Jethro_uk wrote:

Forget all that. The whole scheme will fall by the wayside anyway, since
AFAIK no government project involving IT has *ever* worked (by that I mean
when the [massively over budget] bill is paid the system does what it says
it does).

Good point well made. In fact it is doomed to failure before it even
starts since they have already fallen at the first hurdle. They can not
define why they want it, or what it is supposed to achieve. As an
engineer I can see no way of ever matching that set of requirements or
for that matter even generating a set of requirements from it.

If the government can't run the CSA/Passport office/DSS/IR now, bearing in
mind that these agencies only process data on a *part* of the adult
population, what on earth makes you think they will be able to deliver a
system which can keep tabs on the *entire* population, across *all* of these
agencies ?

None. Part of me thinks "well it would be rich pickings for anyone even
remotely into technology or IT for a good few years". The sad thing is
that we will all be paying for it for years to come.

I think the only thing we have to fear from the ID card debacle is the fact
that there are politicians and senior civil servants out there who think it
will work ... are these the same people who suggested whitewashing the
windows when the bombs fell ?

What is worse is you will have lots of technology providers egging them
on since it will sell product. If you are non technical it is easy to be
blinded by the science and convinced that whichever technology is being
hawked will solve all the problems.

As always it is the fringes and the corner cases that will break the
system. A biometric scanner bought because it is "99.9%" accurate (as
if!) may still leave several thousand people denied access to their
flights each day because according to the screen at the check-in desk,
the owner of the finger/iris should be a middle aged black woman when
clearly he is not!

--
Cheers,

John.

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