Universal Person Name

The government operated processes of birth registration, naturalisation, etc. should be modified to assign each person a universal name (based on URI methodology) of the form "birthname.time.date of birth.person.gov.uk" where birthname is the recorded name and uniqueness can be guaranteed by using sufficient precision on time. Citizens whose birth has already been registered should have the right to claim their UPN on demand. Over time, this could then be linked with other personal identifiers such as National Insurance number, driving licence number, passport number, etc. allowing enormous scope for data integration.

The benefits to the state are obvious; they may even be sufficiently great to obviate the need for a formal national identity card since all existing national systems could integrate data held by other systems. Benefits for commercial organisations are obvious too. The benefit for an individual would be the capability to assert their identity in cases of identity theft and have this confirmed by appeal to an unimpeachable source.