A shortlist of eight suppliers has been chosen for the government’s controversial £2bn biometric identity cards programme, out of an original group of 11 bidders.

The successful firms to go through to the next stage are Accenture, BAE Systems, CSC, EDS, Fujitsu, IBM, Steria and Thales.

The initial procurement is expected to take nine months and will establish a group of up to five preferred prime contractors to bid for future deals to develop and run the scheme.

Individual contracts will be let through a series of mini competitions once the frameworks are agreed next May. The first are expected to be a replacement fingerprint system and the enrolment application for passports and ID cards, both due to be signed towards the end of 2008.

Over the coming weeks, the eight shortlisted firms will be briefed in detail on the government’s plans, Identity and Passport Service (IPS) commercial director Bill Crothers told Computing.

“We will start a series of sessions with each supplier covering two strands of work ­ one is the way we plan to do business, both behavioural and commercial, and the other is the specific content of the scheme including architecture, common requirements and so on,” he said.

Depending on the outcome, between one and three suppliers could be dropped at Christmas. But the full eight might continue until the final selection.

Key points to discuss include how the individual aspects of the technical scheme will be separated and what the delivery timescales will be.

“We have all our plans laid out, we will give them to suppliers and then have a conversation and see if there are any better ideas,” said Crothers.

The three unsuccessful suppliers were Indra Sistemas, Internet Computer Bureau and Secure Mail Services.