ICO uncertain about DfE wallet pilot

The Information Commissioner’s Office has just replied to an email from UCDx about the Department for Education’s wallet pilot, which is being tested in the ICO’s Regulatory Sandbox. DfE has not publicised its wallet  plans. But details revealed in response to a series of FOI requests indicate that it proposes to enable secondary school leavers […]

Another go at the DfE

In March 24, UCDx wrote again to the Secretary of  State for Education, Gillian Keegan, about the benefits of UCD as new digital infrastructure for the sector. We emphasised the potential of UCD as new ‘wiring’ for education, enabling learmers to gather their own digital learning and qualification records from all kinds of learning providers, […]

Google & antitrust

Yesterday, on the 20th October, the US Department of Justice, joined by 11 US states, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google. The lawsuit, submitted in federal court in Washington DS, accuses Google  of attempting to monoplize the marker for search-generated advertising, using contracts –  such as the agreement with Apple to put its search app […]

Names: SSI &/or UCD ?

Naming things is hard. Names that mean one thing when first conceived have the alarming habit of acquiring different connotations as time passes, mostly unexpected and unwanted. I should know. Twenty years ago, I started my first company in the identity field. It was called Edentity. Back in those happy days, it was easy to […]

Surveillance Capitalism

Sometimes, it can help – when explaining a set of ideas  – to describe their opposite. For UCD, this task has been ably accomplished by Shoshana Zuboff, a professor at Harvard Business School. In her 2019 book ‘ The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’, and various earlier articles,  Prof Zuboff explains how users of technology have […]