Report - Guardian

68 The LSE Identity Project Report: June 2005development of e-government must grant citizens more transparencyin the monitoring of their administrative papers and better control oftheir personal details (confidentiality, right to access and correct dataregarding them).” 160To enable this, the Government intends to provide tools and services “which will enable[citizens and professionals] to exercise their rights more simply and completely.” Thesetools and services include :Decentralised Storage of DataThe French Ministry of State Reform is aware that there are several options available,including centralising all the data of every user, but notes that, “This solution is notimplemented in any country, for obvious reasons of individual freedoms and neartechnical impossibility.” The French Government proposes instead that all data willremain decentralised within each department.Distributed IdentifiersThe French strategy acknowledges that the easiest solution would be to call for a uniqueuniversal identifier for all citizens, but the French designers have foremost in mind thatprivacy law was created to prevent a situation such as this. They further note that theGermans consider such an approach to be an unconstitutional practice. The FrenchGovernment position states:“It should be remembered that, with regard to e-government, the Statemust take a stance as guarantor (of individual freedoms, theauthenticity and enforceability of dematerialised procedures andactions, the security of actions carried out by public servants, etc.) andthe Government wishes to confirm this position clearly both in theformulation of the decisions taken and in their methods ofapplication.”As a result, French authorities do not see the need for anything more than sectoralidentifiers to preserve rights. They also admit that a solution such as the nationalregistry in the UK, that would include a listing of all relevant identifiers, “wouldprobably not go down too well in our country” 161 . Instead the French Ministry of StateReform calls for the creation of an ‘identity federator’:“the most successful solution consists of creating an identity federator,enabling the user to use the single identifier to access each of theservices of his or her choice without either the government databasesor the identity federator itself being able to make the link between thedifferent identifiers.”Further proposals include an on-line environment where the user can verify all the usageof her personal information, and give consent if information needs to be shared between160 Ibid, page 13.161 Ibid, page 15.