Guardian Online today covers the e-Government gateway in a piece entitled Spoke in the wheel. The gateway is an open standards authentication broker that is aiming for a single point of contact for authenticating users accessing a range of government services (currently 14).
However, the article contains words of caution concerning the projects derirability and legality. It quotes an article in Public Law by John Morison, professor of jurisprudence at Queen's University Belfast, as saying that by promoting one-stop government, this project is "attempting to promote a structural change that would have fundamental constitutional implications... Ideas of separation of powers, rule of law and basic principles of legality do not seem to have troubled the information systems engineers."
The tension between ease-of-use, access and constitutional issues will eveidently pose an ongoing challenge to those in charge of building e-Government services.
Strange how i find this post when i search for government gateway. today i find myself locked out of all 14 services without being able to reset my username and password.
Hurray for a central system that has screwed me over because i cant remember its vast ellaborate details it asks for when registering.
Matt
Well, how about this - the password that HMRC gave me when I first subscribed to Government Gateway does not work on the Pensions area. You need to format your password differently to get on - how stupid is that? The Pensions site also goes 'full screen', which, according to their intro is a security measure???? They have blocked pasting into the login fields from elsewhere - I use a 448-bit encrypted database to hold my info - so you have to type in every of the two dozen characters one at a time, and get it right of course. This means entries could be subject to key-logging??
I have sent messages and reminders to them since 24 June and they don't have the decency to reply, or maybe don't want to admit that they could have c****d up. If I'm wrong in my aspersions I would be please to bow to their greater capabilities. Muppets.