Commons committee hears ID card scheme lacks clarity and
business case
The government has come under attack from IT suppliers and
academics over the way it is managing the £5.8m national identity
card programme.
IT suppliers association Intellect, Microsoft and academic
specialists said the Home Office had rushed ahead with the scheme
without sufficient consultation with industry.
The result, they said, was an ID card programme that lacked
clear objectives and a clear business case, and represented a
missed opportunity for implementing joined-up services across
government.
Their comments, made to MPs on the Science and Technology
Committee last month, were all the more extraordinary given that
suppliers rarely cause ripples when government contracts worth
millions of pounds are at stake.
The views, recorded in transcripts of evidence published by the
committee, portrayed the ID card programme as a solution looking
for a problem. The organisations questioned talked about a “silo
mentality” in the Home Office, and complained that the programme
lacked detailed specifications and outcomes – a combination that
could potentially put the project at increased risk of failure.
Martyn Thomas, an expert on software engineering and a member of
academic research group the UK Computing Research Committee, told
MPs that after three and a half years, the case for ID cards was
still uncertain.
“It is still, as far as I can see, unclear what the objectives
of the overall programme are, and how its is envisaged it will
deliver the supposed benefits. The benefits are not quantified.
They are drawn extremely widely,” he said.
“It may be that if we carry on down the path that we seem to be
going down, this system will fail completely and it will have to be
reintroduced in 10 years.”
The heart of the problem is that the Home Office has failed to
consult early enough or widely enough with the IT industry. Rather
than leaving the market to produce the best system, the Home Office
appears to have decided on the system in advance, the committee
heard.
Dave Birch, director of consultancy Consult Hyperion, told MPs
that the Home Office had already designed the system and was now
asking suppliers, “What colour should it be?”
As a result, fundamental questions have been unanswered, leaving
it “far from clear” what the overall objectives of the programme
are and how the public and government will benefit from the ID
cards.
“The requirements are woefully unclear,” said Thomas. The
documentation relating to the programme claimed that ID cards would
reduce fraud, for example. “But there is no quantification, there
is no analysis of how the proposed scheme is going to make that
kind of contribution,” said Thomas.
Microsoft said the government had missed an opportunity to
evaluate alternative solutions. On the one hand, the Home Office
was saying that suppliers would be free to offer a range of systems
based on the outcomes the Home Office was looking for. But on the
other hand suppliers were being told, “This is the way the card
will work.”
There have been very few examples of how ID cards will work in
practice, said Microsoft national technology officer Jerry
Fishenden.
Even those that have been published, such as examples of
retailers using ID cards to verify the age of customers buying
alcohol, raise more questions than they answer, he said. There has
been no debate, for example, over whether it was right for a
retailer to be able to demand to see a person’s ID card.
“After all these consultations, we do not seem to have had an
impact on the level of understanding about what makes a good
identity system in practice,” said Fishenden.
And there has been little consultation about one of the most
fundamental uses of ID cards – how they will be used online by the
public. “There has been no discussion about what that actually
means for the user with an ID card,” said Fishenden.
The Home Office has consistently argued that it needs to
restrict the amount of information it can disclose to suppliers and
the public, if it is to avoid stifling competition and
innovation.
But this has meant that the Home Office has become unduly
focused on the procurement process, rather the underlying design of
the scheme, the committee heard.
“I think the industry was looking for the opportunity to
understand the types of scenario that the technology needed to
support, and to debate fairly openly and with each other how the
technology might deliver against those scenarios,” said Fishenden.
“Every time we came close to wanting to talk about the architecture
we were told that it was not really up for discussion.”
Wider consultation on ID card programme needed, say
suppliers
Nick Kalisperas, director of IT suppliers organisation
Intellect, told MPs on the Science and Technology Committee that it
was wrong to suggest that the government had consulted widely with
suppliers over the ID card scheme.
“There needs to be better interaction with the IT industry, not
just potential prime contractors but also those further down the
supply chain, in order for them to make a clear assessment as to
whether they believe this project is worth bidding for or not,” he
said.
Dave Birch, director of IT advisory firm Consult Hyperion, said,
“The consultation became unduly focused on procurement issues. Most
of the presentations were just telling us this is how it is going
to be, followed by an injunction to get out and do something about
there being too much negative publicity.”
Kalisperas said, “What we have here is a reflection of the silo
mentality that exists within the public sector. It is the Home
Office producing a national identity card scheme but only within
the boundaries that the Home Office can do.”
He urged ministers to put aside their desire for a
politically-driven timetable that would see ID cards rolled out
from 2009 and, if necessary, put the project on hold to allow more
work to be carried out.
“If 2009 is not achievable, then ministers need to listen to
that and need to cast aside their own reputation in the short-term
and look at the longer-term benefits of the project,” said
Kalisperas.