ID cards – what's the score?

10 years in the making, the National Identity Service comes to London in a week’s time on Monday 8 February 2010. The National Identity Service is a spectacular new production brought to you by the Home Office, a high-tech solution to the problems of government in the 21st century.
In its tour of the provinces, the National Identity Service attracted interest from just a few thousand stage-struck enthusiasts, among the millions of residents of Manchester and the North-West. Will the producers fare any better in London? How would politicians fill in the scorecard below? What about civil servants, what do they make of the show? And the home affairs editors in the media, printed and broadcast, how would they score the National Identity Service? IBM, CSC, De La Rue, ..., all the suppliers of props to the National Identity Service, what are the conclusions of their review of the project to date? What do their shareholders think? How do the equity analysts assess this performance? PA Consulting – they've been advising the Home Office on identity management for 10 years – their scorecard should make interesting reading. What is the view of our partners in the EU? Above all, what do you think of it?
You be the judge. Just fill in the scorecard to reach your verdict. You’re the investor in this project. You’re the “angel”, as they say in the theatre. Are you satisfied with the return?
Notes	Scorecard	Score
National Identity Service
1	At the edges, the National Identity Service is a cocktail of ID cards, biometric visas and ePassports. At the centre, it relies on a database, a sort of stock control system, the National Identity Register (NIR), listing everyone in the country. Is everyone who should be included on the NIR now included?	yes/no
2	One advertised benefit of the National Identity Service is that it should be impossible for criminals and terrorists to maintain multiple identities. Is everyone who should be included on the NIR included only once?	yes/no
3	Are people’s details on the NIR kept continuously up to date?	yes/no
4	Is the NIR cross-referenced to other UK government databases such as drivers’ licences, National Insurance numbers, tax records, benefit records, health records, education records, international travel records, the Criminal Records Bureau, the Independent Safeguarding Authority, ...? (This cross-referencing may be achieved via the UK Government Gateway.)	yes/no
5	Is the NIR cross-referenced to private sector databases such as bank accounts, insurance policies, pension funds, credit referencing agencies, utility companies, ...?	yes/no
6	Is the NIR cross-referenced to/shared with EU and US authorities and supra-national organisations such as Interpol? (This cross-referencing may be achieved via the UK Government Gateway.)	yes/no
7	If the NIR is not ready yet in your opinion, enter the date when it looks as though it will be ready, e.g. 2024
8	Is there a fast and secure telecommunications network connecting police stations, benefit offices, GPs, hospitals, schools, banks, airports, etc ... to the NIR? (The banks have done it – you can take cash out of any terminal on the planet and your account is updated. The phone companies have done it – you can ring anyone anywhere on the planet and your account is updated. That is what is expected of the Home Office nationally, at least, if not internationally.)	yes/no
9	If not, enter the date when it looks as though it will be possible actually to make use of the NIR, e.g. 2024
10	Do all police stations, benefit offices, GPs, hospitals, schools, banks, airports, etc ... have the ID card readers, biometric visa readers, ePassport readers, fingerprint scanners, cameras, keyboards, screens, encryption software, etc ..., all attached to the telecommunications network, needed to make use of the NIR?	yes/no
11	If not, enter the date when it looks as though it will be possible actually to make use of the NIR, e.g. 2024
12	The Home Office were advised that they would need a national network of about 2,000 registration centres to enrol everyone onto the NIR. How many do they have now? (The answer is thought to be 69.)
13	If not 2,000, enter the date when you think we will have a full complement of registration centres, e.g. 2024
14	These registration centres are meant to identify people. Each person should appear on the NIR. And they should appear only once on the NIR, it should be impossible to maintain multiple identities. It is notoriously difficult to achieve this objective. The National Identity Service is meant to be different. It is meant to succeed where other schemes have failed, thanks to the use of biometrics. Do you think the biometrics chosen for the National Identity Service are reliable enough to do the job?	yes/no
15	The National Identity Service can only achieve its purposes once we have a fully functioning NIR, with supporting national and international networks of registration centres, ID card/biometric visa/ePassport terminals, and so on. Is it clear to you what those purposes are?	yes/no
16	Is it clear to you that the National Identity Service can succeed in those purposes?	yes/no
17	Can you see other ways, perhaps better ways, to achieve the same purposes?	yes/no
18	It is thought that once the National Identity Service is up and running, there will be about 50 million UK ID cards in circulation. How many are in circulation today? (The answer is thought to be about 3,500 or, to put it another way, about 0.007% of the total required.)
19	If not 50,000,000, enter the date when you think there will be a full complement of ID cards in circulation, e.g. 2024
20	What is the cost to date of the National Identity Service?
21	How much more has to be spent to get a fully functioning National Identity Service up and running? (The Home Office always say £5 billion. But that's just for the next 10 years. The National Identity Service may not be up and running in 10 years. And £5 billion is just the costs that go through the Home Office's books. It excludes the costs to benefit offices, GPs, hospitals, schools, banks, airports, employers, etc ... )
22	How much will it cost annually to operate the National Identity Service?
23	What will be the annual monetary benefit of the National Identity Service?
24	Based on your experience, would you advise another country to embark on a National Identity Service-type project?	yes/no
25	Do other countries which already have National Identity Service-type schemes already enjoy the supposed benefits, e.g. no illegal working, no identity fraud, joined up government, ...?	yes/no
26	If so, it may be because of the National Identity Service-type scheme. Or it may be something else. Is it because of something else, e.g. a more effective civil service or a greater respect for authority?	yes/no
If there is any question you can’t answer, that may be because the Home Office have inadvertently failed to keep you informed. You may be best advised to submit a Freedom of Information request and to examine the answer before reaching your verdict.
Notes
1. The quick answer is no. The common assumption is that once the National Identity Service is up and running, there will be about 50 million ID cards in circulation at any one time. Sir Joseph Pilling, the Identity Commissioner, announced that the NIR went live on 20 October 2009 and that as of 19 November 2009, the NIR had 538 people on it, including the Home Secretary. By 21 January 2010, following an enrolment campaign in Manchester and the North-West, there were 2,700 cards in circulation. Clearly, not everyone who should be, is on the NIR. The Home Office issued a consultation document in July 2002 in which the stated intention was to create the NIR from scratch. The scores of existing government databases which list large sections of the population (health records, PAYE records, child benefit records, tax credit records, drivers’ licences, education records, ...) suffer from omissions, duplicates, out of date information and other errors. By the end of 2006, the plan had changed, it would be easier to start with the National Insurance number database, CIS, operated by the Department for Work and Pensions, although even this had problems – there were nine million records on it no-one could account for. Now, from what the identity Commissioner says, the plan seems to have changed again, and it looks as though the NIR is being built from scratch after all. The theory is that there should be a one-for-one correspondence between people and their electronic ID on the NIR. Each person should be enrolled onto the NIR and given an ID card as a sort of receipt, or acknowledgement. But there are three types of ID card. UK nationals over the age of 16 get one type. Other EEA citizens resident (over the age of 16?) in the UK for more than three months (or six months?) get another type. And non-EEA citizens with permission to stay get a third type, a biometric visa, issued by the UK Border Agency (UKBA). But UKBA clearly don’t use the NIR – they’ve issued over 90,000 biometric visas since November 2008, and yet there are only 2,700 or so records on the NIR. Passports come into the equation somewhere. Millions of electronic passports (ePassports) have been issued since March 2006. ePassports are not recorded on the NIR, but they are often regarded as equivalent to ID cards and there are some indications that ID cards could be dropped in favour of ePassports. Question 1 is harder to answer than it looks.
2. The quick answer is, we don’t know. But the promise always has been that the benefit of the National Identity Service would be that criminals and terrorists would find it harder to maintain multiple identities and thus find it harder to ply their trade. This promise has now been diluted, the Home Office no longer promise one-for-one correspondence between people and their electronic identity maintained on the NIR, not now, not ever. The National Identity Service will use biometrics to try to identify people. And it will require personal interviews at which people will have to answer correctly up to 200 questions about their past before they can be enrolled onto the NIR. The Home Office promise that that will improve the situation compared with conventional methods, but they don’t say by how much it will be improved.
3, 5. Again, the quick answer is, we don’t know. The Home office’s July 2002 consultation document acknowledged that people’s records are not generally kept up to date on government databases and that that is a problem. On the other hand, the databases maintained by the utility companies, for example, and by the credit referencing agencies do tend to be kept up to date and the idea was that the National Identity Service might perhaps share data with these private sector suppliers. Once the Identity cards Act was passed in March 2006, the Home Office acquired the lifetime power to fine people up to £1,000 if they did not keep their record on the NIR up to date. Will this power be used? It now seems not, or at least not always.
4, 5. Again, we don’t know. It’s a recurring theme. Tony Blair promised us “joined up government”. The attempt has been made to implement joined up government through the transformational government initiative, initially the responsibility of the Cabinet Office, now the responsibility of the Department for Work and Pensions. According to its authors, transformational government depends on a “suite of identity management solutions that enable the public and private sectors to manage risk and provide cost-effective services trusted by customers and stakeholders ... will converge towards biometric identity cards and the National Identity Register”. The theory is one thing. In practice, transformational government depends on the wholesale sharing of personal data between government departments who currently keep it separately. That raises civil liberties issues. There is also the unresolved question whether government departments used to operating in silos will agree to co-operate and share their spheres of influence. In theory, “It is likely therefore that the planning for this era will be based upon a vision that sees citizens and businesses increasingly serving themselves – at home, in work and public places and on the move; public servants truly dependent on technology to discharge their professional roles ...”. In practice, transformational government depends on downgrading frontline public servants. Their professional experience and judgement would be replaced by “technology”, on which they would be “dependent”.
More notes to follow ...