Whitehall rejects £1.8B digital ID price tag – but won't say what it will cost

The head of the department delivering the UK government's digital identity scheme has rejected the £1.8 billion cost forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), but is not willing to provide an alternative until after a delayed consultation on the plans. The OBR, which provides independent analysis of government …

[Aladdin Sane]

won't say what it will cost

Because it's going to be more than £1.8B. Probably double that before cost overruns and delays followed by the inevitable cancellation.

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

Exactly.

When we all heard the figure, we laughed and said it would cost much more.

When the government is questioned on the figure, they say "No, no, it won't cost that much."

[IanRS]

Cost TBD

Of course they cannot say what it will cost, pre-consultation, but that is not the scary part. The scart part is the required consultation over "what range of uses it will have". This is for something that was just meant to make checking validity for employment easier.

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: Cost TBD

PAPERS PLEASE

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Cost TBD

If it was purely for checking whether you can be employed, all that would be needed is your UTR (unique tax reference)....

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: checking validity for employment

If the government want public support for a digital ID pork barrel then they should publicise the proposed benefits. I'll get them started:

• Working should no longer be a right but a privilege.
• We can introduce extra barriers to getting a job.
• We can exclude the homeless from work: "buy a mobile phone you dirty layabouts!"
• We can give control of access to the job market to companies beholden to foreign dictatorships.

[Mike 137]

Re: checking validity for employment

"Working should no longer be a right but a privilege"

No, working will be an obligation but you must have a smart phone to be able to fulfil your obligation to the state. Anyone who can't afford or use one will be written off as a non-person.

[A Non e-mouse]

Re: won't say what it will cost

Probably double that before cost overruns and delays followed by the inevitable cancellation and the back handers to the old-boys club members.

FTFY

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: won't say what it will cost

"followed by the inevitable cancellation."

Not very likely as most parties and all the govt. departments concerned are unlikely to relinquish their grasp on us whatever the cost.

[Roland6]

Re: won't say what it will cost

Double!

HS2 is more than ten times over the £9bn cost socialised by Labour in 2009 with it's initial announcement that their proposed new London to Birmingham high-speed railway would save 15 minutes in journey time.

Obviously, we can now see this cost excluded lots of things, including trains to run on the line.

So we should expect given how new uses for the proposed Digital Id cards are being discovered, for its budget to likewise mushroom, along with the associated annual operating and maintenance costs.

[DS999]

Re: won't say what it will cost

They'll probably spend that much just on all the consulting to plan and scope the project, before it even starts to roll out.

[CharliePsycho]

Re: won't say what it will cost

They already know how much it will cost because for the last time they tried it... £4.5 Billion under Tony Blair with independent assessments at £19B (according to the Hansard Records) That's why they wont say.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: won't say what it will cost

Have about buying the already working in Finland one, that will be the basis of the EU’s one. Esp. As there is a lot of UK/EU travel.

Bollocks to Brexit wasting money reinventing the wheel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: won't say what it will cost

The brand new USA Mobile Passport Control app (inbound) is pretty nifty too. Also integrates with the outbound face scanning no passport inspection needed at the gate (which also does RealID for ‘Murcans)

https://www.cbp.gov/travel/us-citizens/mobile-passport-control

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: won't say what it will cost

How about not buying any of this ID card shit?

Nobody has made any sort of rational case for having Starmercards and the related infrastructure. Where's the cost/benefit analysis? FFS Starmer's goons can't/won't tell us how much this is going to cost. If it's just to crack down on illegal working (which isn't true of course), what would it cost to do that properly with the current tools instead of pissing billions up against the wall on yet another Crapita-run database that will never work?

[ComicalEngineer]

We're in the land of confusion

Basically, the government have no real idea what it will cost. £1.8Bn is a figure plucked out of the air by some Whitehall mandarin and a group of cronies sitting round a table with a pot of Earl Grey and box of Harrods biscuits in a private club.

The cost assumes that the chosen contractor will actually be able to produce a working system, which further assumes that a government committee can properly specify what the ID system needs to do in order to function and design a working interface [unlikely].

The contract will then be given to one of the usual failures [Crapita / ATOS / Serco / Fujitsu / CGI etc] and then there will be a massive shock when the system doesn't work properly, isn't secure and costs 5x the original estimate.

[Lusty]

Re: We're in the land of confusion

“when the system doesn't work properly”

To determine this they would first need to define the purpose of the system. So far we just have “we want ID” and that’s not really much of a dream techies can aim at with success criteria.

Obviously we all know the success criteria involves giving billions to their mates and has nothing to do with ID.

[Aladdin Sane]

Re: We're in the land of confusion

The system will work perfectly, as it will be engineered to move money from the exchequer to shareholders and to move MPs into boardrooms. Actually doing anything else is an added bonus.

[TimMaher]

Re: Harrods biscuits

Fortnum & Mason surely?

[David Hicklin]

Re: We're in the land of confusion

And what are the odds that it won't even be ready by the end of this Parliament ? This lot won't be in office after that

[Pete 2]

Hofstadter's or Parkinson's law?

> rejected the £1.8 billion cost forecast

No matter what number they choose / guess, we all know it will exceed that by an unimaginably high factor.

Then after overspending by an eye-watering amount, and taking considerably longer than anyone could rationally imagine, it will be cancelled when 90% complete.

[Dale 3]

Re: Hofstadter's or Parkinson's law?

This is exactly why we DO want them to dispute and reject the current estimate. If the current estimate is 1.8B, it will end up costing 36B before cancellation. If they change the current estimate to 18B now, it will end up costing 360B before cancellation. So we might as well go the other way and bring the estimate down 180M, then the final cost will end up being only 3.6B before they cancel it. That would be much better value for taxpayers. It's called value engineering!

[IanRS]

Re: Hofstadter's or Parkinson's law?

I agree with your point, but I am not sure 'better value' is the correct term. 'Less bad value' perhaps?

[Pete 2]

Re: Hofstadter's or Parkinson's law?

Those outfits that get government contracts are experts at pushing up costs. Primarily because government departments have no incentive to keep them low - it's not as if it's their money!

Ultimately all government initiatives cost as much as the Treasury is willing to pay. This number bears no connection to original estimates. I have a sneaking suspicion that if the suppliers were developing this solution for their own benefit, it would come in on time and under budget.

[Roland6]

Re: Hofstadter's or Parkinson's law?

>Those outfits that get government contracts are experts at pushing up costs.

However, there could be good reason for them to up the "costs", as we can expect the government to try and transfer risk to the contractors - like it has done with HS2, and so the contractors naturally will inflate their costs to include contingency...

[David Harper 1]

Definitely a future case study on how not to do a big IT project

About 20 years ago, the Open University ran an excellent course called "Learning from Information System Failures" as part of its postgraduate computing programme. It examined the different ways in which large IT projects often fail. The course material included several case studies, including the infamous Cambridge University CAPSA project and the Home Office's 1999 Passport Office fiasco. If the OU ever brings back this course, I predict that the Digital ID project will be a prime candidate to become a new case study.

[Peter Prof Fox]

Set a budget first

Then ask for bids from contractors to meet the spec. Leave the risk with the private companies. (The whole thing is stupid anyaay.)

[ColinPa]

Spec?

Spec ... they have a spec ? Wow - can we all see it - or is it just chartware?

[Roland6]

Re: Spec?

chartware - so yesterday

They probably have an AI prompt text which is currently being refined...

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

Re: Set a budget first

How can you have a spec when every month a minister announces a new feature it will have or a new problem it will solve?

[Winkypop]

Just as long as….

They budget for the inevitable cost over runs.

The judicial enquiries

Compensation for the innocent victims

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: Just as long as….

"Compensation for the innocent victims"

Don't need that. Victims are little people.

[Anonymous Coward]

Goverment project

so factor in a 10x price increase

[Mike 137]

As expected - mission creep already

"Inclusion of this age group could also support children's online safety by supporting age verification for online services in line with the Online Safety Act 2023."

Now is the time to ask loudly where mission creep will stop (and how many people will be excluded from key services/entitlements just becauss they don't have or can't use a "smart" phone). Write to your MP.

[David Hicklin]

Re: As expected - mission creep already

If they are going to do that then they might as well be done with it and call it the "UK National Identity Card" as that is what it will have become.

At an eye watering cost of course

[MC]

Forced emigration

They can shove this where it doesn't shine. If I need one to get a job, well, I'm not getting a job then.....in the UK anyway.

[Beff Jezos]

1.8 yards?

that's just for the preperations

[TimMaher]

Re:-“hosted in secure cloud environments”

Really?

[CountCadaver]

so on one hand

Until the minute they turn 16/18 they are legally "vulnerable children" but when it comes to "work" they are "young people"

Doublespeak galore there - no different to the "newspapers" talking about "16 year old man" being convicted but where it's a victim of crime they are described (even when over 18) as a "teen boy/girl"

[Anonymous Coward]

Once Upon A Time.........

...."requirements" became unfashionable.....see the Agile Manifesto for details.

This has become not only unfashionable.....but completely inconceivable.

....with the result that "cost estimates" exist in a world of fantasy. One billion, two billion, five billion............who knows................

....and of course in 2025 no one cares any more either!!

[Throg]

Re: Once Upon A Time.........

Until we can somehow magically stop stakeholders / customers from constantly changing their mind about what they want, adapting to “changing requirements” is merely acknowledging reality rather than fantasy.

And of course what they say they want isn’t usually what they actually need.

The very reason why large projects run by big consultancies fail and/or overrun with monotonous regularity is because they promote the fantasy over the reality, because it’s very lucrative to do so.

Digital ID will be the poster child for this.

[Daniel Pfeffer]

Cheops' Law

Everything costs more and takes longer.

I am surprised that the Classically- educated mandarins of the Cicil Service are not aware of this.

[Cucumber C Face]

Déjà construit

Or we could get some indication of cost from establishing and running similar systems:

Unique Taxpayer Reference

National Insurance Number

NHS Number

Passport

Driving License

[Have I missed any]

Or we could extend any one of the above and drop the others.

[Persona]

Re: Déjà construit

One could hope that it would be a single table, yet when you look at one persons details you find the name on the passport is spelt differently from the one associated with the UTR and the address on the driving license is completely different. The date of birth for the NHS number is different too, but that's probably just a typo. They might all relate to one person, but perhaps it's five different people.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can do it for half that

We're talking about one table with 70m records ...

[ColinPa]

Re: I can do it for half that

70 million records is small. I did some work for a Chinese bank - they had over 200 million personal bank accounts. You just need to use the right systems ( and do not expect to use a spread sheet or similar technology).

The problem is the non functional requirements. If you write an record audit every time someone's record is accesses - that will need a database 100 times the size of the number of accounts, and you keep this information for 10 years. And you'll need a fail over and DR system....

And don't forget field encryption etc.

[MrGreen]

More Tax

Digital ID is just another way to take more money from you via tax.

The elites already know who’ll get the contracts and they’ll be buying cheap shares in those companies ready for massive profits.

Everything the government does is designed to make the elites rich and keep you poor.

[Dizzy Dwarf]

Parliament debated the petition you signed – “Do not introduce Digital ID cards”

Watch the debate

Read the transcript

Read the research

The petition