Digital Identity Forum

Digital Identity Forum will be on October 15th/16th in London

[Dave Birch] A date for your diary. We've chosen 15th/16th October for this year's Digital Identity Forum in London. We're looking at a couple of venues and hope to confirm something in the next week or two. The web site will go up tomorrow and I'm looking forward to starting work on the programme soon. As always, constructive suggestions are welcome, but at this time I'm thinking that we should take another look at where the UK is with ID cards (I'm afraid it's the 800lb gorilla), some kind of OpenID/Cardspace "bootcamp" to explain them to a business audience, an update on biometrics and a big session on identity in social networking. And of course, a pub quiz (sponsor please!) and a electronic "Game of Life" for charity, excellent company and conversation.

Yoof

[Dave Birch] Dealing with the government online is precisely the kind of activity that is subverted by bad identity management. Case in point:

 

Ambitious plans to switch the majority of provisional licences from postal to online could not be taken up by one of the largest group of customers - teenagers - because they couldn't prove their identity. Only 40,000 out of the 1 million people seeking a provisional licence were able to complete an online application. The remaining 960,000 had to stick to postal applications. One of the main reasons, according to the NAO, was that online applicants had to have either a new digital passport or a credit record to prove their identity.

[From DVLA plan fails ID test | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics]

The government has portal for accessing public services -- DirectGov -- but it's of limited usefulness, precisely because of this issue. And I'd lay a pound to a penny that the new ID card won't make the slightest difference, since I've not heard a single minister or official say anything about using it in this way. Speaking of which, young people won't have to worry about this problem for much longer because they'll soon be able to get a splendid new identity card that will solve that problem for them. As the Home Secretary said recently

 

We will start to make identity cards available to young people on a purely voluntary basis in 2010. I believe there are clear attractions in the scheme. It will make it easier to enrol on a course, apply for a student loan, open a bank account, or prove your age - especially as we get tougher on sales of alcohol to those under-age.

[From BBC NEWS | Politics | In full: Smith ID card speech]

Anyone familiar with the U.K. will recognise the wisdom of making it more difficult for children to buy alcohol.

1% of the way

[Dave Birch] Things haven't been going terribly well for America's ambitious Real ID scheme. Government agencies missed the end of October deadline to complete background checks for employees and contractors who have worked for the federal government for 15 years or less and to begin issuing the new identity cards that include employees' fingerprints as required under Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, which President Bush issued in 2004. In all, about 1.9 million federal employees and 591,358 contractors require credentials. As of that deadline, 97 percent of federal employees and 79 percent of contractors had completed the required background checks, but federal agencies had issued only 1 percent of the new cards. Now it turns out that some of the other deadlines around driving licenses are being rolled back as well.

Get real

[Dave Birch] At the RSA conference, Forum friend Toby Stevens from EPG was on a panel asking "Does Real ID really work?".  A quick primer: The US Real ID initiative aims to establishes a de facto national ID by establishing national standards for state driver’s licenses and ID cards. It mandates that states maintain accessible databases of documents used to establish identity but makes no provision for securing this data or controlling how data on the card is used.  So never mind "will it work", perhaps a better question is "will it be implemented".

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Driving forwards

[Dave Birch] Driving licences are always a good example to study in the world of digital identity because they are making the transition from dumb to smart, as ID cards are, and could clearly be used to pivot across real and virtual services.  The European Parliament has cleared the way for a new law harmonising EU driving licenses across the European Union, but the new license will not be obligatory until 2033!  There are currently 110 driving licenses held by almost 200 million people - which range in shape, size, the length of time they are granted for and the ease with which they can be counterfeited -- so there are obvious efficiencies to come from replacing them.  However, the law will only come into practice in 2013 – when newly-issued driving licenses must be in the new ID1 format – and will then set a firm schedule for replacing all of the old kinds driving licences during the next 26 years.

Technorati Tags: identity, interoperability