AFile on Four radio programmehas shown
the UK government's proposedidentity card schemeto be badly
co-ordinated and lacking in accountability.
The programme, broadcast on 31 July 2007, included an interview
with Computer Weekly's news editor and several experts from the
identity-management and IT community. It was apparent from the
interviews that civil servants are struggling with the vagueness of
the project.
Peter Tomlinson, an IT consultant and specialist in smart card
technology, told File on 4 he had attended government meetings
where the ID card programme was discussed.
He was puzzled when officials from the Home Office, which was
the department in charge of ID cards, did not appear to be present.
"The meetings were called by people in the Cabinet Office. There
were topics on the agenda that were set by people in the Cabinet
Office and we kept on thinking: why are we not seeing people from
the Home Office.
"Why are we not seeing technical people from the Home Office, or
people involved in technical management? Eventually they began to
come along but they never produced anyone who had any technical
understanding of large-scale systems. We were just completely
puzzled."
File on 4's researcher asked Tomlinson what questions had been
asked at the government meetings he had attended.
"Other government departments were asking the basic question:
how will we use this system, and never getting an answer. No answer
at all. It was my first real introduction to silo government.
Individual government departments were completely independent of
each other and now they were going to have to start working
together. But they just did not start to do it."
One of the government's business justifications for the ID card
scheme is that departments will be able to link into the
National Identity Register to verify that citizens are who they
say they are. But File on 4 found that departments have not
assessed the costs of providing systems or software upgrades that
integrate with the register.
Neil Fisher, vice-president of identity management at
Unisys, was also interviewed for the broadcast. Unisys is one
of the companies that hope to join consortia bidding for ID scheme
contracts.
Fisher had been talking to the Home Office about other computer
projects he was involved in. He believed that work on these
projects should have fed into the identity scheme. He, too,
criticised a lack of co-ordination. He said it was difficult to
find out who was in charge.
"I think there has been a realisation, as they have gone through
this, that there are a lot of projects, even within the Home
Office, being run by awful lots of different and smaller divisions
in perhaps immigration, in law enforcement, in passport, and in ID
cards, all of whom have a sort of relationship which was
ill-defined.
"So [when I went] into a meeting invariably the wrong person
from the wrong department would be there who could not speak for
their colleagues in some other silo."
He added that suppliers liked to talk to those who work within a
well-organised chain of command. "But it just is not like that. I
am not giving away any secrets here. The Home Office is quite a
difficult department to run. It is like a herd of cats and it is
very difficult to herd cats as you know."
Tomlinson said that as he sat listening to officials discussing
the ID project at Cabinet Office meetings, he began to wonder
whether it had really been thought through.
"We were asking questions like: how does one government
department that is not the Home Office connect up to the identity
card system? Where are the specifications for the communications
protocols? How does the equipment get to be security certified?
There was no work going on any of these technical topics
"If you are going to design a large-scale system like this you
first go and look at the volumes of transactions that are going to
take place, how often are they going to take place and then we
would see roughly how big it was going to be. You cannot specify a
system unless you have these figures. There were about four of us
who used to go to those meetings and we were all very puzzled. We
said that this project is empty. It has no content."
BBC File on 4 - ID cards - "listen again" - July 31 2007
>>
ID cards will give 'false' data - BBC >>
ID cards as risky as NHS IT project >>
ID cards - minister's speech highlights the scheme's vague
objectives >>
Gordon Brown under fire over secrecy on ID card costs
>>
ID cards - Home Office site >>
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