tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2092475090824666694.post8458242624181039061..comments2023-12-20T19:39:29.865+00:00Comments on Munguin's Republic: BROWN INTENDS UK TO BE "PAPERLESS STATE" WITHIN FOUR YEARSMunguinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16475165830302054002noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2092475090824666694.post-125960852967174582010-03-21T11:44:58.749+00:002010-03-21T11:44:58.749+00:00You’re right Munguin.
They will spend billions on...You’re right Munguin.<br /><br />They will spend billions on systems and they won’t work.... <br /><br />But I’m sure that some of our “influential” has-been MPOs are already looking around for ways in which to feather their own nests by selling their influence to IT firms... (see next story).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2092475090824666694.post-73174779604639828742010-03-21T11:42:55.605+00:002010-03-21T11:42:55.605+00:00Doug: I agree with you. I'm quite happy for th...Doug: I agree with you. I'm quite happy for this service to be available. I'm certainly not a Luddite; it is going to be the future. but it mustn't be forced on people yet. The problem of poverty and not having access to the net has to be addressed.<br /><br />What I object to firstly is the way this has been put forward. There's a competition on to see who can make the biggest savings and pay off more civil servants. <br /><br />No account whatsoever has been made of what anyone is going to do about the unemployment that will follow.<br /><br />Also their answer to the inevitable problem of people not understanding the computer systems is to set up offices where people will be shown.... I look forward to them in little villages on the island and in the highlands.<br /><br />They won't happen of course because this has been thought out for London, and other big cities.<br /><br />No one has given a second's consideration it seems to what poor people who don't have a computer will do, or old people who can't and won't learn how to use computers.<br /><br />And it's all going to happen in the next 4 years?<br /><br />But I totally agree, we'll all have to buckle down and get one of their "I know what you had for tea" identity cards.<br /><br />Although I could do a lot on the computer, I won't because my local post office is on a shooggly peg as it is... I don't want to contribute to its closing. And frankly I prefer face to face dealings with people, but I know some don't have the time.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2092475090824666694.post-26330974063300559132010-03-21T11:22:31.473+00:002010-03-21T11:22:31.473+00:00You are also forgetting that these vastly expensiv...You are also forgetting that these vastly expensive computer systems that the government buy in often don't work and are inflexable or unsuitable because they are off the peg and are a classic case of a round peg in a square hole.Munguinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16475165830302054002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2092475090824666694.post-34536904966526940682010-03-21T10:49:13.956+00:002010-03-21T10:49:13.956+00:00I'm not actually against being able to access ...I'm not actually against being able to access public services online. I regularly buy my car tax from the DVLA using their website rather than going to the post-office and to expand the idea is not automatically a bad thing but I think this idea is more a trojan horse for another of Brown's wheezes.<br /><br />From the Times article:<br /><i>A unique identifier will allow citizens to apply for a place for their child at school, book a doctor’s appointment, claim benefits, get a new passport, pay council tax or register a car from their computer at home.</i><br /><br />Everyone already has a unique ID in the form of an National Insurance number but for an identifier to be useful, whatever the final number system which is chosen, you have to have some backend database systems in place to match that number to an identity and if you are using it for accessing multiple services online then having some record of your previous access to other related government services and some history of your previous transactions would be essential.<br /><br />It is simply another push towards carrying an ID card and creating interlinked databases with people's details on them.<br /><br />The more difficult it becomes to not have one the more likely people are to get one. If online Government services become pervasive then interaction with them becomes very difficult for refuseniks without an ID card and number.DougtheDughttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02952281599715356995noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2092475090824666694.post-74840770839576686782010-03-21T09:51:24.123+00:002010-03-21T09:51:24.123+00:00Well Anon, I doubt it makes much difference in whi...Well Anon, I doubt it makes much difference in which country the IT centre finds itself. The British government has a record on IT equipment and it’s not a good one. They seem to invest in stuff that doesn't do the job it was commissioned to do, possibly because they try to buy on the cheap, possibly because one of their ex-cabinet ministers has been taking money to influence the government into buying it (see Sunday Times). The Passport Office and the English NHS which has spent £12 billion on something that doesn’t work, and the DWP who have a system for their new one stop benefit which no one understands, all come to mind as total failures, but I’ll bet that there are more. <br /><br />The big data protection problems have come not from an IT centre in India, but from ones in England and on one occasion in America, where a whole database on a couple of discs went missing. I think that one was English education, but I’m not sure. Everyone who gets any kind of child tax credit has, if I remember rightly had their address and NI no lost... all thanks to English IT centre. And again in England, details of Armed Forces personnel was lost. <br /><br />Then of course there are the Whitehall mandarins who routinely leave their briefcases packed with disks and sticks on the train, or in a taxi. So it seems to me we should worry about it being in England rather than India that the problems will occur. It seems to have the “record”.<br /><br />However, country of losing, and colour of skin of losers apart.... the information is, at the moment, routinely stored and lost by the UK authorities. (I doubt if there are many people now who have escaped: teachers, parents, armed services, claimants of Incapacity Benefits all come to mind as having all their details lost.)<br /><br />It is the input of the data into the computer which now seems to pose a problem.... the fact that it will be done by the individual, in his or her home, and that there won’t be any other way to do it. So, unless you are IT savvy, have a computer, have a printer, can afford paper, can get the thing to work etc, you will be.... erm stuck.<br /><br />I wonder how long it will be before Brown gets rid of doctors and has a site where you can take your own stats, type in your symptoms, and you’ll get a diagnosis, and your computer will print a prescription... or a death certificate.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2092475090824666694.post-19894343724234126362010-03-21T01:21:02.918+00:002010-03-21T01:21:02.918+00:00All our personal information stored in one place a...All our personal information stored in one place and monitored by someone in an Indian IT centre. What could possibly go wrong ?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2092475090824666694.post-12346555299382778972010-03-20T23:30:31.542+00:002010-03-20T23:30:31.542+00:00Nae nuthin' Sophia... bar a load ae stoor in a...Nae nuthin' Sophia... bar a load ae stoor in a poke.....<br /><br />How ir you no out the nicht?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2092475090824666694.post-63474387555888455982010-03-20T23:27:19.168+00:002010-03-20T23:27:19.168+00:00Ye see tris, tae put ma finger oan it, it's li...Ye see tris, tae put ma finger oan it, it's like this. Aw' Broon, an' his sorry auld bunch can offer us, is better managerial services than the tories.<br /><br />Nae vision, nae aspiration, nae future.Sophia Panglosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10089164117446635962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2092475090824666694.post-14448880620129877792010-03-20T23:20:13.501+00:002010-03-20T23:20:13.501+00:00Aye Denverthen, I had a few more points to make bu...Aye Denverthen, I had a few more points to make but when I looked at my word count it was 800+, so I had to trim it a bit otherwise I'd have had to break it into chapters and serialise it!<br /><br />I can imagine the frustration of filling in government forms to find that having reached page 98 the computer crashes, or pressing the send button and finding that it has disappeared to the recruitment office of The Royal Bank of Scotland, or McDonald's beef supplier.<br /><br />Or that one of the four remaining civil servants beneath the rank of having a knighthood had left it on a memory stick on the 4.30 from Paddington.<br /><br />...... Of course as you say, the techies... in the end the government will ahve to employ about 9 million of them, and of course they will all have to be imported, because our school leavers have problems reading their own names, so they won't be any use... (Well so says Tesco, so it must be right.)<br /><br />ARGH! Get me out of here.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2092475090824666694.post-68527473487232767352010-03-20T23:12:07.724+00:002010-03-20T23:12:07.724+00:00Not half as mad as I am. I'm bloody furious. F...Not half as mad as I am. I'm bloody furious. For one thing, in addition to all the excellent points made so far, the last thing we need to do in this country is hand over yet more power - (and sacrifice yet more of our privacy into the bargain) - to the IT geeks.<br /><br />I have first hand experience of where that leads where I work. It leads to a tyranny of the techies!Jon Lishmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07272058035800593800noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2092475090824666694.post-39207529536600897292010-03-20T22:53:31.760+00:002010-03-20T22:53:31.760+00:00I think it demonstrates that in their little Downi...I think it demonstrates that in their little Downing Street bunker they are as far removed from the reality of millions of people living in this country as I am from winning the lottery.<br /><br />I suppose these mad people will force this upon the Scottish Government as well, by reducing the amount of pocket money they give us to pay for these services.<br /><br />Shortly they will be suggesting we stop having doctors and get diagnoses over the net from Asda. <br /><br />They are all quite mad.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2092475090824666694.post-23746084645438826002010-03-20T22:48:31.059+00:002010-03-20T22:48:31.059+00:00Well of all the hair brained schemes this takes th...Well of all the hair brained schemes this takes the fruitcake. It seems that the Tories and Labour are falling over themselves with half baked crack brained schemes that we all know will come to nothing.Munguinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16475165830302054002noreply@blogger.com