By Tim Ferguson, 4 May 2007 16:11
NEWS
The status of the national ID cards programme will be made available to the public following a ruling by the Information Tribunal.
The ruling, made yesterday, supports the decision of the information commissioner, Richard Thomas, to make the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) publish details of its Gateway Reviews of the ID cards project.
Thomas said the ruling is likely to enhance public debate of issues surrounding the programme's feasibility and management.
Gateway Reviews were introduced in 2000 by the OGC to track the progress of government IT projects using a traffic-light system of red, amber or green to indicate their status.
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The tribunal found the "safe space" the OGC wanted when making initial policy could not be justified, while the "grave consequences" of disclosing the information was overstated.
The issue emerged following a request from Liberal Democrat MP Mark Oaten to be informed of the traffic light status of the ID cards scheme. But the chief secretary of the Treasury, Paul Boateng, said the information was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and would not be disclosed.
Oaten then lodged a complaint with the information commissioner which was upheld. The OGC appealed the original decision because, it argued, disclosing the information would undermine the review process.
It said that those involved in the process would be less frank if the review was public, while it could also delay the process and deter commercial organisations from being involved.
The tribunal ordered the information to be disclosed once the issue about identifying those involved in the reviews is resolved. The OGC has 14 days to state whether the names of those involved in the process should be made public, before disclosing the information.
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. Simon
Look forward to a quick ammendment tacked on to some boring bill to give the government further exemptions in future !
2. Jeremy Wickins
About time! Some hard figures to go on, will be another nail in the coffin of this insane scheme. I'm fascinated by the idea that companies will want nothing to do with the scheme if their names are known - doesn't this tell the government something about the popularity of the thing?
3. Chris Goodman
Of course the officials (public servants!) involved in making decisions that affect us should have their names known. If they are ashamed of their work then perhaps they should not be employed by the taxpayer.
It is long time that public servants individually became fully accounbtable for their decisions and actions. Then perhaps we will see the weak and useless weeded out.
4. Karen Challinor
any debate arising from this release will be supressed, phillybustered, ignored, poohpoohed and outright denied
meanwhile the labour party will carry on doing exactly what it wants peddling their knee jerk panacea's for whatever story is at the top of the headlines today, while remaining accountable to no one
the next set of figures I would like to see - the amount of our money spent on legal counsel in an attempt to suppress release of this information to parliament
make no mistake it was our tax money spent and suppression was most certainly not in our interest so exactly how much did the labour party spend trying to do just that ?
and now they've lost the suppression battle when can we expect to see the money returned to the public coffers ?