Report - Guardian

190 The LSE Identity Project Report: June 2005EnrolmentThe enrolment stage, in which people's biometrics are recorded and their details enteredinto the National Identity Register, is critical if the authenticity of each identity record isto be ensured. The immediate problem is that of balancing convenience of enrolmentagainst the necessary quality of the result.For example, to make enrolment easy, there will need to be many locations whereenrolment is possible. But if there are many locations, the staff costs will be very largeand the ability of systems managers to maintain control over the integrity of operationswill be degraded. Since enrolment is critical to the integrity of the whole system, it willbe important that staff members are well trained, with at least two people present at anytime so that no single person acting alone can subvert an enrolment operation. Sincethere have to be more staff to cover leave and sickness, the usual assumption for asecure system is that three staff members are needed for every individual role that needsto be performed. This figure increases when management and backroom staff needs aretaken into account.The integrity of the National Identity Register will be compromised even if only a smallnumber of these thousands of staff act improperly. With smaller centres, in particular, itwill become feasible for those who see value in attacking the system to plan aninfiltration strategy based on subverting a single enrolment centre. This will add to therequirements for vetting, auditing and other measures designed to ensure that suchstrategies cannot succeed. This will further increase both the initial and the operatingcosts.If four staff members are needed per enrolment line, then with ten-minute enrolmentinterviews it is unlikely that more than ten interviews can be conducted per staff-day, or2000 interviews per staff-year. With proper interviews and careful checks of foundationdocuments, productivity is likely to be even lower. 5,000,000 enrolments per yearwould thus require an establishment of several thousand staff. This is certainly what willbe needed to maintain the quality of enrolment processes, but experience suggests that itwill soon be seen as an unacceptably low throughput and will thus provoke ‘cornercutting’ to achieve savings, leading to the compromises that so often undermine securityin the real world.It also seems likely that such pressures will promote other enrolment strategiesinvolving fewer centres. However, this is unlikely to make significant cost savings sinceit will simply shift costs onto those who now have to travel some distance in order toenrol. This will also make enrolment much less convenient, adding significantly to thedifficulties faced by those who have to register for ID cards. We may expect particularproblems for the elderly, for people with physical and mental disabilities, and for peopleliving in remote communities.Another issue is that of how citizens will be able to have confidence in enrolmentcentres and those who work in them.