บทถอดความฉบับเต็มของ Digital ID, single-sign-on, and what government knows about you

--> 00:04:51.360 For that, you need something called single sign-on. 00:04:51.759 --> 00:04:56.800 If you read the fine print on GC Key, it says GC Key is not an account. 00:04:57.120 --> 00:04:59.279 It's just an authentication service. 00:05:00.240 --> 00:05:05.279 You may need to separately register for each individual program and service. 00:05:05.680 --> 00:05:10.000 It even says, do not bookmark pages after you have signed in. 00:05:10.639 --> 00:05:16.000 This makes government services really hard to navigate, and plenty of people profit from that complexity. 00:05:16.319 --> 00:05:20.240 Tax filing services that charge you to navigate CRA's labyrinth. 00:05:20.480 --> 00:05:24.800 Immigration consultants who charge you thousands because the process is deliberately opaque. 00:05:25.040 --> 00:05:28.720 Grant writers extracting money from impossible programs. 00:05:29.040 --> 00:05:35.600 These people aren't adding value, they're extracting rent from the friction that exists within our government services. 00:05:35.839 --> 00:05:38.720 In a well-designed system, your taxes would be automatic. 00:05:38.879 --> 00:05:40.800 The government already knows what you earned. 00:05:40.959 --> 00:05:44.959 You wouldn't need an expert to tell you which benefits you qualify, because the system would tell you. 00:05:45.199 --> 00:05:50.959 But we've built something so complicated that navigating it has become an industry. 00:05:51.199 --> 00:05:56.160 And it costs us billions of dollars and years of human life. 00:05:56.560 --> 00:06:00.319 Then there's the next problem single source of truth. 00:06:00.560 --> 00:06:08.079 Once you're authenticated, so I know who you are, and you're authorized, so I know what you can do, I need to clean things up. 00:06:08.319 --> 00:06:16.079 I need one authoritative record of something like your address, rather than dozens of outdated records scattered across departments. 00:06:16.800 --> 00:06:23.439 That's hard too, because in Canada we have a law preventing departments from sharing information with one another unless it's necessary. 00:06:23.680 --> 00:06:30.959 That law was written around the time we invented the internet, before we knew every citizen would have apps in their pockets. 00:06:31.199 --> 00:06:40.800 And this means that when you update your address of the CRA or Service Canada or Canada Post or your bank or any one of dozens of other services, nothing is in sync. 00:06:41.040 --> 00:06:44.079 In fact, you become the synchronization layer. 00:06:44.240 --> 00:06:47.600 We have over 200 portals with 60 separate logins. 00:06:47.920 --> 00:06:56.480 That means 60 separate security perimeters to guard and 60 separate copies of your personal information, each one out of date because you haven't updated it yet. 00:06:57.040 --> 00:07:02.160 And there's a final piece to this digital identity thing, which is ask me once. 00:07:02.560 --> 00:07:08.800 Ask me once is a policy in some countries that says the government may only ask you once for a piece of information. 00:07:09.040 --> 00:07:11.439 That only works if there's a single source of truth. 00:07:11.600 --> 00:07:14.000 It doesn't work if your address is in ten places. 00:07:14.160 --> 00:07:17.279 But what it does is force government apps to work better. 00:07:17.519 --> 00:07:34.079 When you have a baby, you register the birth of the province, you apply for a social insurance number, you update your taxes for the Child Canada benefit, apply for parental leave through EI, update your health card, and three other things you'll forget until a letter arrives demanding to know why you didn't. 00:07:34.560 --> 00:07:38.160 In Estonia, you register the birth once. 00:07:38.480 --> 00:07:39.759 Benefits arrive. 00:07:39.920 --> 00:07:41.759 It's called the once-only principle. 00:07:41.839 --> 00:07:42.639 It's law. 00:07:42.879 --> 00:07:45.920 The government cannot ask you for information it already has. 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:47.519 You tell them once. 00:07:47.759 --> 00:07:51.600 Every department that needs it queries the authoritative source. 00:07:51.759 --> 00:07:57.120 No copies, no re-entering data, no separately update your address with each department. 00:07:57.360 --> 00:07:58.959 The UK does this too. 00:07:59.120 --> 00:08:10.000 When someone dies in England, the family notifies once, and 2.4 million updates flow automatically to partner organizations every year. 00:08:10.240 --> 00:08:16.879 Meanwhile, here in Canada, we spend weeks proving to seven departments that we had a baby while caring for that baby. 00:08:17.120 --> 00:08:21.279 Our government treats you like a stranger who might be lying about having a child. 00:08:21.759 --> 00:08:26.639 And then finally, there's access logging, the right to see who's looked at your data and why. 00:08:27.040 --> 00:08:32.000 Except in Canada, we can't have any of these things, and everyone will tell you it's for your privacy. 00:08:32.240 --> 00:08:35.840 Plenty of Canadians think their government is big brother, and they're not wrong. 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:43.360 The government already knows enormous amount your income, your employment, immigration status, health claims, travel, benefits, debts. 00:08:43.679 --> 00:08:48.559 But you have almost no way to find out what the government knows about you. 00:08:49.039 --> 00:08:52.000 Try writing an access to information request. 00:08:52.159 --> 00:08:55.759 You need to know what you're looking for per department in writing. 00:08:56.000 --> 00:09:01.360 The legal timeline is 30 days to get you an answer, but the actual average is 83 days. 00:09:01.519 --> 00:09:09.759 In Ontario, it's 182 days, and adjudicators found 59% of cases involve wrongful withholding. 00:09:10.080 --> 00:09:14.399 The Globe and Mail called this a broken affront to democracy. 00:09:14.720 --> 00:09:22.399 The current system gives the government maximum access to your information, and it gives you nearly zero visibility into what it has. 00:09:22.639 --> 00:09:32.720 And yet somehow, thanks to a bunch of special interest groups, we've been convinced that chopping it all up protects our privacy when in fact it makes it easier for the government to hide it. 00:09:32.960 --> 00:09:36.879 In Estonia, when a government employee accesses your file, you see it. 00:09:37.120 --> 00:09:39.919 In real time, time stamped and tamper proof. 00:09:40.080 --> 00:09:44.000 That's not Big Brother watching you, that's you watching Big Brother. 00:09:44.240 --> 00:09:45.919 We built the opposite. 00:09:46.240 --> 00:09:50.879 Maximum data collection, minimum citizen visibility, and we called it freedom. 00:09:51.039 --> 00:09:55.600 Countries that implement these systems save 1 to 2% of their GDP. 00:09:55.919 --> 00:09:59.919 For Canada, that's$22 to$40 billion a year. 00:10:00.159 --> 00:10:04.879 Even at a quarter of that, we're talking more than the entire federal housing budget. 00:10:05.200 --> 00:10:10.559 I said at the outset that we trust each other more than other countries, but we don't trust our government. 00:10:10.799 --> 00:10:12.000 It's worse than that. 00:10:12.159 --> 00:10:22.240 The current system erodes the trust we have in each other by forcing us into adversarial relationships with institutions and polarizing us politically. 00:10:22.480 --> 00:10:39.600 The fix isn't a moonshot, it's a login button, a legal framework saying departments must share instead of hoarding, passing laws that make it illegal for the government to ask you for data it already has, and the political will to make the tax authority get on board. 00:10:40.720 --> 00:10:42.960 Political will is the hard part. 00:10:43.200 --> 00:10:47.679 Because the debate we're having, should we build digital identity is the wrong question. 00:10:47.919 --> 00:10:49.519 We already have digital identity. 00:10:49.600 --> 00:10:55.840 It's 60 broken systems, each with your data, none of them talking to each other, none of them letting you see what's inside. 00:10:56.080 --> 00:10:59.039 The real question is whether we want one that works. 00:10:59.200 --> 00:11:04.000 One that gives you visibility into what the government knows about you instead of keeping you blind. 00:11:04.240 --> 00:11:09.840 One that saves you the time and money of proving you exist to department after department, year after year. 00:11:10.080 --> 00:11:15.600 One that costs billions less, delivers billions more, and gives you back your life. 00:11:16.080 --> 00:11:20.080 Right now we're choosing 60 passwords and calling it freedom. 00:11:20.399 --> 00:11:24.000 Thanks for joining us on the Functional Government Podcast.