Statistics database could link to IDcards

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is looking into how its plans for a national database of citizen details relates to other government initiatives such as identity cards.

The ONS aim is to use a database of basic personal information - name, address, date of birth and reference number - as a central register for other public sector systems.

The Citizen Information Project (CIP) - expected to cost up to £240m - is in the definition phase and will go to Treasury minister Paul Boateng next spring for a decision on whether to proceed.

There are no firm decisions yet but the CIP is likely to be populated with data from one of several possible sources including National Insurance, passport or driving licence systems.

But how it relates to other plans such as ID cards and the NHS national data spine will be largely a question of timing, says CIP project manager Paul Allin.

'I think Computing's campaign for a review of government database plans is exactly the right one, but we are talking very closely to other departments,' he said.

'All these initiatives came about in different ways, in different places, but we have a responsibility for making sure we don't keep them as separate initiatives but understand the potential for links between them. We don't yet know if there is a sensible answer to the question as to which project should defer to which, or if there are other models we should look at.'

The plan to build a new database to support ID cards dovetails with the CIP, says Allin.

'The Home Office is starting from scratch over about 10 years so the question is what we can do in the meanwhile to support that development. The options range from letting them get on with it to putting in place some sub-optimal register that is not as accurate as the ID cards database but will over time meld into it or be replaced by it,' he said.

The CIP will need legislation to go ahead by its planned go live at Christmas 2007.