An information tribunal has ruledthegovernment must publish two gateway reviewson the progress of theID card project.
The tribunal upheld a decision by the
information commissioner in July 2006 that the information must
be released, and the reviews must now be published within 28
days.
No gateway reviews have ever been published before. The reviews
are government reports on the progress of large projects. They are
carried out at various important stages through the life of a
programme and can recommend the project be abandoned.
The Office of Government Commerce may appeal, which will
further delay the publication of the reports.
The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) maintained that
publication of reports would "harm the contribution of the gateway
process" to other similar projects. It said there was a public
interest in maintaining the integrity of the gateway process.
But the tribunal said: "The tribunal, with respect to the OGC's
approach,
regards its approach as being too rigid and thus not conducive
to a realistic assessment of the competing public interests. A
project such as
the ID
cards scheme has been a very high-profile matter of overwhelming
concern to the public from the moment it was first addressed by
government."
It added the public interest would be served by the public
knowing how a project has been and is being implemented.
The OGC also said the gateway process depends on the candour of
the officials involved, and that this might be diminished by the
publication of the reports.
But the tribunal said it was "not satisfied that this fear has
been made out by the evidence, which strongly suggests that the
risk even now continues to be minimal."
The tribunal's report also pointed out the importance of
increasing the public's confidence in the government's ability to
implement an IT project with competence.
"There is or has been and indeed remains a perception that
central government does not have a particularly good track record
with regard to IT projects. In the tribunal's view, disclosure
of the requested information would clearly add to the public's
knowledge in this respect and therefore to the public interest
which sought to ensure that schemes as complex albeit as sensitive
as the ID cards scheme were properly scrutinised and
implemented."
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