The UK national identity card

Abstract

During the period 2002–2010 the UK government of the time attempted to relate the rights and entitlements of citizenship with a standard identifier for all British citizens and its representation in a national identity smartcard. The scheme to introduce this identity token for all UK citizens was finally abandoned in December 2010. This teaching case describes the history of this endeavour as promoted by the UK government and its agencies. It also describes the reaction to these plans on the part of numerous other stakeholder groups within the UK. This is a rich case for examining a number of critical, contemporary issues of relevance to Information Systems theory and practice that are occurring worldwide. On the one hand, the attempt to introduce such an identity token brought into focus the critical role that identity and its management plays as supporting infrastructure in areas such as e-Government and e-Business. On the other, the introduction of a national identifier and associated token raised major challenges to data protection, data privacy and public trust in the information governance of this nation state. Indeed, such difficulties constituted a major part of the rationale for the abandonment of the project.