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For the sake of clarity and manageability, this article is in the form of a checklist. It will be published in two parts. The first part in this issue presents some practical and juridical characteristics of personal number systems. But at the end of the day, it is the number strategy that matters. The second part in the next issue, therefore, covers some important aspects of any number strategy and presents a step-by-step plan for the choice, design or assessment of number systems and strategies. Within the Dutch government there is a discussion going on about the introduction of a general personal number for compulsory use by every government agency or any private organization with a public task. The main conclusion of the analysis in this article is, however, that such a number strategy is not good enough for a complex information society. Sectoral personal numbers are the cornerstones of safety and privacy.They should not be put at stake. This article has the Dutch situation in mind, but the analysis and conclusions apply to many other democratic jurisdictions as well.

This is the second of a series of two articles in which the author presents some key elements from his recently completed thesis about functional, non-intrusive information infrastructures for interorganisational public policy implementation. The development of these information infrastructures requires a new approach - chain-computerisation - based on new concepts and practices. This methodology is vital for public administration if the problems associated with interorganisational policy implementation are to be overcome. Chain-computerisation recognises the impossibility in many interorganisational settings of implementing government policy, because no single organisational actor has authority over the system. The methodology of chain-computerisation can be applied to many situations where public policy is to be implemented under close co-operation between many autonomous public and private organisations. The first article gave a brief description of the new approach, chain-computerisation, on the basis of some examples. The emphasis was placed on the management aspect: the streamlining of information exchange within and between value chains. In this second article the emphasis is placed on the social significance of chain-computerisation, which brings about information infrastructures with which privacy and anonymous legal transactions can better be supported. System concepts for the organisational border-transgressing exchange of information are not merely a question of technology, but also determine the quality of the information society through the way in which the computerisation of society takes place. It is for this reason that policy makers will have to involve themselves more in those system concepts. To them, the new chain-computerisation approach incorporates an alternative to traditional system concepts. This alternative at the same time clarifies implicit social choices in the traditional system concepts. It will be clear that the examples used here reflect the legal context of the Netherlands or the European Union, but the insights described can also be applied to other governmental and legal cultures.

In two articles the author presents some key elements from his recently completed thesis about functional, non-intrusive information infrastructures for interorganisational public policy implementation. The development of these information infrastructures requires a new approach, chain-computerisation, based on new concepts and practices. This methodology is vital for public administration, if the problems associated with interorganisational policy implementation are to be overcome. Chain-computerisation recognises the impossibility in many interorganisational settings of implementing government policy, because no single organisational actor has authority over the system. Thus, for example, a Dutch requirement that prisoners serving longer prison sentences must notify the Benefits system so that benefit paid can be adjusted, cannot be enforced because this multi-agency setting is too complex to allow adequate co-ordinated control. What is needed is an informational solution which automatically signals to the Imprisonment system that a prisoner is receiving benefits. Such highly automated communication systems can also protect privacy, in this particular example by signalling that a note must be sent by the prisoner to his benefit agency rather than by triggering enforcement by the Imprisonment system without the prisoner concerned knowing it. This methodology can be seen as emerged from 'lessons learned' during the period that the author was responsible for the development of information policies at the Dutch Ministry of Justice. Chain-computerisation is explained here by means of examples taken from the penal and social welfare systems, but it should be emphasized that the methodology of chain-computerisation can be applied to many other situations where public policy is to be implemented by close co-operation of many autonomous public and private organisations.

Two new developments in information technology will have a profound effect on the identity issue in our society: multifunctional smartcards and biometrics. The wide-spread use of chipcards will in the future facilitate electronic identities and identity documents. This places identity fraud in a new light because multi¬functional smart-cards make it possible to provide a false identity or pseudo-identity that is difficult to detect during transactions. The fact that identity fraud often forms part of other (serious and organised) crime makes this situation particularly trying. The new information technology not only poses threats, it also provides new weap-ons in the fight against identity fraud. Recognition of personal biometric character-istics makes security in physical and electronic environments truly person-based and can prevent identity fraud. The current verification techniques used to ascertain a person's identity are not person-related. Passwords and Pincodes can be passed on to others, so that knowledge of the number leads only to the presumption of in-volvement. In an information society, a weak form of ascertaining people's identity such as this, will increasingly fall short when the law requires indisputably estab-lished personal involvement. Consider for example a summons, a penal pro¬vision to a person, a contract, a government order: they are legally invalid or ineffective when the person(s) concerned cannot be established with certainty. In a strategic alliance biometrics and chipcards can be a powerful weapon for card holders and issuers in the fight against identity fraud and other misuse of cards. But we must then regard identity as the product of a chain in which hundreds of orga¬nisations co-operate in preventing identity fraud. This memorandum outlines this identity chain and highlights a number of important shortcomings in the Dutch identity chain as it stands today. To conclude, an outline will be given of an improvement programme.

Two trends are present in both the private and public domain: increasing interorganisational co-operation and increasing digitisation. Nowadays, more and more processes within and between organisations take place electronically. These developments are visible on local, national and European scale. Research, strategy and policy often focus on the technological issues, whereas the organisational issues are complex and important as well. These issues prove to be difficult on a local scale and barely manageable on national and European scales, because the number of parties increases greatly and because of differences in culture, legislation and IT infrastructure. We introduce the theoretical framework of Chain-computerisation that explains large-scale chain co-operation as an answer to a dominant chain problem. Identity fraud proves to be the dominant chain problem in many chain co-operation situations. Therefore, our main research question is: what is a successful information strategy to combat identity fraud in the large-scale processes that constitute the public domain? Next, we demonstrate the problem of identity fraud using the example of the Dutch criminal justice chain, showing that a certain chain communication system enables to stop identity fraud using forensic biometrics. The second example is about healthcare. In the Netherlands, the government is introducing a national system of medical information exchange based on the national personal number as the sole identifier for recognition and linking. We show that people sometimes have interest in using somebody else's number, to be treated in cases (s)he is not insured. This identity fraud can contaminate medical records on a national scale. We ponder about infrastructural elements that enable international exchange of medical information on a European scale and ask ourselves which additional safeguards will be necessary on this enormous scale. The examples are taken from our chain analysis programme that has an exploratory, empirical character. A chain ...