A government report that will have a serious impact
on the planning of
the £4.3bn ID-card scheme is
imminent.
The report, now nearly a year behind schedule, is expected to
spell out the government's options on how it can best move forward
with plans to provide everyone in Britain with a universally
accepted form of identity.
Gordon Brown commissioned Sir James Crosby in July 2006 to
produce a report on how the government and private sector can work
together on identity management. The original deadline was Easter
2007.
Crosby chairs the Public-Private Forum on Identity Management,
which drew input from the City of London Police, the Department for
Work and Pensions, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, HM
Revenue & Customs, the Identity and Passport Service of the
Home Office and the Serious Organised Crime Agency. From the
private sector, the forum heard from Barclays Bank, Boots the
Chemist, British Airways, Compass Group plc, Linklaters and O2. It
also heard evidence from civil society organisations such as
No2ID.
Its role was to review the current and emerging use of identity
management in the private and public sectors and identify best
practices, consider how the public and private sectors can work
together, harness the best identity technology to maximise
efficiency and effectiveness, and produce a preliminary report for
the chancellor of the exchequer and the Ministerial Committee on
identity management by Easter 2007.
It explored how the public and private sectors might converge
their respective ID management programmes, how consumers could be
"encouraged" to look after their data better, and any legal
barriers to sharing identity information between private and public
sector bodies.