English Defence – another success story for the UK Border Force 2

At 00:27 on 8 January 2013 DMossEsq published English Defence – another success story for the UK Border Force, an article about border control failures in the UK and the US.

The story concerns the leader of the English Defence League – a man known variously as Stephen Yaxley Lennon, Tommy Robinson and Paul Harris – and his trip from the UK to the US and back. There are many border control failures possible and many of them were exhibited in Lennon/Robinson/Harris's trip*. With all of those actual failures to choose from, DMossEsq managed nevertheless to focus on one failure of the UK Border Force that wasn't exhibited.

This mistake has been usefully pointed out by an anonymous commenter.

The newspaper reports of Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris's trip state that: "He used a self check-in kiosk to board the Virgin Atlantic flight at Heathrow, and was allowed through when the document was checked in the bag drop area". DMossEsq confused "self check-in kiosks" with "smart gates" and concluded that this was an example of the unreliability of the face recognition biometrics used by smart gates. Face recognition biometrics are laughably unreliable but as Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris hadn't used a smart gate that's irrelevant in this case and DMossEsq wishes to apologise for misleading readers.

How did DMossEsq confuse "self check-in kiosks" with "smart gates"? Frustration. Undischarged anger. Leading to occasional blind spots.

What's frustrating? The Home Office spend a fortune on security systems that depend for their success on biometrics being reliable. Then when you take them to court to make them publish the evidence, they refuse to do so and add that the trials they carried out were so specific that the results wouldn't tell the public anything anyway. In other words, the Home Office have no justification for spending our money on biometrics.

This misfeasance has been going on under every Home Secretary since David Blunkett and under two Permanent Secretaries – Sir David Normington and Dame Helen Ghosh. Now we have a new Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, Mark Sedwill. Let's see if he's any better. Any less frustrating.

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* Border control failures:-

1. Leaving the UK. Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris managed to leave the UK travelling on someone else's passport, Mr Andrew McMaster's. A UK Border Force officer must have checked at passport control and decided that the photograph in the passport looked enough like Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris. An understandable mistake. But a mistake nevertheless.

2. Entering the US. Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris's flat print fingerprints didn't match Mr McMaster's which must presumably have been already on file. He failed his primary inspection and was referred for secondary inspection. He didn't turn up. Instead, he managed to get out of the airport. Flat print fingerprinting registers false non-matches about 20 percent of the time, so it's perfectly normal for people to fail primary inspection, it's not a sign of the technology working properly, rather the opposite. The non-match won't have rung any alarm bells but, nevertheless, he shouldn't have been able to avoid secondary inspection and leave the premises.

3. Leaving the US. Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris, having entered the US as Andrew McMaster, left using his own passport as Paul Harris. (a) Border control for non-US citizens is meant to match entry and exit details. There would have been no entry details for Paul Harris. As far as the system was concerned, Paul Harris was leaving the US without ever having come in. It looks like a mistake to miss that. (b) His ticket was presumably in the name of Andrew McMaster. Why was the man whose passport was in the name of Paul Harris allowed to leave the US on a ticket in the name of Andrew McMaster?

4. Entering the UK. Why was the man whose passport was in the name of Paul Harris allowed to enter the UK on a ticket in the name of Andrew McMaster?

How could the mismatch between the names on the airline ticket and the passport have been discovered? The expensive answer is "eBorders".

As a taxpayer, you have spent a fortune on ePassports and smart gates. They don't work. In the name of border security, you have also spent a fortune on a system called eBorders, which logs all the details of your flights and is meant to provide the raw intelligence to keep the border safe. Clearly eBorders doesn't work either. Otherwise the mismatch between passport and ticket would have been spotted. You have also spent a fortune making hundreds of Border Force staff redundant, to be replaced by computer systems, and then re-hiring them when the Home Office found the computer systems don't work.

You've spent the money. The systems don't work. The staff don't do anything with the data that's collected. But don't worry. The border is secure.

English Defence – another success story for the UK Border Force 2

At 00:27 on 8 January 2013 DMossEsq published English Defence – another success story for the UK Border Force, an article about border control failures in the UK and the US.

The story concerns the leader of the English Defence League – a man known variously as Stephen Yaxley Lennon, Tommy Robinson and Paul Harris – and his trip from the UK to the US and back. There are many border control failures possible and many of them were exhibited in Lennon/Robinson/Harris's trip*. With all of those actual failures to choose from, DMossEsq managed nevertheless to focus on one failure of the UK Border Force that wasn't exhibited.

English Defence – another success story for the UK Border Force

The leader of the English Defence League is a man called Stephen Yaxley Lennon. Or Tommy Robinson. Or Paul Harris.

Whatever his name is, he has just been sent down for ten months for trying to get into the US with a passport he borrowed from Andrew McMaster. He succeeded in leaving the UK on the McMaster passport. But they rumbled him at the US border.

The Press Association story about Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris's trip to New York is carried by just about every media outlet in the English-speaking world. See for example the Daily Mail's Leader of far-right English Defence League jailed for 10 months for using someone else's passport to get into the U.S. And just about everyone sees in it the story they want to see.

Fraser Nelson, the esteemed editor of the Spectator, sees it as evidence that flat print fingerprinting works – that's the technology used by the Americans to discover that it was questionable whether this traveller really was Andrew McMaster:

The head of the English Defence League has learnt the hard way that those fingerprint scanners at JFK actually work. gu.com/p/3cqgq/tw — Fraser Nelson (@frasernelson) January 7, 2013

There are good reasons to believe that Mr Nelson draws the wrong conclusion about biometrics.

There are other questions.

How did Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris manage to leave JFK and spend the night in New York? How did he subsequently manage to fly out of the US and back to the UK? He flew in as McMaster and out as Harris. There was no record of Harris having entered the US. How did the US authorities manage to let a man who had not come into the country leave it? I-94 exit controls are supposed to match entry controls ...

Let's leave all those complicated issues to resolve themselves as and when more detail is released. Let's look at something simple.

Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris managed to leave the UK on a false passport:

He used a self check-in kiosk to board the Virgin Atlantic flight at Heathrow, and was allowed through when the document was checked in the bag drop area.

Those "self check-in kiosks" or "eGates" or "smart gates" or whatever you want to call them have cost the British taxpayer a fortune. And they don't work. Will the UK Border Force please stop wasting our money on eGates? And will they please stop pretending that eGates provide any sort of border security?

English Defence – another success story for the UK Border Force

The leader of the English Defence League is a man called Stephen Yaxley Lennon. Or Tommy Robinson. Or Paul Harris.

Whatever his name is, he has just been sent down for ten months for trying to get into the US with a passport he borrowed from Andrew McMaster. He succeeded in leaving the UK on the McMaster passport. But they rumbled him at the US border.

The Press Association story about Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris's trip to New York is carried by just about every media outlet in the English-speaking world. See for example the Daily Mail's Leader of far-right English Defence League jailed for 10 months for using someone else's passport to get into the U.S. And just about everyone sees in it the story they want to see.

Fraser Nelson, the esteemed editor of the Spectator, sees it as evidence that flat print fingerprinting works – that's the technology used by the Americans to discover that it was questionable whether this traveller really was Andrew McMaster:

The head of the English Defence League has learnt the hard way that those fingerprint scanners at JFK actually work. gu.com/p/3cqgq/tw — Fraser Nelson (@frasernelson) January 7, 2013

There are good reasons to believe that Mr Nelson draws the wrong conclusion about biometrics.

There are other questions.

How did Mr Lennon/Robinson/Harris manage to leave JFK and spend the night in New York? How did he subsequently manage to fly out of the US and back to the UK? He flew in as McMaster and out as Harris. There was no record of Harris having entered the US. How did the US authorities manage to let a man who had not come into the country leave it? I-94 exit controls are supposed to match entry controls ...

Let's leave all those complicated issues to resolve themselves as and when more detail is released. Let's look at something simple.

30 September 2012, a big day – Dame Helen Ghosh and ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken

30 September 2012. It's a big day today. Dame Helen Ghosh's last day as permanent secretary at the Home Office. What will change when she's gone?

• Will Sarah Rapson, chief executive at the Identity & Passport Service (IPS), be allowed to carry on over-charging us Brits for passports to the tune of £300 million a year?
• IPS has never recovered from its failure under Sir David Normington and James Hall to implement government-issue ID cards. They suffered something like a corporate nervous breakdown. Isn't it time now at last for a new name and a re-launch?
• Will Jackie Keane be able to carry on spending money like water on IABS, the Immigration and Asylum Biometric System?
• Will assistant commissioner Mark Rowley at the National Policing Improvement Agency stop wasting money on mobile fingerprint equipment?
• Will Rob Whiteman, chief executive of the UK Border Agency (UKBA), be able to maintain the high standards and success rates of that organisation?
• Will Brian Moore's successor as chief executive of the UK Border Force ditto?
• Isn't it time now to stop hosing money at CSC and VF Worldwide Holdings for their biometrics-based visa application work abroad?
• Will IBM be allowed to stop bashing its head against the brick wall that is eBorders?
• Is Alex Lahood (the Director of Identity Management, no less, at UKBA, please see p.9) still testing biometrics in Croydon? If so, why?
• Is Marek Rejman-Greene still Senior Biometrics Advisor at the Home Office Scientific Development Branch? Ditto.

These are just some of the questions for Dame Helen's successor to ponder.

Today is also the last day for the Government Digital Service (GDS) to announce the approved suppliers of the UK's much-touted Identity Assurance Service (IAS). It really is a big day.

• Will GDS meet the deadline? (Six hours to go ...)
• Will they dare appoint Google and Facebook as "identity providers" to the UK?
• If not, will the NSTIC folk in the US cross them off the Christmas card list?
• Will Martha Lane Fox ditto?
• When Universal Credit fails, will DWP get the blame or GDS?
• Will the Department for Business Innovation and Skills stop pretending to want midata?
• If ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken (executive director of government digital services and senior responsible officer owner for the identity assurance programme) can't make Estonia come to the UK, will he go there?
• Will GDS's dream of inserting GOV.UK into our national payment systems come true? If so, how many weeks before we are reduced to a barter economy? Two? Or one?
• Will GOV.UK replace the Government Gateway?
• Will GDS's IAS succeed where James Hall's ID cards failed?
• Can GOV.UK operate successfully on a cloud service operated by Skyscape, the one-man company?

These are just some of the questions that probably won't be answered tomorrow.

30 September 2012, a big day – Dame Helen Ghosh and ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken

30 September 2012. It's a big day today. Dame Helen Ghosh's last day as permanent secretary at the Home Office. What will change when she's gone?

Andrew Dilnot and honest political debate in the UK – 2

Whitehall officials are impervious to all requests to explain their mistaken choices.

And yet they are happy to tell us that we need midata to correct our errors.

After you, Whitehall.

After you.

--- o O o ---

We all make mistakes.

That's what the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) say. Faced with a choice, we make the wrong decision. We need help. Computerised help. And BIS aim to provide that help, through their midata initiative. Applications will process our historical transaction data, they will take into account the products and services currently available from the suppliers, and the right transaction will be brokered for us.

It's not just us proletarians. We all make mistakes. Even Whitehall officials.

It's 10 years since the Home Office published their consultation on what became known as "ID cards", Entitlement Cards and Identity Fraud – A Consultation Paper. Crucial to the system was the belief that all 60 million of us in the UK could be identified by various biometrics, specifically facial geometry and flat print fingerprints.

Utter cockpoppy, the technology's simply not up to it. But the choice had been made. By December 2010, when the Identity Cards Act 2006 was repealed, the Home Office confessed to £292 million of our money having been wasted on the scheme, with nothing to show for it.

The waste goes on. We're wasting money on biometrics in Sarah Rapson's ePassports. We're wasting money on Jackie Keane's Immigration and Asylum Biometric System. That takes in eGates that don't work at UK airports and UK visa application checking systems that don't work all over the world. As part of Project Lantern, the police are deploying mobile fingerprinting equipment that doesn't work. And DWP are threatening to use voice biometrics that don't work for their new Universal Credit system.

It goes on because of one wrong choice made 10 years ago. The reliability of the products wasn't checked properly and adverse evidence was ignored. Typical headstrong proletarian behaviour, no idea what's in anyone's best interests, naïve consumers, too much money burning a hole in their pocket, just buy it because it looks good on TV and sounds modern.

How can you help?

You can write to ministers and their officials. That doesn't help. You can write magazine articles and letters to newspapers and comments on blogs and you can write your own blog. You can speak at public meetings and on the radio. That doesn't help. You can have meetings at the Home Office and ditto. You can respond to government consultations and attend government briefings. Fat lot of good it'll do you. You can write to your MP. He or she will get an answer for you. But it won't help. Whitehall wants biometrics and Whitehall's jolly well going to have biometrics, never mind if they don't work.

So then you have another idea. Get reinforcements. Call on organisations that have institutional power.

When the Home Office start advertising their misbegotten ID cards scheme and making unrealistic claims for the reliability of today's mass consumer biometrics, you report them to the Advertising Standards Authority. Brilliant. Except that there's nothing the ASA can do in this case.

So then you submit a freedom of information request asking what justification the Home Office have for investing public money in expensive systems which depend for their success on biometrics being reliable which they aren't and the Home Office know that perfectly well and therefore know that all or some of our money will be wasted. 2½ years later, thanks to the First-Tier Tribunal (Information Rights), you're 2½ years older and none the wiser, Whitehall continue bone-headedly against all the evidence to waste our money on biometrics.

Then Sir Michael Scholar, chair of the UK Statistics Authority, makes an important point:

One of the reasons I took this job is that having good statistics is like having clean water and clean air. It’s the fundamental material that we depend on for an honest political debate.

Honest political debate? Maybe the UKSA can help. Maybe if they or the Office for National Statistics said that the biometrics technology being considered is not reliable enough, then the Home Office would stop wasting our money? No good. The UKSA can only comment on official statistics. And the statistics adduced from the UK Passport Service biometrics enrolment trial aren't official.

This attempt to help the Home Office to make evidence-based policy and to face up to their mistake – choosing to rely on flaky biometrics – clearly goes back years. Lots of effort. No results. The fundamental material that we depend on for an honest political debate still eludes us.

And then Andrew Watson succeeds through a freedom of information request in getting the National Policing Improvement Agency's own internal report on mobile fingerprinting equipment published.

The report is full of statistics, it's marked "Restricted-Commercial", it's got Northrop Grumman's logo on it and it's been prepared for the Police Information Technology Organisation (the old name for the National Policing improvement Agency). Official, or what?

By this stage, Sir Michael Scholar has been replaced by Andrew Dilnot as chair of the UKSA. Can Mr Dilnot comment on the reliability of mass consumer biometrics? No. The statistics still aren't official enough:

From: xxxxxxxxxx On Behalf Of authority enquiries Sent: 01 August 2012 23:19 To: 'David Moss' Subject: Re: Misleading use by the Home Office and others of statistics associated with biometrics Dear Mr Moss Thank you for your email to Andrew Dilnot regarding biometric information. I am replying on Andrew's behalf. We have considered this matter in discussion with David Blunt, the Head of Profession for Statistics at the Home Office. We share Mr Blunt's view that the studies to which you refer are not official statistics, and we understand from the Home Office that there are no current plans for official statistics in this area to be produced. As you will be aware from our earlier replies, the Authority's statutory remit covers official statistics as set out in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. Our view therefore is that this remains a matter about which we would continue to encourage you to maintain a dialogue with relevant Home Office officials directly. We understand that you attended a meeting with Home Office officials in spring 2010 and, following further correspondence, you received a reply from the National Policing Improvement Agency in June 2010 regarding the specifics of the issues that concerned you. I am sorry that we are unable to assist you further at the present time. Kind regards xxxxxxxxxx Private Secretary to Andrew Dilnot, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority

UK Border Force staff are laid off in the expectation that they can be replaced by biometric technology, then the queues at the airport get too long because the technology doesn't work and the staff have to be re-hired, but still Whitehall remains incapable of justifying its investment of public money in biometric technology which is too unreliable to do the jobs demanded of it. Incapable and unwilling.

Whitehall officials are impervious to all requests to explain their mistaken choices. And yet they are happy to tell us that we need midata to correct our errors.

Andrew Dilnot and honest political debate in the UK – 2

Whitehall officials are impervious to all requests to explain their mistaken choices.

And yet they are happy to tell us that we need midata to correct our errors.

After you, Whitehall.

After you.

--- o O o ---

We all make mistakes.

That's what the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) say. Faced with a choice, we make the wrong decision. We need help. Computerised help. And BIS aim to provide that help, through their midata initiative. Applications will process our historical transaction data, they will take into account the products and services currently available from the suppliers, and the right transaction will be brokered for us.

It's not just us proletarians. We all make mistakes. Even Whitehall officials.

Political will (if any) trounced by Dame Helen Ghosh and the Whitehall ancien régime

Trust the Home Office.

Last year's annual report and accounts to 31 March 2011 said that the UK Border Agency (UKBA) reduced its staff by about 1,900 during 2010-11 and planned to reduce it by a further 3,500 by 31 March 2015. These reductions would all be achieved by "efficiencies".

So there they were, dutifully implementing government policy, cutting staff.

On 22 November 2011, Dame Helen Ghosh DCB, permanent secretary at the Home Office, gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee and said that the Border Force – part of UKBA at the time – would be reduced by 900 or so:

... that is driven as much by technological introductions like e-gates, as well as a risk-based approach. Border Force will be getting smaller ...

Advanced risk management and technology, all very modern, just the ticket for 21st century government, spearheaded by the dependable brainpower at the top of the Home Office.

Since then we have had queues at Heathrow, one actual strike by the Border Force and one threatened one and now what do the Times tell us?

Border Force in recruitment drive U-turn Hundreds of new immigration officers are to be recruited by the UK Border Force weeks after it disclosed that 450 staff were cut last year to meet government spending cuts ... The Home Office also admitted that advertisements for the new jobs placed on a Civil Service website said, inaccurately, that 800 new staff were required ... Over the next few weeks it intends to recruit more officers than the total of 457 lost in the year to March 2012 ... Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, said: “I find it extraordinary that a year after making so many people redundant and paying so much in terms of redundancy costs, the very same organisation is now recruiting more immigration officers. It shows a lack of strategic planning concerning staff at both the UK Border Agency and UK Border Force” ...

Given that the technology doesn't work and we're going back to the 19th century and using people, will the technology contracts for eGates and  Jackie Keane's Immigration and Asylum Biometric Service be cancelled?

No.

We shall simply pay for both – for the additional staff and for the technology that doesn't work. The budget deficit will have to be cut somewhere else, not at Dame Helen's 21st century modern Home Office. Predictable result:

Whitehall 1 - 0 Westminster

Trust the Home Office.

Political will (if any) trounced by Dame Helen Ghosh and the Whitehall ancien régime

Trust the Home Office.

Last year's annual report and accounts to 31 March 2011 said that the UK Border Agency (UKBA) reduced its staff by about 1,900 during 2010-11 and planned to reduce it by a further 3,500 by 31 March 2015. These reductions would all be achieved by "efficiencies".

So there they were, dutifully implementing government policy, cutting staff.

Biometrics – don't ask, don't tell

Police forces all over the UK are introducing mobile fingerprint equipment. Result? Approximately 20% of the criminals who would otherwise have been taken down to the station will now be asked politely to go on their way. That's what we were saying back in May.

Don't ask
DMossEsq wrote to his MP asking about this matter. Would Nick Herbert, the policing minister, care to comment? Or the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA)? Could they explain why public money is being wasted on technology that doesn't work?

And thanks to his MP an answer has now come through from Chief Constable Nick Gargan, Chief Executive of NPIA.

Don't tell
Does Mr Gargan express confidence in the biometrics being used? No.

Does he say that mobile fingerprinting will improve crime prevention or crime detection or crime clear-up rates? No.

He doesn't disagree that there is a 20% failure rate associated with flat print fingerprinting based on the 2004 UK Passport Service biometrics enrolment trial.

Rather endearingly – obviously a conservative man with a respect for tradition – he tries on the old line that the biometrics enrolment trial wasn't really a biometrics enrolment trial but it won't wash.

That high 20% failure rate in the biometrics enrolment trial was caused, he says, by using only a small sensor to scan people's fingerprints. That was then. Policemen on patrol are now being issued with so-called "Bluecheck" devices. And what do they use? According to Mr Gargan, only a small sensor to scan people's fingerprints.

The technology has improved, he claims. Is the failure rate down from 20% to 2%? Or 0.2%? He doesn't say. All he says is that the technology has improved. An unsupported and unquantified assertion.

What's the point?
"Finally and perhaps most importantly", Mr Gargan says, policemen on patrol can always ignore the Bluecheck results and take suspects down to the station anyway.

Don't worry
The Home Office are investing your money wisely. You are much safer as a result.

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Cribsheet
Given the choice of two giants, Gargantua and Pantagruel, the English choose one and the Italians the other. Whereas we might say in English that the scale of the deception being practised on the public by the Home Office is "gargantuan", for example, in Italian they would call it "pantagruelico". Not many people know that.

Gustave Doré's 1873 illustration for Gargantua,
the second (1534) of
François Rabelais's series of five novels,
La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel

Biometrics – don't ask, don't tell

Police forces all over the UK are introducing mobile fingerprint equipment. Result? Approximately 20% of the criminals who would otherwise have been taken down to the station will now be asked politely to go on their way. That's what we were saying back in May.

Don't ask
DMossEsq wrote to his MP asking about this matter. Would Nick Herbert, the policing minister, care to comment? Or the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA)? Could they explain why public money is being wasted on technology that doesn't work?

And thanks to his MP an answer has now come through from Chief Constable Nick Gargan, Chief Executive of NPIA.

It's the way he tells 'em

Woody Allen: "This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken. The doctor says, Well, why don’t you turn him in? And the guy says, I would but I need the eggs".

DMossEsq: "This permanent secretary goes to a politician and says, Minister, biometrics don't work. But we keep spending money on them. The politician says, Well, why don’t you lock up the cheque book? And the permanent secretary says, I would but I need an identity assurance system".

It's the way he tells 'em

Woody Allen: "This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken. The doctor says, Well, why don’t you turn him in? And the guy says, I would but I need the eggs".

DMossEsq: "This permanent secretary goes to a politician and says, Minister, biometrics don't work. But we keep spending money on them. The politician says, Well, why don’t you lock up the cheque book? And the permanent secretary says, I would but I need an identity assurance system".

Francis Maude, the UK government's major IT suppliers and the empty chair

Hat tip: Tony Collins, Poor IT suppliers to face ban from contracts?

The Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude is due to meet representatives of suppliers today [28 June 2012], including Accenture[,] BT, Capgemini, Capita, HP, IBM, Interserve, Logica, Serco, and Steria. They will be warned that suppliers with poor performance may find it more difficult to secure new work with the Government ...

The suggestion is that up to now "suppliers with poor performance" haven't found it hard as a result to "secure new work with the government".

Apart from Atos, DMossEsq and Fujitsu, who's missing from that list?

CSC. Computer Sciences Corporation, share price today $23.76 compared with $37.96 a year ago, nearly 40% off, DMossEsq is not licensed to give investment advice and is not giving investment advice.

Last heard in these parts, CSC were picking up a fortune from the UK taxpayer for collecting useless biometrics on UK visa applicants, upgrading the UK passport system expensively and unnecessarily and failing to deploy the UK National Health Service National Programme for IT scheme, NPfIT. That's the good news.

We also heard that they were facing a class action brought by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, they'd been docked $250 million by the US Armed Services Board and they had failed to install their Lorenzo software at Pennine Care NHS Health Trust.

Some of that news is six months old. How are they doing now?

Another hat tip: Mark Ballard, Soldiers nail data for agile offensive on $6bn cock-up:

Supplier Computer Sciences Corporation finished the US Army's 1999 Logistics Modernization Programme [LMP] last year, six years behind schedule [good job the US wasn't fighting any wars at the time]. LMP went on the record as being done on budget after the Army accepted an offer on a $2bn compensation claim it had against the supplier. After seven years of contract arbitration in which CSC filed $861m of counter claims against the Army, CSC settled the matter with a $269m payment last year. The settlement also cleared another $1.2bn of outstanding contract complaints, said the Army spokeswoman.

Six years late and $269 million down the tubes seems a fair summary.

And that's not all, as Mr Ballard tells us in CSC finance director exits as fraud probe hits UK. Their 10-K, filed with the SEC, makes absorbing reading:

On May 2, 2011, the Audit Committee commenced its investigation into certain accounting errors and irregularities, primarily in our Nordic region and in our operations in Australia. This investigation is also reviewing certain aspects of our accounting practices within our Americas Outsourcing operation and certain of our contracts that involve the percentage of completion accounting method, including our contract with the U.K. National Health Service (NHS). As a result of this investigation, we have recorded certain out of period adjustments to our historical financial statements and taken certain remedial measures. The SEC is conducting its own investigation into the foregoing areas as well as certain related disclosure matters ... As noted above, during fiscal 2011, the Company commenced an investigation into accounting irregularities in the Nordic Region. Based upon the Company's investigation, review of the underlying documentation for certain transactions and balances, review of contract documentation and discussions with Nordic personnel, the Company attributes the majority of the $92 million pre-tax adjustments recorded in the Nordic region in fiscal 2011 to accounting irregularities arising from suspected intentional misconduct by certain former employees in our Danish subsidiaries. The Company attributes the $13 million in pre-tax adjustments recorded in the Nordic region in fiscal 2012 to miscellaneous errors and not to any accounting irregularities or intentional misconduct other than a $1 million operating lease adjustment noted in the first quarter of fiscal 2012 which was a refinement of an error previously corrected and reported in fiscal 2011 ... In the course of the Australia investigation initiated in fiscal 2012, accounting errors and irregularities have been identified. As a result, certain personnel in Australia have been reprimanded, suspended, terminated and/or resigned. Based upon the information developed to date, and the Company’s assessment of the same, the Company has identified and recorded during fiscal 2012, $23 million of adjustments reducing income from continuing operations before taxes relating to its operations in Australia. Such adjustments have been categorized as either intentional accounting irregularities (“intentional irregularities”) or other accounting errors (“Other Errors”). Other accounting errors include both unintentional errors and errors for which the categorization is unclear ... Between June 3, 2011, and July 21, 2011, four putative class action complaints were filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, entitled City of Roseville Employee's Retirement System v. Computer Sciences Corporation, et al. (No. 1:11-cv-00610-TSE-IDD), Murphy v. Computer Sciences Corporation, et al. (No. 1:11-cv-00636-TSE-IDD), Kramer v. Computer Sciences Corporation, et al. (No. 1:11-cv-00751-TSE-IDD) and Goldman v. Computer Sciences Corporation, et al. (No. 1:11-cv-777-TSE-IDD). On August 29, 2011, the four actions were consolidated as In re Computer Sciences Corporation Securities Litigation (No. 1:11-cv-610-TSE-IDD) and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board was appointed lead plaintiff ... On September 13, 2011, a shareholder derivative action entitled Che Wu Hung v. Michael W. Laphen, et al. (CL 20110013376) was filed in Circuit Court of Fairfax County, Virginia, against Michael W. Laphen, Michael J. Mancuso, the members of the Audit Committee and the Company as a nominal defendant asserting claims for breach of fiduciary duty and contribution and indemnification relating to alleged failure by the defendants to disclose accounting and financial irregularities in the MSS segment, primarily in the Nordic region, and the Company's performance under the NHS agreement and alleged failure to maintain effective internal controls ... CSC was informally advised by the Danish Justice Department on February 3, 2012 that the project known as POLSAG, a document and records management modernization program for the Danish police, will be abandoned, which affects CSC's contract with the Justice Department ... In addition to the matters noted above, the Company is currently party to a number of disputes which involve or may involve litigation ...

Bit mean of Mr Maude not to invite CSC along for tea and biscuits with the other suppliers.

Francis Maude, the UK government's major IT suppliers and the empty chair

Hat tip: Tony Collins, Poor IT suppliers to face ban from contracts?

The Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude is due to meet representatives of suppliers today [28 June 2012], including Accenture[,] BT, Capgemini, Capita, HP, IBM, Interserve, Logica, Serco, and Steria. They will be warned that suppliers with poor performance may find it more difficult to secure new work with the Government ...

The suggestion is that up to now "suppliers with poor performance" haven't found it hard as a result to "secure new work with the government".

Apart from Atos, DMossEsq and Fujitsu, who's missing from that list?

HMG's cloud computing strategy – there isn't one – and the Edgbaston Test

On 20 October 2011 Chris Chant listed 23 symptoms of the illness which Government IT suffers from. He carried on energetically repeating his diagnosis, unchallenged, and promoting cloud computing as the effective prescription. There he was, at it again, six months later on 11 April 2012, in a blog post on the G-Cloud website, #Unacceptable IT is pervasive. Two days later his resignation was announced.

The man in charge of G-Cloud is Andy Nelson, the Government's Chief Information Officer (CIO). That's only a part-time job. He is more fully occupied as CIO at the Ministry of Justice, where he's got his work cut out with Libra among other things. Libra is the £467 million Fujitsu system which is meant to produce the accounts for HM Courts and Tribunals Service. When the National Audit Office saw the 2010-11 accounts they were in such a mess that the NAO couldn't even qualify their opinion, they had to disclaim an opinion.

Under Mr Nelson, Denise McDonagh is also responsible for G-Cloud. Again, it's only a part-time job. Her day job is CIO at the Home Office. And again, there are quite a few distractions there:

• There's the £385 million CSC contract with Sarah Rapson's Identity & Passport Service which is one of the reasons UK passport-holders are currently being over-charged by £300 million a year.
• There's the £265 million IBM contract with the UK Border Agency to provide IABS, Jackie Keane's Immigration and Asylum Biometric System. IABS is meant to keep the UK border secure and make the 2012 Olympics safe but there's a problem – the biometrics don't work.
• The same problem applies to the National Policing Improvement Agency's promotion of MobileID, a system to allow policemen on patrol to check suspects' fingerprints on the spot using mobile equipment. The idea is for MobileID to save police time. Which it will because, with a 20% failure rate, this flaky technology will cause 20% fewer criminals to be arrested.

Those distractions and others will no doubt explain her lacklustre post on 26 April 2012, Cloud Cynicism (or Dispelling the Dark Clouds) and why she hasn't been heard from since.

Not so, Eleanor Stewart. She's a trouper. She's the Assistant Director of G-Cloud and she's always good for a lively post. On 27 April 2012 she produced Crowdsourcing and a response., in which she took up some of the many questions posed in the 20 responses to Chris Chant's last post.

What the heck can we do to resolve some of the scary and largely unknown legal and policy issues that people are nervous about in a globalised world?, she asked. Good question. No answer.

And What ‘worked examples’ might we be able to provide to ... sceptics? That's in response to the simple question how cloud computing is supposed to obviate the need for long contracts to produce systems like Libra, for example, or IABS or DWP's Universal Credit. Chris Chant says it will. How? No answer.

Ms Stewart threw the post open to the crowd. And published one comment. One. The limiting case of a crowd. (I wandered lonely as a cloud?)

"Scary and largely unknown"? Hmm. Quite clearly, no-one in HMG knows the answers to some very basic questions about its cloud computing strategy. Which is odd. They keep talking about it. Andy Nelson, for example, was holding forth at the Cloud Computing World Forum only the other day. And they've been advocating it for years – the G-Cloud Overview was being touted in August 2010. But still no-one can answer the questions.

Is it all hot air? A cloud of hot air? A cloud which, when it hits some of the colder patches of reality, results in heavy precipitation and the wettest drought ever seen, which washed out the Edgbaston Test? That's certainly what it looks like at this end of the wicket.

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A version of this post has been kindly published by the estimable PublicTechnology.net

HMG's cloud computing strategy – there isn't one – and the Edgbaston Test

On 20 October 2011 Chris Chant listed 23 symptoms of the illness which Government IT suffers from. He carried on energetically repeating his diagnosis, unchallenged, and promoting cloud computing as the effective prescription. There he was, at it again, six months later on 11 April 2012, in a blog post on the G-Cloud website, #Unacceptable IT is pervasive. Two days later his resignation was announced.

The other Golden Jubilee – 60 years of Whitehall's disgraceful public administration, "administrative lawlessness"

In The English Constitution (1867) Walter Bagehot famously wrote:

No one can approach to an understanding of the English institutions, or of others which, being the growth of many centuries, exercise a wide sway over mixed populations, unless he divide them into two classes. In such constitutions there are two parts (not indeed separable with microscopic accuracy, for the genius of great affairs abhors nicety of division) first, those which excite and preserve the reverence of the population — the dignified parts, if I may so call them; and next, the efficient parts — those by which it, in fact, works and rules.

We have all just had a pleasant four days here in the UK to reflect on and to observe the success of the dignified parts.

The Constitution doesn't come with guarantees but, since 1936 when Edward VIII mercifully got rid of himself, we seem to have enjoyed dignified parts of the Constitution which live up to their name.

Now the four days are over and it's back to the efficient parts, which don't.

In his book The Socialist Case Douglas Jay wrote:

Housewives as a whole cannot be trusted to buy all the right things, where nutrition and health are concerned. This is really no more than an extension of the principle according to which the housewife herself would not trust a child of four to select the week's purchases. For in the case of nutrition and health just as in education, the gentlemen of Whitehall really do know better what is good for the people than the people know themselves.

That was in 1937, 75 years ago, and things have changed since then – no civilised man today believes that women are inferior and no four year-old can still subscribe to Lord Jay’s Doctrine of the Infallibility of Whitehall.

In 1952 Professor GW Keeton published his book The Passing of Parliament. Keeton was Dean of the Faculty of Laws at University College, London. He debunks The Socialist Case and points to the danger of the Executive moving beyond the reach of either Parliament or the Common Law:

... Very far from the Common Law replacing administrative tribunals, more and more are being created outside the Common Law year by year, and some of the cases discussed earlier in this book will show how, in spite of obvious willingness, the courts have failed to hold back the onward rush of administrative lawlessness.

That was 60 years ago. Keeton’s question then was, in summary, what was the point of going through all the suffering of the Civil War and of establishing the supremacy of Parliament in the 1689 Bill of Rights if we end up with an Executive behaving for all the world like some latter-day monarch whimsically exercising his or her prerogatives?

In those same 60 years, while the dignified parts of the Constitution have given the definitive lesson in public service, too often Whitehall has continued arrogantly to ignore the interests of the public it is meant to serve while it makes one defective decision after another, inefficient and accountable to no-one.

We have just celebrated two Golden Jubilees. One of them is Whitehall's 60 years of "administrative lawlessness".

The other Golden Jubilee – 60 years of Whitehall's disgraceful public administration, "administrative lawlessness"

In The English Constitution (1867) Walter Bagehot famously wrote:

No one can approach to an understanding of the English institutions, or of others which, being the growth of many centuries, exercise a wide sway over mixed populations, unless he divide them into two classes. In such constitutions there are two parts (not indeed separable with microscopic accuracy, for the genius of great affairs abhors nicety of division) first, those which excite and preserve the reverence of the population — the dignified parts, if I may so call them; and next, the efficient parts — those by which it, in fact, works and rules.

We have all just had a pleasant four days here in the UK to reflect on and to observe the success of the dignified parts.

The Constitution doesn't come with guarantees but, since 1936 when Edward VIII mercifully got rid of himself, we seem to have enjoyed dignified parts of the Constitution which live up to their name.

Now the four days are over and it's back to the efficient parts, which don't.