ID card scheme could cost twice estimated cost

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The government's ID card project could cost twice its estimated £5.4bn and be as risky as the NHS's National IT programme, according to an independent report.

The study, carried out by capacity planning and IT performance consultancy Capacitas, found that the daily projected business demand for the National Identity Scheme would be 3.4m transactions each day, comparable with the NHS's IT programme. This said the report's author would lead to a significant risk to the delivery of the project.

"The NHS National Programme for IT has suffered from a number of high-profile performance issues over the past 12 months," said Capacitas chief operating officer and author of the report Danny Quilton. "These performance issues have an adverse impact on project budget, benefit and delivery timescales. Given the comparable level of expected demand for the UK Identity Cards Systems, similar issues are likely."

Quilton said performance issues may manifest themselves in a variety of ways including high end-user response times and prolonged periods of service unavailability, adversely impacting both project delivery timescales and costs.

He said that prescription exemptions, GP visits and international air passenger numbers would be major factors in overloading the ID system and further demand planning should focus on these business processes. The report also said that performance issues are more likely to occur when system development is outsourced.

The report said there was significant risk that the three largest elements business demand would exhibit coincidental peak profiles, but it added that this risk could be mitigated through advanced demand planning.

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