Private company chosen for ID cards

Monday, 24 May 2004 12:00 AM

The Home Office has announced that it has chosen the private contractor to help develop the controversial national identity card.

PA Consulting, the company chosen, is a management strategy group involved in new technologies.

They will work on the design and feasibility testing of the scheme, as well as being subject to regular Office of Government Commerce Gateway reviews.

Home Secretary David Blunkett said that the identity card project will "bring enormous benefits to us as individuals and as a society."

"This is an ambitious, long-term project which will be introduced incrementally over a number of years. We are determined to get it right, and bringing in expertise from outside Government at this early stage will help us do that."

Explaining the private sector involvement, he said: "Experience from previous projects has shown that early detailed work on feasibility and testing reduces the risks and increases success."

The contract for the advisory service was not put out to tender, rather the Government approached "a number of companies who have framework agreements with the Office of Government Commerce to provide management and business consultancy to Government departments."

However, assurances have been given that the contract has built in safeguards to make sure that competition is not reduced for later procurement contracts.

Draft legislation envisaging the introduction of ID cards from 2007/8 was published last month and pilot projects are being carried out with 10,000 volunteers around the country.

Civil liberties groups however have pledged to campaign fervently against their introduction.

Liberty argues that: "A national identity card has worrying costs and few, if any, benefits. It would pose a real and direct risk to rights such as privacy and equality."

Previous Home Office IT procurement have had a mixed fate. In 1999 a new IT system at the Passport Agency led to chaos as the system was unable to issue passports in time and at one point over 500,000 people were waiting for new passports to be issued.

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