11. Supplementary memorandum
submitted by the Department for Work and Pensions
Q574. Are you in a position now to estimate
the proportion of checks which would be taken backroom as opposed
to front office?
Work is ongoing within DWP to determine how
and where Identity Cards would be checked during the application
procedures for the various benefits administered by the Department.
Any control of access to services through the ID Card will take
account of the DWP Contact Centre strategy, which aims to reduce
face to face transactions to the minimum required. For these reasons
we can only offer an initial high level estimate of the proportion
of backroom checks.
Should a decision on compulsion be made, it
is envisaged that backroom checks would apply primarily to clients
of the Pensions Service and Disability and Carers Service with
whom most contacts are conducted by telephone or post. At present
these services account for about 50% of the benefit claims received
by DWP, so our initial estimate would be that around half of ID
Card checks would be taken backroom as opposed to front office.
Q581 How many of those [readers which are
able to scan and to collect or to register biometric information]
do you expect to have?
The number of card readers cited to the Committee
on 27 April, and in the Home Office confidential memorandum, is
a high-level assessment of the number of readers required, and
will be refined as more work is undertaken on this issue.
DWP are working closely with the Home Office
to establish the full impact of Identity Cards upon DWP systems
and business processes. Issues around the design of the Card and
the information held on the Card will play an important part in
these considerations.
It is important that DWP has the opportunity
to undertake detailed low-level impact analysis on its current
business processes. Until that analysis has been completed, we
will be unable to give a breakdown of the types of card reader
we will need. However, as stated on 27 April, we would expect
to need only a small number of full biometric readers.
Mr Chris Pond MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary
of State
June 2004
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