WRITTEN ON May 25th, 2005 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Identity

I just got our first real and direct comment on the LSE Identity Project. It’s from Dr Miriam Lips, who works with Professor John Taylor and Joe Organ at Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute.

The Identity Project: An assessment of the UK Identity Cards Bill & its implications

This report from the LSE on the proposed introduction of ID cards in the UK is a wide-ranging, largely normative critique of current government proposals with some international data included and some new data on wider opinions gathered from three Focus Groups on biometrics.

The report provides a valuable resource to underpin a much needed public debate on a measure that Government remains determined to bring onto the Statute book.

From a social science perspective in public administration the report could usefully have been further developed on how the proposed legislation intrudes upon the private sphere of the citizen and upon its place within a wider environment of networked government. What is needed in addition to reports such as this one is a much more developed empirical understanding of how Government agencies in the UK and elsewhere are capturing and managing personal identifiers of citizens so as to deliver better services and to enhance forms of State security.

A project located at the Oxford Internet Institute and supported by the Economic & Social Research Council is designed to provide this additional understanding. Our fear is that our research timescale and that of Government are out of sync and that legislation will reach the statute book before a richer empirically based understanding of identity management in government is available.

Dr Miriam Lips, Professor John Taylor & Joe Organ
Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
May 25th 2005

Thanks to the OII team for this. We look forward to hearing about the progress of their own work.