Digital Britain summit plumbs depths of incompetence

Digital Britain summit taking place today

The government is today hosting a high-profile summit to discuss the future of Digital Britain – but managed to mess up its own digital delivery of the event.

The Digital Britain Summit is taking place at the British Library, with speakers including prime minister Gordon Brown, culture secretary Andy Burnham, plus leaders from the communications industry such as BT chief executive Ian Livingston.

In an attempt to reinforce the government’s digital credentials, the event is being broadcast live on the internet at http://digitalbritainforum.org.uk, and live blogs and Twitter feeds are also publicising the speeches. Many of the press – Computing included – were referred to the live video stream to cover the speeches, rather than being offered passes to attend the event in person.

But as the summit started this morning, the video stream was barely working – many viewers complained through the web site, as video was jerky and sound practically inaudible. In particular, many viewers found Gordon Brown’s speech almost impossible to follow as a result.

“Who killed the live video feed? As soon as the conference starts the video dies. Can the mods please give whoever is controlling this a bit of a push to increase the sessions or plug in the cable?” said viewer Helen Foster in a comment posted to the web site.

“It is all over the place, especially the audio,” added commenter Pete.

The site administrators have since put a notice on its home page stating: “ Thanks for the comments about the technical difficulties with this feed. As soon as there is a break in the speeches we will investigate.”

Ironically, one of the sessions proving difficult to watch as a result is titled “Fixing the plumbing”.

UPDATE: The live video stream is finally working, as of approximately 11.30am, more than two-and-a-half hours after the event commenced.

UPDATE 1.00pm: The summit web site appears to be remporarily unavailable - several attempts by Computing to access it returned a connection timout error.

UPDATE 1.10pm: Political blogger Guido Fawkes claims that minister for digital engagement Tom Watson is not attending the summit today, because he only received his invite on Wednesday, two days before the event.

UPDATE 2.00pm: Pleased to say everything seems to be working on the summit web site now. Perhaps Digital Britain has arrived...