Steve Woods

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  • Greens/EFA urge greater FOSS use in European Parliament

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

    European Parliament logoJoinup, the EU’s open source public sector news website, reports today that the European Parliament’s Greens/EFA Group is urging the European Parliament to make an earnest attempt to using free and open source software. In a letter to EP President Martin Schulz (PDF), which was released last week Friday, the group links free software and open standards to the Parliament’s transparency obligations.

    The text of the letter is reproduced below.

    Sir,

    Thank you very much for your reply to our letter of 10 July 2013 regarding Free Software and Open Standards in the European Parliament, further to the Decision on discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial years 2010 and 2011.

    We are very happy to have received the first, and ground-breaking, report on the matter, but we kindly remind you to ensure that the study is completed as well, as requested in the European Parliament resolutions of 10 May 2012 and 17 April 2013, on Parliament’s obligations, in particular under Rule 103 of its Rules of Procedure, with regard to Free Software and Open Standards.

    We have commissioned a second opinion on the report to better understand how we can contribute to the Parliament’s efforts in this field. Please find it attached. The opinion concludes that a study on Parliament’s transparency obligations under Rule 103 vis-à-vis its ICT-policies would “result in recommendations to what extent the use of FOSS and open standards is critical to adhere to these principles as a whole”.

    We believe that if, as the opinion suggests, these recommendations were to follow from the Rules of Procedure, it would serve the Parliament well to develop them.

    Thank you for taking immediate action to remedy the situation.

    Yours faithfully,

    (signed)
    Rebecca Harms

    (signed)

    Daniel Cohn-Bendit

    Co-Presidents
    Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament

    No political organisation seems to be complete without a modicum of hypocrisy. In this instance, despite the Greens/EFA’s avowed espousal of free and open source software and open standards, readers may be interested to know that the PDF version of the letter was produced using the proprietary Nitro Pro PDF production software, which runs exclusively on the Windows operating system. 😉

  • The Eye looks at court interpreting

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    The Ministry of Justice’s latest quarterly statistical bulletin on the use of language services in courts and tribunals (PDF), which was covered by this blog two weeks ago (posts passim), has also caught the attention of the latest issue of Private Eye.

    Describing it as “the shoddy foreign language interpreter service provided by Crapita“, The Eye’s piece notes there’s a greater than one in ten chance of trouble when a court makes a booking for an interpreter via the MoJ’s contract with Capita, with the piece reaching the conclusion why bother with the contract at all?

    Quite.

    Below is a scan on The Eye’s article.

    image of scanned Private Eye article

  • Bristol Post Balls – tall tales

    Steve WoodsBristol, Media

    image of Bristol's Castlemead building
    Bristol’s tallest building according to the Post
    Yesterday the Bristol Post published a story of a wrecking spree that took place at the Castlemead building in central Bristol.

    Castlemead was completed in 1981. The building has a roof height of 80 metres (262 feet) and consists of 18 floors. Written by an unidentified journalist, the Bristol Post article confidently describes it in its first paragraph as “Bristol’s tallest building”.

    But is it?

    No.

    Most definitely not.

    image of St Mary Redcliffe
    Bristol’s actual tallest building
    As this blog has pointed out before (posts passim), that accolade is held by a much older building – St Mary Redcliffe, parts of which date to the 12th century.

    The spire of St Mary Redcliffe, is 89 metres (292 feet) high. Its height makes it the third tallest English church spire in England. The spire itself was struck by lightning in 1446 and truncated (something which can be clearly seen in the illustration of the church on Millerd’s 17th century plan of Bristol. Ed.), in which condition it remained for some 400 years before being rebuilt to its present height in 1872.

    So, Bristol Post hacks, think carefully – and do the all-important background research and fact checking – before in future describing any modern edifice as Bristol’s tallest. 🙂

  • More wifi on Bristol’s buses

    Steve WoodsBristol, Tech

    Some time ago, FirstBus, Bristol’s major bus operator, introduced free wifi on its services nos. 8 and 9 (news passim).

    image of First Group bus
    Never mind the fares, at least the wifi’s free!

    Today the Bristol Post reports that there’s to be a large scale expansion of free wifi for Bristol’s bus passengers, starting next month.

    Written by the Post’s business correspondent, Michael Ribbeck, the article states:

    Free wifi has already been introduced on the 8 and 9 routes in the city on a trial basis but is being rolled out across Bristol throughout December.

    Fellow operator Wessex is also offering free wifi to its customers and is looking to have most of its buses connected to the internet by the end of the year.

    A spokesman for First stated: “We are currently in the process of installing wifi on the majority of our vehicles in the West of England. We fully expect that this work will be completed by Christmas and that all the vehicles that regularly travel in and out of Bristol, in addition to a number of vehicles that are used elsewhere, will offer our customers access to free wifi by the New Year.”

    Reposted from Bristol Wireless.

  • Polish school finds Ubuntu PCs “faster and cheaper”

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

    Ubuntu logoJoinup, the EU’s public sector open source news site, reports that the Zolnierzy Sybiru high school in the Polish city of Lubawka has converted 11 of its PCs to run Ubuntu Linux.

    The 11 machines are shared by 55 pupils and the conversion took place at the instigation of one of the school’s teachers.

    The switch has made the PCs run faster and there have been savings on Windows and other proprietary software licences too, according to FWiOO, the Polish foundation for Free and Open Source Software.

    The 11 PCs in question were bought in 2005 with funds from the Ministry of Education and previously ran Windows XP. In September the PCs were converted Ubuntu Linux.

    In September a brief report (Polish) summarising the high school’s switch to Ubuntu Linux was published.

    The pupils store their data in a free cloud solution offered by Canonical, the firm behind Ubuntu Linux.

    “By using Ubuntu, these computers run faster and more reliably”, FWiOO notes.

  • Bristol Post Balls – ungulate identification

    Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities

    Horses and cattle are both ungulates, i.e. both use the tips of their toes to support their whole body weight whilst moving. Both cows and horses have hooves.

    A horse is an odd-toed ungulate with a long hairy mane and tale, whilst a cow is an even-toed ungulate. They’re easy to identify, unless you’re a city-based employee of the Bristol Post.

    Yesterday the Post published a tragic story of more than 100 horses having to be put down after being rescued from appalling conditions in Bridgend in the Vale of Glamorgan.

    However, the picture used to illustrate the report features animals that look more bovine than equine, as revealed by the screenshot below.

    screenshot from Bristol Post
    Frisians or Dobbins?

    Just because both beef and horsemeat taste equally good on the plate doesn’t means they are interchangeable in the field, Bristol Post. Try saddling up a cow and entering a steeplechase! 🙂

  • MoJ report reveals interpreter complaints increasing and costing millions

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    image of gilded statue of Justice on top of Old BaileyA Ministry of Justice report (PDF) has published details of 9,800 complaints about its court interpreting contract with Capita Translation & Interpreting, with the report revealing that the numbers and frequency of complaints have increased this year. Capita has provided the service since 30 January 2012 and the Statistics Bulletin reveals that 3,786 (39%) of the complaints relate to interpreters not being available for courts or tribunal cases.

    The court interpreting service is essential for those whose first language isn’t English and who need help in understanding and communicating accurately in court cases and tribunals.

    Professional Interpreters for Justice (PI4J), the umbrella group representing interpreter organisations, says the Statistics Bulletin’s stated figure of an 87% “success rate” of completed requests hides the true picture of the thousands of court and tribunal cases where Capita T&I’s failure to supply an interpreter, or when an interpreter is late or of poor quality, is disrupting the delivery of justice and wasting tax payer’s money.

    In the second quarter of 2013 there were 1,957 complaints, 23% more than in the same period of 2012. The majority of these (64%) were about interpreters not being available. When compared with the same period of 2012, figures showed there was a fourfold increase this year, rising from 218 cases (April-June 2012) to 1,254 between April-June 2013.Read More

    Paul Wilson, Chief Executive of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, which is part of the umbrella group PI4J, said: “The accumulated cost of all the delayed and abandoned cases which resulted in complaints needs to be offset against the stated savings the Ministry of Justice thinks it is making. A conservative estimate would be £10 million of wasted court time so far.”

    It costs approximately £10,000/day for a Crown Court trial and approximately £1,600/day for a magistrates’ trial or tribunal.

    For the first time the bulletin includes figures for the number of “off contract” bookings made by courts and tribunals instead of using Capita. For the three months April – June 2013, 2,929 bookings were logged. The Tribunals Service, which had its own automated system, accounted for 50% of these “off contract” bookings. Court clerks were asked to make a manual log.

    Geoffrey Buckingham, Chairman of the Association of Police and Court Interpreters, says: “It’s important to understand what these figures aren’t showing. We know for example that there are high numbers of sub-contract arrangements which Capita has put in place to prop up the contract. We hope the Ministry of Justice will recognise this sooner rather than later, so we can work on something better.”

    The Statistics Bulletin, published on 31 October, listed 9,800 complaints from 30 January 2012 to 30 June 2013. Of these, 39% (3,786) were because Capita could not supply interpreters for courts or tribunals, 16% (1,530) were because the booked interpreter did not attend, 15% (1,515) were because the interpreter was late and 4% (410) related to the quality of interpreting. The remaining 21% (2,042) complaints were explained as “time sheet errors, operational issues and other interpreter issues” (what’s an “interpreter issue”? Ed.).

    Three successive parliamentary inquiries by the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts and Justice Select Committees have been highly critical of Capita’s fulfilment of the contract, in addition tow which the Public Accounts Committee has begun further investigations.

    Keith Moffitt, Chairman of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, one of the organisations highly critical of the current approach, said: “The Ministry of Justice has dragged its heels on addressing the issues of this contract despite a series of official reports which have highlighted what it needs to do.”

    The majority of professionally qualified interpreters withdrew their services as a result of the outsourcing arrangement, which lowered the requirements for qualifications and experience whilst cutting interpreters’ fees and travel expenses to such an extent that many left the profession.

  • Linux: suitable for business and personal use

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

    image of Tux, the Linux kernel mascotThe Netherlands’ Nationaal Cyber Security Centrum (NCSC), part of the Dutch Ministry of Justice, has recently published a fact sheet (PDF) about Microsoft’s impending withdrawal of support for its ancient Windows XP operating system.

    The fact sheet urges users to switch to more modern operating systems as alternatives, but also says some interesting things about Linux, for example:

    Newer versions of Windows, such as Windows 7 are 8, are still well supported. The same is true of Linux-based operating systems like Ubuntu and Red Hat.

    When it comes to operating system updates and suitable uses for operating systems, the NCSC remarks as follows:

    In addition to the newer versions of Windows, there are other operating systems which are also regularly provided with updates. There are various Linux distributions which are suitable for personal and business use. Ubuntu and Red Hat are two popular examples of these. It is also possible to replace the computer itself, or you could also choose a computer with a Mac OS X operating system. These are supplied and supported by Apple. Even older versions of Mac OS X or Linux-based systems reach the “end of life” status from time to time. It is therefore also important for users of these operating systems to use a current version.

    The NCSC’s main target groups for this working paper are the Netherlands’ ministries, national government councils and service organisations, Joinup reports.

  • Spalding Magistrates Court – an interpreting black hole?

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    image of Spalding Magistrates Court
    Spalding Magistrates Court
    The Ministry of Justice’s interpreting contract with Capita Translation & Interpreting is lurching along largely unseen by the general public, delaying and denying justice to many in contravention of Clause 40 of Magna Carta (posts passim) – one of the few clauses of that important legal document from 1215 still in effect today.

    Yesterday Lincolnshire’s Spalding Guardian (not to be confused with a similarly titled, typographically challenged offering originally from Manchester. Ed.) carried not one, but two reports of interpreters who missed assignments at Spalding Magistrates Court, which only sits day per week nowadays.

    Firstly, there’s the report of a 53 year-old man accused of stealing bolt croppers.

    The case of a man accused of stealing bolt croppers could not be heard by Spalding magistrates because there was no interpreter present.

    Secondly, the Spalding Guardian covered an adjourned drink-driving case involving a man called Piotr Nowak.

    His case is due to be heard on Thursday. There was no interpreter present at last week’s hearing.

    In spite of the constant stream of evidence to the contrary, the Ministry of Justice continue to assert that Capita T&I’s performance under the contract continues to improve.

    By that logic 2 + 2 = 5 (at least it does in Petty France, SW1. Ed.).

    Spalding may have an above average need for interpreters due to the high numbers of East European migrant workers employed in agriculture and food processing – something that must annoy the hell out of UKIP supporters.

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