Robin Wilton's esoterica

Well, I couldn't really let this one go without comment, could I? The outgoing Italian government, in a last-minute fit of transparency, apparently decided that the most constructive thing it could do at this point was to publish all citizens' declared earnings and tax payments via the web.

If I understand the situation correctly, many Italians will see this not so much as a monumental breach of privacy, but more as an indicative league table of who is playing the Italian tax game with the greatest degree of skill and panache.

The soundbite of the story, though, is Deputy Economic Minister Vincenzo Visco's explanation that the practice "already exists around the world. You just have to watch any American soap to see that". True enough. Oh, those hilarious episodes where Grace teases Will mercilessly about his tiny rebate. 

Forgive me, reader, for I have sinned. It has been 11 days since my last promulgation... but a busy 11 days they have been. It all started with a trip to Munich for Kuppinger Cole's ID conference, at which I first ran a half-day Liberty Alliance workshop and then took part in two panel discussions.

The Liberty workshop was an opportunity to assemble just a few of the articulate folks who contribute to the Alliance's work, and have them present case studies (Orange/France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom), thought-pieces ('Why Web 2.0 needs Liberty", "How to get from a Use-case to a Spec", "Dynamic SAML") and highlights from recent adoption and working-group activities ("Findings from the PPEG Privacy Summits", "The Concordia Programme").

I think the audience got a good picture of  an organisation which is mature in in more ways than one: established enough to have formulated its ideas and then put them into practice, successfully and on a massive scale; and wise enough to recognise that solving one set of infrastructure problems often simply makes it possible to address the next set of issues... issues which could not even arise before the first set were successfully dealt with.

My thanks to Conor Cahill (Intel), Philippe Clement (Orange/FT), George Fletcher (AOL), Fulup ar Foll (Sun), Michael Gärtner (Deutsche Telekom) and Patrick Harding (Ping) for presenting (and keeping to time), and to Sampo Kellomäki (Symlabs) for contributing so usefully to the Q&A sessions.

The two panels I took part in were on the multi-faceted topic of "Convergence", and "Putting Context in Privacy". Both were fun to be on, but this latter one was made particularly  enjoyable by the deft moderation of Dave Kearns, who did his best to strike sparks off the various panellists, in an entirely good-humoured way. In between sessions, Dave was mostly to be found in the museum courtyard, one hand enfolding a bottle of Coke and the other animating the discussion of some engaging topic. To my embarrassment, I had to make an untimely exit just before the end of Dave's panel so as to get to the airport on time - next stop, Birmingham.

In Birmingham I was again on a panel, this time at an event hosted by Public Sector Forums - Identity Management, Data Sharing and Information Governance. A fascinating line-up, including the Home Office Minister responsible for ID Cards - Meg Hillier, and representatives from the Identity and Passport Service, Cabinet Office, Dept for Work and Pensions, and a host of local government bodies from all over the UK.

This time the huge thank-you goes to the Public Sector Forums team, particularly Ian Dunmore and Nick Hill, who contributed extraordinarily generously to the Devizes-to-Westminster charity sponsorship appeal. Gentlemen, thank you so much. (Next year, if you can get "http://www.publicsectorforums.co.uk" onto a sticker, we'll put it on the canoe: it should just about fit... lengthways ;^)

Then back in the car again and off to Harwich for a ferry crossing to Holland. I know what you're thinking - Munich, Birmingham, Harwich, Groningen... is there no end to this jet-setting high life? Just how far will I go in pursuit of sybaritic indulgence?

Well, I must confess that while in the Netherlands I went beyond the pale. The Friesian pale, or Fryske Peallen to be precise. There was still evidence of a 14th/15th Century earthwork, the Landweer, separating the neighbouring provinces of Friesland and Drenthe.  I hadn't been to this part of the country before, and the landscape was subtle and captivating - a mixture of smallholdings, waterways and wild, sandy heathland. A link to photos will follow when I have uploaded them.

Where next? Well, work continues on the PPEG Privacy Summit programme; I am writing up the London and Basel summits currently, and planning is under way for the next related events, in Washington DC, Tokyo and Stockholm. We're still learning from every summit, but gradually the focus is evolving to include a greater element of putting our findings into the public domain, testing and refining them and trying to pass the value on to successive communities. It will be fascinating to see whether the current findings and principles apply equally to the Japanese context... watch this space.