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Wacky Jacqui's yoof ID site goes silent

Open debate on shut website

Updated The Home Secretary's opinion-harvesting site for young 'uns, mylifemyid.org, has shut up shop and looks likely to drag its feet on publishing the research.

Jacqui Smith launched the site back in July to kickstart debate amongst the yoof about government ID cards. The only trouble was that opinions expressed by those using it were overwhelmingly negative.

The requirement to register to post on the boards didn't stop the No2ID crowd getting involved. Still, the views posted did not seem to match the Identity and Passport Service's claims of majority support for ID cards among young people - the site being only for 16-25 year olds.

This morning, as scheduled, the survey ended and the site disappeared. This was despite promises from site admins that the results of this penetrating research would be published on the site itself.

Luckily we preserved some of the relevant pages for you - this page asks posters for a 200 word summary of opinions expressed on the site.

Site admins asked the pesky yoofs to "summarise the views posted by people on this site about the National Identity Scheme". And they did: "ID cards are expensive, intrusive, uneccessary and just plain wrong" and "Don't need, don't want and won't have one" were two of the pithier contributions.

The site, which was created for the Home Office by Virtual Surveys (a company which is "at the forefront of Research 2.0"), cost £76,249 to set up and maintain. Presumably in-depth analysis to turn the antis into pros will add a little to that figure.

Hat tip to FOI site whatdotheyknow.com for pointing us to this info. And to Reg reader David Blunkett (really?) for the reminder of the site's demise.

Updated: The Home Office sent us the following statement: "Key findings will be published once all the data has been analysed. The written research findings will be published on the IPS website. This qualitative report will explain the range of views expressed on the site, the structure of those views, and will illustrate what underpins the hopes and fears expressed by the participants."®

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