European Business Management School

The informatics infrastructure supporting the Information Society requires the aggregation of data about individuals in electronic records. Such data structures demand that individuals be uniquely identified and this is critical to the necessary process of 'authentication' associated with the use of e-Business, e-Government and potentially e-Democracy systems. It is also necessary to the representation of human interactions as data transactions supporting various forms of governance structure: hierarchies, markets and networks. In this paper we use the agenda surrounding the proposed introduction of a national identity card in the UK as an empirical backbone for considering the issue of personal identification. Currently, the UK government is attempting to relate the rights and entitlements of citizenship in the UK with a standard electronic identifier for British citizens and its instantiation in an 'entitlements card'. This attempt to define legitimising identity seems to us a potentially fruitful empirical source for examining the conceptual and pragmatic issues associated with personal identification in the information age. Such a card offers numerous potential benefits for individuals and organisations but its introduction raises major challenges to data protection, data privacy and public trust in the information governance of the UK. He is currently a member of the British Computer Society and the UK Academy of Information Systems. Before taking up an academic post he worked for several years in the information systems industry in the UK both in the public and private sectors. He still regularly acts as a consultant to the public and private sector particularly in the area of information and communications technology (ICT) and its impact on organisational performance. Dr. Beynon-Davies has published widely in the field of information systems. He has currently published nine books and over fifty academic papers on topics ranging from electronic business, electronic government, information systems planning, information systems development and database systems. Paul Beynon-Davies has engaged in a number of government-funded projects related to the impact of ICT on the economic, social and political spheres. Recently he was involved in an evaluation of electronic local government in Wales. He is currently working with the National Assembly for Wales (NAfW) as an evaluator of its Cymru-ar-Lein/Information Age strategy for Wales. This information age strategy aims to ensure that Wales takes full advantage of the ICT revolution. Introduction The informatics infrastructure supporting the Information Society requires the aggregation of data about individuals in electronic records. Such data structures demand that …