The IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology), Europe’s largest professional engineering society has called on the Home Office to adopt the recommendations regarding consultation on scientific and technical issues made in the report of the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee into the use of scientific advice on ID Cards.
The committee recommends that the Home Office undertakes future consultations on scientific and technical issues and not simply on the procurement process. The IET, which has a long track record of providing impartial expert advice to government, said it welcomed this recommendation as it would help improve the process of policy making.
Dr. Alf Roberts, CEO of the IET said: “The good news is that this report highlights the willingness of the engineering and scientific community to contribute their expertise in order to ensure that Government policy is based on the best possible scientific advice.”
The IET was amongst those who warned that National Identity Card System would fail unless the requirements for the project were formalised and rigorously analysed. Today, the IET strongly supports the Committee’s recommendation that the Home Office should clarify exactly what issues the ID scheme is trying to solve before consulting on the most effective means of addressing them.
Dr Roberts said that there is a growing consensus about the causes of the failure of large IT-enabled projects. These include, lack of clarity in the original purpose and specification by the client, suppliers failing to draw on the best software engineering and computer science knowledge, and unrealistic deadlines set to meet political imperatives.
Particular areas of concern raised by the IET relate to the security and integrity of the biometric identifier database. This demands a high level of assurance in establishing the identity of the person giving the biometric and confidence that the stored information cannot be tampered with. The IET believes the Government must demonstrate that the database cannot be subject to improper use, and that there is the ability to immediately detect attempts to breach the security of the system and to protect it in real time.
Describing the project as “high risk” the IET said that this was not the consequence of the individual technologies to be employed but from combining them in ways that are unproven and on such a large scale.
Dr Roberts said: “We strongly believe the technical challenges have yet to be fully explored.
The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) has more than 150,000 members many of whom have experience in the practical issues involved in developing complex databases, as well as the design and management of trustworthy and dependable information systems.
