Inauspicious signs for ID cards

It seems that at least some of those charged with establishing the government's ID register are as aware of its flaws as the rest of us.

Yesterday, the Sunday Times published leaked emails between Office of Government Commerce mission critical director (identity and defence) David Foord and Identity and Passport Service acting commercial director Peter Smith that revealed plans to implement a scaled-down scheme in order to meet target dates. According to Foord:

This has all the inauspicious signs of a project continuing to be driven by an arbitrary end date rather than reality... I conclude that we are setting ourselves up to fail."

This month, the LSE Identity Project also released Reflections on the academic policy analysis process and the UK Identity Cards Scheme (pdf), which includes discussion on how academics were accused by then home secretary Charles Clarke of 'spinning' earlier this year when they challenged the facts behind the government's justifications for the scheme.