WRITTEN ON July 7th, 2005 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Identity

The Daily Telegraph today publishes one of those multi-signatory letters (see below) explaining the LSE report wasn’t just the work of one dedicated campaigner – Simon Davies of Privacy International.

I signed this because the LSE’s final costings use a model developed at Kable, created by the very capable Philippe Martin.

So just as the Home Secretary’s allegation that the report is technically incompetent is an insult to the likes of Stefan Brands- from whom the Home Office would do well to learn – the suggestion that the numbers are fabricated is an unjust criticism of Kable, and wide of the mark.

The numbers in the Kable model are reasoned estimates, and it’s the nature of estimates that they’re wrong but rational. If the Home Office can improve the basis of our estimates let’s discuss and improve them, but they’re not easy people to talk to (we did ask, and got a one-liner from a press officer saying this was what it would cost and we could attribute that to “a spokesman” – text below in the spirit of open government).

I sympathise with Simon Davies and disagree with Mr Clarke about whether the ID cards and register as proposed are a good idea, but that’s a personal view. I admire Simon’s campaigning energy, but wouldn’t engage him to do IT expenditure analysis for us. If the LSE project were entirely Simon’s work then he’s a genius and polymath of inexhaustible energy and I suspect he’d make an excellent Home Secretary – arise Sir Simon.

The Kable numbers are the work of a very capable analyst, and if he has his own views on the matter we’ve never discussed them. Kable’s a non-political organisation whose customers want carefully researched facts clearly reported. We want to improve understanding of government IT so it’s done better. Text of letter is below –

Daily Telegraph letter –

Sir – The Home Secretary and his ministers have repeatedly claimed that the LSE identity-card report has been inspired and controlled by Simon Davies, a visiting LSE academic. The assertion is both unfair and incorrect. Simon Davies has certainly played a valuable and inspiring role, but his has been one role among many.

We, along with many other professional colleagues, have worked diligently on this report. Our teams have striven over the past six months to ensure that the research is both comprehensive and correct. We see the recent aggression as a political tactic to undermine the research and to shore up the Government’s desperate portrayal of the report as “mad”, “preposterous” and “rubbish”.

No one person involved in this work would ever take sole credit for the report’s many achievements and no one person should suffer a kicking because of its remarkable impact. All of us fully stand by the report and its findings. We therefore collectively offer ourselves up in sacrifice to the Government for our share of ridicule and abuse.

Professor Ian Angell, Department of Information Systems,

Professor Ross Anderson, University of Cambridge,

Dr Adrian Beck, University of Leicester,

Dr Stefan Brands, Credentica,

Dr Ian Brown, UCL,

Professor Roger Clarke,

Dr Alexander Dix, Privacy Commissioner for Berlin,

Ian Dowty,

Dr Brian Gladman,

William Heath,

Dr Gus Hosein,

Professor Frank Land, Department of Information Systems,

Meryem Marzouki, LIP6/PolyTIC-CNRS, France,

Drs Sjoera Nas, co-director Bits of Freedom (NL),

Joe Organ, Oxford Internet Institute,

Nicholas Pauro,

Daniele Pica, Department of Information Systems,

Professor Angela Sasse, UCL,

Gohsuke Takama, Japan,

Sarah Thatcher, Department of Information Systems,

Dr Edgar Whitley, Department of Information Systems,

Rosemary Walsh

Reply from Home Office to my third email over six weeks –

William
I work in the Home Office press office and I am contacting you following your e-mails to Katherine Courtney. As a journalist your first point of contact should always be the press office where we will always try to answer your questions as quickly as possible. Further to your enquiry, please find below information below attributable to a Home Office spokesperson:
“A revised Regulatory Impact Assessment was published alongside the ID Cards Bill on 25 May 2005. It sets out the following figures in relation to ID Cards:
£93: Unit cost of issuing a combined passport and identity card package valid for 10 years.
£584m: Average annual operating cost for issuing passports and ID cards to UK nationals (includes verification).
“We are currently reviewing the set up costs of the scheme but we are confident our latest estimates remain affordable. We didn’t publish set up costs last time and cannot release set-up costs in advance of procurement as it would risk value for money.
“To deliver the Identity Cards Scheme in its entirety will require a wide range of services from the supply market – ranging potentially from the integrated circuits (the ‘chip’) that will be embedded in the identity card, the physical premises in which people will be enrolled into the scheme, to the facilities for housing the computers required for processing (data centres). To ensure that the breadth of this market is addressed adequately, and focus applied in the right place, a structured view of the market is required.
“Market sounding is the activity undertaken to understand the capability, capacity and maturity of the potential supply market for services required. It includes – meeting directly, and in public fora, with suppliers, research, briefing the market on potential opportunities and soliciting views and experiences from others who have undertaken similar projects.
“We are already engaging with the market through market sounding activity and have already met a range of potential suppliers.”

Please contact me if you require further information.

Regards

Anna Zachariassen
Press Officer – Europe & Community Relations
The Home Office Press Office
Peel Building – Ground Floor
2 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DF
T 020 7035 3827
M 07776 471 030
E anna.zachariassen@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

(To be fair, it’s not a one-liner but the costings are pretty thin gruel compared to what we needed and what they surely have done)

My emails to them –

Dear Katherine

I’ve tried to call you following my earlier emails (below)…

Kable wants to tell the IT industry what it thinks this market will be worth based on a clear “bottom-up” model….do you have any information we can share on this, or can our analyst meet with whoever is dealing with costings in your team to compare notes?

Can you tell us when Home Office costings will be published?

William

__________________________________
William Heath, Chairman, Kable Ltd
+44 7973 115024
Public sector intelligence and media services
www.kablenet.com

Dear Katherine

Kable is working out a costing model for the ID system proposals, to help IT suppliers form a realistic expectation of market size. We’ve seen widely varying estimates from the Home Office and the LSE, and don’t really understand the basis for either of them.

In the light of the Minister’s comments today (“I accept the obligation on me … to set out the figures in the clearest and most substantive way,”)* it would be very helpful indeed if you could share with us any detail at all about how you see these costings working. Surely this information cant be “commercial in confidence” if there is no procurement under way?

Can we share our model with you and ask for your comments on it?

William Heath

Guardian link – Clarke promises clear costings

___________________________________
William Heath, Chairman, Kable Ltd
+44 7973 115024
Public sector intelligence and media services
www.kablenet.com

Dear Katherine

I’m really hoping and praying for a good outcome to your work on identity systems.

This has been much discussed at the Ideal Government online brainstorm www.idealgovernment.com, which the EPG/LSE team (whom I think you know) has now asked to host final thoughts before drafting their final report. In particular the Identity Project team wants to elicit suggestions for what critics might see as a clearer statement of what they want and suggestions for a better way of solving the problems.

What did you and your Home Office ID team colleagues make of the interim LSE Identity Project report? Do you accept it as accurate? Do you believe it has weaknesses that should be rectified?

I’d be very pleased to hear from you on this – I think any engagement at all from you in this discussion would help dispel the damaging (and hopefully largely wrong) notion that the Home Office ID team is introspective, cares little about the human rights implications of these proposals, and that it is insufficiently aware of the more consumer-friendly alternatives that industry is now discussing and proposing for identity in the e-enabled world.

I look forward to hearing from you.

William Heath

_________________________________
William Heath, +44 7973 115024
Moderator, www.idealgovernment.com
Chairman, Kable Ltd, www.kablenet.com