New CWGC search interface

[Auimfo]

Um, I don't know whether anyone picked up on this but in David Stacey's response to June he said,

"This is the first time that I have been made aware that links have been made directly to the Commission's website."

Then why was the following statement made on their website,

"one of the likely results of the security upgrade is that external websites will be unable to take advantage of the links to individual casualty details"

Seems to me that if they didn't know about any linking occuring then there would be no reason to put this statement in the website release...would it????? I think I can hear the gentle sounds of heads being plunged into buckets of sand.

Cheers,

Tim L.

[Chris_Baker]

I have contacted CWGC in order to offer my help. I suspect it will be all too late anyway.

[auchonvillerssomme]

Can I ask if anyone is willing to show us a template letter for us to address to MP's? The reason I say that is that we all have our own ideas and it would ensure consistency - I would but I don't know what everyone else needs. My own MP, Mr Trickett, has always been very helpful na dresponded quickly to any correspondence.

Mick

[Seadog]

Mick this was my attempt, you may wish to play around with it for your own purposes.

Regards

Norman

Ref : Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC)

You will be aware that the CWGC maintain in an excellent fashion the War Cemeteries throughout the world. They do however have a second function in that they maintain a database of all casualties which is accessible to the public. There has occurred this week a situation which is causing much concern to many people and is as follows.

Without any prior notification the CWGC implemented a new version of their database, not in itself that important were it not for the fact that the changes also dispensed with the ability of a user to link to an individuals details by quite legally saving the URL. These saved links formed the basis of many WW1 Memorial Web Sites including my own.

It is estimated that there are over 1,500 web sites linking to the CWGC and that the total number of individual links including those saved by researchers amounts to over 1.3 Million. All of these will be redundant when the CWGC implements the changes. Later this week the CWGC reinstated the original database after many users had contacted them with a multitude of errors which were occurring. If the changes do go ahead and it seems that the intension of the CWGC is to implement them at whatever cost, see here.

http://www.cwgc.org/news.asp?newsid=132&view=yes

This would be a disaster and would not only trash those individual memorial web sites but would at a stroke ruin the efforts of researchers some of whom have taken years to complete their work. Will you please speak to the CWGC and put the above points to them in the hope that they will reconsider a course of action which will no doubt have a detrimental effect on their reputation and standing with the public.

[June Underwood]

One important MP to contact is Kevan Jones - Under Secretary of State for Defence and Minister for Veterans. Last week he visited CWGC at Maidenhead and was shown on BBC News. He was very impressed by CWGC and all the work that they did. Could a petition be sent to him?

Thank you to the 2 members who posted a method of finding Kevan Jones's email address. I found that he could be contacted from his website. My own MP - David Lidington - would also, I feel, be very supportive. I am biding my time before contacting either of them, as I know there are members with much more experience than me and I don't want to destroy any impact that letters from them might have.

June

[Seadog]

June have you an e-mail address for Kevan Jones please?.

Norman

[June Underwood]

Norman

I like your letter but could I suggest one extra point. All these websites and links that will be destroyed augment CWGCs search facilities, thereby making it easier for the general public to find their relatives. As this is appears to be the main aim of CWGC they should welcome these links rather than destroy them.

Last night, using Geoffs Search Engine, I located a further 15 entries, that I could not find (and probably would never have found) using CWGC alone.

June

[June Underwood]

Norman

This is the best that I can manage. It's not his actual email address, but it's a method of making contact.

http://findyourmp.parliament.uk/constituen...am/messages/new

June

[Guest acf]

The one thing that amazes me in all of this is the resistance to facilitate easier searches, how is it that Geoff's search engine can do this but CWGC wont allow anything other than name inititial and war or year. This has always raised suspicions in my mind about money and where the CWGC really wants to be as an organisation - it must be quite tempting as managers seeing a well used database being accessed for free when Ancestry can get away with charging huge fees. I would love to see their business plan.

Mick

CWGC Corporate Plan 2008-11

[apwright]

Quote from the document linked to by acf (my italics):

Preserving and Maintaining Accessible Records

In order to achieve this we will:

[...]

Continue the development of the records databases by providing more search options

I wonder when.

Thanks for the link, acf, and welcome to the Forum, though I see you've been lurking for some time!

You don't by any chance work for ... Only joshin'!

Adrian

[eltoro1960]

Welcome to the Forum acf.

I notes this on page 4 , the part about reviewing access to documents could be a good thing, ie putting more into the public arena or a bad thing, ie pay to view the records, I think clarification is required as to what this means to enable informed debate.

John

[Guest acf]

Hello. Yes, lurked for a while. I can confirm I have no links to the CWGC - but then that's the problem, isn't it?

My take on the 'archive documents' are the burial returns which, I assume, are going to end up on a pay-per-view system. I would imagine the costs will be fairly competitive - compared to a visit - for single, genealogical-type access but will be prohibitive for mass commemorations or research purposes. Arguably, the preservation of the information, digitally or otherwise, is a requirement of the Charter yet this work seems to be carried out as a commercial activity, not simply to recover or offset costs. That said, they are giving us something we couldn't get (easily) before so I would consider that an improvement.

They seem to be failing on Point 3, though.

[auchonvillerssomme]

Hi acf, yes thats the corporate plan (all 8 pages) but I would like to see the business plan - where they intend to cut costs and work to budgets, where they identify possible areas of income.

Mick

[Seadog]

June, many thanks for the reply. A good point about my letter I will add your suggestion. Thanks also for the contact details.

Regards

Norman

[galena]

 where they identify possible areas of income.

In That not objective 6 ? Or are you really Looking at pay-per-view? Please Not ancestery.

acf - Objective 2 does not Mention more accessible to The public. What makes you So confident here?

[Seadog]

That so-called Corporate Plan is nothing of the sort. At best it is a statement of intent and at worse waffle. Where are the financial projections for the period 2008-2011 detailing anticipated income and expenditure, where are the staff costs and numbers and very importantly where is the IT budget for the period? In my view if that is all there is then it is pathetic. This time I am speaking with at least some knowledge of the subject as in a previous life I was responsible for producing the Corporate Plan for the subsidiary of a major UK PLC.

Regards

Norman

PS Please try and keep this subject going at this rate I will soon be a General!

[dfaulder]

Still trying to get my mind around what exactly is going on - it would be nice to have a clear statement from CWGC that is not subject to "less is more" type spin or to statements regarding knowledge of links that undermine the confidence of many of us.

The claim that changes have had to be made for "security" reasons strikes me as very odd. The casualty/cemetery database is a read-only database (i.e. we only retrieve information from it and have no means (or need) to write information to it). Such databases are relatively easily secured and can be done by means that are invisible to users. It would of course be a totally different matter if the database was of the read/write type that had to accept information such as say credit card numbers. But they have not said that this is why they are making the changes. (But then when the National Archives put in barriers on the car park they assured us that this was not a prelude to the introduction of parking charges. Take some change on your next visit!). We should also note that other commercial sites (like say Amazon) can maintain links to specific items - indeed they rely on this for referral business - see the book links on many sites. (e.g. In Flanders Fields and Other Poems). The "security claim" does not seem to stand up.

The explicit statement that "external websites will be unable to take advantage of the links to individual casualty details which are currently available" (on CWGC website - ref as at 14:52 10/09/09), sits oddly with their Director IT Services's statement, that "This is the first time that I have been made aware that links have been made directly to the Commission's website" (on this thread - ref - which I don't think is liable to change!). It does make me wonder what is going on.

I note incidentally that in the "Learning Zone" side of the CWGC website (which Westhill Communications have proudly in their portfolio "showcase" - you will have to search for it, I can't form an explicit link!), they use specific links to casualties (see currently http://www.cwgc.org/education/tn_pdf/tn_cwgchithome.pdf and look on page 2).

I always find it useful when trying to understand what has been going on (whether last week or 90+ years ago), to try and form a number of alternative possible narratives and then to test them against what we know.

1) Suppose: CWGC like many organisations has very limited in-house IT resource and consequently outsource to agencies (like Westhill Communications) who do the work for them. I don't know Westhill, but if they are a competent firm (I have no reason to believe otherwise) they will do a job to a set of standards, and if the client does not specify standards they will use their own in-house standards. Because they do so much commercial work, their standards anticipate a different type of user environment to CWGC and they will also (rightly) try to establish a good platform to do other potential later work (such as possibly e-commerce). CWGC were unaware of the consequences of things like session variables and they did not brief Westhill about the number of memorial websites that link into theirs. Classic communication cock-up, no-one really to blame(?), but how the hell do you sort it out and who pays?

2) Suppose: CWGC are under funding pressure and want to introduce an element of charging - possibly for the production of "memorial documents" - a bit like the Ypres League used to (see my current Avatar), possibly for anything more than a very basic search. This rejig is then a very sensible bit of groundwork, and if they were a commercial organisation fair enough.

3) Suppose: CWGC have become aware of the value of their data (and of the pent up demand for a higher quality of access) and want to prevent unauthorised third parties using it prior to giving an exclusive licence to it to an agency like Ancestry or Find my Past (whilst hopefully retaining a noddy search). Again for a commercial organisation, possibly a very sensible thing to do.

For the first of the above narratives, there is possibly room for reflection and acknowledgement of a wider set of requirements - but this may be resisted because the parties involved know that there is no money available for reworking an unsuitable piece of work; therefore they will dig in. The primary issue is lack of effective initial consultation and the need for additional consultation. The secondary one is money!

For the second and third narratives, the initial issue is one of funding and the perception of what CWGC is for and how it should be funded (which is a multi-national issue). If these narratives have something in them there is also the secondary issue of trust, in that a public body is different from a commercial one and this sort of implementation by subterfuge endangers that trust. CWGC is possibly almost unique in the way that it holds memorials in trust.

It would be useful if we could understand what the real narrative should be. Possibly responses from MP's ministers, commissioner etc. may give an indication. Possibly Terry Denham may (when he returns) give us a sage indication of what he thinks is happening.

I think most who have contributed are of the view that we should make a (constructive) noise now, and not wait to see what happens when they re-implement (would they dare do it in the run up to the remembrance season?).

So where do we take our stand?

1. The need for the preservation of existing links. This may be a bit esoteric to get across to non web-savvy MPs, but goes to the heart of the issue:
   • Websites created to celebrate memorials in their constituencies will no longer work if they link to CWGC records,
   • Project webpages created by school children (who under cross-curricula studies are encouraged to integrate ICT history etc. - and who are hopefully being encouraged not to just "cut and paste", but to link to and acknowledge their sources) will find that their pages break (possibly just before assessment).
   • Personal bookmarks to specific records will become inoperative. Many children of those who died in WW1 are no longer able to visit the memorials or graves, but for instance my late father had his father's record bookmarked and could occasionally call it up and see that CWGC were still commemorating his father. It is upsetting, confusing and unacceptable (as well as unprofessional and unnecessary) to see:

     • Server Error in '/' Application.

       The resource cannot be found.

       Description: HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.

       Requested URL: /Search-Our-Records.aspx

       Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.1433; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.1433

2. The knock on effect of the above issue is to disable third party search sites that have successfully managed to offer a search facility that does not have the shortcomings of the CWGC search facility.
3. Other issues listed by Martin Elliget (ref)
4. The CWGC database is in effect an Electronic Memorial, and is accessible to nearly all; just as CWGC would not put turnstiles on the entrances to the cemeteries, they should not restrict access to the database.
5. The manner in which this change has been handled
   • Lack of effective consultation and the perceived inability to pull together a group of stakeholders.
   • The Original unannounced change
   • What looks like a very un-modern attitude to its wider user community They could stand by the claim that their role is just to maintain stonework and gardens, but most organisations now-a-days recognise that they need to engage more widely with their customers / consumers / users and that accessibility is an issue.

There is a danger when we make a noise of "losing the signal". I must admit that beyond the fury about seeing links disappear and Geoff's search engine being disabled, I am not totally sure how I would prioritise my other concerns. I think with people like MPs I would focus on 1 & 2, but would certainly want to put in some reference to 4 & 5. Item 3 above (other items listed by M.E.) I think is for direct discussion with CWGC (which I think Martin is doing).

David

[keithmroberts]

I think that David Faulder has brought some of the issues together very well. As a former civil servant I am never inclined to underestimate the "cock-up" theory of any organisational change, and suspect strongly that his first narrative does hit the nail on the head.

I suspect that the statement on the website appeared only after the initial storm of complaints, and reflects a new understanding of the problems caused by the new design. In other words, its just a reactive, defensive statement.

I will be writing to my MP and to one of the Commissioners of the CWGC. here is a link - if it still works, http://www.cwgc.org/content.asp?menuid=1&a...rs&menu=sub which gives the names of the people at the very top. They should surely not be missed, but they do as others have pointed out need the constructive and courteous approach.

Keith

[kinnethmont]

Some seem not to understand the workings of CWGC and it's obligations in commemorating the war dead.

I do not understand it fully myself, although others have a very good working knowledge of the organisation and may provide details in time.

I do know they were created by a Royal Charter, which they have to operate under, and are controlled by. It allows them to do certain things and prevents them doing others. They are administered by up to 19 representaive members under the CWGC President. CWGC are not a company and we are not it's shareholders. Why then are some " demanding " they consult with us and do as we want as far as researching / searching for data is concerned? They are prefectly at liberty to make changes as they see fit.

Whilst accepting it would make sense to have researched the links problem more it is really none of our business. When did any of the sites affected, myself included, consult CWGC about making changes?

Technology is moving at such a pace it would be ridiculous if they were prevented from adapting their site and the information they provide in order to take advantage to the latest presentation possibilities. No I do not mean, pay per view which I think may be a total red herring.

Some of us might remember Windows 3.1 and ME and consider how things have moved on since.

I would be fairly sure CWGC have been able to fully search their database for years as part of their internal system. It does not follow the must gve us the same access. It is debateable whether they are even required to provide the info on their website for us to enjoy. Their obligations used to be fulfilled with hundreds of Registers. I suspect no-one, least of all CWGC, wants to revert back to that system.

Regardless of the read only data argument their data is not currently secure. The database / data has been created by CWGC and it is theirs. It cannot be secure if Geoff can get access to it. This he does currently, and I for one, am very grateful.

Let us imagine our bank had a database with all their deceased customer's financial, etc details on back to 1914, and a third party site was able to access that, I doubt we would want that to carry on for long. Different I know, yet similar.

Surely some way can be found for CWGC to allow more access to their records without compromising their security. It might be possible to allow interested individuals access on an annual CWGC " donation " basis for a login provided it did not discourage those who are finding those " missing " from their Roll. It is not everyone who wants to trawl their database as some of us do.

As I have stated before, the links / bugs issues discovered need to be sorted out before any new version of the search appears on the CWGC site.

[June Underwood]

This is the reply I have just had from David Stacey at CWGC. The correspondence he refers to is the agreement that was made between us and the CWGC in Aug 2005 for us to make links between our website and the CWGC website, as long as we made no charge. Is there anyone else who has a similar agreement?

In the second paragraph he mentions the survey that was carried out - were any Forum members contacted by phone? I'm not sure what he means by accommodating some of the demands for a better search facility, when it is actually worse and more cumbersome!

Is there room for hope, I wonder?

June

Dear Mrs Underwood

Thank you for your further email about the CWGC database. It is very helpful to have a copy of the attached correspondence of which I was unaware. I will be researching to see how many other similar agreements there might be. I note that your website is freely available, but I would be interested to know whether there are others that in fact charge for the same information.

I was pleased to see that you had participated in the original survey. Afterwards, although you were not chosen, a sample of people were asked more detailed questions about the website, at which point such issues might have been raised (but were not). The survey was sent to almost 5000 customers and we received back over 1500 responses. The customers contacted were those who had most recently contacted the Commission at the time the list was extracted, and represented a complete cross section of our customers from the new user (some of whom had never used our website) to the regular visitor, many of whom used our website for "work" purposes. Of those who replied, 821 said they were happy to be contacted again and a number were then randomly chosen for a more detailed telephone conversation. There were several demands for a better search facility, and we have attempted to accommodate some of these.

Before re-introducing the new database, I will look further into the issues raised by the direct links to it. As another correspondent has suggested, it may be possible to keep the functionality of the earlier version, together with the changes to the new. I am considering inviting various individuals to a meeting to put their view to the CWGC in order to inform the debate, and I may be in contact again.

Yours sincerely

David Stacey

[kinnethmont]

Before re-introducing the new database, I will look further into the issues raised by the direct links to it. As another correspondent has suggested, it may be possible to keep the functionality of the earlier version, together with the changes to the new. I am considering inviting various individuals to a meeting to put their view to the CWGC in order to inform the debate, and I may be in contact again.

This paragraph seems to suggest a dual arangement which would possibly resolve the links issue.

It seems evident that the first or occasional users they have consulted were not best placed to advise on the links / search facility that some of us here might have been. The questions asked would also have a bearing on things.

He should have known that The Canadian Great War Project has (edit - HAD) direct links to the CWGC info on 104,066 casualties. He does now.

[Alan_J]

Someone posted earlier that they would like to see the CWGC Business Plan. I am not sure they have such a document (or at least so named); but they do issue financial reports and the latest can be found here. This shows they had a balance of roughly £1.6M in 2008. Their main income is from the various Governments who provide funding - about £46M.

Some interesting figures are that staff costs are £29M and that they spent 0.75M on communications and IT.

They have about £23M invested, mainly in UK equities.

There are some interesting targets in terms of their replying to e-mails and complaints as well.

I agree with the statements that we have no right to demand what the CWGC do, but on the other hand they are funded largely by the UK Government (78% of the £46M), and so on that basis I do feel that as UK taxpayers (and equally in other countries which also contribute), the public - the "customers" referred to several times in the document - certainly should be able to make their feelings known.

I've been catching up with this thread as I have not had much time recently for the forum, but I will be e-mailing CWGC with my views. I actually don't link to any Debt of Honour records from my website, but I do feel quite strongly that many websites - local memorials or rolls of honour - that do would be very adeversly affected - and there seems no logical reason for a change to the status quo in this respect.

Alan

[galena]

Someone posted earlier that they would like to see the CWGC Business Plan.

The only hint of this is in the corporate Plan, which States:

Carrying out Agency Services

In order to do this we will:

Maintain graves and memorials under agency service arrangements

Continue to seek new agency services work

Renovate graves from the South African War

Perform the Canada Remembers grave tracking project

Recover the remains of casualties brought to our attention and arrange honourable burial with member governments

This seems to be additional to their Royal charter duties, at Least that seems to me in the way It is presented in The plan.

Could it be that Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery is seen as a 'showcase' of what they can acheve?

ie efficiently built within budget and in a less than Olympic timescale and equal to those constructed in Former times.

And may-be that is why the construction Seems to be hurried, why not plan and wait for the slightly Rounder 95th anniversary?

And did this plan Influence the body-recovery? Just A thought.

[Auimfo]

Hi All,

To his credit, David Stacey has responded to my email quite promptly.

Thank you for your email concerning the changes to the CWGC database.

For your information, a web survey carried out in June 2009 was sent to almost 5000 customers and we received back over 1500 responses. The customers contacted were those who had most recently contacted the Commission at the time the list was extracted, and represented a complete cross section of our customers from the new user (some of whom had never used our website) to the regular visitor, many of whom used our website for "work" purposes. Of those who replied, 821 said they were happy to be contacted again and a number were then randomly chosen for a more detailed telephone conversation. There were several demands for a better search facility, and we have attempted to accommodate some of these.

The improvements to the facility will be:

- a more robust search mechanism, with predictive text entry for surnames and cemeteries that overcomes existing issues with hyphenated names and names with apostrophes; it no longer requires a user to know the exact name of a cemetery or memorial to find that location.

- A search engine that no longer returns nil results should a user enter a space behind a name or initial; the system no longer allows the entry of additional characters – full stops etc.

- Redesign of all templates within the search our records facility to ensure all information is presented in a clean and easy to read format.

- Links to additional information and functions (like the ability to sort data in a table or click on a cemetery name for further information on that location) have been made clear.

- A revised printing function that allows the user to download and print that page – be it a casualty report, certificate or picture – as a PDF.

- An ability to search within a cemetery or memorial report for a specific casualty or other criteria.

I am of course now aware of the great use made of direct links to the Commission's database. Although I note that some people have asked permission to do so, there are many that have not. However, I intend to discuss this issue further before implementing the new version of the database.

I can assure you that the Commission is fully committed to commemorating and honouring the casualties of two world wars in their care.

Yours sincerely

David Stacey

Director Information Services

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

I've highlighted the most interesting comment relating to the 'links' problem. I think the reference about permission to link is a little naieve unless directly referring to anyone who is attempting to make profit from it but as far as I'm aware there's nobody in that category. The CWGC's own plan claims they are to promote remembrance amongst the public - isn't that exactly what's been achieved by these linked external websites and databases?

At least it appears that they may have decided to think things over a bit more before destroying so much great work.

It also seems that they have made some small advancements in the search functionality but these are fairly minor in comparison to what might have been achieved.

Cheers,

Tim L.

[Staffsyeoman]

"...attempting to make profit from it" I seem to recall spending a couple of hundred pounds buying a disc from the Naval and Military Press containing a lot of the CWGC data - it's called "Soldiers Died in the Great War" ! How disingenuous that response is.

I am dismayed by that response. On a 20% return rate on a very small sample chaos is wreaked. Not the first steps in slippery slope to charging for access? (Like the NA, which you have also already paid for).

I have views on the efficacy of writing to the Minister, but for personal reasons I may have to leave it at "you might think that, I couldn't possibly comment"