Identity cards pave way for Whitehall IT sharing

Plans for the identity card scheme to be built using existing government databases will be a trailblazer for shared services, according to Whitehall chief information officer John Suffolk.

Speaking at the publication of his office’s Transformational Government (TG) annual report this week, Suffolk said there is a growing realisation of the value of cross-departmental sharing of IT.

The next step is to establish governance structures so schemes relying on systems from multiple departments can work. The ID card scheme – no longer to involve creating a new database – will be a test case, says Suffolk.

‘We are stronger together than apart,’ he said.

‘We are now getting into the tougher issue of working through the governance issues involved in developing an internal market. The main issue this year will be ID cards because if we can crack these issues for identity management, the model should work for almost anything.’

The TG annual report includes updates on the 2005 strategy’s three main themes of citizen-centric services, shared back-office systems and the development of the public sector IT profession.

A key activity in 2006 was to streamline government web sites. Of 951 sites, 90 have been closed, there are plans to close 461 more, and 374 are under review.

The policy is linked to Sir David Varney’s recommendation to make the DirectGov and Business Link sites the single points of access for domestic and business services respectively.

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