Slash the analogue red tape

There's a lot of hope every year in the president's State of the Nation Address, glossing over the difficult bits with a whole bunch of promises that should come with the old E&OE (errors and omissions excepted) small print on ads, contracts and other legal documents.

- KEVIN RITCHIE

One flicker of hope is the promise of a move towards a digital ID - and not just one that you could have on a smartphone, but a digital ID that could incorporate all the other details you need.

In the analogue era pre-1994, there was the so-called Book of Life, a compendium of hatches, matches and possibly dispatches: weddings, divorces, driver's and even gun licences.

Given the much-storied woes with the sole licensing printing machine for our drivers' licences (the backlog is apparently over half a million), it's logical to put everything in one place.