II. Accenture leads race to offer underlying technology for U.K. national ID program

Accenture has emerged as the front-runner to provide biometric technology to implement the U.K. national ID card scheme. A former Accenture managing director, Ian Watmore, who now heads the e-government — and, ultimately, the ID — project, will see his former employer bid for the biometrics contract. The Business newspaper says that laboratories owned by the company have just finished developing technology for storing and collecting biometrics securely. The system is designed to collate whole-hand fingerprinting, iris, and facial recognition.

The London School of Economics (LSE) estimates the overall identity scheme could cost up to “19.2 billion. The LSE has warned that to operate on a national scale, the technology “would have to be close to perfect” — a difficult task for biometric suppliers as “any claim of infallibility is incorrect.”

Jerry Fishenden, national technology officer at Microsoft UK, has reportedly said biometrics experts believe it would be preferable to store biometrics locally, contrary to the government’s plans. The task of managing central control of over 65 million people’s records is considerable. The demands have already forced IT contractor Thales to admit its biometric technology would probably exclude 2 per cent of participants. In its June 2005 report, the LSE reflected how “A central register on a scale of 50 million records would need to contain very accurate biometrics, and the verification process would have to involve high-integrity devices. All biometrics have successfully been spoofed or attacked by researchers. Substantial work has been undertaken to establish the technique of forging or counterfeiting fingerprints, while researchers in Germany have established that iris recognition is vulnerable to simple forgery.”

Katherine Courtney, director of the Identity Cards Program, said in testimony to a parliamentary committee last week that the National Physical Laboratory had tested the feasibility of the key biometric and smart card technologies. “[The] studies came back showing that the technical risks to a programme like this were medium risks and were manageable and actually, the important thing to focus on was of course the business risks and making sure that we are getting the business process right ,and all the other factors around how you identify a person and register their identity,” she said.