Andrea Di MaioYesterday the Chancellor of the new coalition government in the UK, George Osborne, announced some draconian measures to save money, which will affect IT spending and some high-profile programs, which confirmed by the Queen’s speech today
As reported by CIO UK yesterday and today, the identity card and biometric passport programs may both be axed, while discretionary spending, including consulting, will be frozen or immediately renegotiated.
It is interesting that the identity card program gets singled out. Billions have already been spent across the EU in various identity management, smart card programs and the uptake looks very variable. Belgium claims this is a success, while uptake in Spain or Italy is still very low.
This would send a strong a message across Europe: smart ID and similar cards have been high on the agenda for many, but now that draconian cuts are required, maybe it is time to reconsider. Also because it was not all gold that glitters.
Category: e-government Tags: ID card, UK government
2 responses so far ↓
1 Tweets that mention The UK May Prove that ID Card Programs Can Be Killed -- Topsy.com May 25, 2010 at 1:41 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Andrea DiMaio and open3gov, Ben Taylor. Ben Taylor said: Rt @AndreaDiMaio: The UK May Prove that ID Card Programs Can Be Killed – http://bit.ly/bxBZrz #gov20 [...]
2 If the UK Killed Its ID Card, Why Can’t Italy Kill Its Certified E-Mail? May 30, 2010 at 4:09 pm
[...] costs a significant amount of money, it would be great if the Italian government had the guts to do what the UK government is doing with the ID card. [...]