It is odd to claim gross rather than net benefits, especially in the private sector, since it seems inevitable that there will be considerable costs associated with securing these benefits.

Publishing a benefits overview without also publishing the detailed analysis on which the overview has been built is of limited value since it is important to understand how the cost figures have been obtained and important to know what assumptions have been made about how the scheme will be used.

However, taking the claimed benefits on trust, the fact that the majority of the overall cost benefit is evidently secured in the private sector shows that there is a strong argument for letting the private sector take the lead in introducing biometrics for identity verification.

Government interests could then be promoted by paying for the standardisation and the R&D work necessary to ensure a uniform and consistent approach emerges in a form suitable for later public sector use when it is mature.

This would provide the following advantages:

1. the costs and the benefits would be subject to the constaints imposed by market forces;

2. The cost to taxpayers would be much reduced since the technology would be funded primarily by the private sector and not by the taxpayer (as it should be since this is where the majority of the cost benefit lies);

3. At the point at which the government takes up the technoogy for public sector use, it would be mature and this would protect taxpayers from the huge costs involved in high risk government IT investments;

4. It is highly likely that the data privacy requirements that the private sector will have to meet will provide a scheme focussed precisely on high quality identity verfication and not on the use of a central database such as the National Identity Register with its serious safety, security and civil liberties problems.

Such an approach would be close in form to that advocated in the LSE report.

In overall terms therefore this benefits overview provides ‘government accredited’ evidence which supports an approach to identity verification similar to that set out in the LSE report rather than that being promoted by the Home Office.

It also suggests that the private sector and not taxpayers should take the lead in investing in biometric identity verfication.

Brian Gladman