If people lose faith in either the technology ennabling next generation public services or the ability of public servants to effectively administer these systems, it becomes an information assurance issue. We can abandon discussion of biometrics, encryption, passwords and identity management. This is strategic corporate governance and risk management, and needs to be analysed at Board (read Cabinet) level.

If the Conservative Party says that it will disassemble the National Identity Card project if elected, this affects tenders and contracts as well as elections. While no government can bind the hands of its successors, and certainly government tenders are less important than treaties, recent events have added unwanted risk to the government’s transformation and shared services agenda and should, in all honesty, cause a rethink of much-discussed initiatives such as the National ID Card project.

If the ID Card project becomes a political football, it could come down to either being continued or abandoned based on public opinion polls. It is recent government experience that has made this a possibility. Should the government of the day wish to defuse this as a possible issue, it needs to have a pretty long period without negative incident to let memories fade and new issues arise.

Does anyone feel confident that government can go through any significant period of time without an IA disaster?

Chris Smith of Vega rather succinctly encapsulates the problem by saying that good health and safety practices are the result of clear lines of responsibility including personal contracts with employees, and that no such regulatory framework exists for information assurance issues–Chris posts here from time to time, and I hope he takes time to elaborate on this here.

What happened at HMRC is an information assurance issue and it affects the future of information assurance in the public sector. To think otherwise is daft, frankly. While we here at Blindside normally look through the other end of the telescope at these issues, to ignore the political reality of recent events does no-one any good.