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 2^nd 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.(8^th 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.