Britain, Liberty and Online services
Looks like Prime Minister Gordon Brown has laid down a marker for online government services for citizens - and smack dab in the middle of a lengthy discourse about liberty, privacy and information management.
“… This is the century of information. Our ability to compete in the global economy, to protect ourselves against crime and terrorist attack, depends not just on natural wealth or on walls or fences but on our ability to use information - in industry, in our schools and universities, at our borders, in our police forces and intelligence services. And it is clear that we can use DNA to help solve crimes and we can use new powers of access to information to deny terrorists and criminals financial freedom and the ability to move across borders.
At the same time, a great prize of the information age is that by sharing information across the public sector - responsibly, transparently but also swiftly - we can now deliver personalised services for millions of people, something not dreamt of in 1945 and not possible even ten years ago. So for a pensioner, for example, this might mean dealing with issues about their pension, meals on wheels and a handrail at home together in one phone call or visit, even though the data about those services is held by different bits of the public and voluntary sectors.
But if Governments do not insist on accountability where people’s data is concerned - and are not held independently to account - then we risk losing people’s trust which is fundamental to all these issues and more…”
Now, I know there’s a long history of online services in Great Britain, and an extensive data protection regime. I have to think, though, that this speech sends some specific messages to the people working on Web 2.0 apps for the British government - as well as a lot of other regulatory specialists.
Technorati Tags: privacy, liberty, data protection, egovernment, epolitics
