Thursday 4 October 2012

GDS get off to a bad start, and it's only going to get worse

GDS have broken cover.

GDS is the Government Digital Service and they are responsible for a government project called "identity assurance" (IdA). They were due to announce the winners of the tender to provide identity assurance services in the UK by 30 September 2012. They missed the deadline but three articles appeared in the British press today:
All the nonsense that DMossEsq has been blogging about has been confirmed in those articles as government policy. And not just the UK government. The US as well – cloud computing, midata, Skyscape, Universal Credit, Facebok, Google, PayPal, Twitter, GOV.UK, OIX, ...

It will take a long time to unravel. A start has been made by posting the following comment on the GDS blog:
Dear Mr Wreyford

Judging by the Guardian, Independent and Telegraph articles, we are in for a long haul. It will be some time before the Cabinet Office and the US administration abandon their plans for IdA, identity assurance.

Let's make a gentle start.

Question 1. As you say, it's more about trust than identity. The idea is to host GOV.UK on servers operated by Skyscape Cloud Services Ltd. Skyscape has yet to submit any accounts to Companies House. The company has just one director and he owns 100% of the paid-up share capital, which is only £1,000. Why do you trust Skyscape and why should anyone else?
The comment will only appear on their blog if and when GDS allow it to after moderation.

[Skyscape has subsequently changed its name to UKCloud: "London – August 1, 2016 – Skyscape Cloud Services Limited, the easy to adopt, easy to use and easy to leave assured cloud services company, has today renamed and relaunched as UKCloud Ltd (www.ukcloud.com), to reinforce the company’s exclusive focus on supporting the UK public sector in the digital transformation of services".]

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