I wonder how Her Majesty prepares for a day spent wearing hot and uncomfortable ceremonial attire to read a pre-trailed and formulaic speech written by someone else's speechwriter. Anti-depressants, perhaps.
There was nothing about the ID Cards programme in this, Gordon Brown's first Queen's Speech - but there are a couple of reasons why that shouldn't surprise us:
- first, all the primary legislation is already in place in the ID Cards Bill. The secondary legislative measures won't need to go near Parliament, much less into the Queen's Speech;
- second, the reality is that the ID Cards programme has always been more notable for what has not reached the public domain than what has. Think of the KPMG audit report on cost forecasts, the successive findings of project 'Gateway Reviews', the Crosby Report on commercial-sector exploitation, all of which have disappeared without trace.
This 'information parsimony' creates a hot-bed for speculation. What has become of the Crosby Report [IdealGovernment blog] which, after all, was instigated by Gordon Brown before he became PM? What were his hopes and aims when he initiated it? I have to say right here, I don't have the answer to either of those questions, and I'm not expecting an explanatory phone call from Gordon any time soon. Like everyone else, I have to rely on reading the tea-leaves... such as the recent report [Guardian Online] that he has called for a technology review of the programme.
Let's, for a moment, hypothetically assume that, once again, what's not being said is more significant than what is. By implication, that would mean that actually his primary concern lies elsewhere. We can probably rule out financial, as he has had all the opportunities available to pull the plug on that basis. Broadly speaking, that would leave policy, legislative, regulatory, governance, enforcement, best practice, public adoption issues or practical concerns.
I like what one might conjecture to be his thinking. His hypothetical logic might well be incontrovertible.
Any one of those areas is at least as much a potential landmine as any technological shortcoming. That's why, in forums such as the Liberty Alliance, the Enterprise Privacy Group, Kable and elsewhere, such considerable time and effort are devoted to the non-technical issues which are such a critical component of any large-scale identity management system, as well as the way in which they and the technology must intersect.
Unfortunately, when the PM relies on explicit communication, as in his recent speech to the University of Westminster, his view of personal identity appears to be backward-looking, rather than one in which the potential benefits of new identity technology are made accessible to the citizen and not just the state.
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