1994-04-20|Blueprint for Renewing Government Services
To whom it may concern
I attended the CIO Industry Briefing and read the "Blueprint for Renewing Government Services Using Information Technology" with very keen interest. The document is very inspiring and I am extremely pleased to see such a bold initiative.
In "Foreword", you write:
We value your input and encourage you to provide us with your comments by May 31, 1994.
Here are my comments. Although the Blueprint is very thorough, I would like to see more emphasis on the end "client", or the taxpayer. Yes, there are mentions of self-service with an electronic kiosk in a shopping centre, but I would like to see an all-electronic service delivery to my own electronic account for all government information transactions such as statements and notices instead of just direct deposit. With a personal information bank, a "smart card" does not have to contain all the personal information. Only reference pointers would be on the card, making it less of a security risk.
In an Object-Oriented Personal Information Bank used by ordinary citizens, an intelligent agent could be set up to filter and process all incoming packets (EDI-format messages) based on a personal profile, so that only essential information would be flagged to the end client. Such a service can be completely voluntary, and be handled by the private industry. The governments, however, must be able to send personal information in electronic format. This kind of evolution is already happening in Revenue Canada's EFILE and Direct Deposit, but a real benefits in entire society (read Total Quality Management) would only be achieved if the government's Information Technology initiative is extended to include electronic delivery of personal information through X.400 EDI messages to individual citizens. In this scenario, the intelligent agent could automatically prepare tax forms based on E-receipts and E-statements from various government agencies and private companies, together with federal and provincial tax algorithms.
The most essential component of such a vision is the personal directory. The recent X.500 Government Directory project could be extended to include the general public on a voluntary basis and run by the private industry. Since the X.500 directory could include digitised pictures, a passport photo could be stored, for example. With a proper on-line verification mechanism, this would make a paper passport obsolete. Since there are mechanisms to achieve enough security (at least higher than a paper letter which is sometimes misdirected to a wrong household) through encryption and digital signature using today's technology, the decision to say whether there is enough privacy must be up to the individual citizen rather than by the Privacy Commissioner! Given a choice between privacy and convenience, I would always pick convenience so that my electronic agent could make some of my personal information completely public and others selectively accessible in order to avoid giving my name, address and phone number to tens and even hundreds of different government agencies and private companies.
As a private citizen, I would like to see absolute simplicity and consistency in everything including government service delivery. Therefore, I value your vision of end-to-end one-stop shopping, which I presume would imply a single citizenship number, hopefully for both federal and provincial governments.
Thank you very much for giving me an opportunity to respond, and here is the executive summary of my company's proposal submitted to CANARIE's Technology Development and Diffusion program, for your information.
