By Andy McCue, 31 May 2005 17:25
NEWS The cost of the government's proposed biometric national ID card scheme will more than treble to £18bn, according to a report by experts at the London School of Economics (LSE).
A regulatory impact assessment by the Home Office last year put the cost of the controversial ID card scheme at around £5.5bn over 10 years but the LSE study to be released later this week estimates the actual cost will work out at between £12bn and £18bn.
That would mean the cost of a biometric ID card rising from the current Home Office figure of £93 paid by each citizen to a cost of more than £300 per individual.
Among the factors the LSE claims the government has underestimated is the cost of the biometric card readers which will need to be installed to verify the ID cards.
The Home Office claims this will be between £250 and £700 per card reader but the LSE cites UK Passport Agency research, which found more expensive readers costing between £3,000 and £4,000 would be needed to cope with the level of detail the government is proposing to store on the cards.
Dr Gus Hosein, fellow at the LSE, told silicon.com the costs in the government's current ID card plans simply do not stack up.
"They are pretty much pulling them out of the air. We shouldn't trust the government's costing on any of this," he said.
Hosein also questioned the suitability of multiple biometric identifiers to be used in such a vast and complex project.
"There aren't any large-scale biometric ID schemes like this anywhere in the world. I don't think biometric technology was made to be done on this scale," he said.
The Home Office said it disagreed with the LSE figures but declined to reveal the cost of setting up the ID card scheme citing "reasons of commercial confidentiality".
A spokeswoman also declined to comment on why the government figures should be trusted when it had already revised the cost and purpose of the ID cards upwards three times from an initial £25 per card back in 2003 to the current figure of £93.
Click here for all silicon.com's recent ID card coverage.
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. Neil Postlethwaite
Maybe they should get Tesco Clubcard to run it. Would be a damn site cheaper, and would probably work.
I have never understood why the biometric data needs to be on the card *AND* a database, all you need is an individual secure 'logon' to identify you which pulls the data from central records, something like an RSA SecureID tag springs to mind. They are about £40 a pop. Or the
Tesco clubcard scanable kefobs, at probably 1p each.
2. Alfred Reading
Don't know about Tesco. I have applied twice for a Tesco card but still have not got one.
3. anonymous
Forget the implementation cost, it's totally irrelevant, partly as the project will never be completed due to cost overruns and technology problems.
Another factor is that in 2002/03 the police performed 869,164 stop and searches. Assume this number stays the same and an ID card is verified in each case.
If the accurate identification rate from the biometrics can be increased to 97.5% from the current around 80% level then 21,729 people would presumably be arrested just for having forged ID cards. Of course there is then no real way for them to prove their identity without an extensive investigation. Let's assume this takes 3 hours of police time. this then costs 8,148 man days of police time and leaves over 21,000 very annoyed people each year. Remeber this is just to prove an 'identity' it won't flash up 'Terrorist' or 'Criminal' anywhere.
4. anonymous
The UK is a beta site for all large IT projects. What is actually being tested is the ability of goverments to spend vast sums of public money and get away with it. The schemes have little if no benefit to anyone except large, often American, IT companies, their financiers and the puppet goverments they install.
5. anonymous
£18bn eh?
Sounds like some computer-consultant is going to get very, very rich.
I might event put in a tender myself...
Let's see, 60m residents in the UK, so 60m rows in a database - could almost fit it in a Access .mdb file!
I don't know where these people make up their figures. But that is irrelevant. The schem will be a complete waste of taxpayers' money unless the Governament can *absolutely* guarantee that NONE of these will ever happen:
1. Cards will be stolen
2. Cards will be forged
3. Criminals will tell lies
4. Terrorist will tell lies
6. bill o'keefe
cheaper to tatoo a number on everyones right forearm.
7. anonymous
"Let's assume this takes 3 hours of police time." Arresting anyone for anything takes about three hours of police time. To investigate something is a different order of expense.
An ID card system would mean several more staff in every police station. Who's going to run and maintain all those biometric scanners? The LSE is focussing on the wrong things just like the Home Office. The unit cost of the things is going to be irrelevant compared with the hundred-thousand-a-year or so support costs for every one in use in the public sector.