Where is the NGA data set?

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AKA how poor are our govt departments with handling data enquiries?! OK, BIS announce a new report on risk assessment for NGA prepared by Analysys Mason, which is essential reading. But take a couple of Valium first as you will undoubtedly hit the roof at some of the myth perpetuation ongoing in it...

The press release sends you to a variety of sites - Communities and Local Government where you can finally, with some searching, find the report. Within the report is a reference to the data set used to formulate the outputs in an Excel file. Back to the Communities site to look for it - nope. Nothing. Try the BIS site for a reference or link - nothing. Go to data.gov.uk - nothing. Try the ESD Toolkit - nothing. (Or am I just too impatient to search through multiple, intricate layers of non-user friendly websites when the search boxes fail to reveal anything of use for multiple related search terms?)

Reach for phone. Communities and Local Govt know nothing about said report and certainly don't know about an Excel file. In fact, when someone says, "Next Generation.......??" you know you are probably on a hiding to nothing. They send you to publications who know nothing and send you back to the switchboard. They recommend phoning DCMS and BIS. And nicely give you the phone numbers. My long distance call charges are stacking up now....still no luck. When will people spend time and money on educating receptionists so they know who to refer you to?

Phone Analysys Mason in desperation. "We'll ring you back. The person who may know is in a meeting."

So much for the immediacy of e-government. Start preparing the carrier pigeon and the fire for smoke signals......

I'll post on the report shortly when I have calmed down a little at the inadequacies of our civil servants and e-gov!

UPDATE: Hooray for Analysys Mason returning calls. But now we need to wait and see when the data might actually be available from Govt.....