Experienced risk management professionals seem reluctant, for some strange reason, to sign up with the Identity & Passport Service for a job risk-managing the ID cards programme. Too risky? Well, if that's what they reckon, they're the people you'd expect to know.

According to Register sources IPS has been hawking the role of "UKPS/IPS Sen Risk Manager" around the market, for a three month contract at £550 a day. This is viewed as not at all bad for that class of job, but strangely uncompelling for this particular job. According to the job spec which has just kind of fallen into our hands, the Senior Risks & Issues Manager will be accountable for "Risk assessment & management for Procurement risks, liaising with embedded Risk Managers throughout the Programme" and will be part of a new team (but only, apparently, for three months) taking "this exciting change programme forward, using some of the hottest and most sophisticated technology around."

The Register's informant expresses himself puzzled by IPS seeking risk management expertise at this juncture, suggesting that this would surely have been part of the role of PA Consulting, which was appointed in 2004 to work on the "design, feasibility testing, business case and procurement", and which netted somewhere in the region of £20 million, averaging out at over £1,000 a day per consultant. But that, if we read the situation right, is what good risk management is all about. By working on scheme development PA shrewdly ruled itself out of bidding for work (and the associated blame) as part of the actual scheme. More money, less risk, tiptoe away now, lads and leave somebody else to figure it out.

Applications should be in by close of play on 24th November, which we calculate as being within minutes of this story's posting time, but experienced risk management professionals might be right in guessing they'd be willing to accept late, possibly any, applicants. ®

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• UK gov says broken passport system justifies ID cards (20 March 2007)
• Conservatives lay plans to ditch ID cards (6 February 2007)
• Man dressed as The Joker gets ID card (25 January 2007)
• Shock, horror, outrage - biometric passport data snooped, again (17 November 2006)
• Blair bangs ID card drum (6 November 2006)
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• IPS stands ground on ID cards (24 October 2006)
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