Gordon Guthrie

@foundationsofthedigitalstate

Just published The Foundations Of The Digital State - a report for the Scottish Government and blogs at digitalpolicy.substack.com Politician manqué, girl group fan, code monkey

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Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jul 11

Go to South Queens ferry they said Sit out in the sun they said Enjoy the view of the bridges they said

The Forth Railway Bridge with the top wreathed in the haar

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jul 11

It's happening

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jul 10

used to have one of these

Retro handset that plugs into a mobile phone

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jul 1

Squad goals: to be described as <en pyjama framboise>

Screenshot of a passage in La Madonne De Sleepings where Lady Diana is so described

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 27

still from THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, 1928 Carl Theodor Dreyer

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 26

Dawn is 4:30ish in Edinburgh this time of year, I should be able to get dressed without the big light on at 8:30

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 26

Not entirely sure I do, but thanks for asking.

List of offices in a building, one of which is Do You Respect Wood?

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 25

At seven hundred freaking degrees, fluorine starts to dissociate into monoatomic radicals, thereby losing its gentle and forgiving nature.

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 24

buy one Brother printer from Viking FFS

web page covered with ads for Brother printers from Viking

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 22

Close the shutters and put this on the BluRay

Final scene of the greatest film about alcoholism - Ice Cold In Alex, John Mills, Sylvia Simms and the rest drinking beer in a bar (before the South African traitor/spy is to be arrested and, one presumes, shot)

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 22

What a great line "retweeting the hat" berjon.com/rt/

Why does this matter? In part I just want to park a name for the phenomenon. That way, when I see something like the Make Europe Great Again people, a movement (if you can call it that) so tragically sad that their entire idea of European, uh, greatness is predicated on mimicking the gimmicks — gimmimicking? — of an American authoritarian movement, then instead of being baffled that anyone would choose to behave that way in public I can simply think "oh, they're just retweeting the hat." It doesn't make them any less pathetic, but it does make them coherently pathetic.

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 22

The Anglofuturism meetups don't even give a clue * to which city they will take place in, it is truly a magical mystery tour * London, Oxford or Cambridge

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 22

Hot Priest calendar but it's just the Podium Guy

shots from the iconic Roman Hot Priest calendar

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 21

[snigger] not really committed to the ligature there are they?

anglofuturist aesthetics beyong podcraeft

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 21

Counterpoint: pre-referendum and the great Twitter-brain-cook Dominic Cummings et al were not proposing to deport millions of citizens in a giant fascist round-up Perhaps the lack of people calling him a fascist then is related to this? perhaps?

And they’ve convinced themselves that everyone who doesn’t agree with them now is fascist. Go back to pre-referendum: mainstream people in the system in Westminster hated me, thought I was crazy, stupid, wrong, but they didn’t say I was actually a fascist who should be in jail. Now, their argument about people like me is that we’re actually fascists who should be in jail and shouldn’t be allowed to actually participate in democratic politics.

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 20

Uh oh Skynet knows me, but also ha-ha former SEO rival GG of Derby County

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 18

Q: Why were all the teenagers from my oil camp town in Bahrain on a plane hijacked to Dawson's Field in Jordan in 1970? A: Lila Khaled was an unhappy child who fell in with a bunch of wrong 'uns - come the fuck on...

3 jet planes hijacked into Jordan - one of them being blown up

The PLO kept the tortoise fed with lettuce and gave the teenagers a ringside view of the explosions

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 14

merely repeating the form of the law - the money goes the government

King’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer
In Scots law, the Crown can choose to claim ownerless property. Where we claim and deal with property, its realised value is paid by the KLTR into the Scottish Consolidated Fund.

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 13

Summer time is clafoutis time

A resplendent raspberry clafoutis, all gold and red

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 11

Proper leftism

Book - The Death Of Trotsky, Josh Ireland

Diego Riviera, General Secretary of the Mexican Communist Party expelling himself

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 10

And we also have a new Public Sector Reform Committee to oversee Ivan McKee in his new role as Cab Sec for Public Sector Reform - so the reorg stuff is already happening on both sides of the house

New committees
The Parliament has agreed the following committees for the current session:

Climate Action Committee
Criminal Justice Committee
Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee
Economy, Tourism and Energy Committee
Education and Gaelic Committee
Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee
Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Finance and Public Administration Committee
Health, Care and Sport Committee
Public Audit Committee
Public Petitions Committee
Public Service Reform Committee
Rural Affairs Committee
Social Justice, Housing and Local Government Committee
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Transport Committee

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 10

would be required to be standards compliant.
New programmes of work and the 15% maintenance cost are the continuing
financial basis for incrementally moving to standards compliance.
The DSRO might propose programmes that require up-front capital
expenditure to the government, just as the government might instruct the
DSRO to do a capital programme. Those capital expenditures would be
considered under normal budgetary frameworks.
There are occasions when funding will be needed particularly where
recovery of costs by way of fees turns out to be a barrier to uptake. An obvious
example59 of this is Register of Scotland.
The twin body the Digital Service Reform Office is substantially existing
functions in the Digital Directorate put on a statutory footing and should be
approximately cost-neutral.

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 10

A note on costs
This report doesn’t recommend any capital spend with minor exceptions.58
The recommendations fall into one of the following five categories:
• do what we currently do, but in a different sequence
• do what we currently do, but in a different part of the organisation
• do what we currently do, but under different rules
• do what we currently do, but more consistently
• do what we currently do, but with greater velocity
Approximately 15% of all engineering effort on live systems is not feature
work, it is maintenance.
In addition new programmes of work that arise in the course of government

58 The 3 exceptions are firstly the R&D programme (6 programmes of 3-5 FTEs of
duration 6 months over 3 years). Secondly paying wages for Research Fellowships.
Finally the running costs of the Digital Services Scrutiny & Audit Committee. These costs
will be of the same order as the Scottish Commission on Social Security - which is
budgeting £450,000 for 2024-2025

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 9

charge back mechanisms in place for financial audit.
INSTITUTIONAL BASIS
This will be a statutory body and it will sit under a parliamentary
committee. Its introduction will involve an adjustment and rearrangement of
committees of the Scottish Parliament and a consequential set of adjustments
in Standing Orders.
Legislation Required 2 - putting the DSS&AC on a statutory basis
106
DEVELOPMENT
The iterative development of the two institutions, the DSRO and the
DSS&AC, and the finalisation of the parliamentary committee structure that sits
over them, will be dealt with in detail in the implementation section.

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 9

under its own recognisance
As an audit body it will have the power to compel. Key officials of the DSRO
and individuals in major digital programmes will have a personal line of
accountability to it. This is discussed in Recommendation 16 - changes to lines
of responsibility in the civil service.
The DSS&AC is not a purely technical body - it must consider technical
infrastructure in the round and in addition to technical specialists its members
will include:
• social scientists
• ethicists
• legal experts
This body has similarities to the Scottish Commission for Social Security
which is a triage and filter point for Social Security secondary legislation.
However that body oversees functional matters of social security - this body is
entirely concerned with non-functional & infrastructural matters.
The relationship of parliament to the supervision of functional requirements
will be addressed in more detail in Recommendation 11 a review of legislative
processes for major digital programme.
This body works alongside the Audit Commission and there is a legitimate
debate to had about the hard audit functions like the execution of usability and
accessibility audits.
These hard audits are a powerful tool because of the hygienic nature of the
tests. In order for a system to have good usability and accessibility written onto
their surface affect, a whole host of earlier and harder to measure stages must
be of high quality, including:
• design
• programme management and resource allocation
• testing and assurance
It might be more appropriate to get Audit Scotland to extend their remit and
capabilities slightly and have these audits done by them using the existing

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 9

dation 10 - create a Digital Services Scrutiny & Audit
Commission
DESCRIPTION
The DSS&AC is the supervisory body of the DSRO. It will sit under a
parliamentary committee in the same way the Scottish Commission on Social
Security sits under the Social Justice and Social Security Committee.
At this stage it is not clear what that committee would be - the final
committee arrangements will become clear as the implementation plan
progresses. Options are canvassed in Working Paper 0.3 The locus of change.
The DSS&AC has two core functions as its name suggests, it will act as:
• an audit body
• compliance with standards
• implementation of best practices
• correct major project initiation and start up
• commission and execution of surface audits:
• usability
• compliance with accessibility
• the public operations of the DSRO and its relationship with both the
internal technical communities and external jurisdictions
• a scrutiny body
• supporting its parent parliamentary committee, and any other
appropriate functional/bill committee in scrutinising appropriate
aspects of primary legislation
• acting as a triage and filter point for secondary legislation for both
its parent committee and the Delegated Powers & Law Reform
Committee
• reviewing standards and guidance that have been issued by the DSRO

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 5

saw a jar of sour grapes and thought better try them gave one to the girlf and she thought it was the moat disgustijg thing ever

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· Jun 4

What is a <final beneficiary> if there is a DAO operating? A person? A what? An 'owner' where owner is another DAO?

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Final beneficiaries will have to be disclosed — Argentina has no interest in becoming a haven for illicit capital — but for all legitimate commercial activity our framework will offer unmatched terms.

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· May 28

People need to push back Appropos of nothing, found myself reading this *again* for the first time in 25 years

Book The Ulster Crisis 1912-1914 by A T Q Stewart

Gordon Guthrie@foundationsofthedigitalstate· May 26

Went to the hellsite to see if there were any funny posts about Peter Murrell and this is the only one that made me laugh - the rest were just grinding