Daily Archives: February 27, 2007


Bill Goodwin writes in Computer Weekly: The government’s proposed ID card scheme is likely to be as risky as the NHS National Programme for IT, and could cost twice the estimated £5.4bn price tag, an independent review has concluded. The review, the first to analyse the project based on the expected demand for ID card services, concludes that it is at “significant risk” of performance failure, which could delay the project and push up costs. If ID cards are to deliver all the benefits claimed by the government, the infrastructure will need to process 3.4 million transactions a day, putting it on a par with the NHS IT programme for complexity, the report concludes. The report was written by Capacitas – their press release is here.

ID cards ‘as risky as NHS IT project’


Steve Boggan writes in The Guardian: Earlier this year, Tony Blair announced plans to allow government departments to share more information about us, while rubbishing the suggestion that this would lead to the creation of a “Big Brother” super-database. At the moment, he said, over-zealous rules on data-sharing leave government departments hamstrung. Each one stores information on us, and much of it is out of date. Ministers even cited the disturbing case of one man who had had to contact 44 branches of government to sort out affairs when a family member died. How much simpler it would be, then, to have all our identity information in one place where it could be easily updated with one phone call or letter. To most people, unfamiliar with the myriad government proposals and strategy documents on “e-government” and data sharing, it might have sounded like a good idea – even “perfectly sensible”, […]

No more secrets