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We congratulate David Deeks, FIAP who writes elsewhere on these pages, on his elevation to the rank of Professor at Sunderland University.
Edwin Keen, BEng MSc FIAP is standing for re-election to the Council this year. He talks about himself and his aims below.
I am one of the earliest Fellows still in the Institution, having joined in 1983 and first being elected to the Council in 1996. I am currently a Principal Lecturer at England? newest university in Bolton, Lancashire where I am also Legal Main Contact of the Cisco Academy Program. My specialism nowadays is computer networking and network security and I have recently qualified as an instructor for the Cisco Fundamentals of Network Security course.
During my career, I?e worked on embedded and commercial software, as programmer, analyst, team leader and IT manager both as a contractor and as ?ermanent?staff. I still feel that the Institution is a long way from fulfilling its true potential, but consider real progress has been made in the last couple of years and look forward to an opportunity to contribute towards its further success.
The Institution has recently signed a Partnership Agreement with the IT Department of the Telegraph Newspaper Group. Peter Green, the distinguished IT Director at the Telegraph is already a Fellow of the IAP and the agreement makes provision for up to 20 of the department’s Business Analysts and Programmers to also become members of the Institution.
Symposium Report
As regular readers know, Council member Paul Lynham traditionally writes a report on the annual symposium to which we devote the whole of ‘IAP News’. Here’s this year’s.
The annual symposium of the Institution of Analysts and Programmers was held on Thursday, 11 March in Trinity House, Tower Hill, London. Mike Ryan, the Director General of the Institution began by calling for IT to be allowed to lead the way. He also noted that more business analysts are approaching the IAP as prospective members. The IAP is extending to businesses the partnerships that it has always had with academia. Mike went on to introduce this year’s chairman, David Morgan, a long-standing Council member of the Institution.
David introduced the first speaker, Peter Green, IT Director at the Daily Telegraph. Peter talked authoritatively about the Radiate Theory, which can be summarised as allowing IT to drive the business. From a legacy viewpoint, this might be seen as ‘the tail wagging the dog’. The concept of the theory is to make functional IT a business integration tool, allowing the integration of users, senior managers and business units.
Often, Business Unit Managers consider requests for new systems or IT upgrades only in terms of their relevance to that business unit, rather than to the business as a whole. Peter went on to give diagrammatic examples of the perception of a request from a sponsoring business unit (unit A), by other units within the organisation. For instance, “if the system can do X, then we will change our model to that of unit A”. “If unit A changes its model, it will cause our unit additional costs”. “The factory is unclear if it can keep up with the new model”. “Unit D loves the new model”.
Such requests can be managed by gathering all business units together for brainstorming sessions. The idea is to create a large map of the upsides and downsides. Each element can be expanded, so that several layers are produced. This can then help in deciding on the true benefits of the change and in fully costing it. Peter went on to show a simple formula that can be used.
As with any serious project, it must not only be correctly defined but also have a champion to give active support at board level. Peter gave some pointers to successfully implementing such changes, including an iterative approach, the importance of soft systems management and checking the validity of the statements of objectives and their continual review.
Because IT isn’t a service in this model, IT costs become a function of business unit costs. Again Peter demonstrated a formula that could be used. He summed up by reiterating that technology should not be servicing business, but driving it.
Seb Bacon, Technical Director of Jamkit, gave an interesting presentation entitled ‘The Open Source Jungle’. Seb has a personal interest in getting charities and public bodies to use OSS (Open Source Software). He believes that OSS is practical, cultural and ethical and that it is an intersection between proprietary business and open academia. It is ready for servers, enterprise applications and some desktops. Seb offered an overview of the history of OSS and described source code as ‘free speech’. He gave an example of some source code that had been developed to interpret DVD encoding for use on non-MS operating systems. Delegates were greatly amused on seeing the code, bearing in mind his remark about free speech, as the code used 1 and 2 letter variable names and was comment-free!
Seb went on to provide the highlights of OSS development chronologically:
1969 saw the birth of UNIX by Thompson and Ritchie.
In 1978, the Berkeley System Distribution (BSD) version of UNIX was released. A year later, DARPA adopted UNIX and contracted Berkeley.
The 1980s saw the deregulation and commercialisation of software.
In 1983 AT&T released their first public UNIX. BSD was the first OS to support networking for the Internet.
In 1989, UC Berkeley extracted their networking code from the rest of BSD under a loose licence.
1991 saw the removal of all UNIX code from BSD. BSD finished using Internet volunteers.
Seb talked about hackers (as in programmers who like to discover how things work), with a section entitled ‘Cracks in Paradise’. He described how Richard Stallman had habitually written code to modify the behaviour of printer drivers. When, however, printers were supplied without source code, this ceased to be possible. Stallman started GNU in 1983. In 1989 the GNU General Public Licence was formed with the Copyleft concept (after Copyright). This can be summed up as, “you can use this software however you like, but if you use it publicly, you must give away the source code and release it under this licence”. Such licences have been described as ‘viral’ as they spawn further software and licences that must comply with the philosophy.
Seb compared BSD and GNU software by their ideals – the BSD licence is to produce better software, where GNU is to produce more and more free software. Free in this context means free as in freedom to change, rather than free as in ‘free beer’.
Seb described Linus Torvalds writing LINUX, the missing completed GNU kernel and Eric Raymond. He summarised by pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of OSS.
David Deeks from Sunderland University introduced PISO, Process Improvement for Strategic Objectives. David described how this methodology was formed and summarised it as a step-by-step business improvement process. He went on to outline the phases involved and the use of DFDs. PISO uses DFDs for system efficiency and to meet agreed strategic objectives.
The first stage, Stage 0, identifies an area requiring improvement. Stage 1 develops those objectives and Stage 2 analyses the current system (DFD logic). The final stage designs the new system.
Each stage is then broken down into further steps. For instance 0.1 identifies the general area of improvement, 0.2 identifies the initial stakeholders and 0.3 establishes the improvement area boundaries.
David stressed that the stakeholders don’t merely ‘get involved’ - they do the design. The system is a rigorous approach to requirements definition and the agreed strategic objectives drive the re-design. He referred to a case study using a GP system, which was driven by a need for increased efficiency. However there were other systems that were driven by a need for quality. These are not mutually exclusive, as quality doesn’t come at the expense of efficiency. This is because part of the process is the logicalisation of the system for efficiency.
David went on to describe commercial products that have come out of this work, including pisoSIA and a number of applications such as pisoMetrics and pisoLEAN. He also detailed training courses, certification and training organisations.
Henry Nash, of The Apsley Group, gave a presentation on ‘NBIC – The Next Big Thing’. He described NBIC as the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, IT and cognitive science. Other descriptions include BANG – Bits, Atoms, Neurons and Genes, COMBINE – Cogno, Meets Bio, Info and Nano technology, and ‘The Singularity’.
Henry outlined the exponential pace of innovation and cited Moore’s observation of the doubling of power of computers every 18 months. He exemplified the future trend: $1000 will buy you the equivalent power and memory of a rodent brain by 2010, a human brain by 2020, a thousand human brains by 2035 and all the human brains in existence by 2060!
This not only applies to transistors, but to other technologies. For example, the Human Genome Project was originally expected to take 15 years and cost $3 billion. It took eight years to sequence the first 7% but the remainder took only another two. Celera’s map cost just $200 million. Such stories will be repeated with Proteinomics and the Human Cognome Project.
Henry went on to highlight some current examples of NBIC. There are artificial retinas with 5000-pixel resolution fed into patients’ optic nerves. There are neural interfaces implanted with 1000 neural connections. Synthetic biology and nanotechnology will allow the first artificial strands of DNA to be written permitting medicines to be created in situ, rather than having to be transported to the site of need.
The predicted IT involvement in NBIC may be:
2005-2010: The Tool era – IT provides increasingly more powerful tools.
2010-2015: The Embedded era – this is now an active part of NBIC services.
2015-2025: Non-human intelligence.
2020-2030: True NBIC era – NBIC now at work in most industries.
Also:
2005-2010: 1 sq mm computing nodes appear, at less than 10 cents each.
2010-2020: Such technology becomes invisible and nanotechnology becomes increasingly a part of the device.
Henry highlighted the technical issues to be solved in the next 10 to 15 years. Drug discovery will go exponential with ‘in silicon’ experiments rather than ‘in vitro’ being the norm. Most diseases will be curable or their progression halted. (Jim Bates remarked later that his goal was to survive until then!) Self-replication will transform accessibility to this technology. He summed up by saying, “IT changed the world. NBIC will change humanity”.
Brian Swan, of Exoftware, gave an excellent presentation on Agile Software. Brian started by highlighting the number of projects that were either challenged or impaired due to incomplete or changing requirements. He went on to list some of the members of the Agile family, including XP, SCRUM, Adaptive Software Development, Lean development, Feature Driven Development, Crystal and DSDM.
Agile methods favour individuals and interactions over processes and tools, with working software favoured over documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiations and responding to change over following a plan.
Brian highlighted the principles of Agile development. Highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. It should welcome changing requirements, even late in the development cycle. It should also deliver working software frequently and build projects around motivated people. The best way to convey messages is by face to face contact. Working software is the primary measure of progress and there is continual attention to technical excellence. Simplicity – the art of maximising the amount of work not done – is essential. The team also reflects on how to become more effective.
One of the results of an Agile development process is that productivity increases. Success is proportional to size, with small projects having a much better chance of delivery than massive ones.
Dr Philip McLauchlan of Imagineer Systems presented a session entitled ‘Look – no wires’. While supervising a post graduate student, he found that objects could be eliminated from frames e.g. a tennis player from a Wimbledon video. This led to the idea of removing from films objects such as wires used to allow people apparently to fly through the air. Thus it is a computer vision solution for postproduction in film and allied industries. In fact, the software developed can now be used for 2D tracking in visual effects, wire and rig removal, restoration, stabilisation, matte creation and rotoscoping.
The software uses the freely available Gandalf library available from Source Forge and also makes use of OpenRL. Several applications have been developed including Mokey and Monet. Monet incorporates Aspex Line Dancer acceleration.
Philip demonstrated how wires are removed from a film clip. This involved marking out areas on an initial frame, such as anchor points and the wires to be removed. He then ran through a few frames, just to ensure the software could track the wires. Finally, the whole clip was run and the wires were removed and replaced by the background automatically – very impressive. Some leading postproduction companies have already purchased the software.
Steven Jenkins of Safemessage gave an enlightening presentation on the safety of email. Generally, people feel safe when using email. However, there are security weaknesses and email is only as secure as sending a postcard. The contents of an email are virtually public, easily intercepted and can be forwarded (unintentionally or maliciously). Further, identities can be spoofed. Data lives forever because copies can be archived all over the world without the sender’s knowledge or approval.
The costs of email leaks include loss of valuable confidential data, client confidence and credibility. Direct costs are those of litigation and the effect on share price.
There are hacking and packet sniffing shareware applications that can be used for email interception. So is encryption the answer? Well, only partly. Emails can still be forwarded and delivery status is unknown. Often, encrypted material is quarantined at the firewall. Email client incompatibility may present a problem. And headers will still appear in plain text
So what is the answer? Any solution to address these problems should encrypt the entire message and any attachments. It must give control over forwarding, printing and the life of the message. It must provide direct routing. And it must not allow an unencrypted version to exist. Finally, it must be easy for the user to work with.
Steve concluded that everyone should be aware that email is insecure and that confidential information should only be sent over a system that provides absolute security, not just basic encryption.
In conclusion, David Morgan called on the IAP President, Jim Bates. Jim felt that this year’s Symposium had been an outstanding success. He closed the event by inviting delegates to the Piano and Pitcher where a good time was had by all.
Nominations for the Council of the IAP
The Institution is a democratic body governed by a Council elected by and from its members. Five members of the 15-strong Council retire in rotation each year. Nominations for the 2005 election, accompanied by the nominee? manifesto (in electronic form and not exceeding 150 words, please) must be received at the Institution Office by 21st February 2005. Contact the Office (020 8567 2118 or by email.) for further details or an informal discussion if you are interested in playing your part in the governance of the Institution.
Process Improvement for Strategic Objectives
David Deeks, of the University of Sunderland (an IAP Partner) tells us a little about a new development in his Process Improvement System, PISO
The Institution is a democratic body governed by a Council elected by and from its members. Five members of the 15-strong Council retire in rotation each year. Nominations for the 2005 election, accompanied by the nominee’s manifesto (in electronic form and not exceeding 150 words, please) must be received at the Institution Office by 21st February 2005. Contact the Office (020 8567 2118 or by email.) for further details or an informal discussion if you are interested in playing your part in the governance of the Institution.
Symposium Report
As regular readers know, Council member Paul Lynham traditionally writes a report on the annual symposium to which we devote the whole of ‘IAP News’. Here’s this year’s.
We met at Trinity House on 18 March. Director General Mike Ryan welcomed delegates and summarised recent changes including the new office, administrator and Webmaster. He also mentioned the significant amount of outsourcing to Asia and suggested members focus on customer-facing skills to differentiate them from remote working competition. Mike introduced this year’s chairman, Jim Bates, IAP President. Jim noted the magnificent surroundings afforded by Trinity House and introduced the first speaker, Richard Allan MP.
Richard began a career in Archaeology but became interested in IT and completed a government sponsored MSc in IT. He spent 6 years in the NHS, helping roll out Internet and email facilities. In 1997 he was elected MP for Sheffield Hallam. Only 26 of 650 MPs have a background in science or technology – just 4%!
He listed the parliamentary groups with an IT focus, including PITCOM, which IAP representatives attend. He noted the select committees that look at IT spending. The National Audit Office (www.nao.org.uk) analyses projects that have gone astray and concludes that decision-makers are light on expertise. Outsourcing has made the situation worse, with weak client-side input. This is worrying, as IT is a critical plank in improving public services.
Large projects have poor track records, WERS 2, Tax Credit and GCHQ being examples. In the latter case, a project with a £20m budget actually cost £400m. This has led to a perception that ‘Government IT’ is synonymous with failure. So projects must now be ‘green flagged’ through the Office of Government Commerce. The department initiating the project and the industry partner each need a ‘champion’.
PFI’s promise of eliminating Government risk has proved illusory. A new model will use private third parties, but ‘in partnership’. Thus, ministers can no longer say, ‘ We contracted out and they failed’.
Disaster has attended political ignorance. For instance, a political decision was taken not to test a benefits system so that it could meet a deadline. The result was that, although the user interface worked, when connected to the production database, it failed miserably and benefits were not paid.
NHS Direct is a successful example but this project did not affect existing systems. Richard believes IT can deliver better public services but it needs commitment and understanding to succeed.
Peter Welch, Professor of Parallel Computing, University of Kent at Canterbury, gave an interesting presentation entitled ‘Concurrency for All’. Peter demonstrated that nature is dynamic, with entities interacting from the microbial to the astronomical level. Such natural systems are robust, efficient, long-lived and continually evolving. Concurrency is a core design mechanism in which the interconnection of components is achieved with simple composition rules and clean interfaces. Hardware systems are built like this but software often isn’t. Software concurrency is only used at need.
In the OO paradigm, an external thread must invoke all methods. Thus it is really caller, rather than object, oriented. Concurrent systems overcome resulting problems by locking. However, too high a level of locking leads to deadlock, too little results in corruption. But concurrency can make things simpler and safer.
To demonstrate this, Peter used a version of Pong with multiple balls, travelling at different speeds. Analysing it, he showed the many interactions between the game’s components, including the canvas, the keyboard controller, the balls and the paddles. Messages allow components to interact but sub-systems can be used in isolation, without unexpected interference. Changes only affect the required components. If, say, colliding balls need to be redirected, a service to do this wouldn’t affect other components. Thus we can handle each process on its own and reuse our serial programming skills to achieve concurrency.
Peter used a synchronised communication example of an object ‘A’, wanting to send data to object ‘B’ using channel ‘C’. It could be blocked if ‘A’ could not write to ‘C’. This synchronous I/O is concurrency with ‘1 to 1’, ‘1 to many’ and ‘many to many’ flavours. It only uses a 32-byte overhead per process and timing metrics show delays only of nanoseconds.
This can be applied to modelling bio-mechanisms (one of the UK Grand Challenges), so that biological experiments can be simulated within a computer. A nematode worm could be studied from fertilised cell right up to its adult stage, observing its reaction to stimuli. Occam-Л and JCSP can be used to achieve this. CSP has compositional semantics and JCSP enables direct Java implementations of CSP.
Peter observed that OO is about 30 years old. CSP is 10 years younger. It’s now, he says, CSP’s turn to be the leading development paradigm.
Mark Aldington, Managing Director of Addventure Partners, presented a topic entitled ‘Quantum Cryptography – Could it Work?’ He said the jury is still out on what quantum cryptography really is. However he summarised it in one context as a point-to-point securitisation of fibre optic cable using quantum effects to detect eavesdropping. Senders need no common code with the inherent risks of third parties compromising the system, as the keys are thrown away!
QIP Cientifica is a knowledge broker between scientific and academic communities, institutions and commercial partners. They want to showcase this technology and its potential applications and would like to demonstrate it outside the laboratory. A proposed trial would involve the connection of the Bank of England with the Treasury using fibre optic cable. Participants could be given a message to send between them under the same conditions. Hackers would be allowed to try to intercept the messages and the results monitored by a supervisory team and peer reviewed. This might convince interested parties that the technology is usable and reliable.
QIP wants to promote the UK as the location of choice for commercial development of quantum cryptography systems. The UK has a good track record in invention (although not in exploitation). It also has a history in cryptography, with the example of Bletchley Park’s exploits in the Second World War, leading to the development of the computer. Mark gave a rundown of the largest players involved in the field including NEC, IBM, MAGIC Corp, BBN Systems, ID Quantique, Quinetiq, Free Air and the Singapore government.
The limitations of quantum cryptography are distance (recently extended to 150 Km) and medium (fibre optic cable). There is also the cost of new hardware. A further problem is that commerce does not think that it has a problem with key distribution!
Mark identified organisations that would be interested in this technology. These included financial institutions, defence and intelligence agencies.
He said that this could be good news for IAP members. Any new technology provides new opportunities and new standards, protocols and hardware interfaces.
Mark concluded by quoting Richard Feynman – ‘Nobody understands Quantum Theory’.
After lunch, Ken Abraham, Chairman of PICT Innovation, gave a presentation on investment for innovation. He conducted a survey of the people in the room, which reflected the result of research that found the largest percentage of people work for micro companies. These companies (maximum of 10 employees) often don’t have the infrastructure and resources needed to attract investment.
Ken went on to consider the European Paradox –high R & D expenditure but low commercialisation spend. The reason is the lack of specific skills and entrepreneurial culture. This leads to a lack of venture capital investment. The skills sought are Transition Management Skills, Information Management Skills, Networking Skills, Knowledge Management Skills, Investor Persuasion Skills and IPR Protection Skills.
Ken quoted a Swedish investment group (third largest in Europe) which says, ‘Any company failing to implement these skills will disappear’.
Ken referred to the ‘Push and Pull’ of investment. As part of the technology ‘push’, he listed the sources of funding – soft money – which were the company’s own funds, FFF (family, friends and fools), bank loans and angels. The demands on the ‘pull’ were investors and venture capitalists. Often the latter base their investment on the management team’s qualifications, in particular their general skills, marketing skills and R & D. If a company has at least two of these skills, there is an 80% success rate. Otherwise, there is a comparable chance of failure.
Collaborations must maintain good communication between the public and private sectors and academia. This is where PICT can help, with other funding opportunities coming from venture capitalists and the EU.
With EU funding, there are 4 phases. R & D are followed by market preparation, with phase 3 being the commencement of business. The final phase should be profit. The EU funds the first 3 phases. For example a partnership of 4 equal participants put up half of each of their quarter share of costs (time, effort, money), while the EU funds the remainder. Thus each partner only has to find an eighth of the required funding.
Ken pointed to the success of the ARCTIC project that has 7 partners worth 6m Euro. Their product involved synchronous objects in Java and C++. One of the partners is a small Highlands company that now shares 4% of the IPR, which was only possible with the partnership and EU funding.
PICT gets involved when projects have stalled. It shares the IPR. Additional funding is provided and repayment made when viable. However PICT’s main aim is to get the company into a viable position and let them have the opportunity of buying back the IPR.
Another example is the THINK project worth 5m Euro with involvement from Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and Scotland. They are involved with training and work opportunities for people with disabilities.
Ken concluded that not all companies want to expand rapidly, but may want to take the lifestyle route.
Peter Ananicz and Don Tricker, founding directors of e421 Ltd, gave a presentation entitled ‘Tackling the Public Sector Market’. Don started by putting ICT in the UK in context. The UK’s spend on ICT in 2004 is expected to be £124.7 billion, with a growth rate of 3.2%. We will soon overtake Germany as the largest ICT market in Europe.
The three main drivers for this growth are IT upgrades, outsourcing and public sector spending. The latter comprises NHS IT system upgrades, broadband rollout and e-government. E-government is the delivery of local government services by electronic means, including phone, fax, email and the Web. The e-government target is to get all government services online by 2005. This was interesting, as Richard Allan had said earlier that providing services without carrying out a cost benefit analysis was not making good use of public funds!
Issues to be considered include business process re-engineering, project management, e-learning, security and the lack of e-skills. E-government applications include CRM, knowledge management, GIS and Web sites, portals, intranets and extranets.
The e-government budget is £220 million and has priorities for schools, transforming our local environment and promoting economic vitality. However, at present two thirds of the projects are behind schedule. Reasons for this include lack of funding, insufficient guidance and direction, poor infrastructure, skill shortages and cultural change.
Peter outlined some of the players involved. These include the Offices of the e-Envoy and Deputy Prime Minister, IDeA, LGA, SOLACE and SOCITM. Sources of funding include regional and national Government and the EU Structured Fund. The local public sector includes Business Links, Learning and Skills Councils and local authorities.
Suppliers must meet criteria including knowledge of public sector workings, understanding of SLP, VAT registration and professional indemnity cover.
Peter concluded with a 5 stage strategy that may help tap into these projects. These are: Contact the CEO; Offer free baseline consultancy; Target projects below £10K budget; Include weekly project management reports; Partner with other local suppliers.
Julie Howell, Digital Policy Development Officer for RNIB, began her talk by asking, ‘How does a blind person use a computer’? In fact there are few people who are totally blind. Visually impaired people can often see the screen, but may need to change the text size. Sometimes, smaller text is better, as for those with glaucoma. It’s important that the interface is flexible, so users can configure it.
Blind people use a ‘screen reader’ to translate html or text to audio. Relatively few (2%) read Braille, because most people lose their sight late in life. Braille displays do exist, giving tactile screen feedback. Partially sighted people can use a screen magnifier. There are also foot controllers and head pointers that help overcome disabilities.
There are WAI guidelines (www.w3.org/wai) for Web content accessibility. In law, there is the Disability Discrimination Act. The WAI guidelines are one component of a toolkit for alleviating disability discrimination. Others are user involvement and usability testing.
There are four groups whose impairments benefit from good Web design – those with sight loss, hearing loss, poor manual dexterity and cognitive impairments. Areas that need attention are image description and control of layouts, audio text transcripts, keyboard access and logical navigation respectively.
The government estimates that 8.6m UK residents have disabilities. But 9m are hard of hearing, 6m are dyslexic and 2m are blind or partially sighted. Another 4m fall into other categories such as stroke, epilepsy and industrial accidents. According to Forrester Research, 57% of work age population will benefit from ‘accessibility technology’ (see www.microsoft.com/enable/aging).
Julie concluded with an example of a case that benefited all parties. Tesco allows goods to be ordered via its Web site. In 1999 RNIB received 40 complaints from members who found the site unusable. Tesco visited RNIB and listened to suggestions. It spent £35,000 on R & D for a separate ‘Tesco Access’ site. In 2004 it forecasts £13m of new business. ‘Tesco Access’ has also been used in Korea and on the pocket PC, because it is easy to use. Julie says that many non-disabled people use it, purely because it is easier than the main site. Tesco now has plans to build its new main site to be easily accessible for all users.
 Visual Systems Journal
Member News
Nominations for the Council of the IAP
The Institution is a democratic body governed by a Council elected by and from its members. Five members of the 15-strong Council retire in rotation each year. Nominations for the 2004 election, accompanied by the nominee’s manifesto (in electronic form and not exceeding 150 words, please) must be received at the Institution Office by 21 February. Contact the Office (020 8 5672118) for further details or an informal discussion if you are interested in playing your part in the governance of the Institution.
[Do not forget to email Robin Jones with items of news about you or your company.]
Notice Board
The IAP Annual Symposium
is at Trinity House, Tower Hill, London on 18 March. Tickets are £70 per delegate (members) and £100 (non-members). Contact the Office on 020 8 5672118 for reservations.
Legal IT London
is at the Business Design Centre, Islington between 11 and 12 February. Contact Cordial Events Ltd on 01491 575522 or fax 01491 575544 for details.
[Got an activity or event coming up? Email Robin Jones with the details.]
Sounding Board
Robin Jones has some thoughts on usability he would like to share.
The Dell sales rep asked, “Do you want a modem installed in your notebook?” “No”, I said, listening to the siren voices in my head murmuring, “You don’t really need it and you can save some money.”
That was four years ago. Now, of course, I do need one. Not a problem, I thought. I’ll get a USB modem and then it’s available as a lash-up when necessary (an event that occurs at two-day intervals on current experience).
I read the ‘manual’, a poorly printed A3 sheet of paper with instructions in seven languages, none of them English. Unless you count “Don’t reboot the computer system when the USB modem is correctly by plug into your USB Port of Computer.” as English, that is.
Not that I was particularly concerned about that; I was simply looking for the folder at which to point the ‘Add New Hardware’ wizard for the driver files. I found it, gave the wizard the information and went away to do other chores. When I returned 20 minutes later, Windows was aimlessly thrashing around the CDROM. So I ferreted about looking for likely candidates. After a couple of abortive attempts, I found the right directory and the modem installed itself without further hassle.
Two days later, I added a USB hub. Windows noticed and dealt with it fine. Then it denied all knowledge of the modem and insisted I re-install it. No problem this time, of course. Except that the modem is suddenly much less stable and disconnects itself randomly. Removing the hub makes no difference.
When I have time, I’ll uninstall everything and start from scratch. But I shouldn’t have to. I’ve spent – wasted – several hours installing a piece of hardware whose selling point is that it’s Plug-and-Play. That’s at least £100 worth of anybody’s time – three times the cost of the modem! For the non-technical user (at whom, if memory serves, USB was primarily aimed) such experiences just confirm that IT is a black art and that computers and all their works are simply not fit for purpose. If this sort of thing happened when Joe Public bought a new pair of headphones for his Walkman he would simply return them and say he wanted a pair that worked. Now that is Plug-and-Play.
Like it or not, computers are now consumer items. And Microsoft, at least, apparently likes it or it wouldn’t have developed Windows XP Media Centre Edition. So it is time manufacturers and retailers took the same responsibilities they would accept without question for televisions, refrigerators, phones and all the other goods that are displayed not ten yards from the latest computing kit. And if that means higher prices because staff would need more and better training, well, I could live with that. Could you?
[Something to get off your chest? Email Robin Jones with the details.]
Notice Board
The IAP Annual Symposium is at Trinity House, Tower Hill, London on 18 March. Tickets are £70 per delegate (members) and £100 (non-members). Contact the Office on 020 8 5672118 for reservations. See Work in Progress for detailed information about the presentations.
Legal IT London is at the Business Design Centre, Islington between 11 and 12 February. Contact
Cordial Events Ltd on 01491 575522 or fax 01491 575544 for details.
[Got an activity or event coming up? Email eo@iap.org.uk with the details.]
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Sounding Board
Robin Jones has some thoughts on usability he’d like to share.
The Dell sales rep asked, ‘Do you want a modem installed in your notebook?’ ‘No’, I said, listening to the siren voices in my head murmuring, ‘You don’t really need it and you can save some money.’
That was four years ago. Now, of course, I do need one. Not a problem, I thought. I’ll get a USB modem and then it’s available as a lash-up when necessary (an event that occurs at two-day intervals on current experience).
I read the ‘manual’, a poorly printed A3 sheet of paper with instructions in seven languages, none of them English. Unless you count ‘Don’t reboot the computer system when the USB modem is correctly by plug into your USB Port of Computer.’ as English, that is.
Not that I was particularly concerned about that; I was simply looking for the folder at which to point the ‘Add New Hardware’ wizard for the driver files. I found it, gave the wizard the information and went away to do other chores. When I returned 20 minutes later, Windows was aimlessly thrashing around the CDROM. So I ferreted about looking for likely candidates. After a couple of abortive attempts, I found the right directory and the modem installed itself without further hassle.
Two days later, I added a USB hub. Windows noticed and dealt with it fine. Then it denied all knowledge of the modem and insisted I re-install it. No problem this time, of course. Except that the modem is suddenly much less stable and disconnects itself randomly. Removing the hub makes no difference.
When I have time, I’ll uninstall everything and start from scratch. But I shouldn’t have to. I’ve spent – wasted – several hours installing a piece of hardware whose selling point is that it’s Plug-and -Play. That’s at least £100 worth of anybody’s time – three times the cost of the modem! For the non-technical user (at whom, if memory serves, USB was primarily aimed) such experiences just confirm that IT is a black art and that computers and all their works are simply not fit for purpose. If this sort of thing happened when Joe Public bought a new pair of headphones for his Walkman he would simply return them and say he wanted a pair that worked. Now that is Plug-and-Play.
Like it or not, computers are now consumer items. And Microsoft, at least, apparently likes it or it wouldn’t have developed Windows XP Media Centre Edition. So it is time manufacturers and retailers took the same responsibilities they would accept without question for televisions, refrigerators, phones and all the other goods that are displayed not ten yards from the latest computing kit. And if that means higher prices because staff would need more and better training, well, I could live with that. Could you?
[Something you'd like to get off your chest? Email me (Robin Jones) at eo@iap.org.uk.]
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Members’ News:
Nominations for the Council of the IAP
The Institution is a democratic body governed by a Council elected by and from its members. Five members of the 15-strong Council retire in rotation each year. Nominations for the 2004 election, accompanied by the nominee’s manifesto (in electronic form and not exceeding 150 words, please) must be received at the Institution Office by 21 February. Contact the Office (020 8 5672118 or admin@iap.org.uk) for further details or an informal discussion if you are interested in playing your part in the governance of the Institution.
[Don't forget to email eo@iap.org.uk with items of news about you or your company.]
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Work in Progress
This month, we’re giving over this section to a preview of the Annual Symposium (see Notice Board above). As usual, the speakers are experts in their fields and their chosen topics fascinating and current, as you’ll see from the résumés below. Trinity House is a beautiful venue, as the photograph suggests, but it isn’t huge. So make your reservations fast!
Computing Comes of Age
Richard Allen MP is the Liberal Democrat Spokesman on Information Technology. He speaks and writes regularly on a broad range of technology related subjects and takes a particular interest in the development of e-democracy and e-government. He is active in several All-Party groups including the Internet Group, the Latin America Group, the Columbia Group and the Modernisation Group.
The thrust of Richard’s presentation will be that IT is no longer a marginal interest but touches all aspects of our lives. Surveys show that virtually every young person is now an Internet user. Success or failure of public services is directly linked to their ability to implement IT solutions and it is inconceivable that any significant modern business could operate without IT.
Yet IT skills and expertise remain the domain of a small group. Most users have little understanding of how the technology works and many of those responsible for implementing IT programmes are equally ignorant. As IT becomes ubiquitous we need to ensure better public understanding of this technology. It would be very unhealthy for society to ‘leave it to the techies’.
Richard Allen became the Liberal Democrat MP for Sheffield Hallam in May 1997. He is well equipped to talk about computing matters. He has an MSc in Computer Technology and spent several years developing IT systems to support primary health care in the NHS.
Concurrency for All
Concurrency plays a fundamental role in the natural world but in computing applications it is often a mere add-on, a special magic that increases the responsiveness of systems or distributes the work to many machines. Except that the magic often fails, leaving systems either totally without response or hopelessly corrupted. That’s why concurrency tends to be ignored – it’s ‘hard’ or ‘advanced’. It’s only to be contemplated when no other choice is left.
Professor Peter Welch will dissent from such views, presenting modern bindings of Hoare’s elegant and modular CSP algebra to Java (JCSP) and the new occam-M language, which allows concurrency to be restored to its natural role as a key engineering idea. Concurrency should be central to system design and implementation, something to be used every day without fear. It should simplify maintenance, increasing system robustness, scalability and performance. Peter will show examples from a range of application areas, including real-time systems, Web services and the large scale modelling of biological mechanisms.
As Professor of Parallel Computing at the University of Kent at Canterbury, Peter Welch is an enthusiastic speaker on this topic. His doctoral research was on semantic models for the lambda-calculus, one of the key mathematical theories supporting functional programming. For the past 20 years his main area of research and teaching has been the field of concurrency and parallel computing. His contributions to developments in the field have included a CSP model of Java thread synchronisation (enabling formal verification of Java multithreaded code) and CSP-based design rules for process network hierarchies. His main work lies in the development of tools supporting these rules and in the design and compilation of parallel languages.
Web Sites that Work
The Institution knows from experience how difficult it can be to create a Web site that lives up to expectations and does what it is supposed to. But consider the 8.6 million people in the UK with a disability. How much more difficult is it for them? If Web designers do not consider them they may be breaking the law and are certainly ignoring a significant source of potential customers and revenue. 8.6 million is close to 15% of the population and they may all be able to do their shopping via the Internet. But can they access your Web site? Julie Howell is Digital Policy Development Officer at the RNIB. She will explain how a blind person surfs the Web, what companies and Web designers can do to make their sites more accessible and why you should care about it.
Julie joined RNIB, the largest UK charity for people with disabilities, in 1994 and became the charity’s first Web site editor in 1997. In 1999 she moved to the Public Policy Department where she established RNIB’s Campaign for Good Web Design. Last year, she was appointed Digital Policy Development Officer, a role that aims to ensure information products and services published on digital platforms are both accessible and useable. She has advised Tesco, the BBC and the British Bankers’ Association, among others. She has represented RNIB on Government and other public sector bodies.
Investment for Innovation
Ken Abraham MIAP, is a member of the IAP Council. He has run an IT company in Scotland for fifteen years. Because it serves a remote customer base, it has devised innovative business models that make use of developing technologies. To support this work, Ken has participated in a wide range of EU funded R & D projects, resulting in the creation of a new commercialisation and research institute for the ICT industry in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. PICT Innovation Ltd identifies and supports ‘stalled’ ICT projects and creates new commercially sustainable companies and products.
Ken says that the pilot programme successfully established with PICT could now be extended to other parts of the UK. There is money available, from Government, the EU and elsewhere. The problem has been that, for both sides, potential recipients do not know where to look for support or how to present a claim. These are areas that Ken will illuminate for us.
Email – Can You Afford the Risk?
We are all aware of the embarrassing private emails that have leaked into the public domain, then been gleefully plastered over every front page. As another of our presenters Steven Jenkins will show, email is so insecure that it is amazing anything remains private at all. Since 1999 Steven has been with SafeMessage, the leading Secure Messaging and Digital Rights Management system, which provides high level encryption and controls that can achieve secure document distribution.
Steven will explain how email can be compromised from both inside and outside an organisation. He will outline the weaknesses of the email system and show how easily it can be intercepted using basic spying (packet sniffing) software. The real costs of email leaks, and of the litigation arising from its misuse, are much higher than is generally realised. But they can be minimised by taking reasonable precautions to secure communications.
Regular attendees at the Symposium will know that this is one of the rare occasions when IAP President Jim Bates opens his wallet to the public. At the close of formal proceedings members will be invited to inspect his collection of rare and vintage coins laid out on the bar of the nearby Pitcher and Piano public house. We hope to see you there.
[Interesting project or development? Let us know at eo@iap.org.uk!]
Visual Systems Journal
Member News
New Administrator
Jeanette Walsh has been with us only five months, but had, in that short time, made a hugely favourable impression on everyone. Unfortunately, she is moving to the West Country and so has had to leave us. We wish her well. Her replacement, who by the time you read this will have been in post for several weeks, is Anne Harding. Anne is 55 and was born in South Africa, as was her husband who is Head of History at a Girls’ school. They have two grown up daughters and live about ten minutes’ walk from our office at Boundary House. Anne was a computer cartographer from 1970 to 2001. But since 1995 due to a slump in the oil business things have been quiet so she started her own home-based business in Desktop Publishing. She has designed flyers and annual catalogues and organised exhibitions. She’s also acted as a representative. For the last year she has been further augmenting her earnings by temping for Reed, her various assignments including cashiering at Natwest, interviewing members of the public in the street and organising a GP’s surgery administration.
New Fellow
We are pleased to welcome David Hickman, who was recently admitted to the Institution.
Thirteen years in the RAF, where he learned the basic tools of his trade, led David Hickman rather naturally into his first civilian job creating flight simulation software for Singer Link Miles. Moving on to Rediffusion Simulation in 1980, he spent the following five years designing software for inertial navigation and automatic flight control. He continued as a contractor to Rediffusion until 1985, working on Data Logging software. This was followed by shorter contracts with British Aerospace (Avionics and Interactive Training Systems) and British Telecom (Network Management and GUI)
A 3-year contact with ICL signalled a complete break from the aircraft industry. The work, involving Disc Mirroring and Recovery and Back/Front Office Systems, led to a run of work in the Banking and Insurance sectors, first with Sphere Drake Underwriting, then the Environment Agency, and currently with Standard Chartered Bank. The work involves software to assure the efficiency and security of worldwide financial dealing.
Work in Progress
AlldayPA has just signed a Partnership Agreement with the IAP. We believe that they provide a service that could be extremely useful to many of our members, especially those who work on their own and, perhaps, ‘on the road’. But I’ll let Nicole Gerrey, their Product Communications Manager, introduce them to you.
It may not sound very ‘techy’, but IT Receptionist from alldayPA uses expensive and complex telecoms technology and in-house designed software to deliver the simplest of ideas – someone to answer your phone.
IT Receptionist is a call handling and message taking ‘virtual assistant’ service totally tailor-made for the IT Hardware and Software markets. It screens your calls, manages the ones you don’t want to take, transfers the ones you do, takes your messages – everything a real receptionist would do if she were sat in front of your desk, but for a fraction of the cost.
Call Handling
When you register, you instantly receive your own telephone number – you can choose between an 0845 low-call rate number, 0207 Central London number or 0208 Greater London number. Your number is live immediately and ready to use. When a call comes in, it travels immediately to IT Receptionist and triggers your company information screen to ‘pop’ on the screen in front of the available receptionist. The call is answered using the tailored script IT Receptionist agree with you when you subscribe and your caller is completely unaware that the call is anywhere other than at your office. It’s as simple as that. All you need is a call diverting facility on your landline and/or mobile. Alternatively, you can publish your number and IT Receptionist will take all your calls. Then you can take advantage of all these services:
Call Screening
Avoid the calls you don’t want to take and take the important ones that you do. All your messages will drop instantly into your Inbox and, if you wish, be sent to your mobile by SMS text.
Overflow Calls
Set up your business line so that unanswered or engaged calls are immediately diverted to IT Receptionist – you’ll never miss another call.
Helpdesk ‘Call Centre’
We can act as your ‘24-hour Helpdesk Call Centre’ – IT Receptionist can be your client’s first point of contact in those important situations and we’ll make sure the procedures you dictate are followed quickly and to the letter.
Disaster Recovery
In the event of an emergency you can remotely divert your phones to IT Receptionist ensuring your business remains in communication with key clients, customers and suppliers in a time of crisis.
Engineer Call Out
Have your clients call your ‘Engineer Call Out Hotline’ and let us handle the emergency quickly and to your exact instructions. We can contact your list of engineers and report the situation efficiently to the available or nominated engineer.
New Business Enquiry
Use your IT Receptionist number as your Sales Enquiry line and let us take requests for your sales literature, brochures or catalogue.
Booking Line
IT Receptionist comes with an online diary facility – your IT Receptionist can also run your schedule for you – taking bookings for training, client meetings or potential client audits and, as the diary is Web-based, you, or any of your team, can access the diary at any time.
Holiday/Sick Cover
Your IT Receptionist account can stay active even if you use it infrequently, and take calls whenever you need us to – you control it. So when a key member of staff is off sick or on holiday you have back up.
Marketing Campaigns
IT Receptionist can handle many inbound calls at one time and will precisely collate full customer contact details, take telephone orders or requests for brochures – even ask where they saw your advertisement for your own campaign analysis.
Secretarial Service
IT Receptionist’s highly trained personal assistants will take your dictation over the phone and, with a host of different business templates, the information you dictate can be faxed or emailed to your recipient.
Online Office
IT Receptionist also comes with your own secure part of our Web site, an area called the ‘Online Office’. Here you can change how and when your calls are answered in real-time and completely free of charge.
The Online Office also comes with a selection of useful business tools including Web-based email and unlimited document storage.
How much?
IT Receptionist offers you a choice of 2 payment plans, 59p per minute or 69p per call with 50 free calls a month.
Whose idea was this?
IT Receptionist is a tailored call handling package from alldayPA. Its chairman, Reuben Singh, started his first company at 18, while still at school, a fashion chain called ‘Miss Attitude’. At the time, all Reuben had was the best mobile phone money could buy and his imagination. He ran the business in his spare time, which often meant during breaks, which didn’t make him look particularly established or professional each time the bell rang in the background!
When he sold Miss Attitude in 1999, he remembered those days and developed with the concept of alldayPA – an instant ‘virtual assistant’ to act as the professional front to any business, but especially to help start-ups. All he needed was to create the technology to make it work. Today, alldayPA is a rapidly growing technology-based service that helps thousands of small businesses every day.
The technology behind alldayPA is unique and so it has created its own market. There are many message-taking, virtual secretary and typing services in the market but no one else offers its speed, reliability or flexibility. As brand leader, alldayPA has substantial advantages over competition and ensures that the company remains at the forefront of technology.
Visit www.alldayPA.com and you’ll be taken through a simple, four-page registration process at the end of which you immediately have a live 0845 number. You can call it straight away to hear the phone answered in your company name. There’s also a live Web site called the ‘Online Office’ with your personal email account, an online diary, an online contacts database and even secure storage facilities.
The key benefit of the Online Office is the real-time ‘Call Answering’ area where you can control how your calls are taken, how you want to receive your messages, who else you want alldayPA to take messages for, everything about your alldayPA account, live and secure on your own Web site.
A key factor in ensuring that the technology, and the service it enables, are successful is the extensive market research we undertook. We spoke to over 10,000 small businesses and built the system around the needs and requests of customers. The result is a professional, seamless call handling and Web-based office service that is cost effective, quick to implement and reliable. The technology was developed to meet these demands and the result is a simple idea that works.
Content Management Europe and Online Information are both at Olympia, London, from 2 – 4 December. Visit www.cme-expo.co.uk for more.
Insights into Government: How to win your share of the public sector ICT market is being held on Tuesday 9 December at Madejski Stadium, Reading. See www.kablenet.com/events for details.
The 5th Secure IT Forum runs from 9 to 10 December at the Royal Garden Hotel, London. Attendance is free to IT security professionals. www.business-meetings.co.uk has further information.
Employment Exchange
Ajay Jhunjhunwala, AMIAP, has 2 years’ experience in software, database and Web development (VB5, SQL, Access, Oracle 8, D/HTML, ASP, JSP, VBScript). He is currently completing a project on Systems Analysis and Design (SSADM, UML, Process Modelling, RUP, Rational Rose) for his MSc in Business and IT. He’s looking for a position as an Analyst/Consultant.
Sounding Board
John Lillywhite has been in the business for longer than he cares to tell us – the first machine he programmed (in machine code) had 24K memory and paper tape I/O! He’s done business analysis, system integration and project management but came back to programming, which, he feels, is the pinnacle of the informatician’s art. He’s now working on Oracle systems – SQL and PL/SQL. He has some thoughts on Mike James’ October editorial where, he says:
You decry relational structure as a ‘theoretical idea made to fit the real world’. But isn’t that what all scientific and engineering theory is? The relational concept may have been abused by woolly-minded marketeers who are concerned with building a good image rather than the real thing, but relational structure is fundamental to the data itself. An understanding of how the concept can be applied to any data collection, whether it follows the ‘normal form’ rules or not, is essential for any IT developer working in a multi-record environment.
In maintaining systems, you meet many occasions where, if the original design had been a little more relational, it would have been easier to implement a business change. This is especially true in the area of structured codes. These are very popular with business users but many have very little understanding of how to name things and assign them to classes, not just for the here and now, but to incorporate future flexibility. I would go so far as to say that if you don’t understand relational concepts, you should not be in the business.
As for grid computing, the marketing people may be over-hyping it at present, as they are prone to do with everything they touch, but I think it has a lot of potential to provide a different approach from the traditional cluster or server farm. But time will tell.
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