lookatthestateofthat.com
I'm Rob Smith, a computer scientist at
The University of Leeds.
I'm interested in the infrastructure we'll need to support the ideas behind
Government 2.0 and initiatives such as the UK's
Big Society.
I work on ways to build light-weight, low-cost, low-tech integrations of public services while maintaining their governability. I'm especially concerned with aspects of personal privacy.
Government 2.0 and The Big Society require that communities come together to cater for the needs of their members. For example, a community with a lot of elderly members might want to integrate lots of services that are of concern to the elderly. To do this, it might integrate services provided by GPs, hospitals, transport providers, supermarkets, travel agents, charities and voluntary organisations committed to visiting elderly patients in hospital or at their homes.
Such integration could be of great benefit to community members. For example, it might become easier for hospital patients to book outpatient appointments in the knowledge that appropriate transport will arrive to pick them up and deliver them back home. Appropriate transport? It depends on the circumstances surrounding each patient. How far can she walk? Is she concerned with physical safety? Does she have time limitations (perhaps she babysits grandchildren or cares for an elderly spouse or neighbour)? This is why we need integration: the information which provides the context required to assess an individual's needs is distributed and often widely so.
But it's also why we need to worry so much about personal privacy. Different people want to protect different things for different reasons and individual service providers can't cater for such individual needs. This responsibility passes to communities, charities, companies and other organisations that are better able to anticipate and respond to their members' needs. As a rule, such organisations don't have much money, many resources to spend on long and complex integration projects and more often than not, have limited technical expertise.
I want to make building blocks that enable communities to put together mashups of existing services without needing much time, money or technical expertise. The more connected the world becomes, the greater the benefits but also the greater the danger. With the right kind of infrastructure, we can do both.
My work is described in more detail here. Fun, isn't it?
But I'm also interested in science more generally. I'm a skeptic and a non-accommodating outspoken atheist and I blog about this sort of thing here.
I work on ways to build light-weight, low-cost, low-tech integrations of public services while maintaining their governability. I'm especially concerned with aspects of personal privacy.
Government 2.0 and The Big Society require that communities come together to cater for the needs of their members. For example, a community with a lot of elderly members might want to integrate lots of services that are of concern to the elderly. To do this, it might integrate services provided by GPs, hospitals, transport providers, supermarkets, travel agents, charities and voluntary organisations committed to visiting elderly patients in hospital or at their homes.
Such integration could be of great benefit to community members. For example, it might become easier for hospital patients to book outpatient appointments in the knowledge that appropriate transport will arrive to pick them up and deliver them back home. Appropriate transport? It depends on the circumstances surrounding each patient. How far can she walk? Is she concerned with physical safety? Does she have time limitations (perhaps she babysits grandchildren or cares for an elderly spouse or neighbour)? This is why we need integration: the information which provides the context required to assess an individual's needs is distributed and often widely so.
But it's also why we need to worry so much about personal privacy. Different people want to protect different things for different reasons and individual service providers can't cater for such individual needs. This responsibility passes to communities, charities, companies and other organisations that are better able to anticipate and respond to their members' needs. As a rule, such organisations don't have much money, many resources to spend on long and complex integration projects and more often than not, have limited technical expertise.
I want to make building blocks that enable communities to put together mashups of existing services without needing much time, money or technical expertise. The more connected the world becomes, the greater the benefits but also the greater the danger. With the right kind of infrastructure, we can do both.
My work is described in more detail here. Fun, isn't it?
But I'm also interested in science more generally. I'm a skeptic and a non-accommodating outspoken atheist and I blog about this sort of thing here.
