🆕 blog! “What the UK Government gets wrong about QR codes”
One of my most memorable experiences in the Civil Service1 was discussing link shortening services with a very friendly2 person from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I was trying to explain why link shortners like bit.ly and ow.ly weren't sensible for Government use. They didn't …
@Edent There's a whole bunch of "free" QR code generators out there which automatically run things through their own link shortener.
A friend got caught out when they found that after a week their QR codes were disabled because the redirector wanted money from them.
It prompted me to throw together https://dorward.github.io/qr-web/ - it took me rather longer to write the rant than it did to write the JS (and I've just updated it with a couple of links to your blog as its an excellent reference).
If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same...
Shortly before I left the Civil Service in 2023, I made a complete fool of myself. Someone on Slack was discussing their department's app and I (rather snidely) asked why it was an app rather than a website. After all, one of the seminal blog posts of GDS was about not building apps. In response, […]
@simevidas@cwilcox808@Edent Sorry, didn't know it was down. Here's perhaps a nicer overview anyway. TL;DR: we made the web a LOT more capable everywhere we were allowed to. That last part is why it's so crucial to understand this not as an inevitable thing about the web, but a boot on the face by Apple:
'As part of its policy of preserving our legal and historical heritage and fulfilling its ministerial responsibility, the Department of State of Puerto Rico launched its new “Virtual Legal Library” on the portal in agency line... providing free access to an extensive archive of laws dating from 1902 to the present, announced the Secretary of State, Omar J. Marrero Díaz.'
'The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) has made Congressionally Mandated Reports available to the public on GPO’s GovInfo. GPO fulfilled this responsibility ahead of its one-year implementation deadline set by Congress. ... This marks the first time Congressionally Mandated Reports have been accessible to the public in a single location.
Skoro tzw. #Sejmix czy #Sejmflix stał się taki popularny to mam nadzieję, że w końcu poprawią jakoś stronę #iTV na sejm.gov.pl, bo przewijanie i przycinanie do pobrania dziesięciogodzinnych nagrań to jakaś masakra (już nie mówiąc o formacie pobranego pliku)
🆕 blog! “Weeknotes: fin. (So what did I accomplish?)”
I hate being introspective. But I'm told it's good for me. A few months ago, I handed in my notice to Cabinet Office. And now I'm no longer a Civil Servant. It's hard to sum up those 2,462 days. Every day brought new challenges. I saw my work presented to the highest offices in the […]