Day: May 13, 2005

In Britain, the identity card debate is heating up again.

Before the recent election, the British government proposed a law introducing identity cards and a corresponding central identity database. Of course the political issues are for Britains to decide. But several of us who are involved with identity issues have commented on the situation from a technlogical point of view: governments would be well advised to look at advanced technologies through which they can achieve their governmental objectives while better protecting privacy and lowering the risk of an identity catastrophy.

Now the election is over. The British debate has started up again. And Edward Heath of Ideal Government, a site dedicated to issues of how to improve government at all levels, has issued a broad “Appeal to Brainstorm”. What a cool idea.

What do we want from identity systems? Wouldn’t it be better if…?

The Home Office is to reintroduce its idea of an ID system to underpin the sort of world it wants. Some are in favour. Some raise principled objections. Some are too angry to be coherent. There’s a major political row brewing. But very few people can really get their heads aroud it.

Some people, who like political rows, will say – bring it on.

This is a call to people who:

• don’t care for political rows
• are hardcore in their desire to live in an intelligently e-enabled world, built on a foundation of trust
• insist on good public safety measures but reject needless authoritarianism
• insist on respect for human rights and dignity
• hate to see money wasted (whether through incompetence or deliberate fraud)
• and want good, convenient and common-sense public services.

If that’s you, please join us at www.idealgovernment.com in an intense on-line brainstorm about what we want from identity systems for an e-enabled world. Ideal Government – the web log where ethnographers of bureaucracy come together to say what they want in e-enabled public services – is delighted to be official host for the LSE’s on-line debate in preparation for the Identity Project final report. All welcome. Ususal rules apply. Anyone can apply for author password. Anyone can comment. Anything offensive or actionable is taken down.

Contrary to what Baroness Scotland has said, there has not been an effective consultation and debate. A few cosy discussion between a partially-informed buyer and a few willing suppliers is no substitute for intelligent, passionate and measured engagement between people who really understand the issues in which they are respectively expert.

The LSE Identity Project is an essential contribution to setting out a user requirement of what we want from e-enabled government. Identity systems will produce a big bang in the e-enabled world. Let’s make sure we get the fireworks right.

For those not familiar with the British landscape, the LSE is the famous London School of Economics. They published a profoundly interesting report on the British proposal as first introduced, which I wrote about here.

Scott Mace did amazingly accurate notes – pretty much a transcript – of my presentation on the Seven Laws at DIDW. How can he do that? If he ever needs someone to testify as to his accuracy, he can call on any of us who were there.

Over lunch Scott came up with the concept of an ID-Legal web site, joking that:

“…what we need is a Web site that determines which Web sites and services comply with (the) 7 laws of identity. Maybe it could be modeled on this, and let the visitors vote on the compliance of each particular Web site with the 7 laws.”

Anyway, if you know people who would benefit from the laws, I've made some printable versions (pdf and doc) that may be easier for people to read.

John Pallato at eWeek.com did a really good piece on the laws as well. I can't say enough about excellent journalism and what an important part of our world it is. People say it's rare. But excellent anything is rare – by definition.

A number of us have spent the last four or five days at Digital Identity World (DIDW) in San Francisco. DIDW really is an entire world, and a great one for getting a deeper understanding of identity. Many of us had the chance to meet in person for the first time, and I'm sure came away with a deep supply of “aha” moments.

I gave a presentation on the Laws of Identity and was on a panel led by Doc Searls featuring Marc Canter, Dick Hardt, Drummond Reed and Johannes Ernst. In addition I participated in the Digital Identity Update presented by Microsoft's Distributed Systems CTO John Shewchuk and InfoCard's Bill Barnes. It was a pretty moving experience.

Flying down, a fellow passenger in my seat (they were really packing us in) spilled her coffee on my laptop so I've been doing Cameron Unplugged for the last few days. I haven't got a clue yet about who's been blogging or what has been said.

For those who weren't able to attend, I've finally finished a whitepaper on the Laws of Identity, which I will post on www.identityblog.com in “pdf” format as soon as possible. In a meantime, msdn has published an online version here.

At the same time, those of us working on InfoCards and other Web Services identity components at Microsoft published a whitepaper clarifying our thoughts about how to bring about the kind of Identity Metasystem defined by the Laws… This thinking is very much in line with our presentation a year ago at DIDW – though our research and conversations have led to ideas which are noticeably more refined. Further, within a few weeks people will be able to play with early ‘beta bits’.

But whatever you do, don't crank your expectations into overdrive… A metasystem only works if people who can prosper through this kind of ecology climb aboard. This is not something Microsoft wants to do – or even could do – by itself. We won't be “declaiming”… We're early in this process.

The good news is there are a great number of innovative people from all over the industry – and crossing all the conventional fault lines – who want this project to happen. It's actually an incredible experience. More to come…