PD Newsletter #36: Biased algorithms, legacy tech, openness and oh, we're hiring!

🎉We are hiring! For a:
- Director
- Principal Consultant (International Development, French-speaking)

Both based in London with significant global travel. More details on our site. Applications are open until the 27th November.

Now, over to the newsletter where there are LOTS of great things to read this time around.

Emma
@egawen

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Ways of Working

⚓️The U.S. Navy’s $100 million checkbox: a fascinating exploration of how UI design on a navy destroyer led

A great thread from Danny Buerkli looking at different models of change and transformation (mostly touching on either public policy or digital).

UK MoJ digital and technology strategy, in one short blog post. At under 1000 words, it is deceptively simple - but effective. Applicable to any organisation with a complex technology estate.

🙌 Make things open, it makes things better: the DTA in Australia have reused and adopted GOV.UK Notify. Launched as an Alpha earlier this year, it took four people, eight weeks, and $150,000, and is now used by 99 government agencies.

The Government of Canada has recently followed suit, launching an Alpha.
Meanwhile the GOV.UK Notify itself is now used by 1,403 services.

⌛️What is the user experience of applying for social safety net programs in the US? Code for America have mapped the the online application process across five major public benefits programs in all 50 U.S. states. Includes some powerful visualisations and some depressing stats on things like time to completion and number of screens required to complete an application. It's worth a look not just for the findings, but the methodology.

✅While on the topic of forms, some new guidance from the NHS digital service manual on how to write good questions for forms. Among many good tips, "only ask for information you definitely need".

State of technology

🖥
The HTTP Archive has published it's annual state of the web report, testing 5.8M websites. It covers page content, user experience, content publishing and content distribution. Here's something that caught my eye over on the mobile web chapter: "Of 5+ million websites analysed, 75.52% were bloated with JavaScript" - meaning it would be faster to just send a screenshot.

⬛️
Lesson 234972435 in why algorithms can embed rather than mitigate bias: a high profile argument as DHH (one of the creators of ruby on rails) and his wife apply for the Apple card and she gets a credit limit 20x lower than his. Plenty of articles about this, but in her words: "This is not merely a story about sexism and credit algorithm blackboxes, but about how rich people nearly always get their way."

🎤
For another angle on how machine learning is letting us down: Alexa's struggle with African accents.

✋
A deep dive into internet censorship in Russia; particularly interesting because it highlights that Russia is building censorship in a very different way to China, and without major government investment or complex infrastructure.

💵
Ulster Bank’s computer says no to negative rates: The Ulster Bank in in Ireland found it's aging IT system is unable to apply negative interest rate, meaning it has to absorb the costs itself. In the FT (paywalled) | Irish Times

Digital Government

🇵🇪
70 million views: obtained by GOB.pe since it's launch. Spanish | English with Google Translate

🇸🇬
Singapore takes time tracking to a whole new level: with a plan to use a facial recognition system to track MPs' presence in Parliament.

🇶🇦
Qatar has signed a wide-ranging MOU with Huawei to provide training for ICT and digital.

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