More on the "Identity Assurance programme "

[Peter Tomlinson]

Thinking back to the material about the USA's NSTIC that I followed 
earlier this year and last year, I got the impression that NSTIC (which 
is running a Programme Office) expects the private sector to provide ID 
services, because they will want to use them for commercial purposes 
(sales over the internet, for example). But NSTIC is about ID services 
for everyone (public sector service providers, private sector service 
providers, and users both privately and in the course of business). And 
I got the impression that big private sector organisations were keen to 
get involved. Here we seem to be fixated on public sector only, and of 
course that means the ID providers need paying with public money.

This past summer I listened to a presentation that used David Rennie's 
material, and my immediate response was that once again its the public 
sector doing something to us instead of doing something with us. I have 
a feeling that maybe Ian Watmore understands this, but how does he turn 
his colleagues round to face the real world? Follow NSTIC is the way to 
go, because that is how the big global players will implement secure 
online ID. However, as Francis Maude said at the 30th March Public Admin 
Commons Committee, this is a very centralised country (I saw this coming 
as long ago as 1968, and so did my father who was a reluctant civil 
servant, having been dragged in during WWII - he retired in '71 although 
he could have gone on for a bit longer).

Peter

On 01/11/2011 21:34, James Firth wrote:
> William Heath wrote:
>> - will the "ID providers" thrive as a separate new business or simply
>> merge into the other sorts of verification service (because verifying a
>> name or an account number is no different from verifying any other
>> attribute)
> I know it doesn't need saying, but I am going to anyway. Given this, and the
> obvious commercial and cost-saving benefits to banks etc, why the hell is
> £10m of public money being chucked at the problem?
>
> (Apologies for using the list like my blog)
>
> James Firth
>
>
>
>