National Identity Scheme
The home office
released just before Christmas their Strategic
Action Plan for the National Identity Scheme and the NIR.
How does this differ from, and is it included in, the
Treasury PPF of Identity Management.
In a Treasury press
release dated 11 July 2006 The Chancellor of the Exchequer appointed Sir
James Crosby (the ex-Chief Executive of HBOS) to chair the Public Private Forum
on Identity Management.
The Forum’s terms
of reference are to:
a) Review
the current and emerging use of identity management in the private and public
sectors and identify best practice.
b) Consider how public
and private sectors can work together, harnessing the best identity technology
to maximise efficiency and effectiveness.
c) Produce a
preliminary report for the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Ministerial
Committee on identity Management by Easter 2007.
The home office
released just before Christmas their a Strategic
Action Plan for the National Identity Scheme, and it states in section 90 that
Sir David Varney is doing the same thing as Sir James Crosby.
How does this differ from, or is it included in, the
Treasury PPF of Identity Management.
What’s the difference.
Are we going to have 2 ID schemes, are we paying twice for this, and if
they are part of the same programme, has the Home Office not put the Cart
before the Horse. Surely Sir James’s forum should have a primary input into
what the Home Office is building in the first place, or we will end up with
another expensive mismatch of technology that we will either have to pay for
through more tax, or increased charges at the banks.
In the Home
office strategy document procurement is due to begin 2nd Qtr 2007,
so one assumes that they have already selected what they are going to procure,
but Sir James’s PPF does not report its preliminary findings to the Treasury on
its suggestions for technology until Easter.(8th April 07).
Have they already
decided which cronies are getting the contracts, or is the Chancellor trying to
outdo the Home Secretary.
Now we come onto Data Sharing.
As outlined in
the press release from No10 this week, data sharing will enable better delivery
of government services.
But wait. The home office says that the ID card will do
that, section 86 of the Strategic Action Plan states that the ID card will
provide a single access point to various government services using secure
identity verification.
So what is it
they really want. Everyone to have an ID
card so that you don’t have to fill in 44 forms, you just present your ID card,
or everyone’s data shared across departments.
The only benefit
I can see for Joe public is if every government office, job centre, tax office,
benefits office etc becomes a one stop shop, where you can discuss any
government department business at a single point of service.
You could do that
with an ID card, but you could also do it with a medical card, social security card, drivers licence, passport, whatever offical document you had, there would be no need whatsoever for the data to be shared,
only to enable the front desk operative access to the relevant database
depending which service you required.
What would be
better was if the services and databases that each government department has
already got were enhanced and data cleansed, so that the information they
contained were good data. Reports out
today say that 1 in 5 records are wrong, so the old adage of rubbish in, rubbish
out needs to be addressed before we even start to think about sharing it.
What earthly
reason would a DVLA official want with my doctors record, Service record or my
council tax payments?.
Data sharing between
departments was banned a long time ago by Parliamentarians to protect the
rights and privacy of the individual, long before modern governments had
thought up the Data Protection Act, and I for one cannot see that those reasons
have changed.
Don’t be fooled,
data sharing is about people control, not better services.
