Point it at your news story about the 25 million names missing..
After all that demonstrates our governments IT capabilities quite nicely.
"If nothing else a fool can serve as a warning to others"
Daring Register raid snatches key government URL
On Friday the UK government announced a joint industry-government marketing strategy designed to promote the UK's expertise in Information Communication Technology (ICT). The strategy, said Trade & Investment Minister Lord Digby Jones, "is a catalyst to stimulate discussion amongst Government and business about how we sell the …
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 15:17 GMT Tim Greenwood
Tempting
In the absence of a nonsensical government approach perhaps a poll as to what "official" message should be posted. Without going too far overboard on spoofing a few erudite comments on a site may not go too far amiss. I would have thought that the El Reg posse could knock some sort of sensible website together.
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 15:17 GMT Ash
This can only end badly
Something tells me that because you published the fact you
a) Bought a domain name listed as "to be working" in a Govt. Document, and
b) Seek compensation for the return of said domain name to those who would seek to use it for their business (or some other such legal bullsh1t),
I can only surmise that you will be sued, the people who resolve these issues will find in the Govt's favour, and common sense will once more be beaten in the background by corporate / Govt heavy-handedness.
Otherwise, specify Tyrrels crisps; they're really very nice. Lemon and Jalapino Chilli are a personal favourite.
No, you may not use that information to offer me advertising or promotions which may of interest to me.
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 15:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Do your own little consultation page
Please, do a *proper* consultation page that gives the site the El-Reg treatment that it deserves.
Cover:
- The government's excellent record on Data Privacy
- Public Private partnerships in the government IT projects
- Success Stories like the NHS, HMRC, etc.
- How Biometrics will save the World?
- RFID implants for all Children to protect them, of course
- ANPR and how it will never get hacked
- Encryption Policy enforcement throughout government departments
Yup, definitely plenty of scope for El-Reg to get busy on.
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 15:17 GMT Bruno Girin
Cunning Plan
In fact, it's a cunning plan by the government to get El Reg to cybersquat the URL, build up the website and do the consultation, all for the price of a bag of crisps! And hey presto, a government project done on time and within budget!
Or maybe they just lost the domain name registration form in this pesky internal mail system.
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 15:27 GMT Graham Bartlett
@Ash
If you're talking crisps, it has to be Tyrrells root-vegetable crisps. Carrot and beetroot make such good crisps, you wonder why anyone initially bothered crisping potatoes. Although the game crisps earlier in the year were particularly tasty - sadly they seem to have been a limited edition, cos I could do with some for Xmas.
Yes, that's me checking my jacket pockets to find where I left my last bag of crisps...
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 15:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Tell me how you feel
Perhaps you could put up a big form that asks visitors to fill out all of their personal and financial details, and then when they have done so, you could take all that data and sell it on the open market - or use it for your own ends. You'd have to stick an official-looking government stamp at the top, with a photograph of Gordon Brown, and a speech bubble that says "I am Gordon Brown, and I endorse this website".
There might be a legal issue with this kind of plan, and I'm not seriously suggesting that you do it yourself, because that would probably also be illegal.
Perhaps you could offer to "protect" the URL from evil cybersquatters, for a fee. Drop hints that, if you aren't paid on time, the URL might get... damaged. It might fall on the floor. Fragile things, URLs. It would be a shame if it "got wet", if you know what I mean.
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 15:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
That's great, but need to put some decent web page there
That's awesome. Journalism in action.
However, I was disappointed with the standard boilerplate web page. Maybe you could put some news about the iPhone, Paris Hilton, and include a picture of that Eee PC girl on the beach.
Or possibly and advertisement for your consulting services with the results of your latest survey.
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 15:34 GMT Simon.W
Only as good as your weakest link
and the government have dared to affiliate themselves with the word "expertise" and tell everyone how they should sell themselves when they haven't a clue about IT.
This is just designed to level the playing field by tarring everyone with the "know nothing bonzo" IT approach that the ministers, secretaries and senior civil servants love to promote as their gold standard for IT delivery.
Well here it begins; the spin to make out that the IT illiterate UK Gov. has something worth having (barring everyone else’s data of course, which they also don't have now).
Well done El Reg for this pre-emptive strike against UK.gov spin and disinformation.
And I agree with Phil Launchbury, point all the URLs at your articles on the fiasco that has been the UK government approach to data security.
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 16:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
Who hasn't been there...
At my last company the PR types were always doing this kind of thing: Advertizing products before they were even coded, before the coders even knew about them, before the domain names were registered, etc. Unfortunately that always meant the tech guys had to achive the impossible, and the sales people were given fat commisions for creative marketing. Good to know that the government works similiarly to private industry.
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 16:55 GMT Rob
Seriously El Reg....
.... use and abuse it.
Government IT cock-ups and maybe lob some specially crafted stories from BOFH in there as well.... even better than that does BOFH have a BPFH (Barstard Politican From Hell) Cousin.
Also could you ask why we have a dictator running our country.... I didn't vote for him and neither did anyone else.
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 16:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
changing to .gov.uk might be a start
But then the ICT Marketing bods would have to explain why they went to media with the wrong domain name (that they didn't own) and then had to revert to a different domain (that they didn't at the time own either). Which might put a small dent in their credibility.
Even if they did do that, if el Reg get an working site up and running with some content it would be a nice counter-weight to the quango.
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 16:57 GMT Bill Fresher
@Ashley Pomeroy
"Perhaps you could put up a big form that asks visitors to fill out all of their personal and financial details"
Why has no one thought of sending scam emails saying something along the lines of: this is the tax office, as you may have heard we've lost a lot of peoples' personal details, unfortunately you were one of those people and you have to email us your bank details etc so that we can put them back on our systems. If you don't do it within 24 hours you go to prison.
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 17:14 GMT John
Danger!
In view of the obvious threat to national security posed by this exposure of incompetence, the intrepid hacks should be held incommunicado for 28 days until Her Majesty's Ministry of Truth spin doctors have corrected history. Of course 42 days or forever would be far more reassuring to the populace at large, but then I enjoy reading these stories.
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 17:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
No to Goatse
Seriously. The one really great thing about quantum physics is that one day we may be able to erase goatse from history.
The good thing about this is they have a better chance of getting it back from El Reg (with a few red faces) than some third world cybersquatter who would no doubt have registered it sooner than the government.
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 17:56 GMT Tawakalna
terrorists!
clearly your attempt to embarass and humilate the Nation's elected representatives who've delivered ten years of sustained economic growth blah blah blah is indicative that you *may* have been penetrated by an Al-Quaeda associated network in order to undermine our democratic principles. You should turn yourselves in and surrender your hard drives and other data storage devices, for after all, if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide }:)
no Gordo icon?
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 18:09 GMT jayenne montana
Hmm...Has all of this been a little hasty?
I notice the web link you provide points to another URL, one that seems to work fine, and one that was registered on Registered on: 17-Oct-2007 (src: www.who.is)
I suspect nothing more than a typo has given a lot of publicity to the new site and you know what they say about 'all publicity'
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 18:17 GMT John Lettice
Re: Perhaps we can clear this up
Well, erm, a small typo crept into an earlier version of the press release that was published on 16th November, and again in a second release published on 7th December. Nobody apparently noticed until we publicised it, so well done for that, team. Would we be correct in thinking that traffic to your splendid registered-users-only consultation site has in the interim been in the high severals?
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 18:55 GMT Geoff Thompson
Nice one
Well done El Reg. I'd have thought they would have registered the few likely addresses which people might use, e.g. ".gov.uk", .org and .com, and the one without the uk at the beginning - any commercial operation would have covered that one. This is just silly for a so called major initiative.
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Tuesday 11th December 2007 22:14 GMT Martin Peake
No black helicopters then...
Tonight being Spooks night on the telly, I was rather worried that El Reg would be visited by the men in black helicopters, and there would be no more ripping yarns of stranded pantechniconists and government FUBARs for a while.
But once again, our Lords and Masters screwed up their IT facts again. Shame they didn't do the same for the hunting ban, the handgun ban...
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Wednesday 12th December 2007 07:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
the whois data is interesting
"Domain name: ukictmarketingstrategy.co.uk
Registrant: jayenne Montana
Registrant type: UK Individual
Registrant's address: The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their address omitted from the WHOIS service."
A non-trading individual? Er, I'm no expert, but that description is usually used for people who've created a website at home for their local boy scouts group, isn't it, not a commercially created website promoting a "joint industry-government marketing strategy"?
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Wednesday 12th December 2007 07:51 GMT John Lettice
Re: the whois data is interesting
More interesting still, a Jayenne Montana posted an earlier comment saying "I suspect nothing more than a typo has given a lot of publicity to the new site and you know what they say about 'all publicity'" (to which I say, 'Gary Glitter').
Someone of that name is also listed at Linkedin as owner of Polygonsoup Ltd, which runs the nameservers for ukictmarketingstrategy.co.uk. Hiya, Jayenne. (-:
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Wednesday 12th December 2007 09:36 GMT Rob
Re: the whois data is interesting
Well I suppose some numpty from the IT industry has to climb in bed with government to start these things off, otherwise the government wouldn't have a clue, least they have half a clue now.
(typo my arse, blantant half arsed working attitude more like, well it is the government after all).
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Wednesday 12th December 2007 11:04 GMT Chris Coles
This reminds me of the "Stokes" era and the same misguided attempts to promote the UK motor industry
Back in the late 1960's early 1970's one would come across individuals from the old DTI, (Department of Trade and Industry) that called themselves "Industrialists" because their boss, the UK government, owned large portions of what had been thriving industries in private hands that had, by then, become moribund and bloated by social employment created by these self same "industrialists". All sorts of schemes were floated to improve the competitiveness of the industries they "owned". One such involved a man called Stokes whose job was to bring all the disparate parts of the UK motor industry into one company to, yes, you have guessed it, "promote".......... In the end, it all came to nothing, the whole idea proved to be impossible to do within any government structure and Stokes became Lord Stokes and our once world beating motor industry..... evaporated. So all we are seeing here is a repeat of the same old story. The Civil Service do not trust private individuals or small privately owned business. I suspect that derives from their own difficulties with dealing with private sub contractors. You may have noticed Tony Blair once used to proclaim against "Individualism". Back in the 1970's the head of the Inland Revenue once openly stated in a speech that "The self employed are the scum that floats upon the surface of society".
So here we have our national government unable to even conceive that a private business could promote itself and needs their help. Why would they think that? What was it that started them thinking that private industry would need government help? With the greatest of respects to Lord Digby Jones, I ask him to please explain to us here on The Register how this exercise has come about and who thought of it and to tell us if the governemnt was approached by private industry or was this an idea floated by large public company suppliers to the governments internal "industrialists"?
I am not trying to appear negative. I am trying to form a debate that will prevent the repeat of previous failed exercises. Moreover exercises that led, in the end, to the collapse of whole sectors of British Industry.
The Register has shown, with their masterful snatch of the governments URL, the capacity of the free minded individual to move very quickly indeed to fill a need. What has been missing for decades now has been a source of Free Enterprise based funding for those self same "individuals" from the capital base of the nation..... that left them free....... to compete against the largest companies.
It is not new government inspired "exercises" we need, it is simply better access to free market capital to get on and do what we are already very good at, given the chance to succeed.
The nations success comes from masterful action by small groups of individuals demonstrating verve and imagination. We need a capital base that supports that, not a return to government inspired intervention that eventually suppresses innovation in the long term interest of the largest companies, who are in turn keen to suppress the expansion of those smaller individualistic businesses that would otherwise be able to bid for the governments business. And why would I say that? I will bet my right arm that the costs of meeting the requirements to become "eligible" for support under the rules of the exercise being contemplated will make it impossible for the smaller innovative companies to even get through the door in the first place.
With the greatest of respects Lord Digby Jones, you are a large public business, large government person and you have just been left in a cloud of dust by a classic "Turbinia" style action by The Register. You need to learn to trust the imaginations of all those individuals that, given the chance and access to the free enterprise capital they need to compete, would lead the way forward to new success for the nation, but in competition against the interest of all the largest public companies that today you appear to ..........represent......?
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Wednesday 12th December 2007 12:50 GMT peter
FOIA request?
John,
"Would we be correct in thinking that traffic to your splendid registered-users-only consultation site has in the interim been in the high severals?"
How about a Freedom of Information Act request to find out? And while you're about it, throw in a few more telling questions - like, "How many people have registered?"
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Wednesday 12th December 2007 13:19 GMT John Lettice
Re: FOIA request?
I was proposing to ask that very question shortly, just after I'd refreshed my memory on the Cabinet Office consultation guidelines. My own registration attempt has so far yielded nothing but silence, and I'd be pleased to hear from anybody who has successfully made it past whatever multi-headed mutt they have guarding their select discussion group.
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Wednesday 12th December 2007 13:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Tetrahedralsoup
UKTI get a consultancy in to do a marketing exercise. Site URL gets promoted before it's registered. El Reg grabs it.
Revisionism ensues. "Small typo"? Cough, cough. More likely "Oops, grab a new URL before UKTI kick us into next week".
For once, this doesn't smell like the Govt's fault.
yours,
Public-sector-webdev-who-sees-far-too-much-of-this-kinda-ineptitude-from-"consultants"
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Thursday 13th December 2007 13:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Can we have...
...a landing page with all El Reg essentials - units table and conversion tool, updates on the current IT Angle (last seen at around 87 degrees), Paris-related tat, current pricelists for endorsements (I think the previous beer tarrifs are a bit out of date) and funniest comments of the week. Or something.
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
