ID card consultancy race is down to two

The race for the consultancy on the government's biometric ID card scheme is down to two, Computing can reveal.

PA Consulting and Deloitte are the only firms still in negotiation with the Home Office for the contract that will help hammer out how best to design and implement the scheme.

Sources suggest PA Consulting is the favourite, largely because of its experience with the Passport Service.

The shortlist, agreed last week from an original longlist of 12, also included Capgemini.

The deal is reputed to be worth in the region of £10m for around 18 months' work, including developing the business case, setting the requirements specification and working with the government on the procurement for the scheme.

The winning firm is expected to be announced within the week.

Addressing the Common's Home Affairs select committee last week, Home Secretary David Blunkett confirmed that the company contracted for the client-side consultancy would not be in the running for the implementation.

'The private development partner will not be seeking to win contracts; they will not seek to be a contractor; they will be able to advise and help us,' said Blunkett.

'We will hold a seminar with the sector on 24 May to try to ensure that we now bottom this once and for all in terms of the on-going costs, the technology known to be available, the challenges and the pitfalls,' he said.

ID cards are to be introduced incrementally from 2007 in conjunction with the development of biometric passports.

A central part of the scheme is the development of a National Identity Register using 'clean' data from the enrolment process.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) is also working on a plan for a national database as part of its Citizen Information Project (CIP), but Blunkett dismissed suggestions the two parallel projects are the recipe for muddle and confusion.

'They will be complementary,' he said. 'Obviously this is something that has got to be worked through because the CIP was a glint in the eye of the ONS long before...the issue of a biometric ID card system.

'The CIP is about bringing together existing information. The reason we are convinced that we have to have a clean database [for ID cards] is that simply drawing together existing material...would be unsatisfactory, because you would pull into the system mistakes and fraudulent identities that already existed.'

The Draft Bill that will provide the necessary legislative basis for ID cards was published by the Home Office at the end of April.

The contents of the bill is open for public consultation until 20 July.

Assuming it is passed, procurement for the system is due to start in 2005.