Police officers will not have a single digital identity for secure access to national IT systems until two years after originally planned.

Contract tenders have been cancelled for the original multimillion-pound project, which aimed to give a single log-on method for officers accessing applications such as the Police National Computer (PNC).

The scheme, ­ first scheduled to be finished in April 2007, ­ has undergone a change in core strategy, according to a spokeswoman for the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA).

“The project is on a much stronger footing and we are now preparing the new invitation to tender,” she said.

The NPIA is drafting a new framework specification for local forces which will be available in autumn this year, and hopes the new system will be in place by the first quarter of 2009.

It is not yet clear how the new scheme will differ from the original, though it is believed a plan to have officers use smart warrant cards to identify themselves has been kept.

The review of the original project, ­ known as Unified Police Security Architecture (UPSA), ­ found that by the time it was delivered the technology would not be as useful as intended.

A single digital identity for every police officer was mandated by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) in 2006, but rollout delays have frustrated some local forces.

Six, ­ including the Metropolitan Police, ­ have now introduced their own single sign-on solutions to simplify officers’ access to IT applications.

“I moved from a force where I had to remember more than 10 passwords to a force which adopted single sign-on. ­ The improvement is immeasurable,” said one officer.

Part of the role of the NPIA was to iron out such inconsistencies between forces, according to Sir Ronnie Flanagan’s 2008 review of policing.