What are the essential unanswered questions for the UK about ID infrastructure, government’s role and its effect on business and consumers? What are the opportunities for unlocking value, wealth creation, efficiency and what are the threats to privacy and public trust?

The DTI is planning a get-together to start the process of looking at this on 9 July. There are important questions still out there, and DTI has allocated £10m for research projects to look into them to get answers starting from the autumn.

This isn’t a re-run of the ID card policy debate. We live in a democracy, Parliament has spoken, and those who want Parliament to speak again and say something different next time have to go through those channels. That’s Home Office/IPS’s patch anyway, and they are co-sponsors of the get-together. So the approach is, taking the work of IPS as a given in this landscape, what are the great known unknowns, including areas like privacy and consent.

Let’s go into the ID-enabled future with our eyes open. DTI will particularly welcome attendance at this event from people interested in undertaking the research work.

If you’re interested in coming email your details to editor [at] blindside .org.uk for now; online registration will be available soon.

Update: You can now register online by clicking here, or here or by emailing the rather miraculous Susan Pickrell at susan.picrell@kable.co.uk.