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Thursday, November 19 2015

EU Commission DSM strategy will lead to economic & democratic collapse

By WO5-GANDI on Thursday, November 19 2015, 11:48

Ideological blindness is a deterministic road to failure

In the 1960s, Chinas Mao pushed forward the "Great Leap" to industrialization. The rhetoric was grand and promises even bigger. Only problem was that means lacked linkage to claimed consequences leading to economics disaster, famine and millions of dead chineese while destroying enormous wealth and historic artifacts in a mad raze to industrialize through manufacturing steal.

EUs DG Connect and EU Commission claims of a "data-driven" economy is even worse. Systemic dis-empowerment of citizens with eIDAS and ICT standards with build-in lock-on/surveillance, free flow of unsecure data in both public and private sector as well as systemic profiling and abuse of personal data provide a straight route to market and democratic collapse. The strategy is fundamentally a plan for digital feudalization of Europe.

In this, it hardly makes much question if the source of failure originate in institutional defenselessness to bigtech lobbyism, in yet another European authoritarian ideology (a destructive feudalist combination of BigGov bureaucratcy and BigCorp markets controls), in paranoid fear of terrorism leading the system to self-destruct or in some fourth source of institutional failure.

What is important is the way unscrutinized claims and numbers fabricated in "consultancy reports" on BigData, Identification and OnceOnly gets transformed into "political truths" stripped of any linkage to reality and causality.

What is important is the near-total absence of consideration of alternatives or reflection of impact of means that systemically will dis-empower citizens both in terms of democratic rights and in terms of the consumer power to enforce choice on value chains.

Problem is not ends, but means

The claim here is not that we e.g. do not want knowledge from research, but that we want better knowledge in smarter ways, that do no a priori distort the market processes and reduce citizens to analyzed and managed objects.

The claim here is not that we do not want growth, but that growth is caused by SMARTER use of ressources to produce more individual value. The present means will do the opposite - sacrifice value for the illusion of growth as power gets concentrated and monopolly effects benefits the few at the expense of the many and society overall.

The claim here is not that we do not want protection against criminals and terrorist, but that trying to do so by surveillance of everybody always, only makes security worse by making targets defenseless and providing the means and vectors of scalable attacks, i.e. that "security" thinking in terms of identification is worsening - instead of improving - security.

So what is wrong?

Three Digital Agenda 2012 Linking Security with Economicscore aspects are wrong with DSM.

1) Digitalization is not designed for change and adaption to choice, but to create single-size-fits-all and centralize controls. Especially infrastructure is designed more to prevent competition and innovation than to facilitate it. Solution is to create standards to remain open for change in parallel, i.e. open interfaces for better solution to outperform lesser models and value chains.

2) Security is not design to isolate to prevent interdependence as well as targeted or scaling attacks.

3) ICT and processes are not designed for choice to work as the ONLY way to signal best value of alternative use of resources. Both OnceOnly, commercial profiling and infrastructure are designed to manage and control citizens instead of empowering them to enforce choices on processes.

But EU will reform Data protection regulation?

So what?

If the technology fundamentals are designed to reverse the value chains and reduced citizens to analyzed objects to be managed and traded, soft regulation might do a bit to reduce the damage, but cannot compensate of enable processes and markets to adapt and improve.

Data Protection regulation may REQUIRE good empowering security by design or it will inevitably fail reducing "consent" to a mere excuse for abuse without any real choice possible.

What will work is regulation that require the right to enter into digital transactions WITHOUT identification and enabling means to do so. What will work is regulation that actively reject secondary use of personal data and enable means for citizens themselves to respond to request by collecting data from non-linkable sources and anonymizing/contextually isolating the results for knwoedlge creating processes or services.

But EU Commission is enabling the Single Market?

Won't competition and innovation solve the problem?

It would if markets are allowed to work and citizens empowered to enforce choice.

But fact is that EU is NOT enabling market with present DSM strategy. Eu is through accepting and even investing in bad technology design preventing markets from working by systemically dis-empowering citizens and legitimizing reversal of value chains.

So, to summarize, claiming doing good is no good if means are counter-productive to intended goals.

DG Connect, EU Commission, Andrus Ansip and Günther Oettinger - you ae basically spreading misinformation and vasting taxpayers money on bad investments - you urgently need a change of perspective or be the instrument for European deroute for decades to come

Friday, April 17 2015

EU eGov Once Only - a failure by design. Suggest better ways

By WO5-GANDI on Friday, April 17 2015, 09:46

EU Commission indicate they will raise the "Once Only" principle to strategy without pursuing sustainable solutions.

A bigger mistake can hardly be conceived as it is a certain way to fail - both on economics, security and legally. It is also in unresolvable conflict with both EU Charter as well as numerous regulations and principles.

I would suggest a Pareto better approach is to provide citizens with tools to respond to requests for data or answers that know what data has been provided and is able to reuse data (from all sources) and provide answers that do not add linkability. I suggested this 10 years ago Nobel Week - eGov Trust

"Once Only" is the principle that citizens should only provide data to authorities once - and it is then the task of authorities to organize reuse of data to all purposes internally.

From a first reading "Once Only" may seem like good governance as citizens and companies hate being bothered with the same question and it creates double work.

The assumption of “Once Only” being good governance is, however, an illusion ignoring the obvious disaster created by choice and by design while hiding the real question.

The EU choice is based on reports like this (Characteristic for this report is that it has no reality checks or alternative considerations. The economics is cherry-picking not standing to even the lightest scrutiny)

But why is "Once Only" wrong?

Because it does imply 3 mistakes at the same time

1) Incompatible with security in public sector. The only way government can take responsible of using data for non-related purposes is if there is inherently no data security and thus citizens are stripped of all controls. Instead of providing data to the specific purpose, data is feed to general purpose public sector profiling. The choice thereby is not about citizen convenience, but a strategic choice to abandon all possibility of security in public sector - a mistake that can hardly be underestimated.

2) Reverse value chains. The inherent danger when providing data for statistics, research and administration is that such data will revert back into operational system thereby creating seriously negative Command & Control damage to the value system. If government officials assume they already know, they don´t ask and thus create structures that do NOT adopt to real actual needs and choice but force citizens to adapt to system assumptions, however wrong they may be. This create legacy on a grand scale making eGovenment increasingly more ineffective to provide value for money.

This is not only the lesson of former Eastern European regimes. This report is essentially based on scaling numbers fabricated by danish authorities to claim success, but the overall numbers don´t lie. As indication see e.g. Danish Statistics on productivity changes dropping steadily since IT-based centralized bureaucracy was introduced http://www.dst.dk/da/Statistik/NytHtml.aspx?cid=20274

3) "Once Only" creates unsustainable power structures. The assumption that public authorities is trustworthy and only wants to do what is good and legal fails to all historic tests and understanding of how systems operate. Such power structures become self-preserving and self-expanding always scanning for new "excuses" to act and justify their own existence. Without checks and balances bureaucracy will scale out of control and "Once Only" prevent such Checks and Balance based on citizens choice.

Everything gets linked the back-door way while the structure prevent needs-driven innovation. "Once Only" is an inherently destabilizing structure. Instead of becoming better at serving society, the structures will scale mistakes and failures until it cracks.

I claim that "Once Only" is not only a strategic governance mistake of epic proportions, but ignorant to better alternatives based on Citizen Empowerment.

Friday, August 8 2014

Public Sector is lacking a sustainable vision - need a third way

By WO5-GANDI on Friday, August 8 2014, 10:05

The Public Sector is falling for the "easy" central solutions trap

Governments everywhere are working hard to get the benefits of the Digital revolution - driven by the "easy" solution of giving citizens direct access to transactions systems both to save administrative costs and to give better service. The intentions are good and tempting.

However the easy Central Approach paradigm fail to understand and incorporate the dangers and damage of simply plugging identified citizens onto centralized it-systems like we have been doing with employees. Consequences are devastating for all critical evaluation dimensions - economics, security, rights and usability.

Countries are pursuing approaches with minor differences, but when you analyses approaches they are all based on Single National Id and massive centralization of power and control while failing to build sustainable structures that can adapt to individual needs and choice. Not a single version of a citizen- and needs-centric approach without even the potential of creating Citizen Profit seems presently under implementation.

The problems are much worse than simply a lack of citizen involvement in the development phase - the root problem of the massive centralized approach pursued almost everywhere is that we loose flexibility, adaptiveness while risks are rapidly scaling out of control and systemic misuse and economic distortions at the expense of society is exponentially growing.

The alternative is not decentralized lack of structure or manual structures as that would loose the potential benefits from digitalization. It is often seen political spin to use this as a strawman for worse centralized approaches.

Making this a question of plague or cholera is failing to understand the real problems and questions in how to utilize the benefits of digital networking without massive concentration of power and risk leading to an increasingly ineffective and unstable society. We need a third way.

What we need is a Public Sector Renaissance driven by better understanding of the economics and digital requirements. A public sector where processes adapt to individual needs instead of adapting citizens to the implicit behavioral control and interests involved in the provisioning structures.

But this also require the nuances to respect that a public sector is not - and should not be considered - a homogeneous unit, there are vastly different problems related to creating and maintaining a framework for society such as emergency response and critical infrastructure in one end over sustainable legal and court justice to effective Public Sector services such as e,g. healthcare and education in the other end.

To understand the core of a Digital Renaissance, we need to start by assuring we are asking the right questions and defining sustainable principles while also exposing the rapidly escalating problems of the centralized approach.