Heading for an identity crisis?

The deadline for responding to the consultation paper Smart Cards: Enabling E-government, issued by the government Office of the E-envoy, is 29 October. However, home secretary David Blunkett already seems committed to forcing through his National Identity Card Scheme. A pilot project this autumn will test a card system and the difficulties of using computerised fingerprint and iris data.

The Home Office has already launched a smartcard-based Application Registration Card for asylum seekers. The card will contain the bearer's unique fingerprint data as well as their photograph, name, date of birth and nationality.

It is anticipated that the card will greatly reduce the scope for fraud through illegal benefits claims. Meanwhile, the Passport Office and the DVLA have been discussing the possibility of developing a joint standard for identity for future schemes.

National Identity or Entitlement Cards would record name, date of birth, address, employment, sex, photo and numbers for National Insurance, passport and driving licence. They would also carry biometric information, such as an eye scan record or electronic fingerprint, to prevent fraud.

The Entitlement Cards and Identity Fraud white paper of July 2002 demonstrated an intention to set up the first national central database of all people aged over 16 who are legally resident in Britain. It could also include everyone's employment status.

The 44 million UK adults with passports and driving licences will have biometric versions within 10 to 15 years and it is proposed that the identity card would be super-imposed on these.

Presumably, everyone would have to go to kiosks to have their biometric information recorded. The cost of the ID card scheme is estimated at about £1.8bn, with the possibility that individuals would have to fork out £40 for a card. Pensioners could pay in instalments over a 10-year period.

There has been much talk in the national press about "function creep" - the gradual incorporation into a national database of tax and criminal records and exam results, for instance. The economic secretary to the Treasury presented a white paper to Parliament in January 2002 on the computerisation of civil registration of births, marriages and deaths.

A computerised system would remove the need to produce a paper certificate when applying for a passport, driving licence or other government service.

So will all these proposed systems be able to talk to each other? Are the databases of all government departments and local government set to roll into one huge data warehouse? Beyond the pros and cons of the National Identity Cards debate, I can't help thinking that co-ordinating the multitude of bodies involved will take longer than the projected 15 years.

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