Electoral Roll Scenario (UK)

In The United Kingdom, each resident person over the age of 18 is entitled to vote (in local and national elections).

This entitlement is manifested in the individuals presence on The Electoral Roll. The Electoral Roll is managed by the local government (councils/ authorities) that administer each area, there are 433 in total in The UK.

The full register contains the following information:

• voter number (two letters indicating the polling district, followed by a number)
• voter's name and address
• date of birth (if 18th birthday falls within a year of the register is published)
• if the voter has requested a postal vote
• after an election, an indication of whether or not that voter cast their vote

That an individual has a record on the electoral roll is the bedrock on the personal data 'industry' in the UK; it is the platform on which much is built - this is because this record has a) a relatively high degree of assurance that their is an individual at a certain address with this name and date of birth, and b) that this data can be acquired for onward use at relatively small cost (e.g. by credit bureau, marketing services providers etc).

However, at present, the individual has one of the few who don't have the capability to use their electoral roll record to prove their identity. This changes when, as is now becoming apparent in the Mydex Community Prototype, a local authority is able to make that electoral roll presence available digitally for the individual to use in their personal data store.

This scenario can be couched in terms of a UMA (User Managed Access) Scenario and Use Case. The electoral roll scenario has some similarities to the 'Sharing Trustworthy Data With Future Employers' one that has been accepted as an input to the UMA protocol development.

The electoral roll scenario framed for use in UMA development might be entitled 'Sharing Verified Address Data With Individuals and Organisations I Wish to Be Able to See/ Use It'.

The information flow presently covers both the offline and online world, although part of the logic in exploring this issue is that governments (e.g. UK) would be keen to move as much/ all of this process online if that were to possible without loss of security/ identity assurance.

At present, each local council/ authority mails its citizen base once each year, with one letter to each property on its database. This letter will either be addressed to a known 'head of household' from the previous years survey, or to 'the occupier'. Responding to this letter is a legal obligation, the head of household must complete base level details (name and date of birth and opt-out/ opt-in for edited roll/ direct marketing, address is assumed) of each resident. (aside - actual response rate is by no means 100% complete or 100% accurate, and obviously there is an 'in-year' lag in the data. The postal response from an originally letter posted to a specific address is assumed to be strong enough proof that an individual does indeed reside at that address on a permanent basis (with some assumptions/ modifications made around specific communities like students, military personnel etc).

When returned to the electoral roll manager at the local authority, it is then his/ her role to collate and 'manage access' to that roll, and each record on it. Access to the individuals electoral roll record at present works as follows:

1) The council publishes a hard copy of the roll in local libraries and in the town hall in order that a local citizen can use it manually (there is no restriction in use within the location of publication).

2) The council sells an electronic copy of the roll to anyone who wants to buy it, and makes it available for use in local and national elections by political parties and those managing elections.

Aside: UK is in the process of updating how The Electoral Roll is managed from the policy perspective, with an Act of Parliament mandating that new process be in place by 2014 that ensure the electoral roll record is maintained by each individual voter, rather than by head of household as happens at present. The Act of Parliament does not/ will not mandate any specific technological route for the new mechanism, technical choices will be made on merit, with each deployer able to make their own decisions.

One individual-centric variant of a new process could work as follows: