Capacitas warns of ID card system overload

System will not cope with expected 1.2 billion business processes per annum.

The level of business demand for the UK Identity Cards system will present a serious risk to project delivery, according to a white paper released this week.

ICT capacity and performance specialist Capacitas has estimated the demand for the UK Identity Card service to be 1.2 billion business processes per annum.

This is comparable to the NHS National Programme for IT, currently the largest non-military ICT project in Europe.

Capacitas said that the scale of this demand presents a significant risk to the project, as system performance issues are more likely to occur when attempting to meet demand of this magnitude.

Performance issues may manifest in a variety of ways, including high end-user response times and prolonged periods of service unavailability, resulting in project delays and cost overruns.

Danny Quilton, chief operating officer at Capacitas, said: "The NHS National Programme for IT has suffered from a number of high-profile performance issues over the past 12 months.

"These performance issues have an adverse impact on project budget, benefit and delivery timescales. Given the comparable level of expected demand for the UK Identity Cards system, similar issues are likely to surface in this project. "