By silicon.com, 10 July 2006 16:45
It's been just over a year since silicon.com launched the ID Cards on Trial campaign.
In that year we've heard warnings from the government's Information Commissioner that the database at the heart of the project is "unwarranted and intrusive".
We've also seen the Home Office's claims about the cost of identity fraud (a key justification for the project) comprehensively debunked, while all the time the predicted cost of the project has continued to rise.
Most recently, yesterday's Sunday Times revealed that civil servants at the heart of the project are questioning whether it can work at all. As one said: "I conclude that we are setting ourselves up to fail."
Our campaign has always had the backing of senior figures in the political and IT community - but this is the first time we've heard top figures inside the project making comments that echo our concerns.
silicon.com's objections to ID cards haven't been about the civil liberties issues (although there's a doozy) but about the way the government has insisted on commissioning one of the most complicated IT systems of all time with little understanding of whether it is possible or not.
From the complexities of the biometrics to the central database which will store huge amounts of personal information, through to the complexities of integrating ID cards with existing systems, there are big question marks over the government's plans.
As one by one the political justifications for ID cards - such as terrorism and identity fraud - fall by the wayside, and as the government seems stumped by the technical difficulties of the project, it becomes harder and harder to see why we should support it.
And when you consider the broader political scheme of things, it seems there could be more rocky times for the ID cards project ahead.
Labour isn't certain to win the next election and the Tories have made clear their desire to scrap the project - hardly the sort of outlook to make the IT companies bidding for the project happy. So with every minor delay to the procurement process, the ID cards plan risks losing more momentum.
Millions of pounds have already been spent but it's not too late to stop before that becomes billions.
ID cards have been revealed to be an all-but-undeliverable technology and lack a useful purpose. The government should put the whole project on hold to rethink the justification and the IT plans underpinning it before we have another huge IT project failure on our hands.
Read silicon.com's A to Z of ID cards for the lowdown on this controversial project.
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. Charles Smith
The new Biometric Passport store key facial elements from your photograph. To get my pictures accepted by the passport office I had to be photgraphed not wearing my glasses(I'm very shortsighted and wear them all the time).
I recently visted Moscow, but coming through their immigration control their officials were doing a doubletake at my passport photograph. So I removed my glasses. They smiled and I was allowed through. Thankfully they were in a good mood. The quality of the scanned photo printing in the passport by the Home Office is very poor.
Essentially the technology used for the passports is a compromise to meet the limitations of current methods. It has actually degraded the effectiveness of the passport as an identity document.
2. Alastair Warren
Would the Tories cancel the ID card scheme?
It was suggested, here I think, that any contracts awarded would be water tight and that the Tories should they get elected would be unable to cancel them anyway.
As I would vote for the Tories if they committed to cancel the ID Card, I wrote and asked Cameron and my Tory MP to comment on whether they would in reality be able to cancel any contracts should be elected, and got a rather vague reply from an assistant of Cameron saying that they would look into any contracts.
It’s hardly conclusive that their actual actions would match their rhetoric.
Would the Tories cancel the ID card scheme?
3. Bill Citrine
The guys designing the scheme are not doing a hit-and-run. They know it's going to fail so they're building the software in packages to be useful for future, more worthy projects. So our hard-earned taxes (which also pay the discraceful wages and generous self-voted pensions of these imbeciles we reluctantly suffer) are not being completely wasted!
4. richard A
The new Passports are rubbish!
Like Charles, my new passport has an apalling quality photograph printed in it that utterly undermines its usefulness as a conventional security document.
I was shocked by how fuzzy the image is, having gone through a dozen hoops to comply with the new requirements: No glasses, no headgear (unless required by religion...!), no shadows, no background detail and no smiling.
5. Steve Watkins
It should not be forgotten that the department that is in charge of this scheme is the SAME department that 'negotiated' the one-sided extradition treaty with the U.S.
Questions:
1. Is such a bunch of incompetents capable of negotiating ANY contracts with anybody?
2. Is such a bunch of incompetents capable of RE-negotiating contracts without giving away billions of taxpayers' money?
Remember, civil servants are never held to account for anything and have no money to play with except that which they steal from the taxpayer or borrow from someone else.
6. Dr Mark Hosey
I firmly believe there is a culture of psychosis in the upper echelons of management and government. They cannot admit any wrong and show no remorse over the results of their actions. They will hold on to their ill conceived ideas till the bitter end, theirs or ours, regardless of any professionally sound advice to the contrary. God help us all!
7. anonymous
I for one can not see how ID card can stop terroisum. I have a driving liecence, this does not stop me from speeding or parking on double yellow lines. I also have a passport, will this stop me from turning to radical. I think not. They do use ID cards in Europe, but remember after the last war they had to start with millions of displaced persons so they issued simple cardboard/ photo ones that our French friends still carry today listing there name, address and a registration number and NOTHING ELSE.
As we already have a NI number why do we need more.