My Blogs
I write for a number of blogs including my own, the CF Labs development blog and the Government Digital Service blog. This page aggregates my recent blog posts.
It’s not about cookies, it’s about privacy
The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011 which came into effect last year has presented UK website owners with a few challenges in moving to compliance. Those of us who work on public sector websites are no exception. We wrote about some of the ways we were working towards compliance here at [...]
Government Digital Service Blog: 19 March 2012
Local services and GOV.UK
An important design rule of GOV.UK is to hide complexity, so if we are being truly user-centric, people should not need to understand the structure of government to be able to access services. Search data tells us that when people search for government services, they often don’t distinguish between central or local government. Every week, [...]
Government Digital Service Blog: 14 February 2012
Cookies on the beta
The use of cookies on websites has become an increasingly hot topic over the past few months. A new EU law – specifically The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011 (PECR) – requires that websites ask for consent before setting cookies that aren’t “strictly necessary” for the operation of the website. We’ve [...]
Government Digital Service Blog: 12 January 2012
Helping to build a single domain for government
Just under two and a half years ago I joined CF Labs – a new team based within Consumer Focus with a remit to build useful online tools and make data more useful and accessible. Over that time, we’ve worked to make product recall information more useful and helped to make it easier to reduce [...]
Daibach.co.uk: 5 September 2011
An update on the EU cookie law
“The law was meant to protect the privacy of people using the Internet. To accomplish this, the EU made over 90% of websites illegal” - Oliver Emberton, silktide. Back in May I wrote about the new EU law on cookies that came into effect this year and will be enforced from May 2012. On Monday, [...]
Daibach.co.uk: 27 July 2011
Opening up Royal Mail performance data in Wales
The Royal Mail provides a major public service across the UK – it handles millions of items of mail every day. Its operating licence requires it to publish a number of data sets on its performance on a regular basis. For example, it is required to publish information on its delivery targets (quality of service) [...]
CF Labs Blog: 19 July 2011
Opening up rail performance data
I admit it; I’m a bit of a train buff. I don’t stand around at the end of platforms recording the numbers of trains, but I do like to know what is going on and how everything works. I’ve been a regular user of trains for nearly 10 years. When I was in college, I [...]
Daibach.co.uk: 12 July 2011
Using website cookies in the EU
Later this week a new law comes into effect – the Privacy & Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011. This law requires all website operators in the EU to gain consent from visitors before storing or retrieving information from a visitors computer. Essentially, this law blocks the use of cookies until a user has [...]
Daibach.co.uk: 24 May 2011
Website outage
Late last night all CF Labs sites were taken offline following a serious hardware failure at our remote hosting centre. Our supplier has worked to replace the faulty equipment and bring our services back online. This work was completed at around 2.15pm this afternoon. There are however a few outstanding issues with some of our websites: [...]
CF Labs Blog: 2 May 2011
Substandard food hygiene ratings in Wales
In 2005, South Wales was hit by a major outbreak of E.coli O157. A total of 157 people, mostly children, became ill and five-year-old Mason Jones died. Following the outbreak, a Public Inquiry developed 24 recommendations aimed at preventing further outbreaks. Consumer Focus Wales has taken on the task of monitoring the implementation of these [...]
CF Labs Blog: 22 March 2011