Giant ID card is burnt in front of Manchester Town Hall

[moon23]

A video here, from a day of action against ID cards in Manchester, ahead of the launch of the scheme for people within the city.

People came as far and wide as Glasgow, Reading, Oxford, Shrewsbury, London, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Birmingham to hold around 10 stalls across the city centre.

This was followed by a public meeting and a rally in Albert Square, where a mock ID card was burnt. During the meeting, lot's of people were asking questions about the revolving door in government between heads of the IT companies standing to profit from the scheme.

For instance Sir James Hall who heads up the Identity and Passport Service a managing partner of Accenture the company that made millions from cocking up the new NHS spine database system.

http://www.g7uk.com/photo-video-blo...-in-front-of-manchester-town-hall-video.shtml

www.idcardcon.org - for more info of the ongoing campaign to halt the introduction of the scheme and the database state.

 

[Stoat Boy]

Fingers cross that a Tory victory in the elections will totally scorch this whole ID card nonsense once and for all but in the event of a Labour victory and their continued attempts to implement this then far more direct action and protests have to happen.

 

[lopsidedbunny]

Who to say that the tory will ever scrap it... they can't be trusted...

 

[Maurice Picarda]

Eh? The NHS spine was BT. And it's not attracted much criticism at all. Accenture pulled out of NPfIT and CSC took over from them in their regions.

Accenture do surprisingly little govt work for a company that size, and most of what they've done (a lot in DWP) has, again, been successful.

So how can you claim that Hall's appointment is a "revolving door" situation?

 

[moon23]

Eh? The NHS spine was BT. And it's not attracted much criticism at all. Accenture pulled out of NPfIT and CSC took over from them in their regions.

Accenture do surprisingly little govt work for a company that size, and most of what they've done (a lot in DWP) has, again, been successful.

So how can you claim that Hall's appointment is a "revolving door" situation?

Not attracted must critism at all? Despite having it's own campaign The Big Opt Out against it? Despite the FSA investigating Isoft one of the inital software companies, despite the Public accounts committee saing it had provided "little clinical functionality...to-date". Then the project got given the 'Big Brother Award' from privacy international, and again the Public Accounts Committee said the department of health did not have a full grip of the privacy implications - Have you had your head in the sand? Maybe BT are and the CSC are now doing a better job, but still....

Accenture withdrew from the project becuase they messed it up and were effectivley sacked, they were meant to be liable for some of the costs if they drew out early but Richard Granger head of NPfIT (who was on 280k pa) chose not to use that clause and saved Accenture £930 million pounds, which should be in the public purses. Mr Granger had previously worked with Andersen Consulting who later became Accenture. So yes there is a revolving door between the IT professional's and the well paid civil servant roles which appoint and let their chums off the hook when they mess up.

Now Mr Hall is promoting the use of data-sharing accross whitehall and the hated Identity Scheme, which his friends in the IT world just happen to be profitting from.

 

[stethoscope]

Who to say that the tory will ever scrap it... they can't be trusted...

This.

 

[futha]

Fingers cross that a Tory victory in the elections will totally scorch this whole ID card nonsense once and for all but in the event of a Labour victory and their continued attempts to implement this then far more direct action and protests have to happen.

I hate the idea of an ID card and I wish I could have made it down to this event but I will certainly not be crossing my fingers for a tory government!

 

[Maurice Picarda]

Not attracted must critism at all? Despite having it's own campaign The Big Opt Out against it? Despite the FSA investigating Isoft one of the inital software companies, despite the Public accounts committee saing it had provided "little clinical functionality...to-date". Then the project got given the 'Big Brother Award' from privacy international, and again the Public Accounts Committee said the department of health did not have a full grip of the privacy implications - Have you had your head in the sand? Maybe BT are and the CSC are now doing a better job, but still....

You're talking about the care records service in totality, though. The spine is an innocuous platform over which various different applications can be delivered.

And the whining from privacy fetishists isn't relevant to the question of whether IT providers have a) cocked up or b) fleeced the tax payer or c) had an over-cosy relationship with Whitehall. The PAC's criticism of iSoft is fair and possibly germane, but their point about privacy is directed to DH and CfH, not to the IT providers.

Accenture withdrew from the project becuase they messed it up and were effectivley sacked, they were meant to be liable for some of the costs if they drew out early but Richard Granger head of NPfIT (who was on 280k pa) chose not to use that clause and saved Accenture £930 million pounds, which should be in the public purses. Mr Granger had previously worked with Andersen Consulting who later became Accenture. So yes there is a revolving door between the IT professional's and the well paid civil servant roles which appoint and let their chums off the hook when they mess up.

No, that's not fair. The Register link you posted makes it fairly explicit that Accenture had a pretty good case and that DH would have been on very difficult grounds trying to get the money back. It was botched procurement, not botched delivery.

Anyway, where the buggery are government supposed to get IT professionals from, if not from the IT industry? If you want to have better government CIOs, who know what good looks like and buy sensibly, then you want to go to the private sector rather than to a civil servant with a first in Greats.

Now Mr Hall is promoting the use of data-sharing accross whitehall and the hated Identity Scheme, which his friends in the IT world just happen to be profitting from.

Well, a small group of vendors would do well out of the ID scheme, and the others wouldn't. The axis of luddism on government IT (which has you at one end, blimpish Tory back benchers on the other, and some mischievous interested parties in the middle) is actually going to provide a lot of extra revenue to the IT industry through obsessing over Evil Databases and Evil Datasharing: it acts as a block on saving money through rationalising the many, many customer databases across HMRC, DVLA, DWP and several hundred local authorities.