Phil Windley, CIO of Utah is talking about the complex ways in which governments deal with ioentities, from birth certificates to death certificates.

He points out that vehicle titles are in a one-to-one relationship with the vehicles: each vehicle has one and only one title. Why? Because people want government to track this. But government has abdicated its responsibility as an issuer of digital signatures, which is why they’re not as useful as they should be.

But (Phil says) people want the services that a government-based identity program could bring. For example, supose you move to Utah. There’s a long list of things you have to do, from registering your car to enrolling to vote to getting tax information. Utah wants to give you a single site where you say you’re moving to the state, pay one tax, and everything gets done. But this is hard to do because the various information apps are not connected. (In Utah, your name can be in over 200 different databases.)

Phil just netted it out:

Governments are in the identity business but don’t recognize it.

Governments have abdicated their responsibility.

Digital certificates are not the answer.

Citizens are fearful of government collection of data but still demand the connected services that require that aggregation.

The real problem is that these are public policy questions and technology can’t solve them, Phil says.

FWIW, Phil comes across as smart, honest, open, passionate and likeable…the model of what you want a government person to be.

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