[Christoph Engemann of the Graduate School of Social Sciences in Bremen and the Faculty of Media Bauhaus University in Weimar is giving a Tuesday afternoon lunch. The official topic from the Berkman site:

Engemann will describe how Germany’s transition to offering welfare services online has created new responsibilities for German citizens.

He says we can think of the state as being a media-system that’s in transition form paper to code. Newt Gingrich said “Paper kills,” meaning that it slows down the working of institution, sometimes lethally.

Germany is planning on issuing a citizens card (Bürgerkarte) in 2008 and a an “e-card” for doing authenticated transactions on the Net. A health card is being distributed to all 80M citizens. Also an identity card for doctors and pharmacists (Arztausweis), and a job card. (Every European country has similar programs “and some are quite advanced,” he says.) All these cards are interoperable: They use the same public key infrastructure.

Christoph’s thesis is that these new authentication media are new interfaces to collective resources such as public health care. E.g., instead of going to the unemployment office for help getting back into the labor force and money allocated to particular uses, now you get the card and some money you can spend how you want. In education, you will be given points you can expend on getting educational services; these are charged through the card. In health care, the card allows you to access part of your health care info, stored with intermediaries, and update it, e.g., you quit smoking, you’re going to the gym. (Q: How do medical providers know if you’re lying? A: Not sorted out yet.)

In response to a question, Christoph agrees there are two innovations here: Universal citizen identifiers and cards to authenticate that you are the citizen you say you are.

Q: Identity cards are a hot-button issue in the US. In Germany and Austria…
A: Not so much because in Germany you get something for presenting your ID card, while in the US it’s seen as a restriction. Germany hopes to export its system since they have the first authenticiation system that lets citizens be identified as such in Internet transactions.

This results, Christoph, in each citizen being her own civil servant, which he thinks is a bad idea. [Marketing hat on: Call it Do It Yourself Bureaucracy. Hmm still doesn’t sound so good.]

Q: (Colin Maclay) Sounds like the US offering to let people manage their own Social Security retirement accounts. How does this work for people who aren’t in a position to do a good job for themselves?
A: Needs to be worked out. You’ll need high computer literacy, and it’s like writing a CV all the time.

Q: Identity theft?


A: The card only holds the access key. To access all medical data, you need both the patient and doctor cards.

Christoph says it’s a fundamental role of nation states to create the possibility of authenticated transactions. He says it’s Post-Orwell because it’s not top down. “You’re writing yourself.”

There’s discussion trying to make sense of the sense in which in this system people act as public-minded citizens (citoyens) as opposed to self-interested money grubbers. Christoph ways we give up information in exchange for services. We are given an incentive to take charge of our health and become healthier. Even though we don’t consciously thinking about it, our behavior is altered, he says. [Afterwards I spoke with him and straightened out my understanding. The contrast he intends is Hegel’s: The citoyen doesn’t sacrifice his/her interests to the common good but is aware that the same rules bind everyone.]

(He mentions that in Germany the system is designed in part to eliminate people going for a second opinion … something Americans will not give up. Nor should we. Why trust one doctor? Wisdom of the medical crowd!)

Christoph is bothered deeply by all this. He thinks that our becoming our own civil servants will be a lot of work and will create stress because you don’t know that the information you provide will be used well. Plus, how long will the data really be kept in silos? It’s already been used to compile statistics about alcohol and sexual behavior in Austria, with insufficient care taken to anonymize it.

His doctoral thesis is on this topic, by the way. [Tags: berkman digitalID]

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