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The £5.8million proposed costs of the national identity cards scheme are “robust and appropriate” according to independent research commissioned by the government, but concerns over the implied cost of the technology remain. In its report on the Outline Business Case for the ID cards programme, the consultant KPMG concluded the majority of 36 cost assumptions used by the Home Office are based on suitable benchmarks, evidence and analysis from public sector suppliers. The report, which probed principles, processes and standards used by the Home Office, effectively green lights cost in four key areas of the nationwide programme, which collectively accounts for 60 per cent of the forecast budget. Namely, expenditure is agreed on card production and lifespan, enrollment and processing times, take-up of ID cards and ICT implementation of the National Identity Register (NIR). “The structure and approach to modelling the costs appears reasonable,” the report reads. “We have reviewed the granularity of the cost estimates that are included within the model as single amounts or large values and in our view the costs have been decomposed to a suitable degree.” However, KPMG cautioned the Government’s approach to costing means, “care should be taken to recognise the extent which technology–related issues might affect what appear to be standard elements of the programme.” The cost projections, which include mitigating circumstances, result in lower overall estimates because the ID card scheme is broken down by Government into various categories, rather than being treated as a single equipment or development project. Operating the scheme will far outweigh the costs of start-up, the report added, before it questioned OCB statements opposing ID card organisers who recognise “there will be clearly be a point beyond which it will be infeasible to pass through all operating costs incurred to ID cardholders.” Resultantly, the independent auditor called for a more detailed risk-based approach, such as a Quantative Risk Analysis, to identify with greater accuracy the expected operating costs of the biometric programme. And while the report authors said they broadly agree with the cost proposals of each card there was, they said, doubt over the lastability of each plastic card. The Home Office predicts 10 years of usage, but public sector analysis and KMPG decided the evidence was “inconclusive,” concluding that, “the durability of the cards over the ten-year period is questionable.” Likewise, the five-year lifetime of biometric testing pods was “optimistic,” and should probably be reduced to just three years, mainly due to “typical depreciation times of high technology.” Enrolment centres for ID cards are to be carried in mobile units and while the proposed cost broadly matched the auditor’s assessment, the running cost could be affected by extra security requirements. “Conflicting and uncertain evidence” obtained by KPMG means the licence cost for biometric technologies should be subject to further market analysis, but the report concedes this may not be possible under current procurement policy because of the scarcity of suppliers. The data centre(s) at the heart of the scheme – the NIR – is not likely to be near London or within the South East and currently poses one of the biggest problems, given the Scheme requires locations to be found within two years, yet again, few exist and the building timescale is three years. A contingency plan is already being drawn up to propose an interim solution that will compromise on some requirements, such as space, until a full-scale facility can be located. The budget for NIR’s required hardware and software has been approved as being based on “reasonable assumptions” similar to the one-off software customisation and development that the centre(s) will require. However, “The Identity Cards Programme Team should ensure that it has an allowance in its overall ID Card Programme Costs for systems implementation project management”. The NIR costs for specialist communications equipment, network and security management have been approved - as have estimates for internal ICT helpdesk staff. The report adds internal ICT staff will need a supporting number of helpdesk technicians to support them through their hours of work. More consultation was called for in order to drive down costs of biometric matching, such as developing improved algorithms, finding ways to increase the number of matches per second and introducing a method of checking without having to scan the entire NIR database. Ominously, a concluding verdict states: “The number of enterprise scale servers is more uncertain and we would recommend either market soundings with CRM providers and making further contacts with large Telecommunications and Utility companies.” Home Office Minister Andy Burnham embraced the report, saying he was pleased KPMG shared the Government’s confidence in the ID card programme. “There has been lots of discussion of the potential costs of identity cards, much of it based on misinformation and misunderstanding,” he said, alluding to the £230 price tag predicted by the LSE. “No Government would introduce identity cards if the costs to the public are seen as unreasonable. “For the individual, the Home Secretary has made clear that within current financial estimates the charge for a stand-alone ID card, valid for 10 years, will be £30. That is a fair price to pay for the identity protection that this system will bring.” Nov 10, 2005 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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