I'm not there yet, I now have a website, blog, group, twitter and email set up. I need to regroup tomorrow and work out security and permission so the right people can access and contribute and the wrong people are blocked.

Thats it for now - any feedback welcome via Twitter @beaker9.

Live Meetings

Just read that Nick Herbert MP is doing a live online Q&A session on www.number10.gov.uk on Monday Aug 2, 2010 at 11am, discussing 21st Century Policing.  They will be using www.coveritlive.com

I tried out one of these online meetings which was hosted recently by Whitbey neighbourhood police officers. They ran it as a live text only meeting but Cover it Live can also support video and audio live meetings too.  As the Home Office are using it, I think it is likely to be a good candidate for a system which we could use for a national live meetings system.  Does anyone know of any other similar live online systems which could offer a good environment for public consultation. Maybe there are free alternatives?  Google Wave look tantalizingly useful but I've not yet had time to understand exactly what it is and how it works. Likewise, Google Talk with the audio and video add ons could also be useful.  Skype seems to have a '5 users at a time' limit and then there are all those other IM offerings too.  I think we should experiment with some of these services with a view to finding something we could use to develop a live public chat/video/audio service to be used alongside a public meeting or as an alternative.

The Times - three great articles you must read

The Saturday Times has done a great job this weekend on the 21st Century Policing paper, smartphone apps and The Big Society.

21st Century Policing - article page 22 by Sean ONeill
"Police shake-up is tackling all the wrong problems"

Does the Big Society exist? Yes (but only in Windsor) - Weekend pages 8&9 by Tanya Gold
"I do not find a single person, big or small, who knows what the Big Society is or where to find it"

The man who mistook his wife for an app - ideas/technology, the review - page 4 by Hugo Rifkind
"'Half a kilo of ham, please,' I say into my Motorola. "Thomas Aquinas?' my phone says"

All very good.  Recommended reading this weekend.

Mockingbird to the rescue

First draft in Mockingbird

Thanks to John for the Mockingbird reminder.  I have used it to shove together a very basic first draft of a typical force website layout based on the initial research from my previous blog entries from last week.

It shows an overall top bar like the BBC intended to remain throughout all police force sites as an anchor.  It contains a national police graphic ident of some description - typical things would include the checker squares but we can think of something more imaginative than that. The basic navigation which appear to be common to all police sites - this just clears space for more content below. The search is also a universal feature of most sites so this can serve as a search engine and a way to set locality either by postcode or placename - we should be able to use the same search box for both functions and save more space.

The orange section is where the local force identity is established. Common elements like the force crest, force name and motto can all go in here.  I have put in some social media icons but there is space for customisation for text, photos, links and content specific to each force. The general principle is to keep the logo to the left and the height of the orange box constant to aid cross-border navigation.

Next comes an area taken from the BBC homepage layout - a large area containing an impactive photo or image with flexibility for text links below or to the side plus three smaller boxes to the right. At a national level the content of these boxes can be flexible and set to some key national or generic police news stories nominated by any force and democratically elected to the 'top spot'.  It could be general content or features, also nominated and planned by all forces together or maybe under the control of a smaller group of elected reps. At a local force level, the content in these boxes becomes controlled by the force web manager.

The area below is also copied from the BBC homepage and uses a three column layout. This area is populated by widgets which can be 1, 2 or 3 columns wide and of variable depth as dictated by the content. The widgets are or uniform fixed width so the user can add, modify or delete according to their preference.

News widget
This can work at multiple levels depending on site depth.

1. Nationally - it can show news from any police source and possibly mash external sources like the BBC. Refinements can be made to topics of interest by keyword searches which can be saved. In this way a sophisticated set of interests can be built up to refine the news at this level. In this sense it could work a bit like Twitter - by following more sources and topics you refine the news mix you receive. By extending the mix outside of traditional police topics, we can work towards our national page being more attractive to be used as a 'home page' as our news service can be adapted to suit interests beyond traditional policing topics.

2. Force level - Exactly the same concept except that the focus starts by default on force level news.  The user can still refine the mix by bringing in news from another force area to suit where they work or perhaps where relatives live elsewhere in the UK. The key thing is that as soon as they designate a local area by placename or postcode, the site immediately converts to the local force site from that point.

3. Neighbourhood level - News articles should be pinpointed to a local level wherever possible.  This should be done either by Geocode, postcode or tags to a standard area shape - ward, neighbourhood, district etc. As long as the lowest level locator is known, higher level areas can be calculated automatically. The news mix can be refined as people navigate to neighbourhood areas of the site as well as by topic.  An article about domestic violence should bring back recent news articles and display them as possible links for further reading.  Some kind of weighting system could be put into place so that news from outside the force or even from an external source could be offered if it is calculated by the weighing engine to be of relevant value to the keywords in the feature article being viewed.

Other widgets
We should aim to develop widgets that start at a national level but which can be adapted and refined at force and neighbourhood levels also. Ultimately, we need to always consider what is of benefit to the user of the site rather than what is politically convenient for the organisation. People live increasingly transient lives and want to mix and match their content to suit their unique circumstances and not be confined by our self-imposed geographical or topical boundaries.

SIM car keys

I watched Police, Camera Action this week and saw a guy who was drink driving, had no insurance, tax or MOT - not even a driving licence.  He had already been banned once and this was his second ban - before he had even passed his test!

There must be a more secure and reliable way for modern IT and electronics to manage this.

MOT, insurance, tax and the driving licence are still paper-based.  In the 21st century, this must be wrong.  We need a new way to issue and validate these products so that they are useful and work for the law abiding citizen rather than pander to the whims of those who think it is fine to break the law.

So we have these four products issued as SIM cards similar to those in mobile phones.  2 are personal to the car and the other 2 are specific to the driver.  The tax and MOT sims are inserted into the car they belong to and are  validated via 3G networks when the ignition is started.  The other two sims (insurance and driving licence) go inside the car keys and are also validated via the 3G network.  4 lights on the dashboard with confirm each sim has been validated and only then can the car be started. If there is an issue with any of these devices, the car will not start.

This is bound to cost a lot of money and the benefits won't be realised until all cars/keys are compatible with a universal system but it worked for the seatbelt, remote central locking, and airbags. One added security addition could be a fingerprint reader in the key itself.  If the car keys are stolen and used in the car, it wouldn't work unless the key is turned by the registered owner.

Breadcrumbs & search

Busy evening.
First off, I counted breadcrumbs trails. 43 out of 53 sites had them, many with the words 'You are here' preceding the trail.

8 of the search engines are Google Custom search.

1 is powered by Google but not branded
1 search engine returned no results for any search term
1 search by atomz - page not found error
4 non-Google search produced good results
1 non-Google search produced good results and highlighted search term in resulted page.
4 non-Google search results were worse than a bog-standard Google search within site

I didn't finish this list because I got into a Skype call with James and Sasha regarding Ning.  We decided to renew a basic NING account for 1 year which has now been done.  We also set up a Google Group, Google Site, Google Blog and Google email address too.  All that was a bit complicated but I hope to get it all sorted out over the weekend and start sharing the various sites with the rest of the group.  All a bit premature but at least it is all started.

The small logo in the Group is just for a start - I will attempt to do a better one when I get time but if anyone else fancies picking up their pens and pencils (or Photoshop), feel free and join in.

Back to the search stuff above - it seems fairly obvious to me that paid for search engines which come as part of a CMS can never do any better than the basic Google site search (which is free). The issue may be getting recent web pages to index quickly with Google but I think this can be overcome by using Google Webmaster Tools.

Next idea is to do a mock-up of the BBC home page as a police.uk concept site.  I want to try and work out how a national police site and the force sites can site together.  There must be some element of continuity between all police sites but still a large element of uniqueness and local branding.  The balance between the two will be politically charged and very difficult to achieve so starting will some innocent drawings looks to be the best way to begin.  If we don't like the drawings, we can throw them away and try again!

Its late - I'm off.  See you tomorrow.

Footers 'r Us

Quick bit of stats work tonight - may prove interesting later so here goes.

I looked at the footers of about 53 police websites and noted what was in 'em.  Here's the results:

Footer content

Copyright notice - 36
Legal/Privacy statement - 28
Sitemap - 17
Accessibility - 14
Terms and Conditions - 14
Disclaimer - 10
Designed by - 8
Facebook - 8
Crimestoppers - 7
YouTube - 7
Languages - 7
Back to top - 7
Main navigation repeated as plain text - 5
FAQs - 5
FOI - 5
Non Urgent number - 5
Homepage link - 5
Twitter - 5
Neighbourhoods - 5
'Add This' share - 5
Browsealoud/listen to this page - 4
Search - 4
Main address/phone/minicom - 4
Feedback - 4
Print page - 4
About this site - 3
A-Z index - 3
Flickr - 3
Police Authority - 3
Contact Us - 3
'Not responsible for external links' - 3
Delicious/Diggit/Reddit/Stumble Upon - 3
Webmaster - 3
Links - 2
Anti Terror Hotline - 2
News - 2
999 - 2
Media Centre - 2
Force slogan - 2
Investors in People - 2
W3C sign - 2
CEOP web safety badge - 2
Access Keys - 2
Email to friend - 2

Plus 23 others all with 1 each . . .
What's new, link to this site, video, email newsletter, mobile version, DirectGov, Complaints, Report Crime, Victims of Crime, Last  updated, site tools, Safety camera partnership, Policing Pledge, Plain English Campaign, CCA Excellence Award, Hide your visit, Date/Time past edited, Charter Mark, Healthy Working Lives, Get Adobe Reader, Text Sizer (AAA), Zoom, Text only version.

I make that 67 different 'things' altogether. Phew!

Next I counted the overall number of items and links in the footer area of each page:
Footer items

3 items - 6
6 items - 5
7 items - 5
9 items - 4
10 items - 4
2 items - 3
4 items - 3
5 items - 3
8 items - 3
12 items - 3
14 items - 2
22 items - 2
1 item - 1
11 items - 1
13 items - 1
15 items - 1
16 items - 1
19 items - 1
21 items - 1

I'd say the average is about 7 - 10 items in the footer.

Last one for tonight.
Site layout (general pages, not the home page)

Left side navigation with a main content column and right side extras - 25
Left side navigation with a main column only - 20
Left side navigation with two equal content columns - 1
Right side navigation with a main column only - 2
Multi-level top navigation with a single content column - 2
Multi-level top navigation with a main column and right side extras - 1

Vast dominance of left side main navigation in all but 5 websites. It's also worth noting that all the websites are sized to fit (more or less) into a standard width 1024 pixel screen. Most were fixed width sites with a few variable width.  I'll get the figures on the exact totals tomorrow.  Variable width sites were 'all the rage' at one stage in an attempt to fill the available screen real estate. However, in recent years, with the advent of widescreen displays, it is increasingly difficult to design a good looking site which works squashed to the old 800 pixel limit all the way out to the higher resolution sizes 1440 pixels.  It seems more people are designing to a fixed width of about 960 pixels with a centered float for larger screen sizes.

One more thing - The emergence of the latest generation of smartphones like the iPhone have excellent browsers which allow the user to zoom in and over the web page.  I have found this method is better than using the equivalent 'mobile' version of the same site and it maybe that the need to design a specific 'mobile' version of sites will soon be no more.  Probably what is more important is the need to be very flexible with the data - offering it up in a usable format like XML so that it can be mashed into other applications in the spirit of www.open.gov.uk.  This may be a very good reason to develop sites in unison so the resulting data operates to a national schema in the same spirit as the neighbourhood data we all contribute to www.maps.police.uk.

Obvious datasets would be news, events, jobs and police stations data. I expect I'll expand on this topic in later blog entries.

Thats it for tonight - more tomorrow.

Screen grabs

Carrying on from yesterday's initial research where I took screen grabs of 60 UK police and related home pages, I have today taken similar grabs of some typical content pages and page footers.

The idea is to continue making observations about the areas where there are similarities between force sites and pointing out any reasonable observations as I go along.  I haven't structure the work yet - just going with the flow and seeing where it takes me next.  All the screen grabs are public in my Google Picasa web albums.  there should be a link to the most recent posts here.

I haven't got time tonight to start going through these grabs yet but some key similarities do stick out:

Most sites have the traditional top level navigation along the top with the rest on the left and a breadcrumbs trail along the top of the main content area.

Most sites do have a consistent footer area where such things as copyright, terms and other links lurk.

Most sites are designed in a three column traditional design with the navigation on the left, content in the middle and 'other stuff' on the right.

Police sites are generally blue with chequered squares.

I'll go no further tonight but in coming blog entries, I'll start to get into the detail of each aspect of the pages.  If you can offer any helpful advice or would like to offer to help (take your pick at this stage).  Tweet me @beaker9 and let me know what you think.

For those of you who were wondering, I am doing all this in my own time at the moment.

Nite all . .

A few police website facts

I started doing some preliminary research to find out to what extent a national police web service can co-exist with local force sites without upsetting too many people.  Initial results look good.

Crest and force name placement
I started by looking at the real basics with a view to a standardised top strip which could be customised for each force. Out of about 60 police-related websites, 56 have their main logo and name in the top left of the screen.

Search engines
44/60 sites had a search box in the top right corner with a further 8 top left. 9 of the search boxes were branded Google Custom search boxes.  Some other sites didn't have a visible search box but did have a hyperlink to a search facility.  We now have a standard top left logo, force name and optional strapline with a standard right side search box.

Top banner links
Next I looked at the various links offered in or around the top area of the websites. There were about 37 different terms, functions and hyperlinks in this area but the main ones are listed below:

1. Home
Sometimes listed on its own but usually the force crest or logo links back to the home page by default.

2. Accessibility 24/60

3. Site Map 23/60

4. Text Size 20/60 This was usually in the format of three letter As AAA

5. Non-emergency number 20/60

6. Contact Us 16/60

7. Browse Aloud or similar speach-to-text 12/60

8. Language or translate options 11/60

9. Links 9/60

10. 999 emergency number 8/60

Other popuar links were RSS feeds, FAQs, A-Z, text only, help and the ability to change the style sheet to high contrast black or other alternative colour schemes.

The rest were In your area, Index, News, Privacy, Terms, Index, Feedback, Link to this site, printer friendly, HQ, FOI, Police Stations, Login, Podcasts, Feedback, Recruitment, Date/time, Skip Navigation, Access Keys, Glossary, Twitter, You Tube and Facebook.

Postcode look-up
32/60 websites include a visible postcode and/or placename lookup facility on their homepages.  This functionality could be incorporated nationally with a single licence or process to ensure all forces get the most up-to-date data.  The same technology could be used to personalise the local site based on a postcode look-up.  Other material can be localised including news, jobs, neighbourhoods, graphics, photography, style sheets and layout.

Social Media
Facebook - 26
Twitter - 25
YouTube - 22
RSS - 17

Several forces are already using these 'Big Three' social media sites to expand beyond the traditional force website and out to where the people are.  "Fish where the fish are". Several forces are encouraging the use Twitter for individual neighbourhood officers and there is the potential to extend the use of social media for total neighbourhood engagement in addition to or instead of the existing website sections.

Other social media and output channels includes:
Flickr, Blogs, U Stream, Virgin Media, Mobiles and Smartphones, Kiosks, Sky and Delicious.  Many forces use the AddThis.com site to encourage the sharing of website content to other social media sites.

Website sections
Next up were the main website sections offered in the initial navigation structure.

In order were:

About Us - 50
Recruitment - 49
News/Appeals - 48
Contact Us - 41
Crime Prevention/Reduction/Be Safe and various others - 40
Neighbourhoods - 40
Documents, Information, Library etc - 28
FOI - 16
Access to Information - 13
FAQs - 11
Diversity - 10
Crime Maps - 8
Units/Departments/Divisions - 7
Police Authority - 7
Young People - 7
Policing Pledge - 6
Operations/Initiatives/Campaigns - 5
Get Involved - 4
Reporting Crime - 4
Victims and Witnesses - 4
Road Traffic - 4
Justice done - 4
Crimestoppers - 3
Online Services - 3
Firearms Licencing - 3
Links - 3

The top 6 or 7 are popular with the rest being significantly lower than the rest.  This may indicate we could standardise the main categories nationally and allow one or two extra custom sections up to the individual force.

At this point I started looking at how easy it would be to offer a main national system which could equally be utilised further down the stack in force/BCU/District/Neighoburhood/Ward and even postcode level data.

About Us
Is tricky without looking in further detail at which elements are common between forces. One to look at later on.

News/Appeals
A national police news system would be an attractive first national solution.  One system rather than 48 with the advantage that individual articles could be shared freely by area but also by topic, date and media type.  Each news article can be tagged to the lowest possible area and a hierarchical area structure could determine the higher level areas automatically.  This would allow news to be re-distributed to any localised area of any website as well as within the traditional news sections.

Combining news nationally also means subscribers have more flexibility in the news mix they can receive.  As well as the specific local area, they can ask for news by topic or media type or even keyword search.

A sterile RSS news feed could be stengthened by giving options for a 'mix and match' RSS feed creation tool similar to the flexible RSS options available in Twitter where an RSS feed is available for search results.

This topic requires much more detailed discussion.

Recruitment 49/60
All police websites seem to have a very popular recruitment section.  One aspect ripe for national coordination is the police staff vacancies.  These are often offered as an RSS feed so a combined national solution could offer more flexible RSS feeds including job types, part time/full time, salary limits, keywords as well as the traditional area options.

As well as a single system for jobs, we could incorporate a single way of combining competiencies and job descriptions.  In time, we could move to a national online system for HR departments to sift, shortlist, interview, select and recruit before the candidate is transferred into the internal HR system.

The other areas of recruitment are very similar - police officer, specials, PCSOs, volunteers etc.  the existing website www.policecouldyou.co.uk could be incorporated as the top level  recruitment data source with regional variations for each force added in the local layers (i.e. are we recruitment or not?)

Contact Us 41/60
Along with the various emergency and non emergency numbers (which should be standardised to 999 and 101 in my opinion), our best option in this area is a national crime and intelligence reporting system.

Crime Prevention/Reduction 40/60
There is already a rich national selection of good advice and best practice in the www.direct.gov.uk website and much of the content in individual forces is repeated.  There is an opportunity to centralise resources to create a first class crime reduction resource which is feature rich and of higher interest and value to citizens than the individual offering of forces.  We can gather the best advice and web pages already on offer and improve that which new and exciting content funding jointly by all forces working together.

Neighbourhoods 40/60
This is the area that has seen the most national collaboration with the development of the national Crime Maps and the associated XML feeds from local websites.  The XML feed saw the development of the first national XML schema to ensure all data concerning neighbourhood policing is standardised and can be interchanged either national to local or local to national. In the same way that the National Crime Maps benefit the public from offering a standardised interface, the same could be true for neighbourhood policing.  We need to ensure that whatever the national element of the solution is, there is always the opportunity at the local level to add or modify the pages to suit the local audience.

Docs and Information 28/60
This is a wide area but there is some common ground suited to a national approach.  Thinking of a section a little like a library, we could offer similar content in a standard way.  All the force policing plans, annual reports and council tax leaflets could be available all in one place as well as from within a local data library on a force website.  This could lead to further national cost savings where the design and manufacture of these reports could be streamlined and presented in a similar structure to enable not only the delivery to be similar but also the actual information within the reports and plans.

I'm not going to go through all the other various options, just touch on a few . . .

FOI and access to information page
Forces are increasingly obliged to record all the various FOI requests for online examination. Although this may not need to be featured aa a top-level navigation section, we could create a national FOI publication schema so all police FOI requests can be recorded for public viewing in the same standardised format with improvements implemented to the benefit of all users when they occur.

Police Authorities
Generally, these are separate websites which forces are required to link to at a fairy high level but it is probably inappropriate to link within a navigation structure as this implies the website is part of the police site. Better to find a common location on the home pages where this link can be located.

Young People
Many forces have created a separate young people's website but initial examination suggests they are similar and there could be a single youth website for the police with some sophisticated localised add-ins. This area requires MUCH more work!

Crime Reporting and Victim support
These are too far down the list and are, in my opinion the two most important services we should be offering online.  The reason they do not appear higher is because they are both very difficult to achieve so in many forces, there is no online option at all.  As we progress further into the 21st century, all current services the police offer will have to be offered as an online service too.  According to Google, digital is dead and it has become part of mainstream life so ALL policing services need to be reflected online.  Victim support online should be a service for all victims where the full details and updates concerning their crime is available securely online and also via mobile, text and email updates if required.

Firearms applications
There are several online services like Firearms applications and Subject Access reports which can be offered at a national level with the results being ported to the correct local force based on a postcode or placename lookup table.

Thats enough for tonight - more in the coming weeks!

More crazy ideas

Two things came up at work today.  Fairly way-out but may just be the next big thing . . .

1. Farmville goes public
I'm not a fan myself but the popularity of Farmville is very interesting.  People rushing to get back to the land in time to water and feed the crops shows real commitment but with no 'real-world' benefits.  They are even willing to share their spare crops with their friends for free out of the goodness of their hearts! My idea is to capture the virtual interest of Farmville and mash it up with a real-world local scenario.  Whht if the 'Farm' was a community modeled on a real community.  People could join their local 'communityville' and get as involved as they like.  It could start by just observing, move up to chatting, on to making comments and eventually getting involved in 'real world' activities. People could contribute to their local community by rebuilding using virtual lego blocks, naming the buildings and places, linking these to Wikis and Blogs.

The eventual idea is to motivate people to move gradually from their computer screens in a virtual world to real actions that make a difference in the community.

Police meetings could be held online and at the real location at the same time.  People can take part by listening in, interacting with video, photos, text and conversation from home or by actually attending in person.

Community clean-ups can be organised, litter picks, fund raising events - all either virtually or in real life.

This is just a vague idea at the moment but I'll add more details as I goe along.


2. Police website - front counter model
We had a great conversation at work today.  Imagine a police website which is a door into a virtual police front office. You enter the site by going through the front door into the foyer.  We see a 3D environment to interact with and a counter with several windows to interact with staff. doors lead off on either side leading to other rooms.  A leaflet stand offers leaflets traditionally offered in a publications section.  A noticeboard offers news items and latest information on offer.  A video monitor offers video clips from YouTube, speaker system offers audio clips.  At the counter, you can interact directly with real members of staff via videoconference, audio-only or live IM.  This allows people to report both emergency and non-emergency info direct to FIR via the web or mobile phone. Another window can offer victims an opportunity to ask for updates on their crime.  This can be via a live operator or an interactive system.  Another window can offer general advice via real person, search engine or traditional navigation engine.  This virtual station would always be staffed, never close and there would never be a queue.

Big things the service needs to sort out

 - Proper way to track people in the system no matter if they are victims, employees, criminals, suspects or partnership workers.

 - Ensure police systems record information suitable to be shared with the public.

 - Call centre which can handle ALL incoming methods of communications:

Telephone calls
Video conference calls
Text messages
Email
Twitter posts
Blog Posts
Facebook posts
Whatever else comes along in the future.

All these need to be condensed into a single input screen and be dealt with in strict order no matter what method is used.  All staff can divert any message they receive personally to the system at any time and a central monitor checks all incoming messages for potential emergency calls.  These get scanned and either actioned or thrown back.

Public sector killer apps

My passion is finding killer apps for the public sector which will be cheap or free to develop and make a real difference to the way we live.  More than ever, social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are being adopted by people as their medium of choice to meet, chat, share stuff and get things done.  Traditional media is in a decline.

In recent months I have realised that government cannot 'create' killer apps for the unsuspecting citizen to use.  We have to exploit things they already use in their everyday lives.

We didn't try and invent a government telephone network for reporting crimes and calling the hospital.  We used what people were already used to.  Websites have their use but people only visit if they have a specific need and if Google can translate their search term into a top three result.  We cannot force people into doing what we want or listening when we have something to say.  We need to to be there to listen to them, understand what they want and respond appropriately.

If someone wishes to report a crime via Twitter, Facebook, email, text, phone, mobile, letter, telegram or messenger boy we have to be able to receive it.  But that is only the first challenge.  We also have to respond well to the request.  This can be tricky in the police service because for over 150 years, forces have considered it the role of a police officer to deal with crime.  A crime is reported; the police solve it; job done.

Crime cannot be dealt with like that anymore.  Officers are vastly outnumbered by the public and it is not conceivable to expect the police to be able to have all the answers in order to solve the crimes all by themselves.  We have now moved forward - we conduct public appeals for information but we have to go further.  All the police information systems are geared up to serve the police, not the public.  We need to overhaul the information systems so that the public can be involved right from the beginning and the victims can be informed every step of the way too.

Only if the IT systems hold the data in the correct formats can the information be delivered efficiently to the public via the web.

It is customary for officers to try and solve a crime using their own resources and information.  Only when they can't get any further do they seek help form the public.  How often do we see public appeals for a crime on the 1 year anniversary rather than a few hours after it happened?  The public hold all the answers and we already know that Crimestoppers and Crimewatch UK have helped solve hundreds of crimes by getting the public involved in the investigation.  Why did it take a charity and the BBC to develop these tools?  Surely they should have been developed by the government or the police service?  For the next generation of communication tools, we are continuing to rely on external third-party resources to come to our aid - www.mypolice.org is working on a service like this right now.

It is clear we cannot be trusted to develop big systems so we must instead trust the public to assist us.  We must work with www.mypolice.org, twitter.com, facebook.com, youtube.com and all the others.

We can no longer use the excuse that the system has to be built using an expensive, licensed product by a large company and the inevitable huge cost.  There is no more guarantee this will future-proof the service than if it is built in-house on open sourced technology and supported by the people who built it.

We have recently dumped a perfectly serviceable website which was built by us using open sourced software.  It worked faultlessly for 6 years and was continuously developed by us, as-and-when required.  Sometimes a change was achieved before I'd even got off the phone from the person asking for it.  In contrast, we are now running the service on an expensive hosting platform with licensed database, OS and CMS.  Everything we need to add to the system now needs to be costed, quoted and built be an external company which can take weeks and months and many hundreds of pounds where we could have done the same thing for free in a few hours before.

We have to get real about how to create innovative, cost-effective solutions.  We need to work big, think big and be prepared to listen to the public and join in with the creative process.

Things I think we need:

National Crime Reporting System extending to
National Incident Reporting System

National Victim's Portal

National Property Database incorporating Lost and Found Property and VirtualBumblebee auctions

National community meetings system - can extend to councils and all other government departments

and Finally . . .

What about bringing back National Service?  Not in the armed forces but in the public sector?  You have to get involved in your local community somehow - attend meetings, vote, paint fences, help with after-school clubs, join neighbourhood watch, litter picking.  Every activity earns you points and you have to earn enough points to finish National Service.  It has to be the equivalent of two years.  It can be points or minutes - attend a litter picking event for 2 hours and you earn 120 points.