Friday, 1 March 2013
PRESS RELEASE: Is identity assurance fully operational in the UK today?
The following press release has been issued:-
PRESS RELEASE
Is identity assurance fully operational in the UK today?
1 March 2013
Six weeks ago, 16 January 2013, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published the details of a contract they had awarded in connection with Universal Credit.
There are 21 million claimants on DWP's services, they all have to be identified and the contract appoints eight official so-called "identity providers" for the UK. The description of the contract includes this:
If so, we live in something of a new world.
If not, we need to know if the identity assurance programme, like the ID cards scheme before it, is going to linger on for years and then be cancelled with nothing to show for the hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money spent on it.
----------
Notes to editors
1. Although it's nominally a DWP contract the organisation really in charge of UK identity assurance is the Government Digital Service (GDS), part of the Cabinet Office, please see Universal Credit and the December putsch: "The revised DWP OJEU notice is effectively an HMG-wide framework being delivered initially using DWP as the vehicle ... This approach ensures that, ultimately, HMG-wide Identity Assurance is supplied across central departments via a common procurement portal ... and governed by the Cabinet Office".
2. The UK's eight official so-called "identity providers" are: The Post Office, Cassidian, Digidentity, Experian, Ingeus, Mydex, PayPal and Verizon. C.f. The identity of the UK's eighth identity provider has now been provided, reluctantly.
3. Digital-by-default is normally described as the Whitehall policy to make all transactions with the government take place over the web, please see Amazon, Google, Facebook et al – the latter-day pied pipers of Hamelin. GDS's model for the UK is Estonia, please see Francis Maude seeks future in Estonia.
4. What digital-by-default involves is re-constructing Whitehall with power centralised in GDS, please see Martha Lane Fox – https://www.gov.uk/machiavelli and OBITUARY: Whitehall 1947-2012 and A Whitehall death foretold – soul control and Whitehall governance, and GDS's fantasy strategy.
5. Identity assurance is not limited to Universal Credit. Its proposed scope includes all transactions with the government ...
6. ... and the compilation of the electoral register, please see Identity assurance – shall we vote on it?.
7. ... and the compilation of the census, please see Alan Travis – Whitehall, the Guardian newspaper and Lord Leveson.
8. The Department for Business Innovation and Skills claim that consumers will be "empowered" if we adopt their midata plan and use Personal Data Stores, which are virtual ID cards stored on the web, in the cloud, please see Identity assurance. Only the future is certain – doom 4 and last (William Heath, Mydex, midata, BIS, GDS and ID cards) – which takes us into areas of transactions supposedly not involving the government.
9. According to its Whitehall advocates, digital-by-default is modern, fit for the 21st century, inevitable and energy-efficient, and will result in high quality, trusted public services. In fact it is a re-hash of Tony Blair's call in 2005 for joined up government which led to Whitehall's failed Transformational Government initiative. Transformational Government depended on ID cards (please see para.39(7), p.13) and digital-by-default depends on identity assurance.
10. According to its advocates, digital-by-default will save money. Given the history of Whitehall IT projects, that claim must evoke a certain scepticism, please see It's all John's fault.
11. If it does save money, GDS say that it will be by making public servants redundant, please see The savings to be expected from digital-by-default – a clarification. They promise a minimum of 40,000 redundancies, and many more if the constraints on data-sharing can be lifted. They propose in their Digital Efficiency Report that Whitehall should keep the savings rather than pass them back to the public.
It is important to discover whether identity assurance is, as promised, fully operational in the UK today.
"Fully operational" is defined in DWP's description of the contract and involves identity verification, credential management, identity correction services, identity authentication, the use of a standardised data description of identity, the inclusion of attributes like bank account details, the implementation of secure organisational procedures, support for a proper privacy model and a proper consent model, multi-channel delivery, geographical reach and demographic reach.
Tick all those boxes and perhaps we have fully operational identity assurance in the UK today. Otherwise, we haven't.
About David Moss
David Moss has worked as an IT consultant since 1981. The past 9 years have been spent campaigning against the Home Office's plans to introduce government ID cards into the UK. It must now be admitted that the Home Office are much better at convincing people that these plans are a bad idea than anyone else, including David Moss.
Press contacts: David Moss, BCSL@blueyonder.co.uk
PRESS RELEASE
Is identity assurance fully operational in the UK today?
1 March 2013
Six weeks ago, 16 January 2013, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published the details of a contract they had awarded in connection with Universal Credit.
There are 21 million claimants on DWP's services, they all have to be identified and the contract appoints eight official so-called "identity providers" for the UK. The description of the contract includes this:
That's today, 1 March 2013, and the question is, are these UK identity assurance systems now fully operational as stipulated?
In supporting the digital by default policy in general and the Government’s welfare reform agenda in particular, cabinet office have produced guidance for all major public service provider departments relating to the need for identity assurance of members of the public when accessing government services ...
To support the rollout of universal credit and personal independence payments providers will be selected by June 2012 and systems will need to be fully operational from March 2013 [emphasis added].
If so, we live in something of a new world.
If not, we need to know if the identity assurance programme, like the ID cards scheme before it, is going to linger on for years and then be cancelled with nothing to show for the hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money spent on it.
----------
Notes to editors
1. Although it's nominally a DWP contract the organisation really in charge of UK identity assurance is the Government Digital Service (GDS), part of the Cabinet Office, please see Universal Credit and the December putsch: "The revised DWP OJEU notice is effectively an HMG-wide framework being delivered initially using DWP as the vehicle ... This approach ensures that, ultimately, HMG-wide Identity Assurance is supplied across central departments via a common procurement portal ... and governed by the Cabinet Office".
2. The UK's eight official so-called "identity providers" are: The Post Office, Cassidian, Digidentity, Experian, Ingeus, Mydex, PayPal and Verizon. C.f. The identity of the UK's eighth identity provider has now been provided, reluctantly.
3. Digital-by-default is normally described as the Whitehall policy to make all transactions with the government take place over the web, please see Amazon, Google, Facebook et al – the latter-day pied pipers of Hamelin. GDS's model for the UK is Estonia, please see Francis Maude seeks future in Estonia.
4. What digital-by-default involves is re-constructing Whitehall with power centralised in GDS, please see Martha Lane Fox – https://www.gov.uk/machiavelli and OBITUARY: Whitehall 1947-2012 and A Whitehall death foretold – soul control and Whitehall governance, and GDS's fantasy strategy.
5. Identity assurance is not limited to Universal Credit. Its proposed scope includes all transactions with the government ...
6. ... and the compilation of the electoral register, please see Identity assurance – shall we vote on it?.
7. ... and the compilation of the census, please see Alan Travis – Whitehall, the Guardian newspaper and Lord Leveson.
8. The Department for Business Innovation and Skills claim that consumers will be "empowered" if we adopt their midata plan and use Personal Data Stores, which are virtual ID cards stored on the web, in the cloud, please see Identity assurance. Only the future is certain – doom 4 and last (William Heath, Mydex, midata, BIS, GDS and ID cards) – which takes us into areas of transactions supposedly not involving the government.
9. According to its Whitehall advocates, digital-by-default is modern, fit for the 21st century, inevitable and energy-efficient, and will result in high quality, trusted public services. In fact it is a re-hash of Tony Blair's call in 2005 for joined up government which led to Whitehall's failed Transformational Government initiative. Transformational Government depended on ID cards (please see para.39(7), p.13) and digital-by-default depends on identity assurance.
10. According to its advocates, digital-by-default will save money. Given the history of Whitehall IT projects, that claim must evoke a certain scepticism, please see It's all John's fault.
11. If it does save money, GDS say that it will be by making public servants redundant, please see The savings to be expected from digital-by-default – a clarification. They promise a minimum of 40,000 redundancies, and many more if the constraints on data-sharing can be lifted. They propose in their Digital Efficiency Report that Whitehall should keep the savings rather than pass them back to the public.
It is important to discover whether identity assurance is, as promised, fully operational in the UK today.
"Fully operational" is defined in DWP's description of the contract and involves identity verification, credential management, identity correction services, identity authentication, the use of a standardised data description of identity, the inclusion of attributes like bank account details, the implementation of secure organisational procedures, support for a proper privacy model and a proper consent model, multi-channel delivery, geographical reach and demographic reach.
Tick all those boxes and perhaps we have fully operational identity assurance in the UK today. Otherwise, we haven't.
About David Moss
David Moss has worked as an IT consultant since 1981. The past 9 years have been spent campaigning against the Home Office's plans to introduce government ID cards into the UK. It must now be admitted that the Home Office are much better at convincing people that these plans are a bad idea than anyone else, including David Moss.
Press contacts: David Moss, BCSL@blueyonder.co.uk
PRESS RELEASE: Is identity assurance fully operational in the UK today?
The following press release has been issued:-
PRESS RELEASE
Is identity assurance fully operational in the UK today?
1 March 2013
Six weeks ago, 16 January 2013, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published the details of a contract they had awarded in connection with Universal Credit.
There are 21 million claimants on DWP's services, they all have to be identified and the contract appoints eight official so-called "identity providers" for the UK. The description of the contract includes this:
If so, we live in something of a new world.
If not, we need to know if the identity assurance programme, like the ID cards scheme before it, is going to linger on for years and then be cancelled with nothing to show for the hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money spent on it.
----------
Notes to editors
1. Although it's nominally a DWP contract the organisation really in charge of UK identity assurance is the Government Digital Service (GDS), part of the Cabinet Office, please see Universal Credit and the December putsch: "The revised DWP OJEU notice is effectively an HMG-wide framework being delivered initially using DWP as the vehicle ... This approach ensures that, ultimately, HMG-wide Identity Assurance is supplied across central departments via a common procurement portal ... and governed by the Cabinet Office".
2. The UK's eight official so-called "identity providers" are: The Post Office, Cassidian, Digidentity, Experian, Ingeus, Mydex, PayPal and Verizon. C.f. The identity of the UK's eighth identity provider has now been provided, reluctantly.
3. Digital-by-default is normally described as the Whitehall policy to make all transactions with the government take place over the web, please see Amazon, Google, Facebook et al – the latter-day pied pipers of Hamelin. GDS's model for the UK is Estonia, please see Francis Maude seeks future in Estonia.
4. What digital-by-default involves is re-constructing Whitehall with power centralised in GDS, please see Martha Lane Fox – https://www.gov.uk/machiavelli and OBITUARY: Whitehall 1947-2012 and A Whitehall death foretold – soul control and Whitehall governance, and GDS's fantasy strategy.
5. Identity assurance is not limited to Universal Credit. Its proposed scope includes all transactions with the government ...
6. ... and the compilation of the electoral register, please see Identity assurance – shall we vote on it?.
7. ... and the compilation of the census, please see Alan Travis – Whitehall, the Guardian newspaper and Lord Leveson.
8. The Department for Business Innovation and Skills claim that consumers will be "empowered" if we adopt their midata plan and use Personal Data Stores, which are virtual ID cards stored on the web, in the cloud, please see Identity assurance. Only the future is certain – doom 4 and last (William Heath, Mydex, midata, BIS, GDS and ID cards) – which takes us into areas of transactions supposedly not involving the government.
9. According to its Whitehall advocates, digital-by-default is modern, fit for the 21st century, inevitable and energy-efficient, and will result in high quality, trusted public services. In fact it is a re-hash of Tony Blair's call in 2005 for joined up government which led to Whitehall's failed Transformational Government initiative. Transformational Government depended on ID cards (please see para.39(7), p.13) and digital-by-default depends on identity assurance.
10. According to its advocates, digital-by-default will save money. Given the history of Whitehall IT projects, that claim must evoke a certain scepticism, please see It's all John's fault.
11. If it does save money, GDS say that it will be by making public servants redundant, please see The savings to be expected from digital-by-default – a clarification. They promise a minimum of 40,000 redundancies, and many more if the constraints on data-sharing can be lifted. They propose in their Digital Efficiency Report that Whitehall should keep the savings rather than pass them back to the public.
It is important to discover whether identity assurance is, as promised, fully operational in the UK today.
"Fully operational" is defined in DWP's description of the contract and involves identity verification, credential management, identity correction services, identity authentication, the use of a standardised data description of identity, the inclusion of attributes like bank account details, the implementation of secure organisational procedures, support for a proper privacy model and a proper consent model, multi-channel delivery, geographical reach and demographic reach.
Tick all those boxes and perhaps we have fully operational identity assurance in the UK today. Otherwise, we haven't.
About David Moss
David Moss has worked as an IT consultant since 1981. The past 9 years have been spent campaigning against the Home Office's plans to introduce government ID cards into the UK. It must now be admitted that the Home Office are much better at convincing people that these plans are a bad idea than anyone else, including David Moss.
Press contacts: David Moss, BCSL@blueyonder.co.uk
PRESS RELEASE
Is identity assurance fully operational in the UK today?
1 March 2013
Six weeks ago, 16 January 2013, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published the details of a contract they had awarded in connection with Universal Credit.
There are 21 million claimants on DWP's services, they all have to be identified and the contract appoints eight official so-called "identity providers" for the UK. The description of the contract includes this:
That's today, 1 March 2013, and the question is, are these UK identity assurance systems now fully operational as stipulated?
In supporting the digital by default policy in general and the Government’s welfare reform agenda in particular, cabinet office have produced guidance for all major public service provider departments relating to the need for identity assurance of members of the public when accessing government services ...
To support the rollout of universal credit and personal independence payments providers will be selected by June 2012 and systems will need to be fully operational from March 2013 [emphasis added].
If so, we live in something of a new world.
If not, we need to know if the identity assurance programme, like the ID cards scheme before it, is going to linger on for years and then be cancelled with nothing to show for the hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money spent on it.
----------
Notes to editors
1. Although it's nominally a DWP contract the organisation really in charge of UK identity assurance is the Government Digital Service (GDS), part of the Cabinet Office, please see Universal Credit and the December putsch: "The revised DWP OJEU notice is effectively an HMG-wide framework being delivered initially using DWP as the vehicle ... This approach ensures that, ultimately, HMG-wide Identity Assurance is supplied across central departments via a common procurement portal ... and governed by the Cabinet Office".
2. The UK's eight official so-called "identity providers" are: The Post Office, Cassidian, Digidentity, Experian, Ingeus, Mydex, PayPal and Verizon. C.f. The identity of the UK's eighth identity provider has now been provided, reluctantly.
3. Digital-by-default is normally described as the Whitehall policy to make all transactions with the government take place over the web, please see Amazon, Google, Facebook et al – the latter-day pied pipers of Hamelin. GDS's model for the UK is Estonia, please see Francis Maude seeks future in Estonia.
4. What digital-by-default involves is re-constructing Whitehall with power centralised in GDS, please see Martha Lane Fox – https://www.gov.uk/machiavelli and OBITUARY: Whitehall 1947-2012 and A Whitehall death foretold – soul control and Whitehall governance, and GDS's fantasy strategy.
5. Identity assurance is not limited to Universal Credit. Its proposed scope includes all transactions with the government ...
6. ... and the compilation of the electoral register, please see Identity assurance – shall we vote on it?.
7. ... and the compilation of the census, please see Alan Travis – Whitehall, the Guardian newspaper and Lord Leveson.
8. The Department for Business Innovation and Skills claim that consumers will be "empowered" if we adopt their midata plan and use Personal Data Stores, which are virtual ID cards stored on the web, in the cloud, please see Identity assurance. Only the future is certain – doom 4 and last (William Heath, Mydex, midata, BIS, GDS and ID cards) – which takes us into areas of transactions supposedly not involving the government.
9. According to its Whitehall advocates, digital-by-default is modern, fit for the 21st century, inevitable and energy-efficient, and will result in high quality, trusted public services. In fact it is a re-hash of Tony Blair's call in 2005 for joined up government which led to Whitehall's failed Transformational Government initiative. Transformational Government depended on ID cards (please see para.39(7), p.13) and digital-by-default depends on identity assurance.
10. According to its advocates, digital-by-default will save money. Given the history of Whitehall IT projects, that claim must evoke a certain scepticism, please see It's all John's fault.
11. If it does save money, GDS say that it will be by making public servants redundant, please see The savings to be expected from digital-by-default – a clarification. They promise a minimum of 40,000 redundancies, and many more if the constraints on data-sharing can be lifted. They propose in their Digital Efficiency Report that Whitehall should keep the savings rather than pass them back to the public.
It is important to discover whether identity assurance is, as promised, fully operational in the UK today.
"Fully operational" is defined in DWP's description of the contract and involves identity verification, credential management, identity correction services, identity authentication, the use of a standardised data description of identity, the inclusion of attributes like bank account details, the implementation of secure organisational procedures, support for a proper privacy model and a proper consent model, multi-channel delivery, geographical reach and demographic reach.
Tick all those boxes and perhaps we have fully operational identity assurance in the UK today. Otherwise, we haven't.
About David Moss
David Moss has worked as an IT consultant since 1981. The past 9 years have been spent campaigning against the Home Office's plans to introduce government ID cards into the UK. It must now be admitted that the Home Office are much better at convincing people that these plans are a bad idea than anyone else, including David Moss.
Press contacts: David Moss, BCSL@blueyonder.co.uk
Thursday, 28 February 2013
Wednesday, 27 February 2013
midata – a machine for turning personal data into open data
This is the story of a debate about midata hosted on Twitter by BIS, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills. Their version on the right. Another version on the left. One event. Two stories.
Professor Nigel Shadbolt is the chairman of BIS's midata programme, a story of personal/private data. He is also a director of the Open Data Institute, a story of open/public data.
Some people talk about the advisability of midata. Professor Shadbolt talks about how midata would work. Parallel tracks. Which will be a long time meeting.
Professor Nigel Shadbolt is the chairman of BIS's midata programme, a story of personal/private data. He is also a director of the Open Data Institute, a story of open/public data.
Some people talk about the advisability of midata. Professor Shadbolt talks about how midata would work. Parallel tracks. Which will be a long time meeting.
midata – a machine for turning personal data into open data
This is the story of a debate about midata hosted on Twitter by BIS, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills. Their version on the right. Another version on the left. One event. Two stories.
Professor Nigel Shadbolt is the chairman of BIS's midata programme, a story of personal/private data. He is also a director of the Open Data Institute, a story of open/public data.
Some people talk about the advisability of midata. Professor Shadbolt talks about how midata would work. Parallel tracks. Which will be a long time meeting.
Professor Nigel Shadbolt is the chairman of BIS's midata programme, a story of personal/private data. He is also a director of the Open Data Institute, a story of open/public data.
Some people talk about the advisability of midata. Professor Shadbolt talks about how midata would work. Parallel tracks. Which will be a long time meeting.
Sunday, 24 February 2013
A Whitehall death foretold – soul control
No such thing as a ghost?
Wrong.
Scroll down to the blogroll on the right hand side of the screen and take a look at the first entry. 'BIS Blogs – Building an Intellectual Property regime for the 21st Century', says this voice from the dead, as it has done ever since 21 December 2012, when the clock stopped.
BIS is the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and it is their website that has died – under the Government Digital Service (GDS) Single Government Domain project, BIS disappeared into GOV.UK.
GDS promised that the change would be smooth, all links to the old site would be re-directed so that the original content could still be seen. Baloney. Try clicking on the link down there in the blogroll and, instead of learning about 21st century intellectual property regimes, what you get is:
BIS used to email their press releases directly to anyone who registered an interest. No more. That service is gone, along with the website and the blog. Now BIS speaks only through GOV.UK, which is managed, like 10 other government departments so far, by GDS, under just one brand, Inside Government.
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Something has died. There was something wonky about the death and that's what the unquiet spirit stalking the blogroll is telling us.
Ms Jeni Tennison was trying to work out what that something wonky is nearly a year ago. It's a safe bet that we're going to hear a lot more about her and so, for the moment, let's just say that she was working as a consultant with GDS and on 10 March 2012 Ms Tennison wrote in her personal blog:
It's worth reading her post and the 22 comments added in the following 26 hours or so. One parameter in the debate is the extent to which, looking at the web, the public is confused about the way government works. GOV.UK is supposed to reduce our putative confusion. Does it? Some commenters on the blog think that standardisation might actually increase public confusion.
The Single Government Domain policy, indeed GDS itself, is about control. It is "we will do it for you", not "we will help you do it". It is about managing the output of institutions that might keep in check an overmighty State. It is anti-web and it is anti-democracy and I cannot remain quiet about it any longer.
The issue of public confusion is a long way from the main topic of debate proposed by Ms Tennison, viz. over-mighty states and anti-democracy. One commenter avoids being sidetracked and says:
After a day of lively debate, someone had to step in and cool things down. Enter Tom Loosemore, Deputy Director of GDS:
Putting services online, creating new digital services, recreating organisations as online entities—approach or describe it how you will—this has always been seen by influential policymakers as a magic bullet to “transformation”. If, the argument goes, the future of information and interaction will be online, control that experience and you control the soul of really big, important things like public administration and democracy ...
... be aware that "single domain" and other talk of simplification is but the veneer on a far more fundamental project. Be honest about that, and you might just have a chance of making such change happen.
GOV.UK is intended by the end of 2013 to incorporate not just the 24 big departments of state but also over 300 other public bodies many of which are meant to help to make government accountable. In her answer to Mr Loosemore, Ms Tennison makes the point that even if GOV.UK does (yet to be proved) save money, reduce public confusion and improve the user experience of transacting with the government, that's no justification for diluting accountability:
I will admit that the frantic tenor of your post made me wonder for a moment as to whether we'd done the right thing in making this phase of the beta public ...
And I'm afraid [you're] just plain wrong about GOV.UK being "about managing the output of institutions that might keep in check an overmighty State" ...
You've jumped to an entirely wrong conclusion ...
We will nurture the exceptions, but not at the cost of the level of confusion currently suffered by users. Or the £100m/year this chaos currently costs each and every one of us [sic].
A year later, Ms Tennison has moved on, Tom Loosemore hasn't and only the ghost of BIS remains.
I am not frantic, but I am concerned that in a year it may be too late and I do not want to be wishing that I had said something sooner ...
A view of government that does not give space for these differences [between departments] may be less confusing to users but it is hardly accurate or transparent or accountable ...
... shifting the balance so far towards the overt user requirements for department websites ... comes at the cost of losing something essential in our democracy ...
... innovation within the government web space and outside GDS has more or less ceased while everyone waits to see what GDS will do, and my impression is that people are in some way scared to question or discuss the GDS vision ...
... we do all need to be having this conversation rather than suppressing it.
A Whitehall death foretold – soul control
No such thing as a ghost?
Wrong.
Scroll down to the blogroll on the right hand side of the screen and take a look at the first entry. 'BIS Blogs – Building an Intellectual Property regime for the 21st Century', says this voice from the dead, as it has done ever since 21 December 2012, when the clock stopped.
BIS is the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and it is their website that has died – under the Government Digital Service (GDS) Single Government Domain project, BIS disappeared into GOV.UK.
GDS promised that the change would be smooth, all links to the old site would be re-directed so that the original content could still be seen. Baloney. Try clicking on the link down there in the blogroll and, instead of learning about 21st century intellectual property regimes, what you get is: