Gov 2.0 Summit 09 Video 13

Comment by Scott Bryan on September 27, 2009 at 6:23pm

My blog is about exactly the kind of ideas he's looking for. http://ananiasacts.blogspot.com

Comment by Scott Bryan on September 27, 2009 at 7:00pm

We need a map of our economy. The ideal would be a complete list of every economic event and everything that can be known about it. (when, where, who, etc.) Think of it as a universal transactor--it stands between the parties of all transactions as a sort of escrow agent. It could protect us from exploitation by limiting the information available to the entities we do business with. It creates an asset out of our consumption history that belongs to us, and can be sold repeatedly by us to earn additional income, or kept completely private. It facilitates the deployment of far more sophisticated correlations between lifestyle and health, would allow us to discover and adopt preventative medicines far more rapidly. It could save duplication, waste, errors, and overhead for every business or person that uses it.

I feel we must be very proactive in dealing with issues like privacy, identity theft, and other electronic fraud. There is a vast amount of data about us in millions of private databases at varying degrees of risk. This is a recipe for disaster I think. Our government could adopt a strategy that removed that risk--that prevented a credit card issuer, for example, from knowing what you bought or where you bought it, or treating you any differently than anyone else with the same circumstances because to them you would be just a number the government warrants as representing a person with such and such a credit rating, income, etc. A universal transactor solves a great many problems, obsoletes many kinds of fraud, undermines the underground economy, and provides a whole new world of opportunities to better enable citizens to find a meaningful economic role in our society.

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