WRITTEN ON July 25th, 2005 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Identity

And there’s this comment on the LSE alternative architecture also.

Bob from Oz is about as familiar with the UK ID card situation as Glenn McGrath is with the wicket at Lords…He may sound far away, but he was right in there and over here when the notion was conceived. So he did understand the original intention.

Yes, this is the type of approach I have in mind…I must dig around for
some work I have seen in relation to medical smart cards along the same
lines, with different concepts of ‘trust’ (ie, prescription information for
chemists; emergency data such as blood type, allergies, current prescribed
drugs accessible by emergency workers; full history for trusted GP etc;
previous x-rays to radiographers; blood tests for pathologists etc etc) all
based on xml and one-time pad model in a federated, secure environment.

The idea is to release information (with permission) that is context
relevant, enabling more efficient and effective delivery of services….

Because of the potential ‘partitioning’ based around service/context, this
type of ID token might lend itself to other, commercial services (bankcard;
loyalty; travel card). Indeed, think about the applications if the token
has some form of proximity capabilities that work with a common terminal
(such as a mobile phone)…..

As I’ve said before, I am not for one moment championing the reduction of
personal or civil liberties, just ways to make service delivery better…and
trustworthy authentication linked to the citizen seems central to that.

Here’s a left-fielder: down here, we’re going through a terrible drought
(it hasn’t rained in Canberra — not a drop — for nearly 8 weeks) and —
more seriously than dry government — many of our farmers are in dire
straits. Our farmers are not EU subsidised, and generate a significant
portion of our export earnings. Yet they are facing in some cases their
fourth year without any production, meaning their savings and drought bond
redemptions are spent. The Government has a range of programs to support,
but all require considerable information gathering (mostly financial data
which is, guess what, already held by either or both the Tax Office and
Centrelink).

It seems to me that these programs could be more effectively enabled if the
drought affected farmer could permit, through use by him/her of an
appropriate token, pre-population of the application gathering process (at
least the lies would be consistent).

However, that doesn’t happen and it’s in these types of programs that you
see the cold hand of bureaucracy stifling progress, always for very
defensible reasons, and WIBBI thoughts come to mind…and to me, they always
come back to helping governments make use, positively, of the information
they already have, at the instigation of the citizen, for the benefit of the
citizen; citizens aren’t customers, where there is discretion to acquire or
serve; citizens have entitlements in terms of government services, and it is
incumbent on government to ensure these entitlements are met…..

Anyway, I’d better stop for now…need to find some more asylum seekers with
young children to lock up in the middle of the desert (tongue firmly in
cheek). Walks off, singing, “we are the lucky countreee…”