Another Nail In The Coffin For The ID Card?

With the latest problems at Child Benefits Office and the loss of the entire database of claimants information handily put on two CDs and then sent in the internal post it seems time to yet again raise objections to why the government is still trying to proceed with a national ID card scheme. Even if you ignore the issues of what it will achieve, which generally tracks what is a hot topic at the moment so we have gone from illegal immigration, child abuse, terrorism, identify theft and back to illegal immigration again, and wouldn't the £12 billion or so been better spent on something else you still come back to the problem of why do the government think that they can keep this data secure. This isn't a criticism of the government in general as I don't think that any private company would be able to put in place some of the massive IT schemes that the government has tried and failed to do. The difference is that it is only the government that thinks it can get the schemes in place and wastes massive amounts of money at the same time and repeats this time and time again.

So going back to the security of data - exactly which person has decided that it is a good idea to store such a large amount of potentially available data in one database where a simple lack of procedural security can lead to such a massive problem. When we do get the national ID card database, and I don't see this not happening without a change in government. It will not only cost more than expected (a minister once stated that the costs of running the system would be minimal as the charges would be passed on the business' that use it but this argument has a somewhat obvious flaw that they will then pass the cost onto their customers) but it won't work and it won't be secure. It's difficult enough keeping small amounts of data secure with good systems and well trained staff but one slip up with the ID database and the whole thing could be compromised.

So who will benefit, just your usual suspects - consultancy firms favoured by the government and the cause of this is a lack of technical knowledge in the government. They bring in consultants to determine what to do and surprising the answer is always spending larges amount of money on new systems produced by the same companies that the consultants work for. The problem is that if you did this in a private company you would if be sacked or the company would go bankrupt. Unfortunately the government has very deep pockets of other peoples money and lots of jobs for the boys.