Facebook wonk among 'digital' advisers to Cabinet Office
No room on board for Google or telcos, though...
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Facebook's head Brussels' policy wonk Richard Allan is among the names joining a digital advisory group created by the Cabinet Office.
Francis Maude's department confirmed that the collective would unsurprisingly be chaired by digerati darling Martha Lane Fox, who carried out a review of the government's online services in late 2010.
The board, made up of 12 members, will meet twice a year and advise the team behind GOV.UK – a single government domain currently in beta that's intended to eventually replace New Labour's Directgov website.
Maude said:
We are making public service delivery ‘digital by default’ and creating a single place online for government information.
This revolutionary approach in the way government interacts with citizens will offer huge gains in efficiency and cost-effectiveness for the taxpayer.
The impressive expertise and experience on the Digital Advisory Board will help us achieve our challenging goal of delivering all services digitally so they are cheaper, simpler, clearer and quicker and easier to use.
Former Ofcom policy bod and one-time non-exec director of Phorm Kip Meek has also been appointed to Maude's digital advisory board.
Lloyds in the only bank to be represented in the line-up. There's also a venture capital fund "for entrepreneurs powered by entrepreneurs", and retailer M&S, among others.
Perhaps more surprisingly, there's no one on the board from Google or Microsoft, nor for that matter any of the big four telcos: BT, Virgin Media, TalkTalk and BSkyB.
Apparently, the board's first confab takes place today.
The Cabinet Office, as we previously reported, has been in talks with Facebook and other industry players such as banks on ID-handling online.
However, a fresh law to protect taxpayer's identity would almost certainly be needed to farm out such data to the private sector.
Some have argued that it is unnecessary to build an entirely new platform for transactions between benefit claimants and the Department for Work and Pensions – which has been tasked with steering the government's ID scheme, dubbed by Maude as "Little Brother".
After all, a system for handling a taxpayer's identity credentials already exists. Microsoft created the Government Gateway programme back in 2001. The Cabinet Office, however, has countered that a new market can be developed to complement its digital agenda while, it insists, saving money for the public purse. ®
COMMENTS
Can't have anyone from Google
Not after yesterday,
The Daily Fail's headline was that Google wouldn't back the Fail and Government's plan for a magic pixy dust firewall to stop kiddies seeing porn. Apparently Google pointed out that magic pixy dust doesn't exist and that parents should be responsible for their children.
So we can't have that now can we.
Google :
a) clearly won't tow the party line
b) don't understand kids
c) don't understand parents
but mostly
d) clearly won't tow the party line
On the subject of Farcebook and the magic pixy dust, a mate's daughter was being somewhat out of order recently so the selected punishment was to ban her from FB for a period. He prompty added FB to the block list on his home firewall. Less than 30 minutes later she's back on FB. Oh I just used a proxy since you wouldn't let me get their directly. Said daughter is 11, and clearly has a much better understanding of the Internet than either the government or the Daily Fail.
Government hates user privacy
Facbook hates user privacy
sounds like a match made in (their) heaven.
When the government appoints some EFF / privacy activists to counterbalance every big corp appointee they choose then I will be impressed.
"Perhaps more surprisingly, there's no one on the board from Google or Microsoft, nor for that matter any of the big four telcos: BT, Virgin Media, TalkTalk and BSkyB."
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