Anyone know more about this BT "uk identity verification" scheme?

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 11:55 25/03/2003 +0000, Owen Lewis wrote:



> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> > [mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk]On Behalf Of Peter
> > Tomlinson
> > Sent: 25 March 2003 08:51
> > To: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> > Subject: Re: Anyone know more about this BT "uk identity verification"
> > scheme?
> >
> > Here in the UK we desperately need to bring the public sector up
> > to date, to match the quality of the best in the private sector,
> > and so that
> > they can match the expectations of the citizen now that information and
> > communication technology gives us access to so much information.
>
>You should be right but, sadly, I conclude that you are not. This is what
>was tried in the Thatcher years and which signally failed. At its best,
>public service simply marches to the beat of a different drum than does
>commerce and it should be allowed to continue to do so. If one introduces
>the market ethos to public service, de facto, one also introduces all the
>nastier elements of commercial life too. By observation over the last 25
>years, public service standards have - for large amounts of additional
>expenditure - actually fallen. In place of benefits that has been the
>creation of rafts of 'jobsworths' and administrators whose salaries are
>largely earned by administrating yet other non-core functionaries.
>
>There are few sadder sights that what follows after one tells a public
>servant that 'he is now running a business enterprise' and with full
>financial control. These people are simply not commercial animals. They do
>not know what a profit is and, if they did know, where, in God's name, is
>the place for profit in a public service system? I know just how daft this
>is. I've been there and watched and listened.

This is not always the case.  Companies House has flourished as an 
Executive Agency, and not at the expense of public service, though I cannot 
say what profits it makes.  The Crown Estates Commissioners have done 
pretty well too.  There may well be others:  I suspect that those are most 
successful who are least in the public eye and least exposed to ministerial 
interference.

Regards

Nicholas

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