A Good Idea?
I used to think this was a good thing, but that was before I realised that Orwell's 1984 was a Government manual, not a work of fiction. Now I do my best not to give the government information if I can possibly avoid it.
The government has announced plans for a personalised web page for every UK citizen to access all public services online in a single location. Gordon Brown announced this morning "Mygov", a new centralised "dashboard" to act as a successor to Directgov, which was originally designed to achieve the same thing. Emphasising the …
If "Chubby" Gawdhelpus Brown was serious about matters he would ensure that akll his crew were able to comprehend ethos of the internet and it's ramifications. The performance so far has shown just how little the politicians actually understand and what mistakes cost, not them, us.
"Mygov will allow citizens to "manage their pensions, tax credits or child benefits; pay their council tax; fix their doctors or hospital appointment and control their own treatment; apply for the schools of their choice and communicate with their children's teachers; or get a new passport or driving licence"."
So, we get an id and password to get to our personal info which we will (eventually) need to prove our existence. To keep it simple we will need to have a card to wave at terminals at the doctors, dole office, A&E etc.
So, it's either this or Dogdy Dave's fluffy cloud solution - where, co-incidentally, all our info would end up needing some form of handy, personalised, method of displaying it and proving we are who we are .
Oh, FFS, it's got bugger all to do with IT but all to do with knee-jerk popularism and elections.
It's also got a lot to do with politicians not having a bloody clue about IT - assuming that 'computers' will remove the need to pay lots of humans and centralising data while carping on about how dangerous the internet is.
Really needs an 'Oh, FFS!' icon so it's a 'WTF? for now
Not this digital government portal shit again! I suppose it was either make this announcement or launch the Pet ASBOs...
And Martha Lane-Fox! HTF is she still squeezing her fifteen lastminutes of fame out all these years later? Typical New Labour approach: "She's rich! She must be able to do everything well! Let's give her a taskforce and 30 million quid!"
... the initiative would allow users to "to identify themselves simply and definitively".
Sounds like someone's butthurt no-one wants an ID card.
From the speech (rather than the article):
"And millions of us can now spend more time with our families because technology allows people to work easily from home."
This will be why our fucking binmen didn't turn up again this morning for the 3rd week in a row.
"The next stage will be radical expansion and enhancement of two-way communication between service providers and homes"
means "The council will now email you instead of sending you a letter."
"The next stage will be radical expansion and enhancement of two-way communication between service providers and homes"
means "The council will now email you instead of sending you a letter."
at least it is more green to bin an email than recycle the letter as bog roll
and easier to ignore, but yet again, the lack of security in unencrypted email , what happens if you use GMail that is scanned to provide adverts etc
peter
a single place like that would be a phishers dream, infect your pc with a nice little trojan and wait for you to logon to the mygov site and havest all the ID information they want
yet one more way to gather information about UK citizens, no doubt the site will be laced with all sorts of trackers like OMNITURE, flash LSO's etc
no thanks i would rather have face to face dealings with HM Gov, at least you can tell when they are lying (give away is their lips move :) )
I just do not trust HM Gov with security of my data as far as i could throw the pm's limo
peter
They've already tried this with a government portal. Further centralisation and expansion, possibly even compulsion, is an appalling breach of privacy for those of us who wish to minimise our interaction with central government, rather than be part of their Big Brother society. 'But this is just a tidy way of helping YOU with the information we already have'... Rubbish, more control, more power to the faceless ones.
And please don't forget to print out and sign the opt out form for the NHS Central Database:
http://www.nhscarerecords.nhs.uk/options/optoutform.pdf
To make optout as difficult as possible, you have to take the printed form to your docs...
Why do the government insist on huge replacement IT projects instead of just developing what they've already got?
How many more identities does the main governement website need, we've had open.gov.uk, then that got binned and completely replaced/rebranded as direct.gov.uk and now again for my.gov.uk.
Why not just add the bloomin features to the old site rather than waste however many million on a rewrite? So much for trying to save money and cut the deficite.
"How many more identities does the main governement website need, we've had open.gov.uk, then that got binned and completely replaced/rebranded as direct.gov.uk and now again for my.gov.uk."
it's called the gravy train for I.T. suppliers to HM Gov, how else can US companies syphon off huge sums of money from the UK economy,
Peter
"Dashboard" - *shudder*
In principle, great idea.
Said by any sort of a manager (and Brown is the PHB^big number*), it's a frickin' nightmare.
*whereas "Call Me Dave" is the sort of manager who says his door is always open, and wants his staff to "think of him as their friend", organising "team building excercises" and the like. I almost want the LHC to open up a portal to a new dimension of invading aliens to spare us from the "choice".
If any of you have ever had cause to email government, you will know that they do not even acknowledge receipt of communication, lest they have to explain why action was not taken on the matter raised. Obviously the official mantra is ....."Ignore, and if there is anything worth stealing in the communication, steal it and use it as if one of our own ideas" ..... which of course, with the way that things have so radically changed in just the last few years, with the InterNetworking Communities reverse engineering their dodgy Systems and Modus Operandi/Vivendi, is no longer available to them whenever dealing with Prime Players in Greater Game Modes.
And of course, with everything digital supposedly so easily tracked and forever stored, are they petrified of the technology themselves and can you imagine the dirt which Intelligence has on them.
Please file the initiative away where it belongs, with ....Save the world/Save the banks nonsense.
If you believe Govt can be trusted to store and present all of your personal information securely, try this simple experiment.
Go to Google. Cut/paste the terms below. Looks through the pages of results.
site:gov.uk +viagra (21,000 results)
site:gov.uk +cialis (18,600 results)
site:gov.uk +levitra (12,900 results)
etc..etc...
So when you find yourself being offered "Best Prices on Xanax" rather than family tax credits, you'll know why trusting the UK Govt to do this was a mistake.
This is an identity thiefs wet dream. All your data. In one place. All accessible through Internet Explorer 6. And no regulator (looking at the ICO) willing to stop it.
So difficult to do. Why is it people think that putting a computer in the mix makes things:
a) Easier
b) Better
c) Cheaper
d) Quicker
Having worked in IT for 30 odd years, I've found that, for example getting support for a problem is more time consuming than before because a problem that used to be solved by phoning the support desk and having an interactive conversation lasting 10 minutes, now takes five or six message exchanges over a similar number of days.
How they expect to get all the government departments, SIs, Agencies and Authorities to all subscribe to a common portal is beyond me, and the power that the SI running that portal will have will be enormous, you want to add a new portlet, change request, ching.
Just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should Gordon. Some of us really like to talk to people you know.
We've been here 13 years ago. It was called open.gov.uk. They could not be bothered to do it properly then, and they won't be bothered now.
Go and look for the maps that define floodplains and areas at risk from innundation. They are at http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/37837.aspx
HOME AND LEISURE? is property flooding really a barbeque issue?
Wow! With the government's history of IT failures, I'm very impressed that they've managed this!
Of course, in reality, it'll either be tied to one's NI no / voter reg id or it'll be some complex, error laden, support prone "this is my real email address, honest guv" type scheme.
Wasn't the Goverment Gateway supposed to do this? And Direct.gov?
So, what with the Tories wanting to publish details of any government purchase more substantial than a box of staples, and Labour wanting to set up a one-stop-shop for identity theft, that's two parties making campaign promises about ill-thought and unworkable IT projects. Lib-Dems, what's your boondoggle?
Just a thought, O Mighty Government Mega Brains, but open standards are more important than big systems. Set a standard for federated ID for government services, and there's no need to build yet one more portal to failure.
The governments digital economy bill will force you offline on the basis of an accusation and an IP log - the same government wants to put all your interactions with their beaurocracy online.
Whats the betting that you'll only be able to complain about being suspended from the internet through this new portal
"the governments digital economy bill will force you offline on the basis of an accusation and an IP log - the same government wants to put all your interactions with their beaurocracy online.
Whats the betting that you'll only be able to complain about being suspended from the internet through this new portal"
what you missed was you apply from the IPinitially registered and have since been banned from the internet on
just to make it more difficult
oh and there will be a manual process (process detailswill be available online for 1 minute every day)so long as it is on the official form (available online only) signed by your MP, doctor and a police officer to verify you are who you say you are once they have checked your ID card is valid
peter
Ah! Gordon Brown
Everything he touches turns to shit.
Pensions! Oh dear.
Housing! Oh dear.
MP expenses. Oh dear.
The incredibly cheap PPP model that is paying a company to build a hospital and rent it back to the government.
Gold! In a conspiracy theorist's wet dream, Gordon ignores the Bank of England, and almost all the investment specialists able to give advice, and causes a worldwide gold price collapse within weeks of victory, and one of his team, Peter Mandelson, spends his spare time on the yacht of a man whose family set the gold price for the last 250 years. Fortunately this is so obvious, there can't be any truth in it. (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1655001.ece)
The waste of the highest earning ten years of taxation in history, plus a trillion pounds more, for
3 million officially unemployed and another two million not claiming any unemployment benefit.
Don't mention the war. I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it.
11 million and counting from the union formerly known as decimate.
100,000 population in the UK's southern Tory constituencies, but only 40,000 in the Northern Labour ones.
Indigenous terrorism by people they flooded the country with, to try to water down their opponents' votes.
His famous comment that "We shouldn't be allowing 120% mortgages", just six months and one financial catastrophe after he'd positively encouraged them, in the name of prudence, at Mansion House.
16 Billion on the rejuvenation of Leeds, oops! I mean the NHS.
Education, Education, Education. ask any kid who hasn't been to a private school, under the age of 25 what is seven nines, 6 eights, or 12 eights, and then watch while they go blank.
The child investment fund! Who did he take the money off? That's right! The parents!
Lloyds. Does anyone seriously believe he, a scot, and his chancellor, a scot, and Tony, a scot, and the Speaker, a scot, had no idea what situation the Bank of Scotland was in, when he half nelson'd the Lloyds chairman into buying it without enough due diligence?
Still, he's had two kids, and they're alright, so it's not like he's completely useless.
Oh, and did I mention he's a financial genius too? Thank god he saved the world's economies.
What complete and utter rubbish!
"Let's build a single web site, accessible to everybody, to do everything."
Yeah right, and that's not got epic fail written all over it has it?
Haven't learnt from the NHS fiasco have we? This must be a factor of ten bigger project at least. It'll take so long to do that it won't be able to keep up with changes in the government's own legislation, tax and benefits rules. And now, when it gets it wrong, everybody will be affected.
How much money on this being tied into ID cards - one system to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them. Oh, you'll need your ID Card Mk 2 to log in. For anything.
I have a couple of mates who work at direct gov, and their problem is nothing technical, it's just they've never had the mandate to force other government departments to transfer content to Direct Gov.
Regardless, this is a futile exercise that just won't work. Why?
The public sector is not a single institution, and there's no real cohesiveness to it - it is a sector of an entire economy. You would never get any site that is a hybrid of other sites in the private sector because of competition. In the public sector you don't so much have that kind of competition but you do have a huge variety of very, very different camps.
Given that Direct Gov has failed even to merge in 'soft' parts of the public sector - like the NHS - and really only has a bit of Home Office information and a bit of DVLA stuff, it proves that without coercion or mandarin support, such an exercise is entirely futile.
Furthermore, as many others have said above, while it's a pain for us as citizens to have to replicate information when applying to various different government bodies, at least it maintains control for everyone's information. Government departments were never usually allowed to share much information, and that right has been eroded heinously since 1997.
I think the real underbelly of this whole 'My Gov' lark is that Martha Lane-Fox after being appointed by Herr Brown as 'Internet Czar' or whatever pompous dictate he's bestowed on her has convinced Brown of the need to have a single sign-on, and merging of services altogether.
The problem is while Google and Microsoft provide single-sign-on across their broad array of services for practical reasons, there are services like OpenID already available that provide this without much work or expense to the taxpayer.
With all this in mind, I would continue to request the Register to contact friends at Outlaw.com and other sources to an investigative piece about the relevance of the Data Protection Act in 2010, as it seems to me that virtually every announcement this government puts out is in breach of one or other clause of the DPA. Furthermore has the Information Commissioner got any teeth or has he been blighted by the Number 10 Scurvy infecting any civil liberties part of government that doesn't toe the line of the Great Brown Puppetmaster?