Gov. resists ID card scrutiny
Mark Ballard writes in The Register:
The Office of Government Commerce has appealed against an order by the Information Tribunal that it must publish official documents that assess the justification for the government’s identity card scheme.
Meanwhile, speculation over Prime-Minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown’s support for the programme has been see-sawing for lack of any real substance.
The clerk of Mr Robin Tam QC, the OGC’s legal representative, ran round to the high court this morning to file the office’s appeal against an order given by the Information Tribunal on 3 May that it should publish the Gateway Reviews it had performed on the identity card scheme in 2003 before the project was given official approval.
The OGC refuses to publish Gateway Reviews on the grounds that their disclosure would discourage their contributors from making truthful submissions to the process. Aside from giving a traffic-light indication of a project’s health, early Gateways give an indication of whether a project is likely to succeed, what it would cost and so on.
The feasibility of the identity card project – including its likely cost – has been one of the main arguments used by opponents of the scheme. The government is regularly accused of underestimating the challenges it faces getting the scheme running.
May 31st, 2007 at 13:57
As Blair and the rest of his lying cronies keep telling us,If you,ve got nothing to hide you,ve got nothing to fear.Why is it impossible to get a straight or truthful answer about the cost of this unwanted scheme?