By Andy McCue, 17 November 2006 15:45
NEWS
The contracts to build and run the UK's national ID card system will not go out to tender before April of next year, the head of the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) has admitted.
James Hall, the new CEO of the IPS, revealed more details on the ID cards timetable when he met with suppliers last week at a meeting hosted by the British IT industry trade body Intellect.
At the meeting Hall outlined a number of priorities for the ID cards scheme before the end of this year including the publication of the Home Office's action plan on the direction of the scheme, a review of current passport projects and a review of the structure and capability of the IPS to deliver ID cards.
With regards to the ID cards timetable he said there will not be a 'big bang' approach to procurement and that a "current best estimate" for the next procurement activity is April or May 2007.
Security from A to Z
Click on the links below to find out more...
A is for Antivirus
B is for Botnets
C is for CMA
D is for DDoS
E is for Extradition
F is for Federated identity
G is for Google
H is for Hackers
I is for IM
J is for Jaschan (Sven)
K is for Kids
L is for Love Bug
M is for Microsoft
N is for Neologisms
O is for Orange
P is for Passwords
Q is for Questions
R is for Rootkits
S is for Spyware
T is for Two-factor authentication
U is for USB sticks/devices
V is for Virus variants
W is for Wi-fi
X is for OS X
Y is for You
Z is for Zero-day
From 2008, ID cards will be compulsory for non-EU nationals living in the UK for more than three months, but Blair said ID cards will not now be issued to British citizens until 2009 at the earliest.
Some existing UK Passport Service contracts will also be re-tendered, which Hall said will "contribute to an identity 'utility', of which passports and ID cards will be part".
In a public web chat this week Hall said the detailed design of the National Identity Register and the ID cards is still being worked on and that trials of the biometric technology will take place during the procurement process.
"Biometric data will be held on the National Identity Register and we expect that at least some biometric information will be stored on the card. Only some parts of the information will be stored on the card itself. The full set of information will only be stored on the register," he said.
The Home Office, however, was forced to defend the security of the new ePassports and ID cards today after a security expert and Guardian newspaper journalist hacked one of the encrypted chips on the new high-tech passports in just 48 hours.
Comments
There are 6 comments. Join the discussion
1. Guy Herbert, General Secretary NO2ID
Still back to front then? Designing the system is bound to be harder when the Identity Cards Act commits them to having certain (very bad) features built into it.
But stranger even than that is the question what have they been doing for the last two years? The proposed statutory framework - presumably created on the basis of *some* prior discussions about what was feasible/desirable - has remained unchanged since the Draft Bill back in the middle of 2004. Indeed the Home Office doesn't seem to have changed its view at all during the consultations preceeding that...
So if we are to take seriously the Government's assertion that the first cards wil be issued in 2009, then the entire tendering process and the construction of (the core of) the system itself will need to be completed in less time than it has taken a team of 30-odd to grow to 180 in the process of deciding on a specification.
2. Karen Challinor
still no sign of parliament receiving the gateway reviews though
wake me up when they finally get released won't you
... on second thoughts you won't have to I'll probably hear the baying for blood from here
3. Richard
Still not scrapped this crazy project?
Why is Blair's crazy government still pursuing the dangerous, expensive, useless project?
Every published reason for this project has been thoroughly discredited:
The dangers have been proved real:
Much of the proposed technology has been proven inadequate.
The only remaining reason is that *THEY* actually want to snoop on ordinary law-abiding people.
So much for democracy; so much for freedom; so much for Britain.
4. Simon
What a surprise, yet another change in the plan !
5. Alastair
Why is Blair intent on turning us into a former Eastern Bloc Country? He obviously thinks being in the bottom 5% with regard to invasions of privacy as rated by Privacy International is an accolade!
Guy, do you know if that new Irish E Passport is the same as the Mickey Mouse UK or different? If it's better why have we opted for an inferior system?
6. David Quinn
I watched, belatedly, a programme by Henry Porter on More4 last night. He interviewed a security expert who siad that the encryption on new passports, and presumably ID Cards, since they are essentially the same thing, uses a scrambled version of perfectly knowable data items such as passport number, date of birth etc. The way of scrambling it is published on the web, but even if it were not it would be only a matter of time before it was cracked. The passport chips are of course readable by anyone who can get within a few feet of them with an openely available reader. We expected poor security (probably the only other way to encrypt would be to have a database of more randomly generated keys but thatitself would also be vulnerable) but this is surely ludicrously easy. The prospect of cloned passports and ID Cards is now a certainty.