WRITTEN ON March 4th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Uncategorized

Hurrah! Rob Knight (whom we know from the very early days of IdealGov and the UK Feedback idea) has got into the idea of VRM and public services:

Another body (or set of bodies) which would be affected by VRM is the government. We’re currently required to provide information to various government bodies and to keep that information up-to-date. VRM offers a solution to the problem of having to contact several different organisations to make them aware of a change in your personal data. The most obvious and simplest example is the change of address: as well as commercial organisations (banks, credit cards, utilities, insurance, telecoms, any magazine/periodical subscriptions and so on) you are at the minimum required to notify the local council(s) affected and the inland revenue; if you drive a car you need to notify the DVLA. There’s also the NHS, who may need to assign you a new GP. If you have children, the LEA may need to know, and so forth. With a VRM system, you would simply allow each of these organisations to ‘subscribe’ to (some of) your VRM data and they would be automatically notified of the changes as they happen.

This is just the axis that got me interested in VRM. Back in 2005 Rob was emerging from student life full of ideas and tecchie confidence; now he’s an experienced information architect with a great deal to contribute to how we make this all work.