Relocution

The following biographical article was originally published in 1999 in the online newsletter of The National Digital Archive of Datasets.

I left school in 1985 and started work at the Metropolitan Police Department of Computer Services in Putney, which benevolent organisation kindly undertook to school me in the use of ICL mainframes and databases. On arrival I was given a small pick-axe and a stack of punch-cards and set to work in the stygian gloom of the subterranean Cobol mines. From adamantine boulders of syntax I was taught to extract valuable lines of code and fashion them into intricate and unlikely systems of structured programs. One such system was the vast and trunkless Crime Statistics System. My colleagues were an eclectic and good-natured crew, and on one day a year the upper floors of the building held a commanding view of a small section of the Boat Race course.

In 1988 I went to ICL Defence Systems, to work on a procurement system for the Ministry of Defence in Southwark, using the same systems and tools I knew from the Metropolitan Police. At about this time I also remember using an electronic information system in my local library, which combined searchable catalogues, local information, electronic mail: it too used technology I was familiar with, and I remember thinking how much more stimulating it must be working on such a system as that, rather than, say, one forecasting Army spending.

The following year I went to Warwick University to study English Literature. I had many excellent tutors, who helped make my studies enjoyable and successful, and besides the usual fare of such a course, I also got to study Italian literature and spend a pleasant summer learning the language in Siena. I passed my three years at Warwick largely unmolested by computers; however, when essay deadlines were pressing, I was always in demand to help coax friends’ purple prose from departmental PCs or their own quirky Amstrad word processors.

Sated (for a time) with study and impecuniosity, I had interviews with several government departments, even the secret service. Luckily, whatever MI5 thought of me is still classified, but I returned to Scotland Yard, this time in the Management Services Department based in Marylebone. I worked on several projects (including a fascinating study of hand-cuffs), but most of all enjoyed working on a small Apple network for the (self-styled) Forms Unit Corporate Identity Team.

My next stop was the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory (MPFSL, also known as SO7), near Lambeth Palace. Ultimately, I managed a small group of staff supporting the scientists’ many and varied computer systems: the work was a typical pot-pourri of systems administration on Novell, Unix and Windows, user support and training, installation, upgrades, repairs, data protection, and so on. Sponsored by enlightened managers, I enrolled on a part-time MSc Computing Science course at Birkbeck College. The course was thorough and interesting, consolidating much of my experience and introducing many new (to me) aspects of computing and IT, particularly the emerging Web.

In 1996, I changed employers without changing my position or location: the MPFSL was annexed by the Birmingham-based Forensic Science Service (FSS). The then Home Secretary visited for the occasion, and everybody at the lab was given a framed certificate. After this merger, I worked on integrating systems from the two organisations, and on installing new kit, such as a capricious DEC Alpha server for the office automation systems, and a network of Apple Power Macs for the National DNA Database. More interesting, though, was setting up an NT-based intranet server, and developing C programs to convert data for a CD-ROM database of forensic science abstracts, published by the FSS in partnership with SilverPlatter (but I wish I’d known Perl at the time).

In the Autumn of 1997, my interest in information systems and databases rekindled, the chance to work on the emerging Computer Readable Data Archive project (now NDAD) at ULCC seemed too good to miss. That’s why I have spent the past year in Bloomsbury, helping stoke the boilers of the SS NDAD, working on some of the many tasks necessary to present and preserve these important government datasets. And wasn’t my joy complete, to find among my first tasks has been the rediscovery of something very familiar to me, re-examining that very same old Metropolitan Police Crime Statistics System which is where we came in, and which will shortly be available on NDAD. Instant karma, indeed.