To be honest, none of those systems are free as you’d have had to pay someone for any of the privately developed ones and you’d still have had an administration overhead with OpenPostcode.
I don’t agree with the way it was rolled out and the tender was oddly constructed to eliminate smaller bidders, but I can’t really see it being totally free no mater how it was done.
Also we don’t have any universal voluntary ID
Driving licenses aren’t universal. A % of the the population doesn’t qualify for them - too young, too old, not drivers.
Passport Card is OK as it’s sort of universal but you can be permanently resident in Ireland and not an Irish citizen. So you wouldn’t qualify for an Irish passport card. EU and other nationals are entitled to a PPS and a MyGovID / Public services card.
I just think there are positives and negatives to having universal ID systems. They verify identify but if you accept them as the gold standard for proving ID, then the challenge becomes forgery or hacking.
No system is 100% uncrackable and it makes some sense to run checks and not totally rely on tech.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
