ID cards marked for fast rollout

Treasury report will call for rapid take-up by citizens, say sources

The IT procurement for ID cards is imminent

Identity cards should be rolled out to citizens as quickly as possible, an influential Treasury-backed report will recommend to ministers this month.

Sir James Crosby's review of private sector uses of the proposed biometric ID scheme was due to be published with the Budget in March. According to insiders, the former HBOS chief executive's report will be circulated internally in the coming weeks and is to be published when Parliament reconvenes in early October.

'Probably the strongest theme will be a recommendation to establish a critical mass of cardholders very fast, to enable both public and private sectors to get the benefits of the scheme and start building ID checks into business models,' said a senior source.

The IT requirements have already been significantly scaled down. The plan no longer requires an entirely new National Identity Register but instead will reuse the governmentís existing Citizen Information System.

The Crosby report is expected to curb the scheme's high-tech ambitions even further.

'It will recognise that there are many ways for checking services to be used and a lot will be offline, without the need for a huge IT network infrastructure,' said the source.

Though the long-delayed technology procurement is expected imminently, the scheme is subject to continued accusations of confusion.

Officials on Crosby's Treasury team requested a meeting with industry body the Enterprise Privacy Group (EPG) at the end of last month to discuss the potential for private sector ID brokers.

Such a scheme would reduce the governmentís role to mandating and managing the biometric enrolment of citizens only. All subsequent use of the identity established would be run by one or more trusted third parties - such as a bank - as chosen by the individual.

'A broker system could achieve the same outcome but is potentially more civil-liberties friendly and has a much lower cost than the traditional monolithic, centralised approach,' said EPG director Toby Stevens.

The brokerage model is fundamentally different from that being pursued by the Home Office's Identity and Passport Service. But insiders say it is too early to draw any conclusions.

'The concept has not even been fully defined yet - we are only at the very start of debating if that is a direction we might want to go,' said a source.