NO2ID

http://www.idealgovernment.com/index.ph ... ents/1433/

What happened to the Crosby review?

So why hasn’t all that promising hard work by Sir James Crosby for Gordon Brown seen the light of day? Remember, he was looking into what Britain needs from ID management from a public-private business point of view. The Crosby review began in Sept 06, was due by Easter 07, then “being finalised” in early July, then due “late summer” (07, one assumes), then thought likely to appear with the CSR, but...zip.

If I had to guess I’d say Sir James came to the sensible conclusion that the market (ie British business) does not need what the government has asked James Hall’s IPS to deliver, and that nothing he has heard independently suggests that IPS’s business case stacks up. I very much doubt he has any evidence that people generally want what IPS is doing. So his recommendation may be that it is an irrelevance, or needs fundamental change.

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Published by William Heath on 31/10/07 at 5:34pm

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id ... a.148643.h

Written answers
Wednesday, 11 July 2007

Treasury

Brian Binley (Northampton South, Conservative)

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he expects the report of the Crosby review of identity management to be published.

Andy Burnham (Chief Secretary, HM Treasury)

Sir James Crosby has been asked to deliver his report to Ministers by late summer.

BrotherBig makes a remarkably similar guess (October 29, 2007 12:53 PM) to Mr Heath's on IdealGovernment/Kable.

Given that James Crosby actually took the time to speak with people across the spectrum of opinion (including me, despite Home Office attempts to put him off), I somehow doubt that his report as originally drafted was favourable to the IPS scheme.

Anecdotally, I've been told by people in the financial services and retail sectors that they'd still rather use a recent utility bill than the ID card/NIR check as proof of address. The information is much more likely to be up-to-date.

Unless the government agrees to absorb huge amounts of liability (all at further cost to the taxpayer, of course) then there's just not much commercial appetite for them. Most large companies are already far ahead of what the Home Office could offer in terms of CRM/KYC* and employee management. The government's narrow definition of 'identity' simply won't be of much use, so it'll probably have to legislate to force certain sectors to perform ID checks.

Long delayed publication is sometimes indicative of 'difficult' re-drafting. Maybe the Home Office objected to the draft that was circulated to ministers (and spun to at least one journalist) sometime over the summer, and - much as the Treasury wants to keep the early OGC Gateway Reviews secret - would rather that Sir James' original report never saw the light of day...

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*Customer Relationship Management / 'Know Your Customer'

It certainly is. I have suggested to Private Eye that they do a where-is-the-Crosby-report piece and a where-is-the-section-37-report piece.

BrotherBig is someone who writes and thinks remarkably like one David Moss on a number of forums.

Certainly, we are one and the same person but there, I assure you, the similarity ends.