Andrew Stott

Andrew Stott was on the UK Transparency Board & the UK Gov first Director of Transparency & Digital Engagement. Tweets here on data, IT & new media are his own.

[Sir Humphrey @pinstripedline]

The 15" guns outside of the Imperial War Museum in London are one of its most prized exhibits. They are a memorial to the 'big gun' ship. Yet the story of how they came to be there is little known but involves atomic weapons, the space race and lots of financial paperwork…

[Sir Humphrey @pinstripedline]

Possibly the greatest unironic sign off of a Civil Service letter that I've ever read 😁

[Daisy Christodoulou @daisychristo]

We have a lot of historical records of exam papers like this. Frustratingly, we have far fewer records of what the students actually wrote in response! Maybe their responses were all brilliant. Maybe some of them were terrible.

My colleagues wrote a paper on standards in A-level maths over time, and finding archive responses was really hard!

Eventually they were able to compare responses from 1964, 1968, 1996 and 2012.

Standards had declined dramatically between 1968 & 1996. The quality of work that would have got an E in 1968 got a B in 1996.

https://t.co/uJj5O9ZhmE

[Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva]

Environment Agency launches river ecosystem mapping tool for England https://t.co/Oo1EYBJQPQ

Ecosystem Service Map Explorer (ESME) https://t.co/uXQbJU5RwF based on #opendata

Project information https://t.co/QooDZKQPsH

#govtech #geospatial #defradata #loverivers

[Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva]

Combined Sewer Storm Overflow Detailed Event Duration Monitoring Data https://t.co/BCpGDqyI3Z new (?) from @EnvAgency based on returns from water companies in England

Data for 2024 discharges but seems not to have been published previously

#waterquality #sewagescandal #opendata

[Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva]

The UK House of Commons Library has published a collection of new briefings on recognising misinformation, evaluation of sources, verifying images and sources, working with AI and spotting AI-generating text https://t.co/j17hFEmbGC

Useful resources, not just for MPs and bampots

[Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva]

New guidance to support public authorities dealing with AI-generated FOI requests https://t.co/LPPyBHhY65

Advice seems sensible enough, but ICO doesn't suggest any actions that are likely to offset the reported increase in overall requests. (Is AI really behind that? Anecdotal?)

[Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva]

NHS Goes To War Against Open Source https://t.co/z1033aKNYx post by Terence Eden

New Scientist coverage https://t.co/zedNi3D8xx

#govtech #opensource #opengov

[Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva]

GPC England, the representative body for GPs in England, calls on practices to take collective action by refusing to sign new voluntary data sharing agreements that extract patient data for secondary uses https://t.co/V95m0HOHAs

#NHSdata #patientdata #datasharing #dataprotection

[Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva]

Data standards: Laying the groundwork for an open, faster, data-driven planning system https://t.co/Y2LJcIzEiK from MHCLG Digital

New regs (for England) https://t.co/kHggQblChy

Approved data standard https://t.co/cNWzh8vCuE (incl OGL👍)

#planningdata #datastandards #opendata

[Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva]

The UK Government is "refocusing the Data and AI Ethics Framework into the National Data Library" https://t.co/PPghiIOdjf recent DSIT update to @CommonsSITC, on digital government

Devs are going to … plump some ethics into the NDL project?

#govtech #techpolicy #dataethics

[Igor Os @igor_os777]

Ever wondered why Windows uses backslashes (\) while Unix stubbornly sticks to forward slashes (/)? Blame IBM and Microsoft’s shortsightedness in DOS. Unix pioneered forward-slash file separation, a sensible design choice adopted in URLs. When MS-DOS added directories, forward slashes already had another job—command-line options. In a panicked rush, Gates and company arbitrarily chose backslashes. Cue decades of pain for generations of IT admins juggling both OSes. One tiny decision, forever cursing humanity with confusing slashes, awkward escapes, and decades of ranting from frustrated Unix beards. You can practically hear Unix devs laughing all the way from Bell Labs.

[Blake Burge @blakeaburge]

Major cheat code for life: Learn to delay your reaction. Anger, fear, and impulse will try to make you move fast. There's power in pausing. In the pause, you see clearly, you respond wisely, and you avoid decisions you’ll regret. Slow down to speed up.

[Andrew Stott @DirDigEng]

“It’s risky to make predictions, especially about the future”

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

This was published 9 days before Wright brothers’ Kitty Hawk made its first successful flight.

[Andrew Stott @DirDigEng]

Event | LET'S TALK DATA | Inside Uzbekistan’s Data Systems Transformation: Reforms, Innovation, Impact https://t.co/6Ogby2iBZA via @WorldBank

[Andrew Stott @DirDigEng]

UK's grand plan to fuel AI with public data faces uphill battle https://t.co/DWj3doUrbM via @theregister

[Kiran Baby @kiranbaby_14]

Just launched a live 3D map of the London Underground
You can watch all the trains moving in real time, tap any train or station for details, and check line disruptions

50 visitors in the first 30 minutes of launching🤯

Inspired by minitokyo3d and londonunderground by @BenJames_____

🔗https://t.co/8Vok5cxTIx

[Faisal Islam @faisalislam]

Bitcoin: Made in Britain?

There always was a curious link to the headline on Darling’s 2009 UK bank bailout, copious use of “bloody” and other UK English phrases lead the NYT (in a cracking investigation) to conclude it is a British cryptographer, who in turn denies he is Satoshi Nakamoto…

Over to @ruskin147 who was called to give evidence in one of the trials and in fact spent a few of the earliest bitcoin on some pizzas!

[Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva]

Big job – Director General for Digital Transformation at the UK's Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT) in Bristol, London, Manchester https://t.co/lB0KscKvwO

Scope includes the National Data Library and other fashionable #govtech notions

[Owen Boswarva @owenboswarva]

LinkedIn secretly scans for 6,000+ Chrome extensions, collects data https://t.co/Kfb1PVUEFp

Fairlinked's BrowserGate report https://t.co/GDzvQFWv8r

Sketchy data-snaffling behaviour on LinkedIn, of all places! Surely not

#devicefingerprinting #dataprotection