Words in speeches are one thing; delivering on those words is something else.
Thus far on ‘digital ID’ there has been one short speech by the Prime Minister and a few media interviews which mostly contradict each other. There’s also a mountain of papers from the Blair government-in-exile, and from other lobbyists wanting their thing.
While commercial companies can do whatever they want and announce it later – because (mostly) no one cares – Government is different.
Government has to write things down. This takes time and effort. Government has to listen and hear how people respond in consultations, and think about what they say – or just ignore them all, if the consultation is a sham.
If doing things were simply based on speeches, we’d be living in paradise already – there’s no shortage of speeches about the future and solving problems, but the problems still persist.
The real task is delivery.
Delivery that changes the lives of citizens, ideally for the better – though with some Governments that’s not always a requirement…
Government also has to communicate its plan, and then the changes to its plan, in a way which makes sense to everyone who is or will be affected.
In the 1940s, Government communication was simple posters; in the 1940s it was leaflets; in the early 2000s it added a website and PDFs – and now it’s supposedly via an app too. (Direct letters to individuals also work… but not junkmail leaflets!)
The Blair government-in-exile can write more papers about how digital ID should work, according to their own theories of change and control – but they can ignore all the bits they don’t like. Blair and his Institute full of twentysomethings with no understanding of the real world (or long term relationships) may be content that older couples who share an email address and use each other’s ID to run errands for each other will be “committing fraud” under their scheme; the real world will see things somewhat differently.
The Government – the actual Government – has to write down what it wants to do, so everyone can read it, and everyone can comment on it, and point out that criminalising grandma might be a terrible idea. (There are many couples alive in England right now who were both retired when they got their email account…)
Then the Government has to decide what it is going to do – it has to pass legislation to give it the powers to do it, and then it has to implement those powers. Various forms of consultation and clear details are required at every step, and at each step the Government has to write things down to properly communicate with the public about what they are now going to be obliged to do.
Is Government going to criminalise elderly couples who only have one shared email account? How will they have their own GOV.UK Accounts when email address is the first distinguishing criteria? The next thing in the queue to consider is those people who don’t have their own phones…
We look forward to seeing what the Government writes down, what they want to do and why, whether those things match what they (and bits of government) say elsewhere, and who they have forgotten.
Some in digital Government think that the purpose of citizens is to be the ideal consumer of government services – a convenient fiction that has criminalised and punished citizens, again and again: NCC1 forms for rape victims, Carers Allowance punishing carers, Child Benefit data sharing, etc.
In a Database State that refuses to look at a calendar, the real lives of the public are just too complex… and then the Database State decides it is the public’s fault for not telling it how they live.
To the Blair government-in-exile, the purpose of Digital ID is… Digital ID
In a frustrating exchange at the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, Ministers were asked what Digital ID was for and how much it would therefore cost. Ministers said it was possibly for anything and possibly would save money, and then they went round in circles.
But during that exchange, in a telling response clearly audible in the recording on parliamentlive.tv that didn’t make it into the transcript, Kit Malthouse asks (Q331): “How do you know, if you do not know what you want?”
Immediately following that, in the recording, you can distinctly hear the senior civil servant chime in with the answer “Digital ID”.
What they want is “Digital ID” – Digital ID is the identified end, and they want to impose it on you and everyone.
Even Zuck didn’t try that.