ID must 'engage consumers' hearts and minds'
Kablenet.com
Published: 10 Mar 2008 11:39 GMT
A government report says the National Identity Scheme will fail if it does not primarily serve the public, including being free to join.
"To engage consumers' hearts and minds on the scale required, enrolment and any tokens should be provided free of charge," says Sir James Crosby, the former HBOS chief executive, in his much-delayed report on identity, published on 6 March, 2008.
Crosby's report shifts the emphasis of government policy away from identity management and towards identity assurance. It states: "ID assurance meets a clear and growing consumer need, whereas ID management addresses the interests of the owners of any identity database."
He recommends that the scheme should be accountable to Parliament, rather than government; that the amount of centrally held data should be minimised; and that citizens should be able to block reuse of their data except for national security purposes.
Crosby writes that there is a "fundamental" difference between providing individuals with a useful "ID assurance" service, which they would use enthusiastically and frequently in the manner of Google's free service, and constructing an "ID management" system, designed to serve the owner of the database through data sharing and consolidation.
He says that people must want to use an identity scheme, or it will fail — even from a security point of view. "An ID system will only help fulfil national security goals if it achieves mass take-up and usage. If citizens don't use a system regularly, it will be capable of providing very limited data for national security agencies. Thus, even the achievement of security objectives relies on consumers' active participation."
He adds: "Ironically therefore, the system that is genuinely consumer-led, because it meets consumers' needs and inspires their trust, would deliver a better national security outcome than one with its origins explicitly in security and data sharing across government."
Sir James also wrote that biometric data has its uses in tackling multiple identities, in reissuing tokens or in tackling identity fraud. But he warns that it "isn't the silver bullet", and that cross-checking biographical data on a number of databases — as financial services firms do — provides "the highest levels of assurance".
He concludes that, without a universal ID assurance system, British consumers will have to use a complex array of processes. "As a result, the UK will fail to secure the economic and social advantage achievable at the forefront of ID assurance systems and process," he wrote, which would become "tantamount to locking in disadvantage".
"James Crosby's report strongly challenges the Home Office concept of identity," said Philippe Martin, senior analyst at Kable, adding that it represented "another serious blow" to what he called the department's "stubborn authoritarian ambition". He noted that the fact that it had taken 18 months to produce a 48-page report — commissioned by Gordon Brown as chancellor &mda sh; suggested the original draft had been somewhat longer.
Martin added: "Luckily Jacqui Smith, the new home secretary, seems to have scaled down the vision, originally put forward by David Blunkett, in the latest NIS delivery plan published yesterday."
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