No ID-ea
This is excellent news if true. From The Sunday Times:
ID cards doomed, say officials
Tony Blair’s flagship identity cards scheme is set to fail and may not be introduced for a generation, according to a series of leaked Whitehall e-mails
The Times goes on to quote from emails between civil servants:
“From: Foord, David (OGC)
Sent: 08 June 2006 15:17
Subject: RE: Procurement StrategyThis has all the inauspicious signs of a project continuing to be driven by an arbitrary end date rather than reality.
[…]
What benchmark in the Home Office do we have that suggests that this is even remotely feasible? I conclude that we are setting ourselves up to fail.
[…]
I do not have a problem with ministers wanting a face saving solution, but we need to be clear with the programme team, senior officials, special advisors and ministers etc just what this implies. They need to understand this, because a botched introduction of a descoped early variant ID Card backed by TNIR, if it is subject to a media feeding frenzy (queues outside passport offices! and more recently IND) – which it might well be close to a general election, could put back the introduction of ID Cards for a generation and won’t do much for IPS credibility nor for the Govt’s election chances either (latter not our problem but might play with ministers).”
