Why we need ID cards
Here’s my argument on why we need ID cards in Britain, and why I think they should be implemented differently to how the government suggests.
Why ID is good
Unification of duplicate information
We seem to accumulate ID numbers nowadays. What with National Insurance numbers, NHS numbers, passport ID numbers, driving license numbers, and probably another ID number in just about every government department. No-one in their right mind knows their ID numbers, but if they were unified into a single ID number there would be one number to remember.
If the government have one central database cluster which stores key details, such as the full name, address, date of birth and telephone number, then if any of these details should change, you only need to instruct one department of the change, and they will then cause a domino effect and update all of the other department’s databases.
Easy cross-department sharing
I think that non-core fields, such as health records that are only relevant to surgeries and hospitals, or your criminal record which only the police need to see, need only be stored in the department in which they are relevant. This will make the databases easier to install and maintain, as well reducing congestion and access times. Another benefit is that the information is only accessible by the department that created it (which they have at the moment)
However, since the ID number is the same, it’s easier for departments to share information if they are authorised to do so (e.g. the Student Loans Dept could automatically query Inland Revenue to find your parents’ income to eliminate lots of forms).
Benefit fraud could be greatly reduced if departments’ systems could intercommunicate using a permissions-based system. And there would be so much less paperwork.
How to ensure privacy
By seperating different categories of data into into different databases, any security breach will not affect the whole network. I think the government should adopt a common API in which all of these systems can intercommunicate. Also built in each should be a second field which specifies who has permissions to read and write to it (like UNIX file permissions). These permissions could then be updated by the citizen using a telephone hotline or a secure web interface if they wish to allow companies access to certain pieces of information about them (e.g. Student Loans).
Citizens would also be able to see what data is being held about them (except police data etc) and flag any discrepencies early on.
Tasks such as applying for a passport suddenly become very easy if the government has all the data they ask for on the for, a picture of you and a unique number that you’ve had since birth.
Overall, ID cards would make life easier, reduce paperwork and forms and save everyone time and money.
Why the government’s implementation is stupid
There are several flaws in the government’s implementation. First is the claim that it’ll reduce terrorism. This was clearly an aim to get the public’s confidence, but it backfired as most terrorists were previously law-abiding british citzens - there is no data that would show on an ID card.
Second, the government want to charge an extortionate price for the cards, making the public more likely to boycott them.
The government have no plans to unify ID numbers or centralize things. And rather than making it benefit the citizen by letting them choose who sees their data, they want to do the opposite and not tell you what information they’re keeping at all.
The government’s handling of the NHS IT fiasco just goes to show how they can run severly overbudget and make a dog’s dinner of even the most promising of ideas. In the private sector, their dealing with such IT projects would have bankrupted them by now.
It seems to me as if the government has missed all of the advantages of ID cards and wants to introduce them to support a big brother nation, when actually they could be very useful.
