Government struggles with £1bn identity problem
The government has an identity problem. There are numerous different unique identifiers in circulation, but data quality is inconsistent and frequently duplicated. Bill Mew asks is what we really need is yet another ID solution.
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A good Article, and one more reason (or perhaps several) to add to the ever growing list of why MTD will inevitably fail.
The failed projects (many more than those listed here) and wasted billions (ditto) never succeed for rather more basic reasons - namely power politics (with the Cabinet Office being a prime instigator of conflicting camps over the years) and personal career protection (by up-and-coming mandarins in waiting).
Sure there are technical considerations, and (as to be fair the article points out social/political issues to reconcile) ... but even with a perfect spec the 'interested parties' will ensure that it never comes to fruition.
[And yes I'm biased, or embued with cynicism, because I wasted large chunks of my life over a nearly 3 year period in meetings at Whitehall/Horseguards Road ... trying to get a single plan off the ground *before* the current cacophony of logins came into existence.]
Anyone remember "Joined up Government"? - https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publicatio...
Whatever happened to that?
This is a good article that lays down the challenge to government. Government that is increasingly not joined up in its IT systems. HMRC is way off the mark and I have detailed examples in several postings. My recent experience with the NHS is not great. I had my booster jab on 9th November and it appears in the MyGP app and the NHS app. On 17th November and on 6th December, I got text messages saying that their records showed I was due to get the Booster jab and needed to make an appointment. Somewhere along the line the NHS systems are not properly joined up and using them for identity at the moment could lead to problems. Most clients run away from the Government Gateway, because it is unwieldy. A new approach is needed and maybe advice could be taken from commercial organisations with systems that do work.
Interesting topic and raises issues of confidentiality and siloing of different government departments' data when all are accessed via a single login ID (though this issue has been dealt with in this article).
At the accountingWEB live Expo last week, I raised a related issue with Jim Harra (HMRC's chief exec) when other delegates had commented on clients' confusion on what references to use when making tax payments. I suggested that each business (whether sole trader or company, etc.) could have a single 10-digit UTR with a suffix letter to denote the relevant tax (mainly CT, VAT or PAYE for companies and IT, VAT or PAYE for sole traders and partnerships), which would reduce ID confusion within the tax realm.
Excellent idea, but clients would simply use last time's reference on their phone banking app and so pay CT into the PAYE account. Again.
Although some will, it will certainly be much easier for them to just change the suffix letter and get that right (it doesn't require much effort or memory to use 'C' for corp tax or 'P' for PAYE) than it currently is to use a completely different UTR. Also, I'd hope that we will soon get a combined tax payment screen in which we (as agents) or the taxpayer can move payments across tax headings when an error has occurred.
Yes, absolutely. Let us have another failed project / system where lipstick is applied to the pig.
> reminded of relevant xkcd cartoon
> came to post this cartoon
> mfw already posted.
Bobby Tables next week then?
As an e-resident of Estonia this isn't a big or overwhelming problem to overcome if it's planned and implemented properly with a coherent, cohesive strategy to draw together all the various government departments.
Yes Estonia is a much smaller country than ours but they've had e-residency for over 20 years now and you interact with healthcare, business, tax agencies and government with one single digital identity