Having had a quick look at the gov.uk beta site, my first impression is that it’s been very well designed (Maude hails gov.uk beta as another milestone in government IT transformation). Clean, simple, and usable – the graphic designers have been kept on a tight leash!

Also impressive is that mobile usage has been thought about up-front – the same pages work equally well on a phone as on a desktop, with only a minor (but important) adjustment to layout showing that the site does actually notice when you’re using a small screen.

Obviously can’t comment on services that will be delivered yet, there’s not enough there, but it’s a good start, and I hope they keep it up.

Rick Jones

The sale of data from cookies in third-party datamarts is well established (Time to shed light on the dark art of behavioural advertising). Nothing sinister happens to users – the absolute worst case scenario is that you google “DIY” and B&Q advertising follows you around the internet. Is that such a bad thing? Probably better than being followed by those terrible ads with the before and after diet/exercise photos.

Retaining your privacy online is simple – all you do is use the “private browsing” functionality.
The people who have a problem with re-targeting fall into one of three camps:

1. They are ignorant of how it is done, and see the sinister hand of Big Brother (or they are looking at a lot of content that is unsavoury and don’t want anyone to find out).

2. They work for a legal practice and smell a tasty lawsuit because the law is ill-defined and the public are ill-informed and therefore paranoid about privacy.

3. They are politicians and think they can stir up silly and misplaced fear that might sway a few votes from ill-informed people.

Personally, I can’t see a problem with DIY ads following me around when I’m looking for DIY on the net.

John Stephens

Our web site used to be very user friendly and the public could use it to do all manner of things, which was convenient for them and us, and much cheaper than dealing with phone queries and people turning up at the office (Former BBC staffer appointed to pilot a single government web domain). 

Then the politicians decided that we had to join the Directgov web site, to make things “easier” for the public. Now no one can find any information and we get less work done in the office as we are now answering as many phone queries as we were five years ago, but without the staff that we got rid of due to the success of our web site.

Anon

It looks as if the government will not intervene or stop ISPs managing network traffic (Tim Berners-Lee pushes net neutrality at ISP roundtable).

This is a positive outcome as ISPs have had to change the way the traffic moves across our networks to match our changing patterns of internet consumption.

Net neutrality would mean a flat internet where all traffic is treated equally and this was once a perfectly valid viewpoint. Internet usage today has, though, evolved dramatically from what it once was.

The internet cannot be 2D when we are now living in a 3D world. The internet was designed to deal with email and basic web browsing, but now we have services that desperately need their traffic sped up so they can be used at their full potential.

Certain services, where even a tiny delay would result in an almost intolerable experience, would benefit consumers greatly if they were prioritised. Imagine trying to watch a video on YouTube that takes an age to stream, or taking a call on Skype where each speaker was delayed by two seconds.

ISPs need to keep using smart traffic management if they are to deliver a decent internet experience and this means allowing them to – transparently, and with user input – accelerate certain traffic.

Matthew Simms, Rocket Communications

“One is to create a relational database – I don’t know what value that has”.

In the days of Web 2.0 how anyone can say that knowledge of relational databases has no value to the IT industry is incredible. It is one of the key things underpinning most IT systems today and at the very least knowledge of it and how it works and is created should be essential.

On the subject of the BCS statistics of those 28,787 teachers who qualified in 2010, how many were actually qualifying as ICT teachers? The statistics as listed are pretty meaningless as there are many relevant degrees for the IT industry (physics and maths, for example) even if they are not specifically “computing” degrees. Furthermore, even though some of those teachers have no degree in “computing” does not mean that they may not have relevant industry experience as they may have been working in the IT industry for several years with a degree in a related subject.

Surely that IT industry experience is far more relevant to an awareness of the needs within the IT industry?

J Newton