By silicon.com, 26 May 2005 08:15
Second time around the government is taking a much more low key - and believable - approach with its identity cards plan.
Perhaps chastened by its performance in the General Election, the government has repositioned ID cards as a tool to help tackle identity theft and stop the abuse of public services - rather than as a weapon against global terrorism.
The cards will be "first and foremost for the benefit of citizens", says the Home Office, which claims the cards will help reduce the £1.3bn per year lost to identity theft.
At the same time, the cards could cut costs for government by ensuring that people using public services are entitled to do so.
The private sector can benefit as well by using the cards to make sure the individuals they think they are doing business with really are who they claim to be - although they will have to pay for access to the database.
And in case all these advantages don't sway you, 70 per cent of the cost of the system will come from introducing biometric passports which are on the way anyway, so piggybacking ID cards on bio-passports doesn't even cost so much, the government says.
All of this is to be welcomed. The argument for ID cards preventing terrorism was always a weak one, so renewed focus on the everyday benefits of the project is wise.
But it is unclear whether the benefits of the cards will outweigh the costs and disadvantages. Many will see the cards narrowing their individual freedom too much for little visible benefit.
And it remains to be seen whether the benefits outweigh the high cost of the system - nearly £600m per year.
Of course for many the biggest risk is the technology. While the government can point to other implementations of biometrics, there are very few on anywhere near the same scale.
Setting a target of 2008 seems very optimistic for such a cutting edge technology - especially as getting it wrong would be a true disaster.
Leaving aside the broader debate about how ID cards change the relationship between individual and state, creating a stable, trusted identity is something that can hold benefits for the individual, business and the public sector.
This project could be a great chance for the IT industry to play a big role in making the UK a better place to live and work - let's make sure it goes smoothly.
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
The biggest risk to the ID card scheme is people refusing to provide biometric data.
2. anonymous
I didn't know Silicon contained so much crap!
"This project could be a great chance for the IT industry to play a big role in making the UK a better place to live and work - let's make sure it goes smoothly."
Make loads of money more like.
3. Peter Stearn
Is Silicon on the payroll too?
"This project could be a great chance for the IT industry to play a big role in making the UK a better place to live and work - let's make sure it goes smoothly."
Pathetic.
It should read:
"This project could be a great chance for the IT industry to make loads of money - let's make sure we're on the payroll too."
4. Richard
Very Poor ROI:
Only this crazy goverment could consider spending "£600M per year" to "reduce" (ie. NOT stop) the "£1300M per year lost to identity theft."
That's in addition to the high capital and set-up costs; together with the costs to be borne by individuals and non-government organizations.
Even if the ID project is successful, this is a very poor ROI.
There are many much more worthwhile targets for this massive spending and use of skilled technologists.
5. Ian Buckland
The advantages you talk about - "creating a stable, trusted identity is something that can hold benefits for the individual, business and the public sector." - could easily be achieved without the tracking database that will sit behind the scheme. The database will be the biggest threat to civil liberties the west has ever seen. I predict that oppressive states in the world will want to copy Bliar's big brother tactics.
6. anonymous
The ID card scheme is itself a fraud. How many billions of UK citizens' money will go to IT companies?
7. Guy Herbert
The £1.3bn figure for "identity fraud" that gets quoted and requoted so often comes from a 2002 Cabinet Office study that seems to have been produced seemingly only in order to be quoted by ministers to frighten people. It contains no actual research or useful information and calling it a "study" is probably too strong. Gallimaufry of guesses from a departmental ring-round is more like it.
As far as the Government is concerned cardholder-not-present credit card fraud, and an estimated proportion of the estimated total of missing trader VAT fraud are "identity fraud". Together they account for most of that clanging £1.3bn a year. If you don't think those would be solved by ID cards (and you also believe ID cards wouldn't increase some forms of fraud), then we are already talking about a benefit of less than the £583 million (suspiciously precisely) estimated for the running cost of the ID scheme.