No iPhone Apps, Please — We're British 393
GMGruman writes "The BBC has stirred up quite a row in Britain about a shocking use of taxpayer funds: creating iPhone apps to provide citizens services. As InfoWorld blogger Galen Gruman notes, it's apparently bad in Britain for the government to use modern technology during a recession, a mentality he likens as a shift from 'cool Britannia' to 'fool Britannia.'"
Re:iphone (Score:1, Interesting)
If the BBC was to create a Linux media center application, would you criticize them as well, seeing as taxpayer pounds (not dollars) were spent on services that not everyone could make use of, just Linux users?
Re:Wasteful (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe the web can replace a lot of apps, but it can't have completely pointless flashy bling widgets quite as easily as an iPhone. It also isn't quite as "teh coolz" to say "I wrote a web app" as "I designed an iPhone app - now there's an app for that!".
Obviously the UK government just want to be "down wid it" (whatever "it" it is that they're supposed to be "down wid") and waste our money on tailored apps for one specific proprietary (and expensive) platform rather than design something accessible to all from a huge range of devices.
Square Wheels (Score:5, Interesting)
What the article completely seems to miss is that the scandal is about stupid, ineffective use of technology not the use of technology itself. Innovation is certainly to be encouraged but if your new innovation is a square wheel you should expect to get shouted at for wasting money.
Re:too much on too few (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Supporting citizens vs supporting a platform (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Maybe something everybody can use? (Score:3, Interesting)
According to TFA, a whopping 40,000 pounds was wasted on this. Compared to the many millions that are regularly wasted on websites, I don't see this as a terribly big deal. If the apps are useful at all, I'd rather have the government expand this project to other platforms than to stop it completely.
As for wasted tax money, most government websites (where I live at least) cost way more than they should. If you fix that, you can fund thousands of iPhone apps with the money you saved.
Re:Maybe something everybody can use? (Score:3, Interesting)
That is not the real problem here. What is is that using tax money to make iPhone apps is giving Apple an unfair advantage over its competitors at taxpayer's expense, making this yet another example of corporate welfare.
Re:iphone (Score:3, Interesting)
"The main goal is usually to ensure that a photograph results of said functionary or his patron standing next to something shiny."
This made me smile. I worked in public sector for a few years and reading through this sentence gave me flashbacks of countless halls across the different sites I worked at lined with pictures of smug looking folk being presented trophies for the most obscure awards, which they were often self-nominated for, or in some cases nominated for by a brown nosing underling or a boss who stood a chance of also getting in on the photo op should they win.
It made me realise how true that is, something I probably didn't take in at the time when seeing the walls of awards photos in these places.
I remember when the department I worked for went for a "Best places in IT to work" award in some computer magazine, and we had to fill in an anonymous survey for the magazine. Well, needless to say being public sector our department was around 70% pointless and 25% incompetent, so I filled in the survey honestly as did the other 5% of people who actually carried the rest of the department. Our boss was heartbroken we didn't even make it past the first hurdle, and just couldn't comprehend why we hadn't at least been shortlisted.
Still, at least I did my bit for humanity in preventing an incompetent waste of space from getting his shiny photo op, well, for a time at least. I think he got some government sponsored award in the end instead so that he could pretend he was running a good IT department and not one that was largely a waste of space and money. Something he'll no doubt use to get another even more overpaid job running an equally crap department elsewhere in public sector.
Re:Maybe something everybody can use? (Score:4, Interesting)
There are two things wrong with that number. Firstly, it is for Smartphones only, not Feature Phones, which are regarded as a separate segment. Symbian owns over 70% of the (much larger) Feature Phone market. This includes phones that can install and run arbitrary apps, browse the web, send emails, and so on, but for some segmentation reason do not command a premium price.
The second problem is that it's a US number. The US mobile phone market sucks. You have competing standards, no interoperability, and a lot of carrier lock in. In the UK, it is very common (even among non-geeks) to buy a pre-pay SIM and pop it in your existing phone, to buy phones unlocked, and for the person on the fastest upgrade cycle to pass their phone on to one of their friends and have the whole thing trickle down.
In a completely unscientific study, I tried counting the types of phone I saw on the train when I last went to London. I saw two iPhones, no blackberries, and I lost count of Symbian phones some time over 70. I didn't see any Android phones until I got very close to my destination (Google London). I've not seen a N900 in the wild yet, though I'd be quite tempted by one in a year or so when you can pick them up cheaply.
For reference, my current phone is one I picked up for under £50 (including a bluetooth earpiece) when I lost my last one. It runs Symbian, supports UMTS and WiFi, can act as a bluetooth modem, and can make SIP calls (over WiFi or UMTS, although I only use it over UMTS). It has a built-in web browser and mail client, although I rarely use either. I can install my own apps on it - for example I installed an app that lets me carry around and view a local copy of the OpenStreetMap maps for my local area (I also installed the Google Maps app, but it requires a network connection, and most of the time I need a map it's when I am in the middle of the countryside). This phone is counted as a Feature Phone, not a Smartphone, so would not count in the statistic that you quoted.
Re:The BBC should be broken up (Score:5, Interesting)
The BBC is probably the one thing that Britain is best at in the world. No other English-language country has anything as good as it (can't comment on others); it is quite wonderful. I think you underestimate how much it would cost to subscribe to ABC1-friendly 6Music, Radio 4, BBC2/4 if it were not cross-subsidised by the 90% of the population who never watch them- but can if they like. Cultural ghettoisation is bad for all of us. And, of course, who makes a huge % of the high-quality programmes you see on non-BBC tv?
I totally agree with you re: news reporting. However, allowing Sky/Fox to be the arbiter of news agendas sends a violent shiver down the spine.
Re:Proprietary formats (Score:3, Interesting)
The summary is written by the same guy wrote the "blog" at InfoWorld, to which he links. InforWorld's astroturfing here has devolved from the shameless into the downright misleading and incomprehensible. But they've probably already paid Slashdot in advance for the space so they've got to fill it somehow...