Fans of digital ID cards argue that they will speed the UK into a digital future by giving everyone a way to prove who they are.
What’s confusing about this argument is that we can do that already.
We have physical ID cards in the form of passports and driving licences. We also have an extensive system of digital identification and a whole range of laws that require you to prove your identity, sometimes multiple times a week.
If you’ve employed someone recently, even for a few days, you’ll know that you have to check their right to work documents, either physically or digitally.
It’s the same if you open a bank account, hire a solicitor, file a tax return, vote in an election or apply to get government services like Universal Credit. These days, even accessing pornographic content online requires an identity check.
The trouble, from a government point of view, is that none of these systems are joined together, which makes it possible to slip through the gaps.
Despite all the checks, for instance, illegal immigrants regularly get access to bank accounts. The Home Office is meant to share its data with banks and building societies to stop this happening, but the information is often incomplete or just plain wrong: that’s why the system had to be paused for four years after the Windrush scandal came to light.
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A truly efficient system would clean this kind of data, link it up, and connect it in one sweeping overview. But that would require the creaking civil service to access information that’s often hard to find, let alone share.
Much easier – or so advocates of ID cards say – to sweep the old bureaucracy aside and begin again with a single central system.
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The result, they say, would be a system that’s faster and more reliable for citizens. But mainly this is a piece of infrastructure that, its proponents hope, would make government function in the way it’s supposed to.
All of which raises the question – do we actually want that?
Do we want a government that can track us in every part of our lives? That can actually enforce the law, in a way it has no hope of doing currently?
The government believes the answer is yes. Their focus groups and polling tell them that people are sick and tired of failing government systems and desperate for decisive action, especially on immigration.
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That’s why the bigger risk in all this might not be the politics but the delivery.
Can they make sure this system is built on budget and without massive delays? Can they get it operating at scale without suffering a hack or a major technical glitch?
Can they show people that the problem is the current system, not the way it is being used?
This is a task that even Google or Amazon would quail at. One that makes HS2 look easy.
Yet Whitehall – not known for its tech expertise – might be asked to take it on, perhaps in time for the next election.
