Features

Resolutions for 2007

A person can dream, right?

-Scrap the UK ID card. Last week's near-buried Strategic Action Plan for the National Identity Scheme (PDF) included two big surprises. First, that the idea of a new, clean, all-in-one National Identity Register is being scrapped in favour of using systems already in use in government departments; second, that foreign residents in the UK will be tapped for their biometrics as early as 2008. The other thing that's new: the bald, uncompromising statement that it is government policy to make the cards compulsory.

No2ID has pointed out the problems with the proposal to repurpose existing systems, chiefly that they were not built to do the security the legislation promised. The notion is still that everyone will be re-enrolled with a clean, new database record (at one of 69 offices around the country), but we still have no details of what information will be required from each person or how the background checks will be carried out. And yet, this is really the key to the whole plan: the project to conduct background checks on all 60 million people in the UK and record the results. I still prefer my idea from 2005: have the ID card if you want, but lose the database.

The Strategic Action Plan includes the list of purposes of the card; we're told it will prevent illegal immigration and identity fraud, become a key "defence against crime and terrorism", "enhance checks as part of safeguarding the vulnerable", and "improve customer service".

Recall that none of these things was the stated purpose of bringing in an identity card when all this started, back in 2002. Back then, first it was to combat terrorism, then it was an "entitlement card" and the claim was that it would cut benefit fraud. I know only a tiny mind criticizes when plans are adapted to changing circumstances, but don't you usually expect the purpose of the plans to be at least somewhat consistent? (Though this changing intent is characteristic of the history of ID card proposals going back to the World Wars. People in government want identity cards, and try to sell them with the hot-button issue of the day, whatever it is.

As far as customer service goes, William Heath has published some wonderful notes on the problem of trust in e-government that are pertinent here. In brief: trust is in people, not databases, and users trust only systems they help create. But when did we become customers of government, anyway? Customers have a choice of supplier; we do not.

- Get some real usability into computing. In the last two days, I've had distressed communications from several people whose computers are, despite their reasonable and best efforts, virus-infected or simply non-functional. My favourite recent story, though, was the US Airways telesales guy who claimed that it was impossible to email me a ticket confirmation because according to the information in front of him it had already been sent automatically and bounced back, and they didn't keep a copy. I have to assume their software comes with a sign that says, "Do not press this button again."

Jakob Nielson published a fun piece this week, a list of top ten movie usability bloopers. Throughout movies, computers only crash when they're supposed to, there is no spam, on-screen messages are always easily readable by the camera, and time travellers have no trouble puzzling out long-dead computer systems. But of course the real reason computers are usable in movies isn't some marketing plot by the computer industry but the same reason William Goldman gave for the weird phenomenon that movie characters can always find parking spaces in front of their destination: it moves the plot along. Though if you want to see the ultimate in hilarious consumer struggles with technology, go back to the 1948 version of Unfaithfully Yours (out on DVD!) starring Rex Harrison as a conductor convinced his wife is having an affair. In one of the funniest scenes in cinema, ever, he tries to follow printed user instructions to record a message on an early gramophone.

- Lose the DRM. As Charlie Demerjian writes, the high-def wars are over: piracy wins. The more hostile the entertainment industries make their products to ordinary use, the greater the motivation to crack the protective locks and mass-distribute the results. It's been reasonably argued that Prohibition in the US paved the way for organized crime to take root because people saw bootleggers as performing a useful public service. Is that the future anyone wants for the Internet?

Losing the DRM might also help with the second item on this list, usability. If Peter Gutmann is to be believed, Vista will take a nosedive downwards in that direction because of embedded copy protection requirements.

- Converge my phones. Please. Preferably so people all use just the one phone number, but all routing is least-cost to both them and me.

- One battery format to rule them all. Wouldn't life be so much easier if there were just one battery size and specification, and to make a bigger battery you'd just snap a bunch of them together?

Happy New Year!