I am the first to agree that ID is essential infrastructure for business, government and citizens.
I do not agree that it should cost £87 billion to provide it.
I did a few back of the envelope calculations assuming:
- The British Government can do back of the envelope addition, division, multiplication etc
- It would cost the rest of the EU and world about the same per head to provide the ID card in the same manner as the UK from the same suppliers (handy eh?)
- The US, Canada and Australia would have to follow suit and they indicate they'll do so and the government in Australia was tipped out partly as a result of that (lesson here?).
I added the populations together and divided by the population of the UK (where they claim £5.6 billion will be required to provide ID cards). Then multiply by UK cost.
Population numbers are in millions because we don't want anyone confused by too many zeros and we've rounded the numbers so that even the kiddies can follow:
UK = 58
Eu = 490 UK Govt Estimate ID cost £5.6 billion
USA = 300 Total population UK ~58 million?
Australia = 20
Canada = 31
899 million - So lets round it up to 900 million
Divide the 900 million by population of UK and multiply by cost of ID in UK = £86.89 billion
So from that I take it the UK Government and it's fellows are suggesting that the above countries shell out £87 billion pounds for an ID scheme.
Have you seen the state of the economy, food prices, collapsing financials?
Been to a public hospital lately, or a school?
I believe you should give me a call before you're out of a job like John Howard.
My back of the envelope calculations suggests that for the £5.6 billion pounds my company could provide a better system using mobile phones and maintain it for approximately a century.
£5.6+ billion down the gurgler or 100 years of practical identity management?
What'll it be?
p.s This is a public service announcement, not blatant self promotion.