WRITTEN ON Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, We told you so..., What do we want?

ContactPoint database could put 11 million children at risk Every child in England could be at risk because of security failings in the Government’s controversial children’s database, experts have claimed. By Heidi Blake Published: 3:19PM BST 03 Aug 2009 ContactPoint is designed to help protect England’s 11 million children by giving officials a single register […]

WRITTEN ON Friday, July 31st, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, Pertinent Art, What do we want?

WRITTEN ON Thursday, July 16th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, Transformational Government, We told you so..., What do we want?

The database carrying the details of 11m children in the UK will be accessible by 390,000 users making the system highly vulnerable at thousands of endpoints. “Why the government has created this security headache in the first place, particularly when their track record on data handling raises serious questions, is something of a mystery”…said Richard […]

WRITTEN ON Monday, July 13th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, Identity, Save Time and Money, What do we want?

Not only are our passports too expensive (cf €59 for the Irish); they leak our personal details through their insecure RFID chips. This is far from Ideal. This, it seems, is the device we need to cure the latter problem:

WRITTEN ON Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 BY Richard S AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, Identity, What do we want?

According to this report, Alan Johnson is abolishing compulsory ID Cards, starting with “air-side” airport workers. As always, the precise detail of this decision is crucial. But let’s hope that this decision marks the beginning of the end of the crazy ID project which has wasted so much money and so much valuable talent. Let’s […]

WRITTEN ON Friday, June 26th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, Identity, Transformational Government, We told you so..., What do we want?

The Lords’ Constitution Committee has given its verdict on the government response to its report Surveillance: Citizens and the State we are disappointed that the Government’s response does not fully appreciate the danger posed by surveillance to privacy and the relationship between individuals and the state. We regret that the Government have not agreed to […]

WRITTEN ON Thursday, June 25th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, Identity, Transformational Government, What do we want?

Cracking speech by Dame Pauline Neville-Jones. She concludes: As I made clear at the start, the individual is the rightful owner of personal information and the state is merely possessor and should behave as a responsible custodian. We need to roll back the advance of Big Brother and restore this fundamental right of our citizens. […]

WRITTEN ON Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Design: Co-creation, Foundation of Trust, Identity, Official fibbing/bad stats, Save Time and Money, Transformational Government, What do we want?

Over at Ctrl-Shift Ive tried to sketch out the impact of VRM (buyer-centric commerce, customer-managed relationships, user-driven identity) on public services: It seems to me the effects of VRM on public services will be of four sorts. It will improve public services. It will cut costs. It will de-tox the “database state”. And it is […]

WRITTEN ON Thursday, April 30th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, Transformational Government, What do we want?

Someone I’ve never heard of called Delyth Morgan of Drefelyn writes to me in my capacity as a ContactPoint National Partner (I had no idea I was one. How did I get on this database. More to the point, how do I get off?) Anyway, Delyth of Drefelyn says I’m writing to you because of […]

WRITTEN ON Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, What do we want?

The EU is to take action against Britain over its poor implementation of online privacy, says Reuters. The European Commission started legal action against Britain on Tuesday for what the EU executive called a failure to keep people’s online details confidential. EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding said the action related to how Internet service providers […]