Fujitsu shrugs off Tory threat to cancel ID cards
Kablenet.com
Published: 04 Jun 2008 08:56 BST
The European boss of Fujitsu, one of the contractors to the National Identity Scheme, said he does not fear a Conservative victory at the next election.
The party's shadow home secretary, David Davis, has written to Fujitsu Services and the other vendors stating the Conservatives' intention to cancel the ID card scheme if they win the general election, which must be held by 2010.
However, Richard Christou, Fujistu's corporate senior vice president and head of European operations, told GC News: "I don't see that presents a particular problem. If you look at the contracts — the way they are let — a lot of them are to do with managing passports and the national identity database. I think those will happen in any event."
Fujitsu Services was recently confirmed as one of the five vendors which will bid for the five contracts to build the scheme for the Identity and Passport Service.
"You can question whether a different government would take a different view of the rollout of ID cards, but that's only one of the contracts," Christou added.
Noting that the European Union has mandated the use of biometrics in passports, Christou added: "A lot of this is going to happen whatever government is in there. Will it be compulsory? Who knows, but that's some time away."
The Identity and Passport Service agreement obliges Fujitsu and the other participating vendors to bid for each of the scheme's contracts, including the politically vulnerable one for ID cards. "At the moment, there are no doubts on it, and one never knows what political change may occur. But we are obliged to bid, and we will make serious bids on all of them," Christou said.
As to the scheme's possible cancellation, he said: "If it happens, it's within the range of possibilities that are always looked at with a contract. All government contracts, as you know, can be cancelled for convenience, so that may happen."
"I think the ones that everybody is concentrating on at the minute are: who's going to run the passport system; who's going to run the national identity database?" Christou added.
More generally, Christou said that the scheme may set a precedent, and that government bodies "may choose to break [contracts] down into small chunks. If you look at the ID card, maybe three years ago they would have done it all in one".
"I think that may be the way that public-sector procurement will go in the future. That's an adaptation that we would go along with, clearly, if that's what the customer wants to do," he added.
He was not willing to discuss Fujitsu Service's recent firing from the NHS National Programme for IT, with which it had a contract worth £896m, except to say that the firm is likely to continue to have involvement in Picture Archiving and Communication System, and Radiology Information System work, and remains interested in working with the health service.
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