Why should anyone care about identity management

Proving who you are every time you want a public, voluntary or private sector service is a nuisance, but having others pretending to be you can be even more irritating. And it’s not only your inconvenience, all that checking of ones identity costs money, and someone has to pay for it. And although most of us have nothing to hide there can be good reasons for not making it easy for others to find us, whether ex-partners or the people who generate junk mail. It can also be threatening if what are innocent interests, e.g. nudism, being a scoutmaster and visiting Thailand are linked by a sensation seeking journalist. Privacy is a basic human right, but it shouldn’t result in wasted money, inconvenience and frustration.

Many people don’t trust the Government to safeguard their identity and the data it has about them, and I can’t say I blame them. We don’t know who can access our data, e.g. can anyone in the NHS access my medical records or only my GP and a hospital where I’m receiving treatment, and we also don’t know what controls exist to make sure that the systems are working as intended. For example if someone looks at records they shouldn’t, e.g. a neighbours, how would they be caught and what would happen to them. It’s not hard to build in controls, I know systems that include them, but there isn’t any public confidence that the controls are in place and operating consistently.

Transformational Government depends on there being a real improvement in how we manage identity’s, e.g. it’s hard to make it simpler to report a bereavement if one is identified differently by all the organisations one touches. But identity management will only work if people have confidence in it and that requires an open dialogue on what people want, the risks and how those risks can be managed.