ID Cards - Phasers Set To F*ckup

quarsan posted earlier linking to the Sunday Times' articles on ID cards. which are fascinating, partly because of the context they give the back-of-envelope calculations I made back in March but mainly because they were leaked by senior civil servants, who are evidently seriously disillusioned with their political leaders. No wonder John Reid wants to send whistleblowers to the Gulag.

I'll start by analysing the intestines of the emails as printed. There are three emails, two lengthy and very pessimistic ones from a David Foord from the Office of Government Commerce (with a fairly rare surname he's Googleable, and you find a number of references to him on the OGC website, where he appears to be an expert in how to assess the progress of large government projects). His job title, for what that's worth, is Mission Critical Director (Identity and Defence). Quite what links ID and defence is one for the tinfoil hats, but it has a wonderfully post-Apocalypse feel, don't you think? Not quite the soft and cuddly 'empowerment' card 'giving the individual control of their identity'. Of course, many large defence companies are interested in ID card work, so perhaps it's efficient to buy both your cluster bombs and clusterf*cks from the same company over the same agreeable lunch.

The middle email is from a Peter Smith (sadly not easily Googleable with that surname) who takes a slightly sunnier view, as well he might, being Acting Commercial Director at the Identity and Passport Service.

The full job advert for the permanent post is online. which tells us that the Commercial Director, IPS is going to rake in £55-77k to:

I think he's underpaid for that lot. I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. He's got to manage the IT suppliers for an unworkable project and the commercial customers (banks etc.) who are expected to pay for some of it (which they won't, when it doesn't work), and juggle the two to try not to go too far over budget. In those circumstances his email is a beacon of sunny optimism, suggesting as it does that even if the whole thing goes tits up there'll be some bits worth salvaging. Reassured yet?

Going back to Foord's emails, the first one immediately backs up our hunch that (presumably, since the NIR has to be up and running by then) the late 2008 date for passport renewals at 7m people/year going onto NIR is a purely arbitrary end date driven by politics rather than technical capability. At this point, remember that we estimated the project timescale as 32 months starting from the Act becoming law in April 2006. So far we've seen the contract for the regional centres announced, plus their locations and that's been about it. By now I reckon they should know what they want and be urgently negotiating with suppliers, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

OK, so there's no business case, which means no Official Journal of the EU Invitation To Tender advert which means no suppliers which means no project work until that's done, and if it's on time there'll be 21 months left before launch. However, Foord says that at this point there are 'just over two years', which suggests launch around April/May 2009 and explains why they're worried about a possible General Election coinciding.

So, being generous, you've got 25 months from business case to full capability launch at 7m people/year.

Then comes the bombshell, and a whole new acronym - this *isn't* the NIR at all, but something called the 'TNIR'. The ST suggests this is 'Temporary National Identity Register', presumably a descoped NIR to allow ministers to save face or Tony to put in place another part of his 'legacy'. I say 'presumably', since the senior officials themselves seem to have no idea what this is either. They also have no idea what the benefits are (well, we're pretty sure that they're nowhere near what the Home Office claimed, so the OGC can take that as a starting point, if they like). Nor are there proper requirements documentation in place (which is a bad idea for a website with a couple of Perl scripts, as I know to my cost - you inevitably end up delivering something other than the customer wants otherwise).

The TNIR as suggested by the ST sounds slightly like the 2008-2010 'compromise' the craven Tories signed up to, where you get enrolled onto the NIR but don't get a card. This gives the Government all the joy of a central control system for Britons, without the expense of actually giving us a full card. However, it's hard to see how an ID card scheme that doesn't actually involve an ID card can still be sold as an ID card scheme, particularly when it would still involve all the palaver of swingeing fines for not keeping your record up to date. There'll clearly still *be* a card under TNIR, but what sort is sadly not disclosed to us. It's possible this isn't actually known yet, since:

It therefore relies on Tony's grasp of technical minutiae and the quality of his decision making.

So to sum up. the people in charge of supervising the delivery of the ID cards scheme:

* Don't know why they're doing it
* Don't know who'll be doing it
* Don't know what they'll be doing
* Don't have enough staff to do it
* Don't know how much it will cost

Given this, it's not surprising that David Foord goes on to predict meltdown:

Suits us, we've already pointed out the likelihood of queues outside ID card centres if the systems falls over early on, and the likely unpopularity of the scheme by then (as the rescoping, cost overruns and lies used to justify it become clear) means a media frenzy is almost inevitable.

Finally, it's pleasing to note that the people in charge are spending their time ringfencing ID-based projects from non-ID card projects, which must have something to do with the Nick Clegg and David Davis' repeated promises to scrap ID cards if they come into government. I really hope the Conservatives in particular keep on at this, as it's clearly helping sow doubts in the minds of the civil servants responsible. Meanwhile, here and elsewhere we'll be watching this closely for further signs of slippage and leaks.

*UPDATE*

The rest of the thinking world is leaping on this:

* SpyBlog
* Chicken Yoghurt
* Mr Eugenides

And more this evening:

* The Register (John Lettice on the money as usual)
* Nether-World
* Ministry of Truth
* Charlie Stross
* NO2ID