ID card tech to go untested

The government won't test all of the technology underpinning its ID cards plans before the project goes live, it has revealed.

But it also insists it will not chase "unrealistic" delivery targets for the project.

The claim came in the government response to the Identity Card Technologies report published by the House of Commons science and technology committee in August.

The government said it "would not be realistic to rigorously test everything before the scheme 'goes live' to the point where the government can be sure no further changes need to be made to the design of the scheme".

Some parts of the system will not be tested but will use off-the-shelf technology that has been "adequately" tested elsewhere, it said.

Trials will focus on the parts of the technology that could have the biggest impact on the ID cards project, it said.

Testing the entire system before going live would involve trialling a large number of low-risk technologies, such as email, which would not be cost-effective and may "needlessly delay launch", the government said.

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The government said it plans to roll out the ID cards project incrementally - and then learn from the early stages and use that data to modify the scheme's design as it grows.

It said: "The performance of the end-to-end solution will be tested during the rollout - the risk of this strategy being controlled, if necessary, through varying the rate of the rollout."

The priority is that the programme "should have a sensible and practical delivery timetable rather than be focused on chasing unrealistic delivery dates", it added.