Costs of a Single Citizen View

Liliendahl on Data Quality is a blog "about data quality and master data management." Readers with interest in the subjects we cover here may also find Mr. Sørensen's site of interest, as well.

His recent post, inspired by India's UID Project, got me thinking.

Back in the late 60’s the United States was able to put a man on the moon.

It was at the same time that the Scandinavian countries implemented their “single citizen view”.

Besides digitalizing the national identification number Sweden also, in 1967, managed to change from driving on the left side of the road to driving on the right side. I’m not sure if Sweden could afford turning to the right side today not to say the United Kingdom doing the same.

It certainly does seem (regarding biometrics, anyway) that the appetite for huge projects is greater in the developing world than among the developed economies. India, Nigeria and Ghana come to mind as examples of countries attempting large-scale ID deployments.

Admittedly, developed countries have already developed ID management institutions that, while they were very costly to develop, work quite well today. See: Biometric Identity Management, an Information Age Revolution. But Mr. Sørensen's piece makes you wonder if there isn't more to it than that.