Covid Inquiry

[Woodchopper]

Yes, I think that maybe they thought that WhatsApp was the 21st century equivalent of a smoke-filled room. It fairly obviously isn't.

It is of course possible that they think that Whatsapp is confidential. But there may be a more prosaic explanation.

WhatsApp became the default messaging application about ten years ago. Network effects mean that it’s very difficult to get people to move to using new communications software.

Unless all the political users of WhatsApp persuade their contacts to move, any new application is going to be

But why were public officials (politicians and civil servants) not using public systems to conduct official business? Their work phones will have some official chat software that's properly vetted.

Apart from the lack of traceability, there is the national security issue. The software needs to be controlled, and the apps on work phones controlled.

It's fine saying that you have to persuade your contacts to move to a particular package, but these are people all working on official business. They should have official contacts. I don't send my colleagues work email from my personal email accounts.

I expect that there was an official protocol that they all ignored.

There’s no way to enforce rules if they are routinely being broken by all of the leadership.

Let’s say that you’re a senior scientific advisor. You know that if you use, say, Teams no one will read the message for weeks. But you can reach the minister directly using WhatsApp. So you get with the program.

[jimbob]

It is of course possible that they think that Whatsapp is confidential. But there may be a more prosaic explanation.

WhatsApp became the default messaging application about ten years ago. Network effects mean that it’s very difficult to get people to move to using new communications software.

Unless all the political users of WhatsApp persuade their contacts to move, any new application is going to be

But why were public officials (politicians and civil servants) not using public systems to conduct official business? Their work phones will have some official chat software that's properly vetted.

Apart from the lack of traceability, there is the national security issue. The software needs to be controlled, and the apps on work phones controlled.

It's fine saying that you have to persuade your contacts to move to a particular package, but these are people all working on official business. They should have official contacts. I don't send my colleagues work email from my personal email accounts.

I expect that there was an official protocol that they all ignored.

There’s no way to enforce rules if they are routinely being broken by all of the leadership.

Let’s say that you’re a senior scientific advisor. You know that if you use, say, Teams no one will read the message for weeks. But you can reach the minister directly using WhatsApp. So you get with the program.

Oh I blame the ministers and SPADs for this.

[dyqik]

Let’s say that you’re a senior scientific advisor. You know that if you use, say, Teams no one will read the message for weeks. But you can reach the minister directly using WhatsApp. So you get with the program.

Yes, but I'd also be making sure I had screenshots etc.

[Nero]

I'm a relatively senior civil servant (Head of Department), so might be able to shed light on the above discussion. In my deptartment, and most others that I know, our work machines (laptops, phones) etc are pretty tightly locked down. Pretty much no opportunity to install non approved messaging services. Teams and Slack are really the only messaging services that are signed off. Both of these are fully backed up and archived.

However, mininisters are not civil servants, SPADS whilst they are employed via a CS route are not really CSs. Both groups are issued with locked down phones, they mostly don't use work issued phones but use their own devices. Hence can dodge around normal protocols. They are only in position for a relatively short period of time, so see using work issued kit as a hindrance.

Other CSs needing to comm with the above mentioned will just lean into their own devices, path of least resistance.

[jimbob]

I'm a relatively senior civil servant (Head of Department), so might be able to shed light on the above discussion. In my deptartment, and most others that I know, our work machines (laptops, phones) etc are pretty tightly locked down. Pretty much no opportunity to install non approved messaging services. Teams and Slack are really the only messaging services that are signed off. Both of these are fully backed up and archived.

However, mininisters are not civil servants, SPADS whilst they are employed via a CS route are not really CSs. Both groups are issued with locked down phones, they mostly don't use work issued phones but use their own devices. Hence can dodge around normal protocols. They are only in position for a relatively short period of time, so see using work issued kit as a hindrance.

Other CSs needing to comm with the above mentioned will just lean into their own devices, path of least resistance.

Thanks, that is pretty much what I expected.

I have little issue with Civil servants trying to do their job and where communication with ministers would be important.

I do however have a problem with ministers and SPADS trying to sidestep these.

[Woodchopper]

I'm a relatively senior civil servant (Head of Department), so might be able to shed light on the above discussion. In my deptartment, and most others that I know, our work machines (laptops, phones) etc are pretty tightly locked down. Pretty much no opportunity to install non approved messaging services. Teams and Slack are really the only messaging services that are signed off. Both of these are fully backed up and archived.

However, mininisters are not civil servants, SPADS whilst they are employed via a CS route are not really CSs. Both groups are issued with locked down phones, they mostly don't use work issued phones but use their own devices. Hence can dodge around normal protocols. They are only in position for a relatively short period of time, so see using work issued kit as a hindrance.

Other CSs needing to comm with the above mentioned will just lean into their own devices, path of least resistance.

Thanks for that, different country but my wife has a similar position and follows similar rules (separate work phone and laptop which can't be used for personal stuff).

One complication in the UK is that ministers have three different jobs - leading a government department, being a constituency MP and being a senior member of the party. Of course they could have separate applications and devices for different jobs. But ministers don't seem to have been capable of that. As I'm trying to be fair, there will be blurred boundaries between the three jobs.

[bagpuss]

I wonder how well the likes of Teams works where people need to communicate as a group with individuals from a whole range of different organisations, if it hasn't already been set up to work that way. For example, we have Teams at work, and I can only use it to message other people in my own company, or at one or two client companies where IT has specifically set things up so that certain individuals are in some way linked to our Teams (I wasn't involved with that being set up so don't know the terminology or the process, but I do know that stuff had to happen before we could do this).

So if you have a disparate group of people such as govt ministers, civil servants, university academics, etc, all suddenly needing to communicate as a group when they haven't before, then I can imagine WhatsApp being the easiest way to get that set up quickly. I would hope that they'd be working to set up a better structure asap but I can very much understand why people might not bother when they have something already going that works fine, thanks very much.

Perhaps someone who understands Teams or Slack far better than I can come along and tell me that/if I'm hopelessly wrong on this and actually it's a breeze to set up a chat with people from all over the place.

[Woodchopper]

I wonder how well the likes of Teams works where people need to communicate as a group with individuals from a whole range of different organisations, if it hasn't already been set up to work that way. For example, we have Teams at work, and I can only use it to message other people in my own company, or at one or two client companies where IT has specifically set things up so that certain individuals are in some way linked to our Teams (I wasn't involved with that being set up so don't know the terminology or the process, but I do know that stuff had to happen before we could do this).

So if you have a disparate group of people such as govt ministers, civil servants, university academics, etc, all suddenly needing to communicate as a group when they haven't before, then I can imagine WhatsApp being the easiest way to get that set up quickly. I would hope that they'd be working to set up a better structure asap but I can very much understand why people might not bother when they have something already going that works fine, thanks very much.

Perhaps someone who understands Teams or Slack far better than I can come along and tell me that/if I'm hopelessly wrong on this and actually it's a breeze to set up a chat with people from all over the place.

In my experience Teams doesn't work so well in practice with people outside an organization. Currently trying to use it for academic collaboration. Even when both organizations use Teams as their standard application it has so far proved impossible to include one person from outside. Both IT depts haven't been able to fix it.

As you write, WhatsApp is probably the best option for some tasks. But people should then get used to using different hardware and software for different tasks.

[Fishnut]

In my experience with slack it's really easy to add people to. You can invite people using their email address.

You can also make channels which can be public or private and if private only accessible by those with permission. It's so much better than WhatsApp as you can keep track of important stuff much more easily.

I've been invited to a couple of local/regional political WhatsApp groups and I find them f.cking infuriating to the point I've left and said that if they need me to email me. You get a mix of chat, memes, irrelevant stuff and then important stuff like invites to meetings all mixed together. It's so easy to miss the important stuff if you're not constantly reading it.

[bagpuss]

In my experience with slack it's really easy to add people to. You can invite people using their email address.

You can also make channels which can be public or private and if private only accessible by those with permission. It's so much better than WhatsApp as you can keep track of important stuff much more easily.

I've been invited to a couple of local/regional political WhatsApp groups and I find them f.cking infuriating to the point I've left and said that if they need me to email me. You get a mix of chat, memes, irrelevant stuff and then important stuff like invites to meetings all mixed together. It's so easy to miss the important stuff if you're not constantly reading it.

Thanks. In that case, it sounds like Slack should definitely have been the tool of choice in these circumstances, if it's that easy to add people from a variety of orgs. Which means there's a failure somewhere of either policy or enforcement of policy, in government/ministerial circles. Which doesn't remotely surprise me given that just doing whatever they feel like seems to be the standard operating procedure of the current government, and has been for some years.


ETA: Thanks

[Woodchopper]

It’s so easy to miss the important stuff if you're not constantly reading it.

That seems to be a problem of our times.

[shpalman]

In my experience with slack it's really easy to add people to. You can invite people using their email address.

You can also make channels which can be public or private and if private only accessible by those with permission. It's so much better than WhatsApp as you can keep track of important stuff much more easily.

I've been invited to a couple of local/regional political WhatsApp groups and I find them f.cking infuriating to the point I've left and said that if they need me to email me. You get a mix of chat, memes, irrelevant stuff and then important stuff like invites to meetings all mixed together. It's so easy to miss the important stuff if you're not constantly reading it.

Thanks. In that case, it sounds like Slack should definitely have been the tool of choice in these circumstances, if it's that easy to add people from a variety of orgs. Which means there's a failure somewhere of either policy or enforcement of policy, in government/ministerial circles. Which doesn't remotely surprise me given that just doing whatever they feel like seems to be the standard operating procedure of the current government, and has been for some years.


ETA: Thanks

I'm a Slack with a research group from a different institution in a different country and I actually find it really annoying, like I'll get a notification (eventually*) about a reply to a message and then I won't be able to find it, because replies are split off from the channel or something, and then the existence of multiple channels ought to be useful but in the end everyone just posts in the general one.

* - there was a phase in which the notifications just weren't showing up for some of us. But then I made the mistake of connecting Slack to my google drive, because there's a google sheet we share, which means I was getting a Slack notification every time something in my drive changed.

So Slack is the worst, apart from all the others.

We have Teams, but it was also a headache when we needed a Teams for an inter-university course, which was a different Teams, but the course calendar was in my main Teams, oh and what's the f.cking b.llsh.t about Teams not recognising Teams events if you add them to the calendar yourself (because e.g. someone has emailed you a link to the meeting and told you the time) but if you get an actual invite email it adds it to the calendar for you but then also helpfully deletes the email even if you try to set the option to tell it not to?

[shpalman]

In my experience with slack it's really easy to add people to. You can invite people using their email address.

You can also make channels which can be public or private and if private only accessible by those with permission. It's so much better than WhatsApp as you can keep track of important stuff much more easily.

I've been invited to a couple of local/regional political WhatsApp groups and I find them f.cking infuriating to the point I've left and said that if they need me to email me. You get a mix of chat, memes, irrelevant stuff and then important stuff like invites to meetings all mixed together. It's so easy to miss the important stuff if you're not constantly reading it.

The problem there isn't WhatsApp, it's the other people using it. Or rather, the problem is that that's what people normally do on WhatsApp, there must be some effect of WhatsApp not feeling like "work" whereas Teams and Slack do, so people behave according to that context.

[discovolante]

In my experience with slack it's really easy to add people to. You can invite people using their email address.

You can also make channels which can be public or private and if private only accessible by those with permission. It's so much better than WhatsApp as you can keep track of important stuff much more easily.

I've been invited to a couple of local/regional political WhatsApp groups and I find them f.cking infuriating to the point I've left and said that if they need me to email me. You get a mix of chat, memes, irrelevant stuff and then important stuff like invites to meetings all mixed together. It's so easy to miss the important stuff if you're not constantly reading it.

The problem there isn't WhatsApp, it's the other people using it. Or rather, the problem is that that's what people normally do on WhatsApp, there must be some effect of WhatsApp not feeling like "work" whereas Teams and Slack do, so people behave according to that context.

Not entirely. You've blamed Slack for the fact that people all use the general channel, but that really is a problem with the people using it. I do sometimes find it hard to find recent posts or replies on Slack but if I click on the notification it takes me directly to the post (or reply). If I don't then I can have a fairly good stab at working out which channel it's in. You can also save messages on Slack to go back to later. WhatsApp doesn't have separate channels although you can star (save) messages.

The ability to reply in-thread or add your reply to the channel is also useful if it's used properly. It's a bit annoying because I don't think I get notifications for replies to threads that aren't send to the channel unless I've replied myself (or started the thread). But at least it stops streams of replies clogging up a channel when they could be contained within a thread.

So yeah Slack is far from perfect but I agree with fishnut that WhatsApp is worse.

[jimbob]

And none of those are sufficient reasons to use something like WhatsApp if you are a minister or SPAD conducting official business.

Very similar to Gove using a gmail account to conduct official business. And for a similar reason.

[nekomatic]

My employer doesn’t allow Slack because of some data protection or security concern or other, so possibly it’s not been taken up by government for a similar reason.

The Teams thing that lets you chat to people outside your organisation outside a live call is called federation, and no doubt requires savvy IT departments on both ends (don’t @ me).

[Gfamily]

My most recent employment was for a company ('ABC') that had several outsource partners: IBM, Accenture, Wipro, BT, Infosys, etc and when ABC seriously adopted Teams, the way they got it to work was to give people on the outsourced teams an ABC company login and email address so that they could get included on Teams scheduled meetings, chats, document shares etc.
It was pretty crap for us internally, and apparently even worse for them.
We'd often use WhatsApp or even FB Messenger as a backup.

[jimbob]

Nero points out that Teams and Slack are signed off

[dyqik]

My employer doesn’t allow Slack because of some data protection or security concern or other, so possibly it’s not been taken up by government for a similar reason.

My US government institution uses both Slack and Teams without reservation.

[Nero]

Nero points out that Teams and Slack are signed off

Yep, and not wishing to give details away, my deptartment has some of the highest IT Security considerations across our sector. If implemented and managed appropriately both Teams and Slack are fine.

Doesn't necessarily make them functionally right, but both platforms can be made secure.

[FlammableFlower]

Vallance is giving evidence and it really doesn't paint Johnson, Sunak and Hancock in a good light...

[shpalman]

Vallance is giving evidence and it really doesn't paint Johnson, Sunak and Hancock in a good light...

Because they believed him when he said the UK for four weeks behind Italy?

[Stranger Mouse]

Johnson caught lying on the record again https://x.com/iamhappytoast/status/1727 ... 89403?s=61

[tenchboy]

hancock-maggot is denying everything.

slimyfuckingscuzball.png (471.11 KiB) Viewed 7385 times

i want that on big posters all around town.

yes i did but you can't prove it
hahaha

[tenchboy]

cunts.png (25.8 KiB) Viewed 7356 times

which is like now. yeah i know it's late but busy busy