new tech observations from the UK (ntouk)

Category: social inclusion

  • Book extract (work in progress)

    Book extract (work in progress)

    My book exploring digital, data and technology—and how politicians and policymakers can understand and use them more effectively—is (slowly!) taking shape. It’s currently around 270 pages, but that’s before I give it a severe haircut. Anyhow, here’s a short draft extract from work in progress … I’ll post more raw samples over coming weeks and months.…

  • Back to the past with government identity

    Back to the past with government identity

    The Government Digital Service (GDS) has a generous £400m budget to develop “One Login”, a single sign-on and digital identity system for government services. But it comes with a nagging sense of déjà vu: although billed as a fresh approach, it’s remarkably similar to the solution implemented in 2001 by an earlier Cabinet Office team at a cost…

  • What can politicians learn from Universal Credit?

    What can politicians learn from Universal Credit?

    The unfortunate saga of Universal Credit is a powerful reminder of the repeated failure to successfully integrate policy making with technology. A failure that comes with profound human consequences and suffering, not just a financial cost. Universal Credit (UC) aimed to deliver a radically better approach to welfare benefits, one that would provide:  “A dramatically…

  • Integrating technology and policymaking

    Integrating technology and policymaking

    I’ve written before about the need to better integrate technology and policymaking — in 360-degree policy making, policy making in the digital age, and many earlier pieces going back over several decades, such as my 2006 co-authored paper The New World of Government Work. Governments have been keen to take advantage of digital, data and…

  • 360-degree policy making

    360-degree policy making

    How can we improve policy making to make it more effective — not just for politicians and policy makers, but citizens, organisations and communities too? One of the defining characteristics of the “digital revolution” is continuous feedback and improvement. The best organisations learn what works and what doesn’t in a timely, efficient way. They update…

  • International Standards and Digital Identity

    International Standards and Digital Identity

    So-called ‘digital transformation’ can often involve little more than moving things from paper onto a screen or automating the way things are already done, aiming to optimise them or reduce costs. Nothing wrong with that in itself of course, but it’s not really ‘transformational’ in any real meaning of the word, more about efficiency and…

  • Online public services in the UK—23 years of federated identity

    Online public services in the UK—23 years of federated identity

    Here’s my paper providing an overview of Federated Identity for Access to UK Public Services: 1997-2020 (PDF): As its catchy title suggests, it provides an historic overview of the UK Government’s approach to federated identity over the past 23 years, segmenting the journey into three stages: It isn’t intended to be history for its own sake—it aims…

  • The elusive pursuit of outsourced digital identity

    The elusive pursuit of outsourced digital identity

    Remember when UK banks were innovative, leading the world and always at the top of the polls for brilliant customer service? No, me neither. Actually, that’s not entirely fair. There have been brief flashes of innovation. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the UK government hoped that banks would become trusted providers of digital…

  • Digital government and asymmetric justice

    Digital government and asymmetric justice

    Governments are acquiring and sharing more of our data on the basis that it will improve efficiency, personalise services, and reduce fraud, error and debt. Data acquired for one purpose is often used for another, whether the citizen agreed for this to happen or not – perhaps most notoriously our health records or children’s data.…

  • Improving identity assurance and trust

    Improving identity assurance and trust

    We may live in a digital age, but paper documents – notably passports – are still the most trusted evidence to help prove who we are. It’s not surprising that one of the most common requests made of Government is to provide a secure service for checking the validity of passports. An online Document Checking…

  • Data Privacy Day musings

    Data Privacy Day musings

    Consider this on #DataPrivacyDay. For more than 60 years now, organisations have been trying to understand and manipulate the way we think, as the first in the series of quotes below illustrates: “Many of us are being influenced and manipulated — far more than we realize — in the patterns of our everyday lives. Large…

  • The political opportunity—and threat—of better public services

    The political opportunity—and threat—of better public services

    Hard to believe I know, but we’re approaching ten years ago – 4th June 2009 to be precise – when Tim O’Reilly set out his ideas on how to improve and modernise public services (referred to as both “Gov 2.0” and “government as a platform”), discussed in more detail in his subsequent 2010 article. These…