Daily Archives: May 24, 2007


Michael Cross writes in The Guardian about the dangers of creating a single point of failure (such as a National Identity Register) in any national government infrastrusture: A decade after we nerds started using the term, “e-government” has entered the chattering class’s lexicon. “E-government? Isn’t that what they call the town council in Yorkshire?” one of the wags on Radio Four’s News Quiz quipped last week. The reference was to a special case of e-government, Estonia, and the claim that its online existence was under attack from Russia. Estonia is a special case because the Baltic state has one of the world’s most advanced electronic administrations. On independence, it took advantage of small size and made a clean sweep of obsolete Soviet bureaucracy, installing a state-of-the art government machine. For the past few years, it has been hailed as an exemplary e-government, where citizens and businesses enthusiastically sign on to […]

Whitehall must learn from Estonia’s e-government


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Victoria Macdonald writes in New Statesman: The Stasi was relentless in its pursuit of data collection, despite its lack of decent technology. The everyday details of the country’s citizens were instead logged meticulously by pen on paper. In the 21st century, the UK government is equally obsessed with charting our lives, from the pills we take to the type of sex we have. But it has one massive modern-day advantage over the east Germans – computers. From biometric passports, to national ID cards, to an enhanced Criminal Records Bureau, the data is – or will be – all stored for use by one authority or another that needs to know, or just wants to know, what we are up to. And it will all be accessible by thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people. After an explanation of the Children’s Index and NHS Summary Care Record databases, she concludes: This […]

Are our lives safe in their hands?


Sarah Arnott writes in IT Week: The procurement framework for the national ID card scheme will be in place by the end of the year, with the first contract awards scheduled for the second quarter of 2008, according to the latest timetable. Sources say formal bidding for inclusion on the framework list is expected to start before the end of June. A group of up to five major suppliers are expected to be included on a framework covering generic terms and conditions. Specific components of the scheme, such as customer services or biometrics, will then be allocated by mini-competitions within the four-year period of the overall deal.

ID cards deals primed to start