Category: Uncategorized (Page 2 of 11)

In 2021 the UK government’s Geospatial Commission prepared a briefing paper for some discussions about address data. It has been released to the journalist James O’Malley after a freedom of information request.

The paper was prepared in response to the long-running campaign asking the government to deliver on political commitments to make the list of UK addresses – and other non-personal geospatial data – freely available. People could then use the data to improve public services or build innovative new businesses.

The paper includes the mind-boggling statement that a government project in 2016 estimated that the cost to the UK government of buying back UK address data from the Royal Mail would be £487m. 

Yes, you read that right. That figure was four hundred and eighty seven million pounds.

It’s a big number and – if true – one that would call into question the whole campaign.

But, it doesn’t hold up to critical scrutiny and, unfortunately, the 2021 paper repeats this estimate without questioning it.

The civil service needs to be less credulous when it comes to claims over the financial value of data assets, and the UK government needs some fresh analysis.

Valuing intangible assets is difficult, valuing a commercial product is much easier

Valuing intangible assets, like data, is difficult. I’m such a fun person that I read books and academic papers about the different ways it can be done.

But, to the Royal Mail address data is fundamentally a commercial product line. Or, to put it another way, a small business within their larger business. 

At the simplest level the product is created when Royal Mail adds postcodes to the addresses created by local authorities. The Royal Mail then sells the resulting data product – under a commercial licence – both back to the government and onto other businesses.

This product is regulated. Every year it brings in about £30m of revenue and generates about £3m in profit.

A valuation of £487 does not pass the ‘smell test’

A price of £487m values that product line at a multiple of 162 (one hundred and sixty two) times its yearly profit of £3m.

If the valuation is true then that single product line would account for 15% (fifteen percent) of the current market capitalisation of the Royal Mail’s owner, IDS (International Distribution Services).

To put that further into perspective the whole of the IDS business has a turnover of £12bn. 400 (four hundred) times the turnover of this product line of address data. Yet somehow this small product line is 15% of the market capitalisation?

The IDS annual financial report does not even mention address data. It is too small a part of their overall business.

The valuation discussed by the UK government’s Geospatial Commission in their paper makes no sense. It does not pass the smell test.

We can imagine some negotiations

But, let’s look deeper. I can imagine the Royal Mail’s negotiators asking for such a large figure from the government. Why wouldn’t you try?

The Royal Mail might have talked about the economic value that better and more accessible address data could create for the UK economy. They might be thinking that they hold a unique asset and have the UK government over a metaphorical barrel. They might have argued that the £3m a year in profit was necessary for the financial viability of the Royal Mail. The negotiators might have said that only the Royal Mail can create addresses that work for deliveries around the country and that it was a vital part of delivering the UK’s universal postal service.

But the argument in return is that most of the effort that goes into creating address data comes from local government officials around the country. That if the address data they create is good enough for other services and other delivery firms then it can be good enough for the Royal Mail too. And, most importantly, the small amount of financial value that this product line creates for the Royal Mail’s own business.

But the negotiations should have simply started with a fair market value

But, to draw a comparison to the physical world, this type of negotiation would also have been the wrong starting point.

If the government needed to compulsorily purchase a piece of land or a business to build some physical infrastructure the discussion starts at the market value that a willing seller might find on the open market. The buyer selling a piece of land does not get to claim a percentage of the larger economic value that the new infrastructure could create for society. They simply get to sell their asset at a fair price.

The negotiations for selling the Postcode Address File back into the public sector should have started the same way. This would have cut through the complexity of data valuation.

No other buyer would pay £487m for a regulated product that creates £3m in profit a year, a multiple of 162. It is not the market value.

UK government and Royal Mail need to be realistic about the market value of address data

The campaign to open up UK address data is supported across the political spectrum. Most recently it was supported by peers from four political parties – Labour, Conservatives, Greens and Liberal Democrats.

A Minister from the previous government rejected their request and referenced this flawed report from 2016 that includes this unrealistic figure of £487m. The Minister should have asked the civil servants to start again.

The new UK government is building a digital centre for government and plans to create a National Data Library to deliver better services to people, researchers and businesses. That National Data Library could create significant economic and social value for the UK, particularly if it opens up foundational datasets, such as geospatial data. Other countries are doing this and the UK is falling behind.

As part of that work the Ministers from the new Labour government should ask their officials to stop relying on their flawed, old work and carry out a fresh analysis of address data.

‘Public good’ is a term that is frequently used in debates about data, statistics and AI. It has featured prominently in UK government policy and strategy, but the term isn’t always well defined or explored.

But in the UK it can seem like there is little recognition that there are different uses of the term ‘public good’ in debates elsewhere in the world, particularly with the emergence of the concept of ‘digital public good’. Sadly UK policy seems to have gradually become more insular over the last decade as the country has wrangled with the results of the Brexit referendum and a seemingly never-ending carousel of ministers with responsibility for this area.

The UK’s new Labour government’s draft industrial strategy, published in 2022, said that “our second mission will be to harness data for the public good“. It has created a new “digital centre” within DSIT and plans to build a National Data Library.

It seemed a good time to explore the concept of ‘public good’ a bit more., soJob de Roij and I from the RSS’s Data Ethics and Governance section have organised a couple of online events with speakers with expertise in both the UK and more globally.

• Event 1: Friday 18 October 2024 – for the public good
• Event 2: Wednesday 6 November – as a public good

Both events are free for RSS members, and £10 for non-members.

Read on for more about the two events, the confirmed speakers, and some background reading on the topic.

Event 1: For the public good

The UK Statistics Authority’s Five Year Strategy 2020-2025 is called Statistics for the public good. It also features in Labour’s draft industry strategy.

While some work has been undertaken to unpick this term by understanding how the UK public think of it, and to review how the public good can be enhanced to support policy makers, regulators and practitioners, there is more work to be done to ensure that statistics and statistical processes truly serve the good of the UK public.

Speakers

• Rachel Coldicutt (Careful Industries)
• Sofi Nickson (Office for Statistics Regulation)
• Ken Roy (Independent)

Starting questions

What do we mean by “serving the public good”? What are the gaps in our understanding of how to make things serve the public good? How do we fill those gaps?

Event 2: As a public good

Meanwhile there is growing attention around the world to the concept of ‘digital public goods’.

The UN defines digital public goods as “solutions and systems that enable the effective provision of essential society-wide functions and services in the public and private sectors”.

Identity assurance and payment systems are well-known examples of digital public goods. Certificate transparency, which underpins website security, a less well-known example.

In the world of statistics things like national statistics or the new ONS Integrated Data Service could be grouped into the concept of digital public goods. But what other kinds of digital public goods might, or should, exist that are relevant to statisticians? 

Speakers

• Steve Macfeely (OECD)
• Nicola Hamilton (Understanding Patient Data)
• Krisstina Rao (UCL IIPP)

Starting questions

What is a digital public good? When is data, AI and statistics a public good, and when is it not? Are any digital public goods that could help statisticians serve the public good missing? How do we build and govern digital public goods?

Further reading

If you want to read more about this topic then some links are below. Skeet or mail me if you think other things should be added.

• ADR UK and OSR (2022) – A UK-wide public dialogue exploring what the public perceive as ‘public good’ use of data for research and statistics
• David Eaves and Jordan Sandman (2023) – What is digital public infrastructure?
• David Eaves, Mariana Mazzucato, and Beatriz Vasconellos  (2024) Digital public infrastructure and public value: What is ‘public’ about DPI? 
• Diane Coyle (2020) – Big Data for the Public Good
• Digital Public Goods Alliance (2023) – Exploring Data as and in Service of the Public Good
• Cosmo Howard (2024) – State formation and statistics
• Jan Krewer (2024) – Signs of progress: Digital public infrastructure is gaining traction
• Labour Party (2022) – draft Industrial Strategy “Our second mission will be to harness data for the public good“
• National Infrastructure Commission (2017) data for the public good (UK Government response)
• Oliver Dowden MP (2024) – Deputy Prime Minister speech on AI for Public Good
• ONS (2022) – The importance of ethics and privacy in producing statistics for the public good (podcast)
• OSR (2023) – Data Sharing and Linkage for the Public Good
• OSR (2024) – The use of official statistics in UK public policy: facilitators and barriers
• OSR (2024) – How statistics can serve the public good: a thinkpiece
• OSR (2024) – Data sharing and linkage for the public good: breaking down barriers
• Ken Roy (2023) – The public good of statistics – narratives from around the world
• Linnet Taylor (2016) – The ethics of big data as a public good: which public? Whose good?
• UCL, IIPP (2024) – Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) map
• UKSA (2020) – Statistics for the global good – A five year international strategy for the Government Statistical Service
• UKSA (2021) – Considering Public Good in Research and Statistics: Ethics Guidance

• Jason Aaron (& others) – Thor Omnibus Volume 2
• Sarah Bernstein – Study for Obedience
• Steven Brust – Tsalmoth
• Deb Chachra – How Infrastructure Works
• Tom Chatfield – Wise Animals
• Counter-Print – The Snow Ghost and Other Tales: Classic Japanese Ghost Stories
• Lutz Seiler – In Case of Loss
• John Wagner (& others) – Judge Dredd: Case Files 33
• Manya Wilkinson – Lublin

Note

I read a lot of papers and blogposts for work too. Things that I need to write down so they can be found again tend to be bookmarked on Pinboard.

A journalist managed to meme themselves, myself – and some wiser people – into a meeting with the Shadow Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, to talk about how to free up the UK’s address data. There were even badges.

Address data – ie the list of properties in the UK: 1 Acacia Avenue NE26, 2 Acacia Avenue NE26 – might seem a bit dull, but it’s actually really fundamental to our lives.

It’s digital infrastructure that’s used every time you order a pizza online, to every time you get home insurance, to that time the government needed to combine umpteen datasets to work out who was most at risk from the pandemic and then help them shield from it.

Anyway, UK address data has been partly privatised (into the Royal Mail), partly behind paywalls (Ordnance Survey), and tangled up in some really complicated copyright and business model stuff.

That holds back innovation, investment and makes all of the services we use a little bit worse as people need to spend time wrangling money, copyright, licensing rather than cracking on with doing stuff that can make our lives better.

It’s possible for a government to fix that mess, but it needs some will power. And the last few governments have, to be kind, had other things to do.

So, in the run up to the next election a few of us are doing the rounds to ask the political parties who might form the next government whether they’ll have a go at sorting it out

Anyway, you can read more on the meeting on James’ substack, and subscribe to his newsletter too.

If you subscribe then James might even send you a ‘free the PAF’ badge…

The Post Office scandal is one of the most outrageous miscarriages of justice in recent UK history.

For over a decade people were wrongly accused of defrauding the Post Office. Many were prosecuted. Many others will have paid money to the Post Office to stop the accusations. Eighty three convictions have already been overturned, with more likely to come. There were jail sentences, deaths, divorces, bankruptcies and suicides before justice started to be restored. A public inquiry is under way.

One thing the scandal shows is that the legal presumption that computers are operating correctly risks causing a lot more harm.

_{The building on the left of this picture used to be a combined sweet shop and post office, it was run by my grandparents. Fortunately they retired before the Horizon system was implemented. Image © Google.}

Some of the problems were caused by computers

The root cause of the scandal is often described as being bad technology. Horizon, a system developed and operated for the Post Office by Fujitsu, was clearly not up to the job. It incorrectly reported that subpostmasters owed the Post Office money. But stories from subpostmasters, journalists, court cases and the ongoing inquiry show a broader set of failures.

_{The failures spanned a full stack of user interfaces, technology, organisations and public policy. Image by Projects by IF.}

Security researchers at University College London have done a neat summary of many of the technical issues with the Horizon system that were identified by a judge in 2019.

Nick Wallis’s book, The Great Post Office Scandal, also contains evidence of other issues. Sometimes Horizon’s touchscreen interface was too slow to keep up with the speed that people could enter orders, while the training and tools provided to subpostmasters were inadequate.

But there were organisational failures too

Employees of the Post Office and Fujitsu falsely told victims, politicians, and courts that the IT system was working correctly. Both organisations had evidence of its ongoing failures.

To make things worse the Post Office was in the rare position of having the legal power to both investigate and bring private prosecutions. There appears to have been little oversight of how the Post Office was using those powers by the Post Office’s sole shareholder, the UK government.

A report to the public inquiry that was published last week said that the policies and training provided to Post Office ‘s investigation and prosecution teams was not adequate to ensure that investigations and prosecutions were fair, auditable, and in accordance with the interests of justice.

And the law is an ass

And, for the icing on the cake, the Post Office’s prosecutions relied on a piece of law that says that courts should presume that computers are operating correctly. It is for defendants to demonstrate that a computer is operating incorrectly.

As the Post Office case shows it is incredibly difficult for defendants to do that when some organisations are as broken and incapable of being honest as the Post Office and Fujitsu. The evidence that they held of system failures was not shared with defendants or the courts.

The UK government has said that it has no plans to review this piece of law. As the technology industry is currently moving towards more probabilistic forms of technology, like the current wave of AI foundation models, that will be an increasingly strange position to take.

This is a law that will not just harm people in extreme cases, like the Post Office, but in many other cases too.

But if the law is an ass, then the law is an ass. There need to be campaigns to review and change the law, but in the meantime we can also try and make the law less of an ass.

_{A nice picture of an ass that I found on the web.}

Making the law less of an ass

Over the years most people that design, build and operate computer systems, products and services have realised that we need to mitigate the effects of computer faults.

But there’s less recognition, and less guidance, on how to reduce the chance of law, like the presumption that computers are reliable, being misused to harm people. The intent of this law was not to falsely jail people, but that is the outcome it has led to.

So, if you are responsible for designing, building or operating a computer system then you need to think about how and when to provide evidence that that system does have faults and flaws.

That means doing the basic things like collecting and storing evidence about problems with the computer, its user interfaces, and the surrounding organisational processes. The kind of things that most organisations do.

But it also means being prepared to do what can be a hard thing. To disclose that evidence, even when an organisation’s leadership – like the Post Office’s – decide not to.

Because a fair justice system that does not falsely prosecute and jail people is one of the most important foundations of society. And, as our society increasingly runs on computers, how the justice system handles evidence about computers is going to become ever more important to all our lives.

The public sector is facing pressure to innovate in response to changing needs, financial pressures, and emerging technologies. To innovate it needs to be trusted. The public sector can earn and maintain trust by aligning data and technology use with democratic values.

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