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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The general session presentation by a guy from GM is in process. After spending too long telling us that GM is a big, honking company, he’s talking about “identity as a business issue.” But so far he’s pointed to two basic situations where identity management would help: First, consolidating information about customers so that the dealer has access to the same information as the marketing department, etc.; Second, consolidating the six different identities (= email addresses?) the speaker has at GM.

This type of consolidation of customer information is the standard benefit of application integration that’s been touted for years. Certainly it’s valuable and important (and just a little bit scary), but it’s not what I think of as central the issues of digital IDs: the creation of a permanent, traceable link from Web presence to the real world body sitting in front of the monitor, and vice versa. Yeah, of course we want to consolidate our customer information. But do we want a digital ID across companies? Who manages it? Who controls it and the record that it accretes? That’s what I’m here to learn about. Maybe he’ll get to it…

Nah, now he’s telling us why automating processes over the Web saves GM yada yada bucks. Presumably his standard presentation.

Now he’s getting to it! Three major digital ID issues.

1. Single sign-on is no longer GM’s focus. Other factors have taken precedence at GM, including security and privacy. GM feels it needs a more comprehensive approach, rather than focusing on single sign-on by itself.

2. They’ve joined the Liberty Alliance, which is the everyone-but-Microsoft response to Redmond’s attempt to own digital ID management. But he just said that the Liberty Alliance has nothing to do with countering Microsoft. (Bushwa! As if there’s anything wrong with countering Microsoft on this!)

Hmm, I don’t know what the third thing was.

Take-away: GM is doing lots of interesting things webbing people together. The question of digital ID for them comes down to how they can consolidate information about the variegated interactions each customer and employee has.

If I got this wrong, other bloggers will get it right. And you’ll let me know about it I’m sure.

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I just got in, an hour late. (And I had to get up at 4:30AM to be this late. Sigh.) So I missed the opening presentation. But I’ll be able to get the gist from the many blogs being written here. For example, Denise covers it really well. Nice on-the-fly writing!

But we’re off to a great start: I ran into AKMA at the airport so we took a cab here. In the hall at registration was Eric Norlin, high on ideas and DayQuil. AKMA opened the door to the hall where the keynotes are being given and who’s sitting on the aisle but Doc, I believe next to Denise Howell (whom I’ve never met). This will be fun. [I just read Doc’s blog, and, yes, he says he’s sitting next to Denise. Howdy, Denise!

I’ll be blogging the conference for the Boston Globe over at DigitalMass. Sorry to split between two sites, but I’m a writer so I like to be published. (No, I don’t know the relationship between globe.com and digitalmass.com. There is some relationship. If I had to guess, I’d say that digitalmass is the tech site for globe.com)

One good incidental effect of the Globe.com system is that they aren’t yet set up to let me post directly, so I have to do it by sending email to their very helpful Web guy. So, I’ll have to do batch posting as opposed to real time blogging. This is good because it will discipline me into writing retrospective chunks (“Watch out, dude, that guy just spewed retrospective chunks!”) rather than a set of running notes; I tend to get unreflective when taking notes.

The guy from GM is now talking, describing the complexities of GM’s IT/Web infrastructure: over 2M subscribers to thheir Business Web, etc.

Wait, I’m doing running notes! Noooooooo!

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Some very nice writing over at Joe M’s blog about a dinnertime conversation that is chaotic yet all about one thing.

By the way, if you wonder if Joe’s family table talk is really so literate and civil, the answer is: Yup.

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I’ve started blogging the Digital ID World conference in Denver that I go to tomorrow. The blog is here at DigitalMass.

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Gary Turner is starting an anthology of quotations from unfamous people (where fame is defined by mass culture or acceptance into the Canon of Important People). For example, from Marek we have, among other bon mots, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Gary is soliciting contributions.

Euan TheObvious Semple responds to my blog about the way in which the Internet is like my brain by wondering if the Internet could convey moods.

Kevin Werbach is pumping up the Supernova conference, Dec. 9-10, in Palo Alto: “Software, communications, and media are decentralizing, tearing apart industries with the force of a supernova.” A great list of people are presenting, including Doc, Clay Shirky, Jeremy Allaire, Dave Winer, Howard Rheingold, Cory Doctorow and David Isenberg. I’m probably going to mosey on over and be on a panel myself. (Hmm, are there any circumstances in which flying 3,000 miles in a pressurized tube can count as “moseying”?)

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I listened to the first half of W’s speech on the radio. Then I switched to TV because his performance was so lackluster, his tone so monotonous. It was worse watching him. My working hypothesis: Before he went on, W said he really wished he weren’t a recovering alcoholic so he could have a drink “jes’ to steady mah nerves,” so the White House doctor gave him a mild sedative.

As for the substance: It’s beneath contempt. Sorry to write him off, but by now we know how his mind works. For any problem, he can hold on to only one solution. No matter how the situation changes or what the evidence is, that one solution is the right one. A massive – and massively unbalanced – tax cut was the right policy when we had a huge surplus and it’s the right solution when we have growing deficits. Overthrowing Saddam is the right thing so we will come up with evidence to support it. It isn’t dialogue. It isn’t even thinking. If W weren’t president, there would be no reason to waste a moment listening to him.

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The new issue of David Isenberg’s Smart Letter is not only must reading for anyone who uses telephones but is also a delight to read, beginning with Buckminster Fuller’s explanation of why pirates had a better business model than kings. At issue is what’s right and wrong in the fundamental stance of George Gilder, the telecommunications guru. But David uses that to dig into the roots of the telecommunications industry and its coming meltdown.

Now compare that with a recent conversation the FCC sponsored in which the operating assumption is that the only way to ensure continuity of service and innovation is to prop up the current telco cadavers.

Isenberg for FCC Chair!

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Dethe Elza of Living Code comments in an email on The Outrage Formula in which I agreed with a column by Charles Jacobs in the Boston Globe that says the predictor for which acts of oppression outrage us isn’t the plight of the victims but our sense of identity with the oppressors.

Dethe insists on making a complex matter complex:

There’s another axis to the question of outrage (at least one). The US government is not directly (or overtly) providing aid to the Sudanese government, but they are providing several billion dollars, mostly in military “aid,” to Israel. When Palestinian homes are being destroyed, it’s American bombs at work, and all the future terrorists who are created by the rubble are aware of this.

…Of course, this doesn’t replace any of your theories, just overlaps with them. The old canard about one kidnapped American being worth 10 dead Europeans or a million dead Africans still applies to news coverage. There is also the small detail of the news companies being owned (or heavily invested in) by the same mega-companies financing a lot of the suffering around the world in their quest for oil, pharmaceutical markets, or whatever.

I totally agree that there are multiple factors at play. The question is whether the sense of identity is actually the predictor. For example, there are lots of repressive regimes that my government gives aid to, yet we aren’t as angry at them as many of us are at Israel.

I probably lost an argument about this on Saturday because as you try to test the hypothesis with historical examples, matters get pretty durn fuzzy: How outraged were we at what point about the killing fields of Cambodia? How angry were we about Franco and how repressive do we count him as being? We’re furious about Castro but seem not to give a sweet fig about murderous right-wing regimes in Latin/South America. It’s a tough hypothesis to test because — as Delthe makes clear — it’s a messy, complex world.

Nevertheless, I like the original op-ed piece because it tries to explain what I believe is a fact: most thoughtful anti-Israel actions in the US are not motivated by anti-Semitism despite what so many of my fellow Jews believe. And if you can’t tell the difference between someone who thinks Israel’s reaction to 40 years of aggression is disproportionate and unwise and someone who just hates Jews, then you’ve lost an important moral distinction.

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Richard Seltzer at B&R Samizdat Express has reviewed Small Pieces Loosely Joined, quite enthusiastically.

Richard reviews a wide variety of books. I’m in the middle of Fagles’ new translation of The Iliad and found Richard’s review both learned and helpful, a rare combination. (Think I’m just reciprocating? Read some of his reviews for yourself, you cynical, jaded, suspicious, person! Take “Trying to Enjoy Bellow” as a fr’instance.)

I’m going to be the guest on his chat board Nov. 21. Details here.

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