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Select Committee looking at Government procurement

The Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) launched an Inquiry into public procurement.

We have responded.

Nominet

Consultation on a new .uk domain name service

In October 2012 Nominet opened a consultation on proposals for a new domain service, including proposals to offer features designed to offer reassurance for end users:

verification to check a registrant has a UK address, daily monitoring for malicious software and viruses, and a digital signature which minimises the risks of a domain name being hijacked. These measures would be supported by a trustmark to give consumers a clear sign that it was a verified domain name.

Our full response is available below, however in summary: we consider that Nominet fails to demonstrate understanding of risk, is over confident in its claims for consumer protection and that the proposal has the potential to undermine the market for services based on open source software.

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Openness

not what you say but what you do

In July 2012 the government announced to Parliament that it was changing the consultation guidelines.

A Minister was quoted by BBC News:

The aim is to replace potentially unproductive process with real engagement with those affected.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee issued a call for evidence in preparation for a meeting on 11 December 2012 where it will take oral evidence from Mr Oliver Letwin, Minister for Government Policy into the way in which Government develops and implements technology policy.

We have responded.

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Open Source Hardware Event

15 November 2012, London, 6.45pm

Embedded systems continue to grow in importance as they play an ever-increasing role in everyday life: more computing is done on the move as smartphone functionality catches up with desktops and services move to the Cloud; the Internet of Things is set to herald an age in which networked objects create and consume data on our behalf.

This event, organised by our friends the Open Source Hardware Group will be discussing and demonstrating a number of projects related to improving embedded system performance.

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BBC and Apple - latest

Today the BBC Trust is considering our complaint about undue product prominence.

It all started on 2 March 2012 when we approached the BBC expressing concern about undue product prominence amounting to advertising.

On 20 August we sought a status update and received the following by return:

Please accept my apologies for not keeping you updated regarding your appeal.

I am afraid that, due to a large amount of Committee business to be considered in September, your appeal will now be considered by the ESC at their October meeting.

Except of course, it wasn't.

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Unitary Patent System

proposals by European Commission

Along with other organisations, such as FSFE that consider the latest proposals by the European Commission for a unitary patent system represent a poorly thought out blight on innovation, we have written to MEPs on the Legal Committee asking them to support suitable amendments when they meet to discuss the matter on 17.18 September 2012.

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