Search Results for identity

How the Government Gateway works

Caveat: this is not a technical description of how the Gateway works. Nor does it cover the behind-the-scenes services that the Gateway provides in terms of messaging and interoperation between various government systems. But it is my description of the…

Why the big fuss?

The usual parade of whimsy on this blog about this or that in public services, or things-that-make-my-head-hurt-in-general, has been rudely interrupted by a series of diatribes on identity and trust online, with a focus on people interacting with government. Why,…

The Nature of the Relationship, part 2

In which we look more deeply into that business of what an online trusted relationship actually means—over and above the mechanics of actually “proving” something about it to a particular degree. New readers will probably want to read an introductory…

The Nature of the Relationship, part 1

This is where the going gets tougher. The previous post here was about the different things we use to bodge our way around the minor inconvenience that you can’t actually prove anything about identity with absolute certainty (and it’s all…

Who are you again?

This online identity stuff is very difficult—as I’ve written here before: much harder to truly grasp than it should be, in a peculiar way. I think that one of the reasons is that there are really two, logically separate things…

Petitions and democracy

Tortoise: Y’know Achilles, when we were last talking about this identity business we got into all sorts of hot water very quickly in trying to find ways to use a definitive identity to do governmenty things on the Internet. But…

My phone’s been blacklisted

Well, it hasn’t really – not for a while anyway – but it’ll do as a title. The massive problem of mobile phone handsets being stolen led in 2002 to a marvellous bit of innovation. If a phone was stolen,…

Sit down and be counted?

Online interactions between people and government fascinate me. Which is just as well, given I’ve spent a long time working on innovation and programmes that attempt to do this sort of thing. I’ve written before about some of the challenges…

It’s all about me

I don’t know where this story ends. I know where it starts though. At various times since the dawn of technology-enabled government – since information about some of the big things in your life was held on computers – the…

The dark side of citizen empowerment (Part 2) – a cautionary tale

Johnny was a rebel. A real maverick of a man. Show him a system, and he’d find a way round it. All the little get-outs, he got out through. He opted out of all opt-in mailings, he had his number put on the list to avoid junk calls, he made sure as hell he wasn’t on that electoral roll that’s for sale. His email address was a miracle of concealment to fool the bots, and you’d be bloody lucky to get it. And almost nobody got anywhere near his ‘real’ online identity. If he was a bit naughty in his car, he’d make a real song and dance about ’fessing up to who was actually driving. There had to be pictures. Of his face. If not, he’d write long letters inevitably quoting the Human Rights Act. Stopped by the coppers in Waterloo? Same thing, knowing all the right responses to give to stay just the right side of the law, and exactly what would press the frustration button of the guy in the yellow jacket. Junk calls? He loved those – playing right into the hands of his call centre victim – baiting them further and further into revealing who they worked for, and where, while tapping away merrily on his 192.com account and his Google Maps (and other, darker sources). Until he could surprise them by telling them the name of their wife. >