German engineering

In Germany, the government has just introduced a new smart identity card, a kind of technologically advanced version of something that the might have developed in the UK, had David Blunkett's desire to do something about ID gone in a different direction. Will it be used by the private sectors? Well, Deutsche Bank say that

The new ID will help to significantly boost the general environment for electronic commerce in Germany. For one thing, the new ID enables new types of online business relations and more efficient processes. These include, for example, opening an account via the internet or reporting insurance claims online. Some people who have harboured concerns up to now about internet security could presumably be convinced of the merits of online transactions via the use of an eID function. For another thing, there is less likelihood of the public or business suffering financial losses due to identity theft
[From Talking point]

German consumers who want to use the new smart card to access e-government, e-finance and e-commerce services can obtain a free USB smart card reader to plug into their PCs. (This is a slight weak link in the security chain, to be honest, because viruses and trojans can steal the PIN when it's typed into a PC -- fraudsters would still have to the steal the smart card, of course.) A survey of found reasonable acceptance.

The survey found that Germany’s internet users would use the new ID mainly for government services (44%), online banking (38%) and online shopping (33%).
[From Talking point]

I would imagine that these numbers are wrong, because people will only imagine using such an eID card for the things that they already use ID for but inefficiently. They don't see the additional products and services that might be developed once a working eID exists, so I'm sure that smart developers are even now coming up with new applications for the eID. If everyone has one, you might as well use it (and I'm sure that one of the uses will be to drive a sort of son-of-ELV payment system). I can't help wondering, though, why the UK vision wasn't like this.

Is this just my bias as an essentially technical person or is the German approach -- to develop technical specifications that include advanced functionality and then procure against them -- better than the U.K. approach of "output-based specification"?
[From Digital Identity: Engineering eID]

The German card comes with a framework (the e-Card API) to make it easy for private and public sector service providers who want to use the card. Such a framework was never developed in the UK.

Germans not only get a useful ID card but they get free card readers for their PCs as well. Now that's what I call a networked nation... The Brundesdruckerei (Federal Printing Office) has already put forward a plan to allow citizens to load their electronic identities on to NFC-capable mobile phones in the future.
[From Digital Identity: There has to be a reason for this]

Meanwhile, back in Broken Britain, I can't log in to my Barclays account to send money to my son - in response to a pleading text message - because I can't access my current account without my dongle thing that I've left at home. Oh well.

Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name;
Robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed.
William Shakespeare, Othello (Act 3, Scene 3).

[posted with ecto]

government, smart card

Posted at 11:15 AM in Case Studies, Government | Permalink

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Looking forward to getting back into blogging and what better way than doing this challenge to raise awareness. Thank you for hosting!

Posted by: gclub | 10/24/2011 at 01:58 PM