Owen Boswarva
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owenboswarva.bsky.social
Owen Boswarva
@owenboswarva.bsky.social
2.4K followers 2.1K following 2.8K posts
A mix of stuff: mainly #opendata, #dataprotection, #geospatial, #datapolicy, #ddj, #genAI, #govtech. Links and half-formed thoughts posted for my own amusement. Still on Twitter at @owenboswarva. Sites: www.owenboswarva.com and www.datadaptive.com. He/him.
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owenboswarva.bsky.social
More #openaddresses:

Buckinghamshire Council in South East England has released its Council Tax address list as open data owenboswarva.com/blog/post-ad...

No geocoded version this time, as sadly the UPRNs are missing for most of the records. (I've asked the Council to investigate.)

#FOI #opendata
November 25, 2025 at 8:26 AM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
UK House of Commons: @commonsproccom.parliament.uk has launched an inquiry undertaking a detailed review of Written Parliamentary Questions (WPQs) committees.parliament.uk/committee/12...

Find written questions and answers questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-ques...

#opengov #FOI -relevant
The inquiry will focus on: ● The purpose and value of a WPQ for MPs and their staff, and whether this has changed over time ● The interaction between WPQ and the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and any other recent changes that have impacted on the ability of MPs to gain access to the same, or similar, information via other methods ● The limits on the number of WPQ that MPs can submit on any given day, and whether they are comparable with the rules in place in other legislatures ● Whether the internal House of Commons processes and procedures, and those in Government Departments, for processing and dealing with WPQs are working effectively and efficiently
November 24, 2025 at 9:13 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
I really wouldn't read too much into this, Kendall is just vamping. UK Labour will keep playing hot potato with the AI copyright policy conundrum as long as it can www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Consultation launched last year www.gov.uk/government/c...

#genAI #IPlaw #techpolicy
The technology secretary, Liz Kendall, has indicated she is sympathetic to artists' demands not to have their copyrighted works scraped by AI companies without payment and said she wanted to "reset" the debate. In remarks that suggest a change in approach from her predecessor, Peter Kyle, who had hoped to require artists to actively opt out of having their work ingested by generative AI systems, she said "people rightly want to get paid for the work that they do" and "we have to find a way that both sectors can grow and thrive in future". The government has been consulting on a new intellectual property framework for AI which, in the case of the most common large language models (LLMs), requires vast amounts of training data to work effectively.
November 24, 2025 at 8:38 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
70+ organisations and experts demand action over failing ICO www.openrightsgroup.org/press-releas...

Letter calls for an inquiry into "collapse in enforcement activity" at UK Information Commissioner's Office www.openrightsgroup.org/app/uploads/...

#Afghandatabreach #dataprotection #lackofgumption
Parliament has given the ICO considerable powers not to politely hope for the best, but to enforce compliance with legally binding orders. As we heard from the public hearing you hosted, the ICO chose not to use these powers to address the Afghan data breach, a decision strenuously defended by the Information Commissioner. Unfortunately, the Afghan data breach is not an isolated incident, but the symptom of deeper structural failures which are emerging in the way the ICO operates. The recent call for views on enforcement procedural guidance "aims to increase transparency" about how the ICO investigates infringements, but does not change or even leave room to question the ICO overall approach to enforcement.
November 24, 2025 at 8:09 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
UK ministers' criminal records can stay secret, rules watchdog www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/art... (£)

ICO decision notice ico.org.uk/action-weve-...

#FOI #opengov #dataprotection
In a decision notice, the ICO accepted the Cabinet Office's claim that disclosing the number of ministers who declared convictions could create a "jigsaw" effect through repeated requests identifying individual ministers. It argued that, hypothetically, if one minister resigned after the Cabinet Office had previously disclosed at least one minister had declared a conviction, and a follow-up request then revealed no ministers in post had a conviction, the resigned minister could be exposed.
November 24, 2025 at 7:54 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
If social media is dead why are governments around the world trying so hard to stop kids from using it?

Social media isn't all about the gratifications of posting. Maybe the experiences of a middle-aged Times columnist and her friend group aren't representative?
thetimes.com The Times & Sunday Times @thetimes.com · 1d
‘Everyone is scared that something they share might attract the attention of social media’s angry hordes, always ready to accuse on X, Facebook and Instagram’ | ✍️ Caitlin Moran
Social media is dead — none of my friends are posting any more
‘Everyone is scared that something they share might attract the attention of social media’s angry hordes, always ready to accuse on X, Facebook and Instagram’
www.thetimes.com
November 24, 2025 at 7:27 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
UK Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) spend data April 2010 - September 2025 drive.google.com/uc?export=do... (55.6 MB zipped XLSX)

#publicspending #opengov #opendata
November 24, 2025 at 5:41 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
Navy made legal threats to try and keep nuclear pollution secret www.theferret.scot/navy-try-kee... by @robedwards5.bsky.social via @theferret.scot

#FOI /EIRs #opengov #natsec
The Campaign for Freedom of Information in Scotland was pleased that Hamilton "refused to be intimidated" by the MoD's "aggressive manoeuvres". The public interest had finally been served by disclosure, said campaign director, Carole Ewart. She thought the MoD might have "overlooked" the fact that Scotland's environmental information law is tougher than that south of the border. Details can only be kept secret in Scotland if they "prejudice substantially" national security, but UK law says they can remain hidden if they just "adversely affect" national security. The Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament thanked Hamilton for acting "without fear or favour" in the public interest. "The MoD tried to add to their shameful history of nuclear cover-ups by harassing officials with false claims of national security, hoping we'd never know radioactivity was negligently leaked from Coulport," said campaign chair, Lynn Jamieson.
November 23, 2025 at 3:59 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
MPs should have their smartphones taken away, they can get all the information they need from @commonslibrary.bsky.social
November 23, 2025 at 3:12 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
UK Labour MP tricked by AI-generated content. Don't believe everything you see on social media, kids #genAI #medialiteracy
Screenshot of tweet from UK Labour Jon Trickett MP @jon_trickett: "Read this and then resolve never to allow anyone to let private medical care replace the nhs" Trickett was quote-tweeting another tweet with a context message: "This story about 91-year-old Helen Miller being arrested for felony theft is fictional and never actually occurred. The story, characters, and accompanying images are AI-generated content that has been debunked as completely fabricated."
November 23, 2025 at 2:48 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
The UK company behind Undress​.cc has "voluntarily" applied to be struck off following Online Safety Act enforcement find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/1507...

Ofcom may struggle to collect that £50,000 fine www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safet...

#censorship #openweb #techpolicy
FIRST GAZETTE NOTICE 15076132 ITAI TECH LTD Publication date in the Gazette: 25/11/2025 The Registrar of Companies gives notice that, unless cause is shown to the contrary, the Company will be struck off the register and dissolved not less than 2 months from the date shown above. Upon the Company's dissolution, all property and rights vested in, or held in trust for, the Company are deemed to be bona vacantia, and will belong to the Crown.
November 22, 2025 at 2:48 PM
Reposted by Owen Boswarva
sarahlicity.bsky.social
tldr of this thread: neither Parliament nor the government of the day ever intended, at any point, for sex in equality legislation to be read to exclude trans people.

The Supreme Court judgment was legislating from the bench and is clearly bad law, and as a result, untenable.
reactiveashley.bsky.social Ashleeee 🌊🪭 @reactiveashley.bsky.social · 4d
1/🧵 The good people of the Cabinet Office has found a copy of the Department for Education and Employment’s drafting instructions* for the Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations 1999.

* the Parly Counsel does vetting only in this case, so the instructions is to DfEE’s in-house lawyers
Sex Discrimination Gender Reassignment Regulations 1999 Drafting Instructions - a Freedom of Information request to Government Equalities Office
Please send me copies of the Sex Discrimination Gender Reassignment Regulations 1999’s Drafting Instructions given to the Parliamentary Counsel. If you can’t locate all versions, send me any one of th...
www.whatdotheyknow.com
November 22, 2025 at 6:24 AM
Reposted by Owen Boswarva
stephenabbottpugh.bsky.social
Answer to parliamentary question from @jimmcmahon.co.uk reveals how the size of the UK's register of companies held by Companies House has grown from 2015 to 2025 questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-ques...

cc @greybrow53.bsky.social @georgegreenwood.bsky.social
November 21, 2025 at 12:50 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
More than half of UK novelists believe AI will replace their work www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...

Impact of Generative AI on the Novel www.mctd.ac.uk/impact-of-ge... report from @mctd.bsky.social by Dr Clementine Collett

#genAI #IPlaw #techpolicy
The study, conducted for the university's Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, suggests widespread unease about the speed and scale of AI's advance into the literary world. The research surveyed 258 published novelists and 74 industry figures including editors and agents. Just over half (51%) of novelists said that AI is likely to end up entirely replacing their work. Many participants reported that their work had already been used without their permission to train large language models, and more than a third (39%) said their income had fallen as a result of generative AI. A large majority also expected their earnings to decline further.
November 21, 2025 at 4:12 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
Transcript of Wednesday's evidence from DSIT bods to Commons SITC's inquiry on the 'digital centre of Government' committees.parliament.uk/event/25600/...

Mostly about #digitalID plus tech budgets, procurement (Samantha Niblett MP maligning Microsoft), cybersecurity, etc.

#govtech #techpolicy
Q342 Chair: You have said "sovereign" a number of times. Is sovereign capability something that is built here, using British infrastructure—British-owned data centres, British-owned networking—or is it something that is built here using infrastructure owned by others in the UK? Ian Murray: When I asked the question about sovereignty in the tech area, the first part that came back to me was: "It depends how you define what sovereignty is." Chair: Yes, and that’s why I am asking you.
November 21, 2025 at 3:10 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
UK tech secretary Liz Kendall seems to be pushing for legislation restricting chatbot services, beyond current scope of the Online Safety Act www.theguardian.com/media/2025/n...

OSA only applies to chatbots if they include user-to-user engagement or live search

#censorship #openweb #techpolicy
Kendall said she was now "really worried about AI chatbots" and "the impact they're having on children and young people". The dangers have been highlighted by US lawsuits involving teenagers who took their own lives after becoming highly engaged with ChatGPT and Character.AI chatbots, which they treated as confidants and advisers. "If chatbots aren't included or properly covered by the legislation, and we're really working through that now, then they will have to be," Kendall said. "People have got to feel their kids are safe."
November 21, 2025 at 2:29 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
I don't normally bother with Andrew Orlowski's stuff any more – he's reliably wrong and not in an interesting way – but this piece is especially stupid:

Defend British sovereignty, defend the Online Safety Act thecritic.co.uk/defend-briti...

#censorship #openweb #techpolicy
If American internet companies withdraw from Britain, would we be poorer? Hardly. In several examples superior UK and European services in search and mapping were muscled out by competitive practices, such as bundling, subsequently found to be illegal. Being boycotted by Wikipedia would hardly be the end of the world, and allow a "Britipedia" without the Californian wokeness.
November 21, 2025 at 1:27 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
Addressing database rights: Royal Mail successfully protects rights in its Postcode Address File www.twobirds.com/en/insights/... analysis of last month's Codeberry decision in the High Court (England and Wales) by Quinn Liang at Bird & Bird

#IPlaw #datapolicy not - #opendata not - #openaddresses
Tricks, traps, and evidence of infringement: Mr Smith argued that the GetAddress database was created not from the PAF but from a list of 13 publicly available sources such as The Ordnance Survey Code-Point Open dataset, an NHS postcode directory, addresses of social housing, and HM Land Registry Price Paid Data. Cunningly, both the PAF and the GBR Databases had been seeded with dummy addresses, decoys purposefully introduced to expose copying – known as a 'Mountweazel' after a famous encyclopaedia entry designed to do just that. Evidence presented at the trial demonstrated a high correlation between the PAF data and GetAddress data (around 78%), similar uses of abbreviations, and in particular two forms of mountweazel: the presence of 'seed' addresses (postcodes that do not exist originally planted by RMG in their PAF data) and over 5,000 'sleepers' (errors in addresses purposefully introduced by the creator of the GBR Database once he became suspicious that GetAddress was using information from the GBR Database) in the GetAddress database.
November 21, 2025 at 10:49 AM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
More #openaddresses:

Camden Council in London has released its Council Tax address list as open data www.owenboswarva.com/blog/post-ad...

Thanks @camdencouncil.bsky.social!

I've geocoded the address locations as usual

#FOI #localgov #UKhousing #proptech #opendata
Screenshot of sample of Camden Council's Council Tax address data, visualised in Google Earth
November 21, 2025 at 8:48 AM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
Ofcom has fined a "nudification" site £50,000 and launched new Online Safety Act investigations into 20 more porn sites www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safet...

Itai Tech Ltd is a UK firm, but it's unclear how many of Ofcom's other targets are within its practical reach.

#censorship #openweb #techpolicy
November 20, 2025 at 2:16 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
Microsoft has 'ripped off the NHS', says MP amid call for contracts with British firms www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Valid concerns but some of the people quoted in this article sound as if they just this minute discovered public sector tech procurement. I will wait for the transcript
Niblett, who worked in the data and technology sector before being elected to parliament in 2024, did not provide further evidence, but when the committee chair, Chi Onwurah, voiced surprise at the claim, she said: "Well, it has."
November 20, 2025 at 6:52 AM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
Connected Nations 2025 www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-b... reports from UK regulator @ofcom.bsky.social

Including #opendata on the state of the UK's #telecomms infrastructure down to small areas of coverage www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-b...
November 19, 2025 at 9:11 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
Job – Senior Data Engineer in the Open Data team at the UK's Parliamentary Digital Service housesofparliament.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/...

PDS's tech-led approach to #opendata has produced rather underwhelming results in the past, but perhaps you can help
The Open Data team, part of the Data & Search, is responsible for defining and delivering Parliament's open data strategy, as well as managing open data products and services. Our core service is the Open Data Platform. The team is now beginning development of a new Open Data Platform for parliamentary procedure data, which will replace existing platforms and the data integration and publishing services that support them. We are seeking an experienced Data Engineer who will play a central role in building and supporting the new platform. The role will focus on developing the ETL data pipeline framework to integrate upstream master data from parliamentary business systems, as well as engineering new data services, including APIs and web-client applications.
November 19, 2025 at 8:45 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
Ofcom has received a short extension to answer the US complaint filed by 4chan/KF re enforcement of Online Safety Act www.courtlistener.com/docket/71209...

Ofcom declares 'sovereign immunity' in free speech battle with US website www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...

#censorship #openweb #techpolicy
In a notice filed to a federal court in Washington, its first response to the lawsuit, the regulator said: "Ofcom is a UK public regulatory authority and has substantial grounds for seeking dismissal of this lawsuit based on sovereign immunity." The US Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act shields foreign governments from lawsuits in the US. 4chan's lawsuit argues that Ofcom operates as a "commercial enterprise" and thus should not benefit from sovereign immunity.
November 19, 2025 at 7:45 PM
owenboswarva.bsky.social
More #openaddresses:

Dorset Council has released its Council Tax address list as open data www.owenboswarva.com/blog/post-ad... (UK)

No geocoded version this time, as unfortunately the Council has withheld the vast majority of the UPRNs. (I've asked for an internal review.)

#FOI #opendata
November 19, 2025 at 5:22 PM