Why the ID database will never work...

[sbisson]

...you just have to look at the problems people have with CRM systems...

Standard data cleaning metrics show that data in any contacts database degenerates at a rate of around 30% a year, just through people moving, changing jobs, getting new phones - all the trivial things we never really think of. It's a massive problem, and the companies set up just to help people clean corporate contact databases struggle to keep up with things.

Now imaging trying to keep the data of everyone in the UK clean. It's going to be virtually impossible. And the national database will be storing much more than just where everyone lives.

So, you have to ask yourself, are you able trust a national ID database?

Comments

The perils of database cleaning.

[megadog.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine some years back undertook a project for a major UK electricity utility - basically doing a database-clean on their customer list to remove dupes.

Result: something in excess of 600,000 hits [principally where they had Jane Doe, Jane E. Doe, John Doe and John Q. Doe all living at 16 Acacia Avenue, Witley Scrotum, Middle England, WR31 2BQ].

So far, so good. Except that the company's business-managers threw their hands up in horror with the realisation that - if the truth got out - it would appear that this particular utilityco had just suffered a massive slump in its number of customers [with consequent massive slump in share-price].

You can bet your sweet bippy that any government agency [or outsourced outfit like Crapita] running an ID-card-type database will *love* to retain dupes in their system on the basis that they can then claim "we have 50 million of the UK's 57 million population registered".

[ccomley.livejournal.com]

specious - it doesn't matter if a national ID database doens't have your current mobile phone number or yahoo messenger nickname.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure - it's a matter of complexity. If a relatively closed problem domain can degrade at 30% per year, what will be the degradation on an open system with no clearly defined data model?

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

This problem has been legislated out of existence - the errors in the database are the fault of the record holder. If there is an error in your entry and you do not tell The Powers that Be that will be a 2000 pound fine or 2 years in prison.

This is in the law already. They don't say whether you need to know about the error for it to be your fault...

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Well, that's 30% of the population in jail every year...

I wonder what that'll do to the prison building programme...

[andrewducker]

It's an interesting one. I've long thought that the only way to keep that kind of data up to date was to give everyone access to update their data. Only you can imagine the fun that would cause...

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Make the ID database a Wiki!! Hell, stats show it'll be more accurate than central cleaning??

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

they have to find you to prosecute you though. And your contact details will be wrong..

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Which would be a great justification for random spot checks on the street...

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Exactly - shows how well thought out the bloody thing is!

[vampwillow]

I was thinking of testing that 30% thing last night, as it happens. Many years ago I set up the membership database for a London-based organisation, which meant I was the "keeper of the phone numbers". Last night - via something else which prompted the thought - I was debating calling all the numbers I have on file to see which (indeed, if *any*) are still extant and the same person.

Although I havn't moved my phone number has changed; I doubt that more that 3-5% might still be accurate ...

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

So, you have to ask yourself, are you able trust a national ID database?

But a national ID database is about fear, not trust. A fearful population is a compliant population.

[ajshepherd.livejournal.com]

There's at least one database out there that has someone living at this address with my first name and the surname of a former upstairs neighbour.
Telewest have an accounts database showing me living at 76 [this street], but a support database showing me living at 2 [this street], which is why the two times I've had an engineer round they've sent him to the wrong end of the road.

Besides. It's a major government IT project. Of course it'll never work. It'll be an immense waste of taxpayers' money and completely useless.

[tanais.livejournal.com]

So a new card scheme has been issued as a replacement for Bus Passes. I get one because I'm technically classified as disabled. I thought it was odd that the original card one was being phased out with two years' of life left on it but I duly handed in a photo for the ID card (no problem, the last one had one as well to verify it was me using the buss pass) and waited.

A nice new card came back. Not laminated card like the last one but one printed on plastic and my mug printed on it.

What was a bit more disconcerting was the following:

"In time the entitlement card will include your CHI number, which is your unique number for the NHS in scotland. This number, which is already used in the NHS but may not t be familiar to you, helps ensure that NHS staff have access to the information they need to provide you with the best care possible."

To many people this all seems innocuous, useful even, and maybe I'm paranoid but this ties into a much bigger picture which I think many people here will see as being an attempt at putting a kind of ID card in via the back door.

This article here says:

Developed under the first round of the MGF, the Citizen's Account is a standardised and integrated electronic citizen's record to be used across the Scottish public sector. The aim of the Citizen’s Account is to support the provision of a much more personalised service by using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology, to track progress in dealing with service requests and deal instantly with follow-up inquiries, to target services to specific customers, reducing the need for customers to apply for services, and to make possible joined-up service delivery.

What is also interesting is an article from Atos Origin which I recognise as one of the companies that manages doctors' examinations for people on benefits in Dumfriesshire, specifically:

there are three main routes by which entitlement can be taken forward:

* by proceeding with a "stepping-stone" approach, allowing local authority schemes to grow up, for example those being researched in Scotland, South Wales, London, Tyneside and Yorkshire, and perhaps linking them into a national network in the future;
* by taking the "big bang" route and building an entitlement database from scratch and issuing a new entitlement smart card to authenticated applicants;
* by piggy-backing on existing operations such as driving licences and passports to utilise their issuance and authenticating processes while "smartening" the photo card counterpart.

I think I'll microwave this card and or more likely send it back -- the Scottish Executive can then go fuck themselves. They can try to foist an ID card by the back door on me another way.

[andrewducker]

The first of those three methods being the one most likely to work. The way to write effective big systems being, of course, to write effective small ones and then make them bigger.