Sarah Arnott, writing in Computing, reviews the state of the Home Office ID cards project, and is not encouraged:

The national ID cards scheme is one of the largest, most ambitious IT programmes ever attempted. Yet it is ignoring just about every lesson that should have been learned from the past.

It lacks clear aims; it has a politically-motivated timetable; it is likely to go into procurement before the details are finalised; it belongs to everyone and no one. The list goes on.

In the interests of brevity, let us stick to only the two most arresting issues. First, the timetable. The government announcement that the first ID cards would be issued at the end of 2007 was made before the legislation was even in Parliament, let alone passed.

Because of the General Election, the bill’s passage was cut short and the original schedule for the technical procurement, which was to have started by this summer, was held back. With the second bill due to take its time through Parliament this autumn, the bidding is now unlikely to start until next spring. So there is already a nine-month delay, but the 2007 start date remains unchanged – not a good sign.

Second, what are ID cards trying to achieve? In the two years since the plan was first mooted, its primary purpose has skidded from public service entitlement, to fighting crime and terrorism, to cutting identity fraud, and back again, in a frenzy to keep up with the news agenda of the day.

This entry was posted by andrew on Wednesday, July 27th, 2005 at 23:00 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.