ntouk.com - Jerry Fishenden's technology policy blog

It's somewhat ironic that the Home Office is currently advertising for a new Chief Scientific Advisor given the continuing row over the decision to sack the UK's chief drugs advisor. I wonder how long the queue of applicants will be?

The Home Office, on the face of it, has little regard for independent scientific or technological advice, so whoever secures the role is likely to find it professionally frustrating.

In the current escalating row, the Home Secretary is reported as justifying his decision to sack Professor David Nutt by using the Professor's comment about horse riding being more dangerous than ecstasy. Which, the Home Secretary asserts, is a "political rather than a scientific point." Well, if it's based on scientific evidential risk, it's actually a factual point.

Mind you, the Home Secretary did not have a good week last week. On the Wednesday he suffered the inevitable embarrassing consequences of having shown the press his UK ID card. Despite repeated advice that a badly designed UK ID card would represent an increased risk to individuals, the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) has ploughed on resolutely with the notion of printing the holder's full name, date of birth and place of birth on the face of the card for the whole world and its dog to see.

Mind you, that's better than an earlier version of the ID card which had planned to make it a one-stop-shop for identity fraudsters by also including on the face of the card other personal information, such as national insurance number. At that time it would not have surprised me if it had also included mother's maiden name, your favourite colour and last school too. It does make one wonder where on earth they obtain their advice.

Anyway, back to the vulnerability of the UK ID card. The personal information about Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, printed on the face of his ID card provided enough information for Dr Edgar Whitley, of the London School of Economics, to pay 10 GBP and obtain a duplicate of the Home Secretary's birth certificate from the online birth certificate ordering service (also conveniently operated by the very same Identity and Passport Service, as part of a seamless plan to apparently establish a one-stop-identity-fraudsters-service).

Given that possession of a birth certificate and a utility bill (not exactly hard to produce) are the basis of much of the government's identity requirements both for their own services and those they impose for money laundering prevention, this does raise serious questions about how the current ID card design is going to help tackle problems of identity fraud rather than exacerbating them.

Dave Birch gives a great summary of the whole sorry episode in his blog here. What is particularly frustrating is the way in which expert advice has been intentionally ignored and the current risky card produced. There is no need to broadcast to the world our personal information, let alone for government to oblige us to do so. Technologies exist that would have enabled the UK to produce an identity card that could have better protected UK citizens, that could have stopped the casual leaking of our personal data.

But this card is not it.

My concern is that the Home Office and IPS have repeatedly been told by experts about the problems they are building into the ID card system. Rather than taking account of such advice, they have largely chosen to ignore them. Which seems to be a sad echo of what has recently happened with Professor Nutt.

That's not to say politicians should blindly and slavishly heed scientific advice without any other considerations. Of course not. The whole nature of politics is about balancing various constituencies of interest. But politicians should be able to explain the reason for their decisions when they choose to ignore independent expert advice and press ahead with proposals that potentially put the UK population at greater risk.

There is also a bigger question here. If the Home Secretary and others are not at least taking account of expert independent scientific and technical advice from leaders in their field, whose advice is it they are following? And does it not bother them that they repeatedly end up with the type of embarrassing outcome that was on display last week with Alan Johnson's ID Card?

If, as former Home Secretary John Reid once commented, parts of the Home Office are "not fit for purpose" with "inadequate" leadership and management systems, how do we fix that? This is not, after all, about party politics. But about making sure that Ministers, of any political persuasion, not only receive the best impartial scientific and technical advice, but understand how best to use it in formulating their decisions.

There was a time when the UK's senior civil service prided itself on getting things right. When it took account of a wide variety of inputs, both factual and opinion, in order to distil the best available options and hence help enable Ministers to take informed decisions. These days however, it seems instead to be focused merely on getting things done.

The sooner we can help restore a more professional model the better. The current model works well for no-one -- be they citizens, scientists, technologists, civil servants, or indeed, politicians.

At this rate the only applicant for the Home Office's vacant Chief Scientific Advisor role will be Mystic Meg. Or, thinking about it, perhaps she already has the role? Now that could help explain a lot...

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