If ever there was a clear statement of what is wrong with transformational government and the NIS
... this podcast with Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom, the government's tech czar, is it!
He talks about transformational government - just listen to his two examples (a 4-year old with HIV offered extra rice pudding and a recently bereaved widow who is prompted to pay for her TV license - I kid you not).
When challenged about concerns amongst the public about the NIS, he trots out the IPS' 10 myths rather than responding to what the public actually thinks; claims that the concerns originate from a small number of troublemakers working under the guise of the LSE; claims those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear; promotes the NIS as the gold standard of identity ...
I get the distinct expression that Dave Birch from Consult Hyperion, who is very knowledgeable about identity management, is exasperated during the interview. And I am not surprised. Sir Bonar is so patronising (he talked about his "Blackberry girl" who clearly reads his email for him - you would think a tech czar could master that). I could feel his virtual hand reaching out from my MP3 player and patting me on the head.
He ends with the statement "that's why we need to know everything about everyone"!
If I didn't know better I would have thought this was a satirical joke. Sadly, it isn't.
Listen and weep
UPDATE: Methinks this may actually be a satirical joke! In which case ... brilliant. But the sad thing is that it could easily not have been!
The link to the podcast did not seem to work. Sorry if its just me. I got a page saying "The requested URL /digital_identity/2008/07/sir-bonar-nevil.html was not found on this server." Please can you let me know if it works for anyone else. Thanks
Posted by: William Flack | July 27, 2008 at 09:10 PM
Apologies. For some reason a spurious special character had sneaked into the end of the URL. The link has been updated but here it is
http://digitaldebateblogs.typepad.com/digital_identity/2008/07/sir-bonar-nevil.html
Posted by: FishNChipPapers | July 29, 2008 at 01:39 PM