Creating new opportunities with personal information
Just how much could citizens (and organisations) do if they held all the information they needed to get stuff done at their fingertips — so it was always ready and waiting to be used?
You know how it happens. You’re applying for something and they ask you for this one bit of information which you can’t immediately provide. You have to stop what you’re doing and go looking for it. Then, once you’ve found it, simply providing it isn’t enough. You have to prove its valid and correct, and not simply made up. What should be empowering — achieving something in your life — turns into an irritating and potentially stressful obstacle course.
A few weeks back, we started working with the Scottish Government to develop a working prototype for a new approach to handling ‘verified attributes’. The thinking is quite simple. Various Government bodies hold huge amounts of information about us: information that says something about us such as whether we are officially recognised as disabled or are entitled to certain benefits; information that helps identify us such as a national insurance number. This information could be used in lots more ways than it currently is, by lots more people (us included), to lots more things.
If these Government bodies gave this information back to individuals in a safe, electronic form so that they could (as it were) carry it around with them, they could simply this information any time they need to. Straight away. No fuss. No hassle. Just getting stuff done quickly, safely, easily, efficiently.
Not only would this save us lots of time, effort and hassle and help us get more done in our personal lives, it would also help the organisations we deal operate much more efficiently and effectively (because now they have access to the right information at the right time). A true win-win in other words.
An important question follows. If the information organisations hold about us could be used in lots more ways, by lots more people, to do lots more things, where do the biggest opportunities lie and how do we make them happen? The Scottish Government has been pondering these questions in relation to data it holds about citizens, and it has asked Mydex CIC to help them come up with some good answers.
The topline brief is to answer this question: “what new or expanded products could exist if there was a means of supporting citizens to store and then share proven information or attributes about themselves if they wanted to”. In other words, what would an effective ‘Smart Entitlement’ strategy look like?
We’re already uncovering some really exciting opportunities and we’ll be reporting back on our findings over the next couple of months.
