The war of independence

Here in the UK, the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) state benefit is in the process of being replaced by the Personal Independence Payment (PIP), worth between £21 and £134.40 per week. "PIP helps with some of the extra costs caused by long-term ill-health or a disability", which is good, but the whole point is that many claimants will be dependent on this benefit which makes it very odd to call it a "Personal Independence Payment". Something odd is happening to the concept of independence here.

The same odd thing is happening to the concept of control. Mr Andrew Dilnot, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, argues that there should be a limit of £35,000 on the amount old people pay for their social care. That limit should apply even if an old person owns a house, say, worth £2 million, say. They shouldn't have to sell the house to pay for their care.

Why not?

So that they can leave the house to their children? No, says Mr Dilnot, that's not the point. The point is, he says, that with the state paying for all their care after the first £35,000, old people will have "control over their lives at a time when they're vulnerable and need that control".

No.

Far from granting control, Mr Dilnot's proposal will take it away. If someone else is paying for your care home, they have control and you don't. Yield that control, and your independence goes with it.

That's not the case just for care homes, of course. You don't pay to use Google or Facebook, do you. You don't have any control over what they do with all the personal information about you that they collect. You're in no position to complain. You take what you get. Because you're dependent on them.

Google, by contrast, dispose of considerable power. Just ask Interflora UK. They displeased Google by trying to "game" the search engine's PageRanking system. So Google just omitted them from any search results. With its on-line sales threatened, a contrite Interflora UK swore obedience and was subsequently readmitted to the fold.

That's real power. Power that some web evangelists ignore. Douglas Carswell, for example, and his curate's egg of a book, The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy. Our politicians and our civil servants here in the UK might be ever so useless, yes, but to believe that we could be returned to some prelapsarian iDemocratic idyll if only the government were replaced by the web is to ignore the power of the Googles of this world.

Taking a holiday some years ago from their normal diet of heavy-handed legislation and irritating regulation, so much of it ineffectual, look at the banking world, our politicians got the idea that perhaps they could exert power using the wily tricks of the marketing world. Thus was born Whitehall's Behavioural Insights Team, who were meant to "nudge" us into doing certain things, no legislation required, just clever psychology.

Fat chance.

The Behavioural Insights Team worked with the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) on the midata project. The idea was to nudge retailers into releasing data back to consumers so that we would all be "empowered". Result? No cigar, so BIS asked parliament for statutory powers to underpin midata. And with that resounding failure to nudge, the Behavioural Insights team have been kicked out of Whitehall and adopted by Capita. Good luck, Capita.

BIS got their statutory powers the other day, with the passing of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013. "Regulatory reform" in the UK is supposed to imply the reduction of government regulation. midata is dealt with at clauses 85-87 of the Act and what do we find at 86(1)?

Regulations may make provision for the enforcement of regulations under section 85 (“customer data regulations”) by the Information Commissioner or any other person specified in the regulations (and, in this section, “enforcer” means a person on whom functions of enforcement are conferred by the regulations).

Far from reducing regulation, the Act will increase it.

We should have known.

In the midata consultation document last year BIS and the Behavioural Insights Team said, para.4, p.11:

Increased data transparency and greater consumer choice will help promote innovation and competition and could also have a deregulatory effect. By giving people access to their data in a format which is machine readable it may be possible to avoid the need for some types of regulation, for example, specifying product characteristics.

In what sense can this new regulation have a deregulatory effect? Grant us this power to regulate data access by consumers, BIS answered, otherwise we'll make your life hell with a lot of other regulations about product specification – the logic of the protection racket.

Responses to that consultation had to be returned to a Mr Craig Belsham at BIS by 10 September 2012. He popped up again the other day:

Welcome to my new blog about midata 2 May 2013 Craig Belsham I’m Craig Belsham from BIS, where I head up the midata programme. This blog is designed to give some insight into that programme, help people and business understand it and hopefully encourage both to start to get involved.

It's not really a blog. You can't submit comments. And there's no feed – you can't add http://blogs.bis.gov.uk/midata/ to a blogroll.

The Government Digital Service heaped praise on themselves last month for completing the project to bring all central government departmental websites into one single government domain, the award-winning GOV.UK. http://blogs.bis.gov.uk/midata/ shouldn't exist. But it does, and there's Mr Belsham to prove it.

And does Mr Belsham really "head up" the midata programme?

• What's happened to Kirstin Green, the deputy director at BIS who led the open forums on midata?
• What's happened to Professor Nigel Shadbolt, chair of the midata programme?
• And what's happened to William Heath, member of the midata strategy board and chairman of Mydex, the only system ever mentioned in connection with the personal data stores BIS want us all to maintain?

As to the last question, Mr Heath continues to promise that "Mydex gives individuals back control over their personal data" although when asked to explain how, in public, he doesn't.

It's not in Mydex's power to grant that control. It's an odd view of control anyway. You get control of your data back, so goes the Mydex argument, by storing it all with them, complete strangers, in a personal data store, out of your control, on the web, in the cloud, the Wild West where – so Symantec tell us – 250,000 cyber-attacks take place every year.

Normally that wouldn't make sense.

But if you're surrounded

• by people who call a personal dependence payment a "personal independence payment"
• and who argue that you stay in control of your personal care by giving up control of it
• and who write that politics has ended when clearly it hasn't
• and who conclude that the way to nudge people is to legislate
• and who claim that regulation can have a deregulatory effect
• and who operate a blog that isn't a blog on a website that doesn't exist
• and who represent themselves as the head of a programme when perhaps they're not
• and who congratulate themselves on the completion of a project which is manifestly incomplete

then perhaps it does make some sort of sense

• to take back control of your personal data by giving it away.

You might fall for it. But Google won't. They'll win the war. Because they still understand what power and regulation and control and independence are.

The war of independence

Here in the UK, the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) state benefit is in the process of being replaced by the Personal Independence Payment (PIP), worth between £21 and £134.40 per week. "PIP helps with some of the extra costs caused by long-term ill-health or a disability", which is good, but the whole point is that many claimants will be dependent on this benefit which makes it very odd to call it a "Personal Independence Payment". Something odd is happening to the concept of independence here.

The same odd thing is happening to the concept of control. Mr Andrew Dilnot, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, argues that there should be a limit of £35,000 on the amount old people pay for their social care. That limit should apply even if an old person owns a house, say, worth £2 million, say. They shouldn't have to sell the house to pay for their care.

Why not?

midata – nudging you into an interactive flashbased graph

There's so much wrong with midata, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills initiative to "empower" all us consumers, that you may forget the delightful loopiness of its proposed benefits:

If organisations try to share customer data with each other they invade individuals’ privacy and risk breaching the Data Protection Act. The result is duplication, waste and missed opportunities ... Tallyzoo, a service dedicated to self monitoring, allows users to measure anything from their caffeine intake to the number of times they cut their grass. Users collect data using a mobile device or website program which creates interactive flashbased graphs enabling them to spot trends and patterns in their consumption habits, work, health and fitness goals. Data is manipulated so that users can share statistics and compare the end results ... Access to such data represents a ‘holy grail’ data to companies because it explains why people do what they do and predicts what they are going to do next.

Silly old privacy laws. They just get in the way. They're synonymous with waste and duplication. They stand in the way of interactive flashbased  graphs of our coffee consumption and lawn-mowing. With midata choice engines we'll be able to predict the future and control it.

Which mooncalf would fall for this unlikely sales pitch? Cui bono?

There are many answers but one obvious one is Whitehall's Behavioural Insights Team.

They're not having much luck. Most people ridicule the team's nudging job. Their behavioural insight is limited. Tasked with getting UK retailers to sign up to midata, they failed and have now resorted to legislation – the very tool they're meant to abjure.

How could their performance be improved? What would help the Behavioural Insights Team to do its job?

These questions must have haunted Sir-Gus-now-Lord O'Donnell, head of the team's advisory board. And then along came midata. midata and its attendant app-writers, churning out choice engines to help people make life-style decisions, vehicles which could be tuned, perhaps, by Whitehall – who are footing the bill, after all, let's face it – tuned to influence, or nudge people's decisions in a chosen direction, an officially preferred direction ...

----------

Just after writing the word "pitch", just before "Cui bono", an email appeared from Alan Mitchell, the man who thinks midata will allow us to tell the future more accurately than horoscopes:

Please forward this newsletter to colleagues if you think they will find the content useful. Anyone can sign up to receive the newsletter by joining our registered [sheltered?] community here. We only send the newsletter to people who request to receive it.

Would you like to join this registered community? Perhaps this sample will help to nudge you:

We have published a short, informative paper, ‘midata: where next?’ ... It summarises the new focus areas of the programme and showcases a prize winning example straight from the recent inaugural, ground-breaking midata Hackathon of what innovation and value can be achieved in a new midata-enabled world ... In a series of blog posts we’ve ... discussed how, by opening up a new private sector market of Identity Providers which can act on an individual’s behalf, the Government is kick starting an ecosystem of enriched, trusted data sharing, stimulating innovation and cost saving opportunities ... There is further investment in the quantified self space as Canadian company Retrofit announces $8 million in new funding ...

----------

Added 1.4.13: Nike+ FuelBand and Google Glass: what next for the 'quantified self'?

midata – nudging you into an interactive flashbased graph

There's so much wrong with midata, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills initiative to "empower" all us consumers, that you may forget the delightful loopiness of its proposed benefits:

If organisations try to share customer data with each other they invade individuals’ privacy and risk breaching the Data Protection Act. The result is duplication, waste and missed opportunities ... Tallyzoo, a service dedicated to self monitoring, allows users to measure anything from their caffeine intake to the number of times they cut their grass. Users collect data using a mobile device or website program which creates interactive flashbased graphs enabling them to spot trends and patterns in their consumption habits, work, health and fitness goals. Data is manipulated so that users can share statistics and compare the end results ... Access to such data represents a ‘holy grail’ data to companies because it explains why people do what they do and predicts what they are going to do next.

Silly old privacy laws. They just get in the way. They're synonymous with waste and duplication. They stand in the way of interactive flashbased  graphs of our coffee consumption and lawn-mowing. With midata choice engines we'll be able to predict the future and control it.

Which mooncalf would fall for this unlikely sales pitch? Cui bono?

midata, the loneliest initiative in Whitehall – 12 and last

Today is the deadline for submitting responses to the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) consultation on midata. That doesn't make it an important day. BIS will not be dissuaded by any adverse comment in the responses. But for what it's worth:

midata 2012 review and Consultation - response form Consultation on legislating to give consumers access to data in an electronic, machine readable form For your ease, you can reply to this consultation online at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/midata Alternatively you can email, post or fax this completed response form to: Email midata@bis.gsi.gov.uk Postal address Craig Belsham, Head of Consumer Empowerment, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 1 Victoria Street, London, SW1H 0ET Fax 020 7217 2234 A copy of this consultation can be found at: http:/www.bis.gov.uk/consultations The Department may, in accordance with the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information, make available, on public request, individual responses. The closing date for this consultation is 10 September 2012. Your details Name: David Moss Organisation (if applicable): Not applicable Address: xxxxxxxxxx Telephone:    xxxxxxxxxx Fax:    xxxxxxxxxx         email: BCSL@blueyonder.co.uk Please tick a box below that best describes you as a respondent to this consultation:               Business representative organisation/trade body Central government Charity or social enterprise ü Individual Large business (over 250 staff) Legal representative Local Government Medium business (50 to 250 staff) Micro business (up to 9 staff) Small business (10 to 49 staff) Trade union or staff association Other (please describe) Question 1: Do you agree with the principles of midata? No                           Have you any comments on the proposed approach? The Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) say that midata would force suppliers to make transaction data available to consumers. They already make that data available and have done for decades. midata is unnecessary. BIS say that midata will make the economy grow. They give no reason to believe that and provide no figures. What is the target? How would BIS know if midata had succeeded? They say that midata would empower consumers. The examples of empowerment given concern switching between mobile phone suppliers and between energy suppliers. There are already applications which support this switching and BIS themselves describe the energy companies as already blazing the trail. Again, midata is unnecessary. Even its promoters have trouble explaining what midata is for. Professor Shadbolt, chair of the midata programme, was interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours on 5 September 2012 and cheerfully announced that he couldn’t give examples of any other applications. We already have Ofcom and Ofgem. Why do we need midata as well? Are BIS saying that Ofcom and Ofgem don’t do their job properly? BIS still can’t answer the questions raised by Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBCon 3 November 2011: “what's the catch for consumers and why is the government getting involved?”. Which may in turn explain the lack of take-up by suppliers, not a single new adherent having been announced since BIS’s 3 November 2011 press release. Which leaves this respondent to the consultation wondering why BIS want midata, and want it so much that they have switched from midata being a voluntary scheme to proposing to make it compulsory. And wondering what the rôle of the Behavioural Insights Team is in midata – they’re meant to nudge, not legislate. And wondering how BIS can describe this proposed additional regulation of UK business as having a deregulatory effect. The practical effect of midata on the public would be to require us all to maintain a number of PDIs, personal data inventories, each recording sufficient data to identify us. The PDIs would be maintained on the web, we are told, in the cloud, by trusted third parties – i.e. complete strangers – and they would be in permanent contact with all our suppliers, disseminating changes to our data automatically, without our being involved, to everyone who needs to know about the changes, and occasionally making recommendations to change our phone contract or energy contract. It takes years to inspire trust and BIS provide no reason to trust these suppliers. They don’t even name them. If midata was a company, no reputable broker would sponsor it and no reputable stock exchange would list it. The web is an inherently dangerous place to store personal data. BIS and the Cabinet Office, together with the Foreign Office/GCHQ, held an event on 5 September 2012 advising businesses to take effective precautions against cyber threats. At that event BIS promoted a set of GCHQmanuals, in which they give it as their opinion that most businesses have failed to implement cyber security properly. ENISA, the EU’s information security arm, advise that no valuable data should be entrusted to the cloud and that cloud computing should only be embarked on with a clear exit strategy. The OECD also have their reservations about cloud computing: “cloud computing creates security problems in the form of loss of confidentiality if authentication is not robust and loss of service if internet connectivity is unavailable or the supplier is in financial difficulties”. If BIS believe GCHQ, ENISA and the OECD, their simultaneous advice to consumers to entrust our personal data to cyberspace is inconsistent and irresponsible. The Cabinet Office make the unlikely claim that cloud computing is the key to transforming government by making all public services digital by default and delivering them through the G-Cloud, the government cloud, and a number of public clouds, P-Clouds. For that, they need identity assurance, they need to be able to identify the consumers of public services online. They need the equivalent of the Home Office’s failed National Identity Service. They need us all to have PDIs. That’s what the Cabinet Office say, even while simultaneously acknowledging how dangerous it is and warning people against it. It’s all very well BIS telling us consumers that we are hopeless at making choices and that we need midata apps to improve our lives. But BIS and the Cabinet Office might do well, equally, to ask themselves how on earth they decided to adopt PDIs, against their own advice, ignoring GCHQ’s advice, ENISA’s and the OECD’s. Better decision-making begins at home, in this case at No.1 Victoria St London SW1. BIS should drop the ill-thought out midata initiative forthwith, it would do nothing for the economy and it would not empower consumers. Instead, it would expose us all to the risks of identity theft. If the Cabinet Office want us all to have PDIs, let them argue their confused case themselves. There is no good reason for BIS to do the Cabinet Office’s dirty work for them. Question 2: Do you have a view on whether particular sectors or types of business should or should not be covered? Yes                          Comments: The question doesn’t arise, midata should be abandoned. Question 3: What is your view on the likely impact of the proposed approach on privacy, consent and information security and the implication for data protection It would be disastrous. It courts all the dangers that BIS/the Cabinet Office/GCHQ/ENISA/the OECD warn against. Question 4: What is your view on who should have the right to request data? Consumers should and already do have the right to request data, midata is unnecessary. Question 5: Some consumers already shop around, though may not always switch to the best deal for them. What additional proportion of consumers is likely to become empowered by this data? None. Question 6: What types of new services might be offered by intermediaries (such as, price comparison websites) and what could be the value of this new market? The question doesn’t arise, midata should be abandoned. Question 7:Should a consumer be able to require the business to supply the data in electronic format directly to a specified third party? No                           Comments: It is irresponsible of BIS to incite people to hand over control of our personal data to third parties. Question 8:Should a third party who is duly authorised by the consumer be able to seek the consumer’s data in electronic format directly from the supplier? No Comments: The consumer is being cut out of his own life in the midata scenario BIS suggest. A number of computers would be exchanging reams of information about the consumer without him or her being involved. Anybody naïve enough to embrace this potty vision of the future should be protected from themselves and not exploited by BIS. Question 9: What, if any, requirements should be placed on the secondary users of such data, albeit under the direction of consumers e.g. switching and advice sites? The question doesn’t arise, midata should be abandoned. Question 10:The Government is minded to require businesses to give their customers access to transaction and consumption data, in order to help them better understand their behaviour. a)         What types of data would be most helpful? Customers already have access to their transaction data, the question is wrong-headed. b)         Over what period should the data refer to? That is a matter for the market to decide. It already has decided. Where the period is too short, wise suppliers will heed their customers’ requests to lengthen it. Question 11: Should other types of information, such as warranties or terms and conditions, be included?   No Comments: The question doesn’t arise, midata should be abandoned. Question 12: Should the Government specify a particular electronic format beyond a machine readable open standard format in which the data has to be supplied? No Comments: The question doesn’t arise, midata should be abandoned. Question 13: Should the Government specify a period within which data must be released electronically following a consumer’s request? No Comments: The question doesn’t arise, midata should be abandoned. b) If so, what would be a reasonable period within which data must be released? Question 14: Please provide information about cost: - Where your business already collects the relevant data, please estimate: a) Additional one- off costs of making the data available in an open standard format (such as, purchasing new IT, hiring IT staff) – not applicable. b) Additional ongoing costs (such as of additional staff) – not applicable. c) If not already stated, please state here the approximate number of customer accounts that these costs are estimated for. For example, number of UK accounts – not applicable. Question 15: Should businesses be permitted to charge a consumer for providing them with the data in electronic format? Yes Comments: If midata were deployed, then yes, of course, but the question doesn’t arise, midata should be abandoned. Question 16: Should any such charges be constrained by the legislation? No If so, do you have a view on how a maximum charge should be set or adjusted? The question doesn’t arise, midata should be abandoned. Question 17:Which body/bodies is/are best placed to perform the enforcement role for this right? The question doesn’t arise, midata should be abandoned. Question 18:Should the Government specify a lead enforcement body? No If yes, who: Question 19: How should the right be enforced by any such body? Will they need any new powers to enable them to enforce it? The questions don’t arise, midata should be abandoned. Question 20:  What examples of existing regulatory actions could be reduced or removed if the power being consulted on was exercised? The question doesn’t arise, midata should be abandoned. Question 21: Should a consumer be able to launch independent action (and, if so, what sort of action) in relation to non-compliance with the duty? No Comments: the questions don’t arise, midata should be abandoned. Question 22: Do you foresee any risks or undesirable consequences from exercising a power to require certain data to be released electronically? Yes Comments: please see answer to Questions 1 and 8. © Crown copyright 2012 You may re-use this information (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. Visit www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence, write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk.This publication is also available on our website at www.bis.gov.uk   Any enquiries regarding this publication should be sent to: Department for Business, Innovation and Skills 1 Victoria Street London SW1H 0ET Tel: 020 7215 5000 If you require this publication in an alternative format, email enquiries@bis.gsi.gov.uk, or call 020 7215 5000. URN 12/943RF

midata, the loneliest initiative in Whitehall – 12 and last

Today is the deadline for submitting responses to the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) consultation on midata. That doesn't make it an important day. BIS will not be dissuaded by any adverse comment in the responses. But for what it's worth:

midata, the loneliest initiative in Whitehall – 9

BIS prove that midata is unnecessary.
Would you give a complete list of your acquaintance to a stranger?
Do you believe there is such a thing as a secure website?
Why keep a regulator and bark yourself?

--- o O o ---

Talk about lonely.

On 3 November 2011, Ed Davey MP posted 'Giving consumers the midata touch' on the the Department for Business Innovation and Skills blog and that was it – for 305 days, Mr Davey's post sat there all on its own.

Then yesterday, 3 September 2012, a second post was delivered, 'Why my data is important data', written by Stelios Koundouros, the "founder and director of billmonitor.com".

Mr Koundouros describes a number of his company's achievements, helping people since 2005 to choose the right mobile phone tariff. These successes have been achieved without there being any midata. They have been achieved using the mobile phone operators' tariffs and people's mobile phone consumption data both of which are released by the Telcos without there being any midata.

billmonitor.com's success is the neatest proof BIS could possibly have offered that midata is unnecessary.

So why does Mr Koundouros write the following, given that his story proves the exact opposite?

The implementation of the ‘midata’ vision is without doubt a prerequisite for ending confusion facing UK consumers about how much they pay for goods and services.

We are told that:

Stelios Koundouros is founder and director of billmonitor.com, and has led the company’s efforts since 2005. He holds a PhD in mathematics from Cambridge University and has carried out research at the Mathematical Institute at Oxford.

We are not told – but it is the case – that billmonitor.com is one of the 19 companies which initially expressed interest in midata, and that it is "Part of the government Midata board", according to the billmonitor.com home page. Perhaps that is why Mr Koundouros writes as he does.

There's nothing wrong with Mr Koundouros expressing his support for midata, even if he does undermine his own case. Just don't let BIS give you the impression that his is independent support.

The billmonitor.com website says:

Only you can make spending decisions Bank level data encryption

Why this level of security?

Because, remember, in order to use the billmonitor.com service, you have to give them months and months of your detailed phone bills, they will know who you call, how often, for how long, and who you text. That personal data needs to be protected, and thus the "bank level data encryption".

Do you mind telling a total stranger as a result, who your friends and colleagues are? The people you call? Might they mind?

Do you trust Mr Koundouros's security measures?

The US Government trusted HBGary Federal's security, and just look what happened when the hackers decided to drive a coach and horses through it:

... A second example is Anonymous’ perhaps most striking operation, a devastating assault on HBGary Federal, a technology security company. HBGary’s clients included the US government and companies like McAfee. The firm with the tag-line detecting tomorrow’s malware today had analyzed GhostNet and Aurora, two of the most sophisticated known threats. In early February 2011, Aaron Barr, then its chief executive officer (CEO), wanted more public visibility and announced that his company had infiltrated Anonymous and planned to disclose details soon. In reaction, Anonymous hackers: infiltrated HBGary’s servers, erased data, defaced its website with a letter ridiculing the firm ... ... with a download link to a leak of more than 40,000 of its emails to The Pirate Bay, took down the company’s phone system, usurped the CEO’s twitter stream, posted his social security number, and clogged up fax machines. Anonymous activists had used a number of methods, including SQL injection, a code injection technique that exploits faulty database requests. ‘You brought this upon yourself. You’ve tried to bite the Anonymous hand, and now the Anonymous hand is bitch-slapping you in the face’, said the letter posted on the firm’s website.  The attack badly pummeled the security company’s reputation.

Stories like that are two-a-penny and you can read about 25 penceworth here. After which, you may wonder how secure billmonitor.com or any other website is.

Iran, which has suffered a number of cyber-attacks, has given up the ghost and decided to "move key ministries and state bodies off the worldwide internet". Meanwhile, in the name of midata, here's BIS luring you into storing your personal data in the custody of complete strangers on servers which could be anywhere in the world, much of which is beyond the jurisdiction of English law and emphatically out of your control.

The billmonitor.com website also says:

billmonitor was the first mobile comparison site approved by Ofcom in 2009

No doubt it was. It is Ofcom's job to regulate the Telcos. Why do we need billmonitor.com as well? And midata? If Ofcom can't do the job, why should midata be able to? Why keep a regulator and bark yourself? Surely the public interest is served by having the regulator do its job properly, and not by expensively doubling up on regulation.

midata, the loneliest initiative in Whitehall – 9

BIS prove that midata is unnecessary.
Would you give a complete list of your acquaintance to a stranger?
Do you believe there is such a thing as a secure website?
Why keep a regulator and bark yourself?

--- o O o ---

Talk about lonely.

On 3 November 2011, Ed Davey MP posted 'Giving consumers the midata touch' on the the Department for Business Innovation and Skills blog and that was it – for 305 days, Mr Davey's post sat there all on its own.

Then yesterday, 3 September 2012, a second post was delivered, 'Why my data is important data', written by Stelios Koundouros, the "founder and director of billmonitor.com".

Mr Koundouros describes a number of his company's achievements, helping people since 2005 to choose the right mobile phone tariff. These successes have been achieved without there being any midata. They have been achieved using the mobile phone operators' tariffs and people's mobile phone consumption data both of which are released by the Telcos without there being any midata.

billmonitor.com's success is the neatest proof BIS could possibly have offered that midata is unnecessary.

midata, the loneliest initiative in Whitehall – 8

BIS's midata initiative raises two questions for you.

Would you trust a complete stranger to store all your personal data?

And would you trust a lot of other complete strangers

(BIS's currently non-existent applications developers)

to process that data?

You might. If you're mad.

--- o O o ---

Coverage in the media of the Department for Business Innovation and Skills's lonely midata initiative remains scant.

The BBC reported on 22 August 2012, in 'Midata project plan for compulsory customer data', that ...

Consumer Minister Norman Lamb said: "It's clear to me that giving consumers the right to access their own transaction data promises huge opportunities for both consumers themselves and UK businesses."

... without pausing to ask how it's clear to Norman Lamb when it isn't clear to anyone else.

On 23 August 2012 ComputerWorldUK published 'Government threatens legal action against midata laggards'. Clearly the days of midata being a friendly voluntary initiative are long gone.

Retail Gazette carried an odd article on 30 August 2012, 'Why are retailers so afraid of Midata?' – odd, because there's no evidence that retailers are afraid of midata. Why would they be?

And then there's this week's Economist, 'Shameless self-promotion – Britain wants to lead the world in exploiting consumer data':

Britain is already “streets ahead” of most countries in liberating consumer data, says Liz Brandt of Ctrl-Shift, a marketing consultancy ...

Ctrl-Shift? Ring a bell? It should, please see 'The case for midata – the answer is a mooncalf'. Someone has posted a comment on the Economist website advising the magazine and its readers who Ctrl-Shift are:

The point of quoting Ctrl-Shift here is presumably to introduce an element of independent objectivity. Ctrl-Shift Ltd was incorporated on 26 January 2009, according to Companies House. Alan Mitchell was appointed a Director on 13 May 2009 and William Heath on 16 July 2010. Mr Heath's appointment was terminated on 10 May 2012. Mydex Ltd was incorporated on 18 February 2008 according to Companies House. Alan Mitchell is Head of Strategy and William Heath is Chairman, according to the Mydex website. In their report The new personal data landscape Ctrl-Shift discuss the Personal Data Stores (PDSs) that would be needed for midata and recommend the PDS supplier Mydex. In their 3 November 2011 press release about midata, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) list the 19 commercial organisations that have agreed to collaborate with them on midata. The list includes Mydex. At the 9 August 2012 open forum on midata held by BIS, Kirstin Green, a Deputy Director at BIS, said that William Heath (ex of Ctrl-Shift and still Chairman of Mydex) is on the BIS Strategy Board for midata. In this case, no element of independence has been introduced. The Economist find themselves effectively quoting midata saying that midata is a Good Thing.

The fact that William Heath is on the midata strategy board is news but nothing else is, not for long-time DMossEsq readers.

In their 3 November 2011 press release, BIS listed 19 commercial organisations who had signed up to midata. No-one else has signed up since to this lonely initiative, even after the government threats of legal action reported by ComputerWorldUK.

Among those 19 was Mydex, Mr Heath's company, the company promoted by Ctrl-Shift, Mr Heath's ex-company, which is a paid consultant to BIS.

What readers may not know is that the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) have invested in a number of companies including Mydex, please see p.24 of their document, 'Ensuring trust in digital services'. Pump-priming, fine, funding R&D, government "picking winners", no problem with that.

The TSB organised an exhibition of the products of these R&D companies on 31 October 2011, just a few days before the BIS press release. The event is reported by ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken on the Cabinet Office's Government Digital Service blog, 'Establishing trust in digital services'. We attendees were treated at the same time to a number of talks given by GDS, including a talk by Francis Maude himself.

The subject of these talks was identity assurance or "IdA", as the Cabinet Office call it.

HMRC want to make all their services available on-line and preferably only on-line, said Joan Wood, Director, Online Service & Digital Development at HMRC. DWP want to make the Universal Credit system on-line only, said Steve Dover, DWP Corporate Director Universal Credit Business and IT Solutions.

But how can HMRC and DWP achieve that if they don't know who they're dealing with at the other end of the line? Where does the IdA come from? The same question could be asked of midata. And the same answer could be given – what IdA needs is for everyone in the UK to have a "Personal Data Inventory" (the BIS name for it) or "Personal Data Store" (everyone else's name for it).

Putting all public services on-line is the old Tony Blair/Cabinet Office/Gus O'Donnell/Ian Watmore Transformational Government/joined-up government plan. That plan collapsed years ago, partly because it depended on ID cards and the Home Office's misbegotten ID card scheme failed.

The Cabinet Office are trying to breathe new life into Transformational Government through the G-Cloud and GDS initiatives much discussed on DMossEsq and, it seems, through midata. We may not have ID cards but the idea is that we should have PDIs/PDSs instead, please see para.2.19, p.24 of BIS's midata 2012 review and consultation:

A ‘Personal Data Inventory’ has been proposed, with the aim of giving consumers clear information about the types of data which organisations hold about them. This work is still in development by the midata programme participants, but broadly the proposal is that to gain access to their Personal Data Inventory, the customer would have to log-in to a secure website where the Personal Data Inventory would contain a simple explanation of each category of data and if, and how, the data can be accessed by the consumer. The Personal Data Inventory is likely to contain data such as address and contact details, existing tariffs/contracts, payment methods, items purchased, when, value, amount spent per year, usage data.

The midata question was posed by Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC, "why is the government getting involved?". Professor Shadbolt couldn't answer it. Not even Norman Lamb MP can answer it. Not so far. But do we perhaps see an answer now – midata is the ID cards scheme resurrected? That might explain why BIS want to take powers to implement a scheme whose stated benefits are some of them footling and others no more than wishful thinking, neither of which provides a sound basis on which to invest public money.

Take a look at BIS's 'A midata future: 10 ways it could shape your choices', particularly at example #2, Getting a new job:

midata' could allow individuals to have access to information held about them by various organisations. When getting a new job, an individual could use verification programmes to send necessary proofs to a new employer. For example, instead of making copies and going to the post office, a new employee could get their driving licence, educational qualifications, CRB check and personal identity all by ticking a set of boxes and clicking 'send'. This would save money for employers who won't have to deal with lengthy and expensive hiring processes.

"Establishing trust in digital services" is the Cabinet Office's apt name for the problem. And midata is not the solution.

Would you trust a complete stranger (Mydex, or whoever) to store all your personal data?

And would you trust a lot of other complete strangers (BIS's currently non-existent applications developers) to process that data?

You might. If you're mad. The rest of us will "make copies and go to the post office" and any sensible employer will retain his or her "expensive hiring processes" – otherwise they won't have a clue who they've just hired.

midata, the loneliest initiative in Whitehall – 8

BIS's midata initiative raises two questions for you.

Would you trust a complete stranger to store all your personal data?

And would you trust a lot of other complete strangers

(BIS's currently non-existent applications developers)

to process that data?

You might. If you're mad.

--- o O o ---

Coverage in the media of the Department for Business Innovation and Skills's lonely midata initiative remains scant.

The BBC reported on 22 August 2012, in 'Midata project plan for compulsory customer data', that ...

Consumer Minister Norman Lamb said: "It's clear to me that giving consumers the right to access their own transaction data promises huge opportunities for both consumers themselves and UK businesses."

... without pausing to ask how it's clear to Norman Lamb when it isn't clear to anyone else.

midata, the loneliest initiative in Whitehall – 7

---

... why is the government getting involved in midata,

an initiative which can't deliver any of its stated aims

but which will expose everyone to identity theft?

It's up to the department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS)
to answer that question.

There are two more open forums left in the BIS midata consultation programme

on Tuesday 4th (10 a.m. to 12 p.m.) and Thursday 6th (11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.)
September 2012.

Just email midata@bis.gsi.gov.uk to attend
1 Victoria Street London SW1H 0ET

Let's get an answer

---

On 3 November 2011, when the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) issued their midata press release, the BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones interviewed Professor Nigel Shadbolt.

Professor Shadbolt is an expert in artificial intelligence. He and his colleague at the University of Southampton, Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, are co-directors of the Open Data Institute (ODI) ...

... established by the UK Government to innovate, exploit and research Open Data opportunities ... The new Institute is one of a number of measures that the Government announced ... as part of a larger initiative to boost UK economic growth.

Professor Shadbolt is also chair of the midata programme, related to the ODI, but different.

Mr Cellan-Jones has been around the block a few times and he cut straight to the chase:

Two questions spring to mind - what's the catch for consumers and why is the government getting involved?

He poses that question to Professor Shadbolt at 2'15" in the televised BBC interview and the answer given, with his midata hat on, is that the government wants to encourage the development of an environment in which data is shared.

But the private sector already releases transaction data back to consumers. It doesn't obviously need any more encouragement or legislation.

Entrepreneurs can already develop applications which process that data if they want to. At the start, midata was supposed to be a voluntary scheme. Now BIS have gone beyond trying to "encourage the development of an environment in which data is shared" and moved on to legislation. Why? There's no reason to believe that BIS can create a market in personal data transactions after legislation is introduced any more than they have done in the 400 years of their existence so far.

BIS give no reason to believe that this legislation would expand the economy.

They initially offered consumers control over their personal transaction data, in addition to access to it, but that was a false prospectus and BIS have now had to renege on that offer. Consumers will have no more control over their data after BIS have taken their midata order-making powers than before.

And the benefits of a midata future pictured by BIS seem peculiarly footling. Example #1 of the future offered by midata concerns, of all things, warranties. midata could provide us with a "contracts and warranties dashboard".

For goodness sake, we can already monitor the warranties we have bought with our washing machines if we want to. Do we really need legislation to make that easier? If we don't monitor these warranties now, why would we monitor them any more after BIS have involved themselves?

midata really is lonely. It has no economic argument to support it. It is unaccompanied by any cogent benefits to consumers or the economy. Private sector suppliers and their customers/clients have got on perfectly well without midata for the past 5,000 years. Government ministers can't explain why they are wedded to midata and neither can their officials.

BIS aren't stupid. They know just as well as the rest of us that they haven't answered Mr Cellan-Jones's question, why the government is getting involved. It can't just be to help us monitor our warranties.

We're none the wiser. All we know is that BIS are sufficiently motivated to enact legislation to make midata a reality while being completely incapable of saying why. What really impels BIS in this case?

When, as here, there is a gap between what the government is doing and what it says the temptation is to fill it with all sorts of conspiracy theories.

Let's give ourselves a limit of 13 paragraphs to see what kind of a conspiracy theory we can cook up.

Faced with making a decision, we all have problems. We're no good at getting utilitarian choices right. So says Norman Lamb, minister responsible for midata, in his Foreword to the midata 2012 review and consultation (p.8):

Technology has allowed businesses to understand their customers’ needs and buying patterns to an unprecedented degree. At the moment consumers are at a disadvantage because the vast majority of them do not have the ability to use that same data to help their own decisions. The midata programme aims to redress this imbalance.

If midata ever comes to pass, everyone will have a Personal Data Inventory (PDI) which includes all our transaction data, please see the consultation document, para.2.19, p.24:

A ‘Personal Data Inventory’ has been proposed, with the aim of giving consumers clear information about the types of data which organisations hold about them. This work is still in development by the midata programme participants, but broadly the proposal is that to gain access to their Personal Data Inventory, the customer would have to log-in to a secure website where the Personal Data Inventory would contain a simple explanation of each category of data and if, and how, the data can be accessed by the consumer. The Personal Data Inventory is likely to contain data such as address and contact details, existing tariffs/contracts, payment methods, items purchased, when, value, amount spent per year, usage data.

And thanks to BIS we will have the benefit of a thriving applications industry which processes the data in the PDI to make the right decisions for us.

All that's needed, it seems, is the data. And a wise application. That's all that's missing when we currently try to choose. Only supply the data, and a computer application can make the right decision. Notice what happens here. The pathetically irrational human being in between is cancelled out of the equation.

This imaginary world in which electronic Mary Poppinses run our lives for us is coherent with the picture BIS provide of a midata future in which, for example, an application decides whether we should go out one evening or not, please see A midata future: 10 ways it could shape your choices, example #10, Going out:

So where your favourite restaurant has deals or offers, you could be alerted in advance to take advantage and make a booking. Combined with other services, the programme could also indicate where you could save money or improve your health by eating elsewhere, drinking less or going out less.

Has BIS been infiltrated by mad scientists who believe in the perfectability of human beings by computer? If so, which mad scientists?

You may suspect Professor Shadbolt in the library, with his eerie and recondite expertise in artificial intelligence. Perhaps he is the manipulative genius plotting to bring about a worldwide nightmare utilitarian tyranny?

There is no evidence of that. If anything, Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, is more likely to be the guilty party. Here he is, being quoted by the Guardian in their Battle for the Internet debate:

... individual users were not yet being allowed to exploit all the information relating to them to make their lives easier. Armed with the information that social networks and other web giants hold about us, he said, computers will be able to "help me run my life, to guess what I need next, to guess what I should read in the morning, because it will know not only what's happening out there but also what I've read already, and also what my mood is, and who I'm meeting later on".

A mooncalf may believe that twaddle but, unless they've gone completely mad, BIS won't.

Conspiracy theory over, obviously we can forget the mad scientists and the subjugation of the human race worldwide. But we have come up with something. The PDI. BIS seem to recommend that we should all have a PDI, stored somewhere on the web – in the cloud – and containing all our transaction data. And they seem to recommend that third party computer applications should be given access to that data to help us to make the best decisions for ourselves.

This is strange coming from the UK government, or any other reputable body.

Identity theft is a major problem on the web. CIFAS, the Home Office, Financial Fraud Action UK, the UK Cards Association, Equifax, Experian, the Royal Mail, Callcredit, HM Revenue & Customs, DVLA, the Identity & Passport Service, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the Metropolitan Police, the City of London Police, the Scotish Business Crime Centre, the Financial Services Authority, the British Bankers' Association, BSIA and NFA have all come together to form IdentityTheft.org.uk to make people more aware of the problems of identity theft and to help them to avoid it.

And yet here's BIS suggesting that we should collect our transaction data together in one place, store it with one set of complete strangers in a PDI somewhere on the web and then let another set of complete strangers access it – exactly the opposite of what IdentityTheft.org.uk recommend.

Once again, with feeling, and Rory Cellan-Jones, why is the government getting involved in midata, an initiative which can't deliver any of its stated aims but which will expose everyone to identity theft?

It's up to BIS to answer that question. There are two more open forums left in their midata consultation, on 4 and 6 September 2012. Just email midata@bis.gsi.gov.uk to attend. Let's get an answer at last to Mr Cellan-Jones's question.

midata, the loneliest initiative in Whitehall – 7

---

... why is the government getting involved in midata,

an initiative which can't deliver any of its stated aims

but which will expose everyone to identity theft?

It's up to the department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS)
to answer that question.

There are two more open forums left in the BIS midata consultation programme

on Tuesday 4th (10 a.m. to 12 p.m.) and Thursday 6th (11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.)
September 2012.

Just email midata@bis.gsi.gov.uk to attend
1 Victoria Street London SW1H 0ET

Let's get an answer

---

On 3 November 2011, when the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) issued their midata press release, the BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones interviewed Professor Nigel Shadbolt.

Professor Shadbolt is an expert in artificial intelligence. He and his colleague at the University of Southampton, Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, are co-directors of the Open Data Institute (ODI) ...

... established by the UK Government to innovate, exploit and research Open Data opportunities ... The new Institute is one of a number of measures that the Government announced ... as part of a larger initiative to boost UK economic growth.

Professor Shadbolt is also chair of the midata programme, related to the ODI, but different.

Mr Cellan-Jones has been around the block a few times and he cut straight to the chase:

Two questions spring to mind - what's the catch for consumers and why is the government getting involved?

midata, the loneliest initiative in Whitehall – 6

On 3 November 2011, the department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) issued a press release about midata, their "exciting" plan to empower people and make the economy grow.

On or about 26 July 2012 BIS and the Cabinet Office's Behavioural Insights Team jointly issued their midata 2012 review and consultation.

Question – in the intervening 266 days, what did BIS make?

Answer – progress.

How do we know?

Because they tell us. Norman Lamb, the minister responsible, tells us on p.8 of the review that:

I am pleased to be publishing an update on progress on midata and consulting on proposals to provide it with a statutory underpinning.

Only two paragraphs later, there's been more progress:

Under Professor Shadbolt’s Chairmanship progress has been made, with businesses, consumer groups, regulators and Government agreeing core principles about data release, commissioning research into customer attitudes and beginning work on important questions about privacy and security.

It's all go. By p.11:

Progress has been made on establishing a vision and principles. We understand better the current consumer and business perceptions and the need for safeguards when consumers use their data. And we have started to see data made available.

BIS are really quite insistent, p.27:

As this review shows, there has been progress in moving midata from a concept towards reality.

It's clearly been a hectic 266 days, in some ways, for BIS and Professor Shadbolt. What with establishing the vision. And the principles.

They've had to chat with all those businesses and consumer groups and regulators and government departments. And they've had to commission research. Exhausting.

The discovery of the need for safeguards for people's privacy, and the need for security, when you're shunting personal data around must have come as a shock.

It is inevitable in this maelstrom that a few wheels fall off the initial vision. midata was meant to give us control over our own data, as well as access to it, but now control has been dropped. midata was going to be a voluntary scheme but now, perhaps at the suggestion of the Behavioural Insights Team, the idea is to legislate and make it compulsory.

The drafting of that legislation, and generally turning the midata concept into reality, will be a struggle. How will BIS force the banks, for example, to start issuing us all with statements? Professor Shadbolt may well have to hold more discussions and commission more research to crack that one.

And someone still has to come up with a reason to believe that midata would make the UK economy grow – despite all the progress already made, there's a lot of work still to be done.

Let's finish on a positive note with some incontrovertible progress made by the midata team.

Once we've all got all our transactions with every supplier we deal with safely stored in our "personal data inventory (PDI)", as BIS call it, we're supposed to be able to process the PDI in some beneficial way using applications which the market has failed so far to deliver but which, now somehow inspired by BIS, will at last appear.

What sort of applications? This question was posed to Kirstin Green at the 9 August 2012 open forum and the answer seemed a little extempore. The "midators" have obviously thought about the question since then and on 22 August 2012 the top story on the BIS news website was Next steps making midata a reality, which includes a link to A midata future: 10 ways it could shape your choices.

The reader will enjoy all the examples given, of how midata would offer otherwise unattainable benefits which empower the consumer and expand the economy. It is invidious to choose between them.

The first example of the midata future suggests that you could use your PDI to monitor the warranties on all the equipment in your house:

Instead of losing receipts and forgetting when guarantees expire, customers can use a ‘contracts and warranties dashboard’ to keep track of their purchases.

Hard to beat but somehow the tenth example is even more cogent – you can almost feel the economy expanding as you read it, this is why the state has to take order-making powers to promote midata. It's called "Going out" and it reads, in full, as follows:

midata service providers could use an individuals purchase data to look at which restaurants and bars that user like. Taking this data, they could offer you a unique service, alerting you to new or recommended restaurants that suit your taste and location. So where your favourite restaurant has deals or offers, you could be alerted in advance to take advantage and make a booking. Combined with other services, the programme could also indicate where you could save money or improve your health by eating elsewhere, drinking less or going out less.