Data fear haunts ID card scheme

Mark Ballard
The Inquirer
May 7, 2008

THE UK government has been warned that it should deal with the risk of data loss from its Identity Card Scheme before it proceeds any further.

The latest data warning follows repeated requests from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK data guardian, that the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) conduct a proper assessment of the risks of data loss from the ID Scheme. That advice was ignored and now, in the wake of the HMRC data fiasco, the IPS has been told that it must improve its data standards across the whole of government to avoid data leaks from the ID scheme.

The 2007 report of the Independent Scheme Assurance Panel (pdf), which provides official oversight of the ID Scheme, said yesterday that the data risks were so serious that they needed ministerial direction and that its precautions ought to be transparent because public trust was vital to the scheme’s success.

…….full article here