By Mark Ballard for The Register
This article has been reproduced with permission
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee inquiry
into the thinking behind ID Cards, published today, found the
government had decided what it wanted to do before it had
determined if it would even work.
"In view of the potential adverse impact on large numbers of
people, it is better that the scheme is late and workable than on
time but flawed," the committee report said.
It recommended that the Home Office, which introduced the
scheme, "extend the procurement phase to ensure that enough time is
taken to gather the necessary scientific evidence and to undertake
all the appropriate trials".
The committee even recommended a cross-government consultation
as many government bodies had varying ideas about what they wanted
to do with ID Cards.
Government trials of the biometric technology it wants to use in
ID Cards are planned to occur simultaneously with the procurement,
which specifies the system, decides who will develop it, and how
much it will cost. But the procurement process should be informed
by evidence gathered from the trials.
To date, the committee found, the Home Office had been
"unscientific" in its practice of selectively using evidence
collected by previous trials to prove its own theories about
biometric technology.
"We are surprised and concerned that the Home Office has already
chosen the biometrics that it intends to use before finishing the
process of gathering evidence," the committee report said.
It added that the Home Office should "act on evidence rather
than preference".
The Home Office's consultation on ID Cards had also been
inadequate. Industry was doubtful about what the Home Office was
doing and sceptical that it had given it proper thought.
Jerry Fishenden, national technology officer at Microsoft, told
the committee: "After all these consultations we still do not seem
to have had an impact on [Home Office] understanding about what
makes for a good identity system."
As the Home Office was lacking inhouse expertise, it was relying
on industry to plug the gaps in its knowledge, but it did not
conduct adequate consultation with those it would rely on to
develop the system.
This lack of inhouse knowledge has been identified before as the
cause of government IT failure, the Child Support Agency debacle
being a case in point. As it happens, the committee was worried
that the signs showed the Home Office had not taken enough notice
of the accumulated wisdom of previous IT disasters, as surmised in
numerous reports over the last decade.
It was also concerned that the committees set up to guide the ID
IT plans had not been "best placed to offer expert advice" because
they had few experts. The Home Office also lacked an IT chief,
while there was uncertainty about who at the Home Office was in
charge of the project.
The Home Office wanted a flexible, staggered approach because it
was learning what to do as it went along. But until it fixes its
plans, which the committee said should be done "as soon as
possible", it will not be able to get the disparate parts of the ID
scheme interoperating - i.e. working.
© The Register 2006
Disclaimer: We hope you find OUT-LAW’s content useful. It’s prepared by the lawyers at Pinsent Masons. Please remember, though, that it’s intended as general information only. It’s not legal advice. If that’s what you’re seeking, please
contact us. See also: our
full disclaimer
