After hearing how poor the IT infrastructure in the British government is, I got wondering if it was time for them to implement a better solution than people running amuk on WhatsApp because there are no better options.
The obvious answer is to run Matrix instances, one for each government department like the French do. They’ve even made the app they developed open source and the German Ministry of Defence have been inspired by that to create their own app, with the idea being that it could then be rolled out to the rest of the government.
It wouldn’t be too difficult for the British government to use existing solutions, perhaps adapted to their own circumstances. Perhaps with message histories getting saved so they can’t be conveniently “lost” and/or algorithms to flag up suspicious activity.
It needn’t stop there. With recent changes Xitter is no longer a useful platform for putting out official information. The Beeb are now on Mastodon, it is time something like that were used by MPs.
I’d be up for the idea that MPs get issued with a secure phone that contains only the apps vital for conducting political business and it could be made a offence to use your own devices for anything other than personal reasons.
It wouldn’t stop all the shenanigans but it’d certainly go a long way to laying the foundations for a better political IT system and one that could largely be done in-house.
Anyway, just a few rambling thoughts brought on by recent events.
This is key, especially as there is concern that some state actors have undue influence over certain services (hence all the fuss over TikTok as well as general concern about our reliance on Chinese companies). The idea of network sovereignty keeps coming up. Working with established open source solutions that can be largely implemented in-house is going to be key for governments going forward.