IPS temporarily Rapsonless

The Identity & Passport Service (IPS) doesn't exist any more, of course, it's now HM Passport Office (HMPO) and the Home Office is IPSless.

The executive director of IPS between about June 2010 and March 2013 was Sarah Rapson. Her predecessor, James Hall, presided over the British public being over-charged for passports by about £300 million a year. He also presided over the disaster of Whitehall's attempted introduction of state-produced ID cards.

Ms Rapson has delivered a £5 reduction in the cost of a 10-year adult passport since then, from £77.50 to £72.50. Otherwise her tenure seems to have been without incident.

She is perhaps lucky that IPS/HMPO were banned from having anything to do with Whitehall's latest attempt to re-enact the ID cards massacre – that honour goes to the Cabinet Office (individual electoral registration and the Identity Assurance Programme) and the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (midata). If you hold futures in either organisation, sell, sell, sell.

Now her luck has broken.

Home Office press release, 16 April 2013:

New interim Directors General appointed Two interim Directors General have been appointed to lead the new immigration commands in the Home Office that were announced by the Home Secretary on 26 March. Sarah Rapson will lead UK Visas and Immigration, bringing her experience of managing a successful customer-focused organisation as Chief Executive of the Identity and Passport Service. David Wood will lead Immigration Enforcement, drawing on his background with the Metropolitan Police and as Director of Operations for UKBA ...

The history of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) is spectacular and its demise under Rob Whiteman even more so. The Home Office is now UKBAless. It's shattered into three pieces – the UK Border Force, Immigration Enforcement (ambiguous name) and the piece Ms Rapson has picked up, UK Visas and Immigration (UKV&I).

Interim Director General Sarah Rapson gave evidence in front of the Home Affairs Committee on 11 June 2013:



Next day, the Times newspaper reported the session and found themselves with an over-abundance or superfluity or excess or nimiety of scoops. Too many to handle. They settled for Visa system might never be up to job, admits chief.

A month later, the Home Affairs Committee published their report, and they went with Backlogs hit half a million at immigration service. This followed Ms Rapson's revelation that there are 190,000 unresolved immigration cases that her predecessors unfortunately forgot to tell the Committee about.

The Times and the Committee and the BBC could equally well have led with Ms Rapson's management approach – she wants her staff to discover for themselves how to do the job, she doesn't intend to issue "decrees" (16:34:40 to 16:35:44), instead, she's holding "workshops". She has 7,400 staff in 150 countries and an annual budget of £450 million. There's something missing from the concept of leadership there or "command" as Ms Rapson keeps calling it.

Or they could have led with Ms Rapson's repeated claim to have only just started in the job – e.g. "I'm 54 days in" (16:59:43). According to the DMossEsq slide rule, that's nearly eight weeks. Eight weeks in, and she still doesn't know how many categories there are for the cases UKV&I deal with and didn't realise that the category with 190,000 cases in it was new to the Committee. Clearly it takes some time for a new boss to get their feet under the table, but surely eight weeks is long enough to get to grips with some of the basic metrics of the business. If eight weeks isn't long enough, is it ever going to happen?

IPS temporarily Rapsonless

The Identity & Passport Service (IPS) doesn't exist any more, of course, it's now HM Passport Office (HMPO) and the Home Office is IPSless.

The executive director of IPS between about June 2010 and March 2013 was Sarah Rapson. Her predecessor, James Hall, presided over the British public being over-charged for passports by about £300 million a year. He also presided over the disaster of Whitehall's attempted introduction of state-produced ID cards.

Ms Rapson has delivered a £5 reduction in the cost of a 10-year adult passport since then, from £77.50 to £72.50. Otherwise her tenure seems to have been without incident.

She is perhaps lucky that IPS/HMPO were banned from having anything to do with Whitehall's latest attempt to re-enact the ID cards massacre – that honour goes to the Cabinet Office (individual electoral registration and the Identity Assurance Programme) and the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (midata). If you hold futures in either organisation, sell, sell, sell.

Now her luck has broken.

UKBA soon to be Whitemanless

Home Office press release, 27 June 2013:

Rob Whiteman leaves Home Office for new Chief Executive role Rob Whiteman, Director General of Operational Systems Transformation, is leaving the Home Office to become Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. Rob Whiteman, Director General of Operational Systems Transformation, is to leave his role at the Home Office to join the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) as its new Chief Executive.

When he joined in July 2011, Mr Whiteman was chief executive of the UK Border Agency (UKBA). Eight months later in March 2012 he lost the UK Border Force, which was but is no longer part of UKBA. And a year after that in March 2013, the remainder of UKBA was split in two. Leaving Mr Whiteman with nothing to be chief executive of, any more, at least at the Home Office.

Good luck CIPFA.

How many pieces will CIPFA be broken into by March 2015?

As Theresa May, the Home Secretary, says archly in the press release:

He leaves with my very best wishes for the future and I am sure he will be a great success in his important new role at CIPFA.

And what does Mark Sedwill, the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, have to say about the trail of destruction which is Mr Whiteman's career at UKBA? He speaks in Mandarin, of course, but you can probably manage your own translation:

Rob has made a remarkable contribution to the Home Office over the past 18 months and, on behalf of the department, I would like to thank him for his dedication and leadership.

The Home Affairs Committee routinely accuse UKBA and the Home Office of withholding information and going back on their word. It's not just the lack of accountability the Committee doesn't like. In one excruciating evidence session (15 May 2012), they also unmasked Mr Whiteman as the victim of producer capture, a common Whitehall affliction:

Q151 Chair: ... over the issue of your computer system that crashed at Lunar house. Hundreds of people were turned away, and we hear that some were in tears at the fact that the system did not work. What went wrong? Have we got compensation from the IT company? Will it happen again, and have we rearranged all the appointments? Rob Whiteman: We contacted people over the bank holiday weekend and rearranged appointments. Around 500 appointments that were cancelled were rearranged. The issues around IT are incredibly frustrating for my staff, as well as for our customers. When I meet staff, it is a constant frustration that systems do not work all the time and that some of the resilience issues do not conform to common standards. In terms of morale and other issues, it is absolutely vital that we get to the heart of these IT problems. They are complex, yes, but- Q152 Chair: Yes, but we do not want to go into that now. Do we know why it broke down? Rob Whiteman: We do know why it broke down. It was an error on the network that affected the way appointments were queued from the system, and therefore they could not travel properly around the network. It was an IT failure, but, to answer your question, I have discussed this several times with the Chief Executive of the IT company that is the primary IT provider. Q153 Chair: What is the company? Rob Whiteman: I would rather not say. Q154 Chair: I am sorry, Mr Whiteman; this is a Select Committee of the House- Rob Whiteman: It is Atos. Q155 Chair: There is no need to be secret with us; we will find out. It is public money. It is not coming out of your pocket. The taxpayer is paying. What is the name of the company? Rob Whiteman: Atos. Q156 Chair: And what was his explanation as to why it broke down? Rob Whiteman: The reason I was reluctant, Chairman, is that we have a contract with Atos. It is trying its best to resolve the issues, but obviously we are being a demanding client and saying that performance is not good enough. Q157 Chair: As you should be. Rob Whiteman: I would not want to cast aspersions on the effort that it is making. It has put an additional team in to try to analyse the problem, and I receive daily and weekly reports from them. The point I would make is that in terms of UKBA improving over the next couple of years ...

Being chief executive of UKBA as was, was probably an impossible job, beyond any human being, and Mr Whiteman is just a human being.

That conclusion is a bit mundane for some. They like something more dramatic in the Guardian. Here's an extract from an open letter they published, from David Walker to Mr Whiteman:

Congratulations on finding a safe passage out of the Whitehall jungle. Senior people at the Home Office, especially those anywhere near the borders, have proved pretty expendable of late, and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (Cipfa) job came at the right time. Some say those who live by the sword die by the sword. You shafted the UK Border Force's Brodie Clark on behalf of Theresa May and you, in turn, have been shafted by the new permanent secretary, Mark Sedwill, on behalf of Theresa May. She sails on, the Tory leadership in her sights, while all around good people fall to their deaths.

"All around good people fall to their deaths"? That hasn't been reported in the Guardian. Or anywhere else.

Anyway, take your pick, mundane or murderous.

UKBA soon to be Whitemanless

Home Office press release, 27 June 2013:

Rob Whiteman leaves Home Office for new Chief Executive role Rob Whiteman, Director General of Operational Systems Transformation, is leaving the Home Office to become Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. Rob Whiteman, Director General of Operational Systems Transformation, is to leave his role at the Home Office to join the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) as its new Chief Executive.

When he joined in July 2011, Mr Whiteman was chief executive of the UK Border Agency (UKBA). Eight months later in March 2012 he lost the UK Border Force, which was but is no longer part of UKBA. And a year after that in March 2013, the remainder of UKBA was split in two. Leaving Mr Whiteman with nothing to be chief executive of, any more, at least at the Home Office.

Good luck CIPFA.

How many pieces will CIPFA be broken into by March 2015?

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?

Probably not the last victim of Sir David Normington's success

Sometimes it seems as if half the senior decision-makers in Whitehall are former Accenture partners.

But no-one writes "there must be something rotten at Accenture, when so many of their partners are on a veritable stampede for the exit".

Unlike Accenture, the UK public sector employs about six million people. (Six million!) But when one of them announced her departure last month, Dame Helen Ghosh, permanent secretary at the Home Office, what did Sue Cameron write in the Telegraph?

Why are Whitehall's top mandarins running for the exit? There must be something rotten in the Coalition, when so many of our top civil servants are on a veritable stampede for the exit. Right across government the mandarins are shaking the dust of Whitehall from their feet and moving on to bigger, better jobs elsewhere. They include senior officials at Education, the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Justice, International Development, Energy, and the Home Office ...

The BBC profile of her reminds listeners of the time when Dame Helen was called before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to explain various mishaps that took place at DEFRA while she was permanent secretary there. With "the public interest" striped into her very bones like a stick of seaside rock, Dame Helen refused to attend and had to be ordered.

She was there again yesterday, up in front of the beak, Margaret Hodge, trying to explain why she had had to hire back UK Border Agency staff and UK Border Force staff who had been previously laid off with tens of thousands of pounds in severance pay in the name of government cuts. According to Martin Beckford in the Telegraph:

Dame Helen ... defended the arrangements by saying that all of the returnees had to wait at least six months before going back to work, otherwise they would have had to repay the lump sums.

Simon Jenkins isn't going to put up with a non sequitur like that when Dame Helen is working for the real National Trust and apparently the PAC wasn't having any truck with it either:

She did however admit that the Border Agency – which has faced repeated criticism for losing track of illegal immigrants, allowing in bogus students and causing delays at airports – had got rid of too many people too quickly since the election as it tried to cut costs.

Maybe the Home Office will survive her loss after all. There could even be an article in it for Sue Cameron. And this time maybe she'll pay a bit of attention to Sir David Normington.

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Televised proceedings of yesterday's PAC:



See also:
Nicholas Watt, 6 March 2011, The Guardian, David Cameron calls civil servants 'enemies of enterprise'
Jill Sherman and Richard Ford, 15 November 2011, The Times, Borders row blocks first woman from top Civil Service job
Editorial, 15 March 2012, The Guardian, Civil servants and MPs: settling accounts
Patrick Wintour, 13 April 2012, The Guardian, Civil service exodus sees one third of senior officials leave
Christopher Hope, 13 April 2012, The Telegraph, A quarter of senior civil servants quit Whitehall under Coalition
Jill Sherman, 18 June 2012, The Times, Ministers demand right to sack Whitehall mandarins

Probably not the last victim of Sir David Normington's success

Sometimes it seems as if half the senior decision-makers in Whitehall are former Accenture partners.

But no-one writes "there must be something rotten at Accenture, when so many of their partners are on a veritable stampede for the exit".

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".

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.

Dead fish Department of Health has lost sight of the "public" in "public service" – Sir David Nicholson KCB CBE

Key Stage 3 is that phase in the education of our children which takes place in England between the ages of 11 and 14. The syllabus is demanding and includes a course on management consultancy. No mere ivory tower training divorced from the real world, students are expected to give policy advice to Whitehall departments. Advice on procurement, for example, much needed by the Department of Health.

All procurement should be centralised, said the team from Stretchford Middle School, so that stakeholders in the NHS all pay the same price and, with the economies of scale available to the Department, currently spending about £120 billion of our money every year, that price should be a minimum, offering the best value for public money.

Similar advice was given to the Civil Service by Sir Philip Green, of course, on one of his rare visits from Monaco. Philip Green's efficiency purge recommends more centralisation, ran the headline in the Guardian, before going on to spell it out:

The government has little control over the money its own civil servants spend and is wasting billions every year by failing to negotiate the best contracts for phones, IT equipment and rent, according to the Topshop boss Sir Philip Green, who was brought in by ministers to assess efficiency in Whitehall ... The report identifies massive variation in procurement with one department paying £73 for a box of paper and another paying £8. The most paid for printer cartridges is £398 and the least is £86 ...

As all management consultants know, you hand in your report full of tightly argued recommendations, you go back to Monaco (or Stretchford) and what does the stupid client do?

Something stupid.

Like ignore your recommendations.

Generally true, that is not the case at the NHS. Not by a long chalk. Sir David Nicholson KCB CBE, Chief Executive, runs a tight ship. The National Programme for IT (NPfIT) divides England into five regions, the contracts are held by just two organisations, (CSC-3 and BT-2), and they all come together at just one central point, CfH, Connecting for Health, as recommended.

And now, a cautionary tale.

Some poor deluded soul at the Whittington Health NHS Trust went out on his or her own and bought an electronic patient records system (EPR). They could have got it from BT, who have the NPfIT contracts for London and for the South of England. But, no, poor benighted fools that they are, lambs to the slaughter, they set out to do the procurement themselves.

BT's EPR is an American package called Cerner Millennium. In London, Cerner Millennium costs £31 million on average. And in the South of England, health trusts pay an average of £36 million for the same thing. Almost the same price. Only £5 million different.

And, wantonly ignoring all the added value of Whitehall's magisterial assistance acting energetically exclusively in the public interest, what did the naïve neophytes of Whittington Health pay?

£7.1 million.

----------

Hat tip: as so often, Tony Collins.

What the students learn at Key Stage 4 is that all the normal rules of logic, arithmetic, business and economics that govern rational open markets break down in Whitehall.

These rules melt in the heat of the close personal bonds between the Department and its suppliers. The Department of Health's friendship with BT and CSC is not a unique example. We have already seen a similar  case of producer capture at the UK Border Agency where Rob Whiteman, the Chief Executive, would rather not mention Atos's name in connection with the immigration computer system breaking down for a month.

These relationships are intense. Too intense to accommodate any other loyalties. Other loyalties such as public service.

Dead fish Department of Health has lost sight of the "public" in "public service" – Sir David Nicholson KCB CBE

Key Stage 3 is that phase in the education of our children which takes place in England between the ages of 11 and 14. The syllabus is demanding and includes a course on management consultancy. No mere ivory tower training divorced from the real world, students are expected to give policy advice to Whitehall departments. Advice on procurement, for example, much needed by the Department of Health.

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.

Dead fish Home Office has lost sight of the "public" in "public service" – Rob Whiteman

Thanks to Anna Leach writing in The Register magazine, the following astonishing interchange at a Home Affairs Committee evidence session (15 May 2012) is brought to everyone's attention. The Chair of the Committee is Rt Hon Keith Vaz MP and Rob Whiteman is Chief Executive of the UK Border Agency, part of the Home Office:

Q151 Chair: ... over the issue of your computer system that crashed at Lunar house. Hundreds of people were turned away, and we hear that some were in tears at the fact that the system did not work. What went wrong? Have we got compensation from the IT company? Will it happen again, and have we rearranged all the appointments? Rob Whiteman: We contacted people over the bank holiday weekend and rearranged appointments. Around 500 appointments that were cancelled were rearranged. The issues around IT are incredibly frustrating for my staff, as well as for our customers. When I meet staff, it is a constant frustration that systems do not work all the time and that some of the resilience issues do not conform to common standards. In terms of morale and other issues, it is absolutely vital that we get to the heart of these IT problems. They are complex, yes, but- Q152 Chair: Yes, but we do not want to go into that now. Do we know why it broke down? Rob Whiteman: We do know why it broke down. It was an error on the network that affected the way appointments were queued from the system, and therefore they could not travel properly around the network. It was an IT failure, but, to answer your question, I have discussed this several times with the Chief Executive of the IT company that is the primary IT provider. Q153 Chair: What is the company? Rob Whiteman: I would rather not say. Q154 Chair: I am sorry, Mr Whiteman; this is a Select Committee of the House- Rob Whiteman: It is Atos. Q155 Chair: There is no need to be secret with us; we will find out. It is public money. It is not coming out of your pocket. The taxpayer is paying. What is the name of the company? Rob Whiteman: Atos. Q156 Chair: And what was his explanation as to why it broke down? Rob Whiteman: The reason I was reluctant, Chairman, is that we have a contract with Atos. It is trying its best to resolve the issues, but obviously we are being a demanding client and saying that performance is not good enough. Q157 Chair: As you should be. Rob Whiteman: I would not want to cast aspersions on the effort that it is making. It has put an additional team in to try to analyse the problem, and I receive daily and weekly reports from them. The point I would make is that in terms of UKBA improving over the next couple of years ...

The first reaction of a senior civil servant like Mr Whiteman is meant to be in favour of the public. That's what the public service ethos is. But when Mr Whiteman is asked to name the contractor responsible for the failure of a major IT system his first reaction is "I would rather not say".

His first reaction is to try to hide information. From Parliament and from the public.

His first reaction is in favour of the producer. "I would rather not say". This is producer capture.

The relationship between the Home Office and its suppliers in this case and others is pathological. Mr Whiteman's posture is craven. He isn't meant to be beholden to his suppliers. That's the wrong way round. Instead of serving the public, he finds himself serving UKBA's consultants and contractors. Which leaves the public paying and unserved.

Dead fish Home Office has lost sight of the "public" in "public service" – Rob Whiteman

Thanks to Anna Leach writing in The Register magazine, the following astonishing interchange at a Home Affairs Committee evidence session (15 May 2012) is brought to everyone's attention. The Chair of the Committee is Rt Hon Keith Vaz MP and Rob Whiteman is Chief Executive of the UK Border Agency, part of the Home Office:

Q151 Chair: ... over the issue of your computer system that crashed at Lunar house. Hundreds of people were turned away, and we hear that some were in tears at the fact that the system did not work. What went wrong? Have we got compensation from the IT company? Will it happen again, and have we rearranged all the appointments? Rob Whiteman: We contacted people over the bank holiday weekend and rearranged appointments. Around 500 appointments that were cancelled were rearranged. The issues around IT are incredibly frustrating for my staff, as well as for our customers. When I meet staff, it is a constant frustration that systems do not work all the time and that some of the resilience issues do not conform to common standards. In terms of morale and other issues, it is absolutely vital that we get to the heart of these IT problems. They are complex, yes, but- Q152 Chair: Yes, but we do not want to go into that now. Do we know why it broke down? Rob Whiteman: We do know why it broke down. It was an error on the network that affected the way appointments were queued from the system, and therefore they could not travel properly around the network. It was an IT failure, but, to answer your question, I have discussed this several times with the Chief Executive of the IT company that is the primary IT provider. Q153 Chair: What is the company? Rob Whiteman: I would rather not say. Q154 Chair: I am sorry, Mr Whiteman; this is a Select Committee of the House- Rob Whiteman: It is Atos. Q155 Chair: There is no need to be secret with us; we will find out. It is public money. It is not coming out of your pocket. The taxpayer is paying. What is the name of the company? Rob Whiteman: Atos. Q156 Chair: And what was his explanation as to why it broke down? Rob Whiteman: The reason I was reluctant, Chairman, is that we have a contract with Atos. It is trying its best to resolve the issues, but obviously we are being a demanding client and saying that performance is not good enough. Q157 Chair: As you should be. Rob Whiteman: I would not want to cast aspersions on the effort that it is making. It has put an additional team in to try to analyse the problem, and I receive daily and weekly reports from them. The point I would make is that in terms of UKBA improving over the next couple of years ...

The first reaction of a senior civil servant like Mr Whiteman is meant to be in favour of the public. That's what the public service ethos is. But when Mr Whiteman is asked to name the contractor responsible for the failure of a major IT system his first reaction is "I would rather not say".

His first reaction is to try to hide information. From Parliament and from the public.

His first reaction is in favour of the producer. "I would rather not say". This is producer capture.

The relationship between the Home Office and its suppliers in this case and others is pathological. Mr Whiteman's posture is craven. He isn't meant to be beholden to his suppliers. That's the wrong way round. Instead of serving the public, he finds himself serving UKBA's consultants and contractors. Which leaves the public paying and unserved.

Protecting civilisation from the fingers of terror

Here's a quotation from an article in New Scientist magazine. You need to know that Visionics is a biometrics company that specialises in face recognition. Now you're an expert:

Airport security isn't the only use for face-recognition software: it has been put through its paces in other settings, too. One example is "face in the crowd" on-street surveillance, made notorious by a trial in the London Borough of Newham. Since 1998, some of the borough's CCTV cameras have been feeding images to a face-recognition system supplied by Visionics, and Newham has been cited by the company as a success and a vision of the future of policing. But in June this year, the police admitted to The Guardian newspaper that the Newham system had never even matched the face of a person on the street to a photo in its database of known offenders, let alone led to an arrest.

Admitted ... the police admitted ...

Clearly, the Newham police, for all sorts of human reasons, somehow entrapped themselves in a deception perpetrated on the public at public expense. Has it happened again?

Last week, Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley was singing the praises of the mobile fingerprint readers now issued to policemen patrolling in 28 of the UK's 56 police forces. Home Office figures suggest that the flat print fingerprint technology used in these devices fails about 20% of the time.

Equally clearly, and to the credit of the Newham police, they finally extricated themselves from this fraud with their admission. Will that happen again?

How long before we read in New Scientist that:

... Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley admitted to __________ that the MobileID initiative had never even matched the fingerprints of a person on the street to a set of dabs in its database of known offenders, let alone led to an arrest. In fact all it had achieved was to reduce the chances of a felon being taken down to the nick by a straight 20% at a stroke.

For anyone interested in the history of biometrics companies, i.e. how we got into this mess, please note that:

• After the Newham debacle Visionics was taken over by Identix.
• Identix supplied the biometrics technology for the UK Passport Service biometrics enrolment trial from which the 20% failure rate for flat print fingerprinting is taken.
• Identix was taken over by L-1 Identity Solutions.
• L-1 was bought by Safran.
• And Safran provide the biometrics we depend on for the success of IABS, the Immigration and Asylum Biometrics System which is meant to keep the UK border secure and to make the 2012 Olympics safe.

Please note also that the New Scientist article quoted above appeared in the 7 September 2002 issue of the magazine, nearly 10 years ago. The article is so full of important observations of mendacity, opportunism and technological incompetence still relevant today that it is further quoted with grateful acknowledgement below:

Face-off I CAME here looking for an argument but I can't find one. All round this lofty exhibition hall - billed as the world's biggest market for security equipment - the people selling face-recognition systems are being disarmingly, infuriatingly honest ... I thought they'd at least attempt to defend the technology. When they don't, it's me who's caught off guard. Is it true that the systems can't recognise someone wearing sunglasses? Yes, they say. Is it true that if you turn your head and look to one side of the camera, it can't pick you out? Again, yes. What about if you simply don't keep your head still? They nod. Maybe nine or ten months ago they would have risen to the bait. In those days the face-recognition industry was on a high. In the wake of 11 September, Visionics, a leading manufacturer, issued a fact sheet explaining how its technology could enhance airport security. They called it "Protecting civilization from the faces of terror". The company's share price skyrocketed, as did the stocks of other face-recognition companies, and airports across the globe began installing the software and running trials. As the results start to come in, however, the gloss is wearing off. No matter what you might have heard about face-recognition software, Big Brother it ain't ... Image Metrics, a British company that develops image-recognition software, ... warned of the danger of exaggerated claims, saying that "an ineffective or poorly applied security technology is as dangerous as a poorly tested or inappropriately prescribed drug" ... to catch 90 per cent of suspects at an airport, face-recognition software would have to raise a huge number of false alarms. One in three people would end up being dragged out of the line - and that's assuming everyone looks straight at the camera and makes no effort to disguise themselves ... Palm Beach International Airport in Florida released the initial results of a trial using a Visionics face-recognition system. The airport authorities loaded the system with photographs of 250 people, 15 of whom were airport employees. The idea was that the system would recognise these employees every time they passed in front of a camera. But, the airport authorities admitted, the system only recognised the volunteers 47 per cent of the time while raising two or three false alarms per hour ... To give themselves the best chance of picking up suspects, operators can set the software so that it doesn't have to make an exact match before it raises the alarm. But there's a price to pay: the more potential suspects you pick up, the more false alarms you get. You have to get the balance just right. Visionics - now called Identix after merging with a fingerprint-scanning company in June - is quick to blame its system's lacklustre performance on operators getting these settings wrong ... Numerous studies have shown that people are surprisingly bad at matching photos to real faces. A 1997 experiment to investigate the value of photo IDs on credit cards concluded that cashiers were unable to tell whether or not photographs matched the faces of the people holding them. The test, published in Applied Cognitive Psychology (vol 11, p 211), found that around 66 per cent of cashiers wrongly rejected a transaction and more than 50 per cent accepted a transaction they should have turned down. The report concluded that people's ability to match faces to photographs was so poor that introducing photo IDs on credit cards could actually increase fraud. The way people change as they age could also be a problem. A study by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology investigated what happens when a face-recognition system tries to match up two sets of mugshots taken 18 months apart. It failed dismally, with a success rate of only 57 per cent. There's another fundamental problem with using face-recognition software to spot terrorists: good pictures of suspects are hard to come by ... Very few security personnel at American airports have CIA clearance, so they aren't allowed to see the images. "Until they've got cleared personnel in each of those airports they can't stop terrorists getting on planes," says Iain Drummond, chief executive of Imagis technologies, a biometrics company based in Vancouver, Canada ... Airport security isn't the only use for face-recognition software: it has been put through its paces in other settings, too. One example is "face in the crowd" on-street surveillance, made notorious by a trial in the London Borough of Newham. Since 1998, some of the borough's CCTV cameras have been feeding images to a face-recognition system supplied by Visionics, and Newham has been cited by the company as a success and a vision of the future of policing. But in June this year, the police admitted to The Guardian newspaper that the Newham system had never even matched the face of a person on the street to a photo in its database of known offenders, let alone led to an arrest.

There are more of these gems available in the DMossEsq treasure trove of mendacity, Biometrics: guilty until proven innocent.

Look at the Image Metrics quotation above, "an ineffective or poorly applied security technology is as dangerous as a poorly tested or inappropriately prescribed drug". Prescription drugs are subject to extensive testing before the regulators will sanction their release to the public. Without that, we'd all be dead. The same goes for aircraft design. Without the Civil Aviation Authority, a lot more of us would be dead.

There is none of that open, public, peer-reviewed testing regime when it comes to the government wasting our money on biometrics. Try to find out what justification there is for Whitehall's decision to invest in biometrics and you get a two-year court case and no information.

There is no good reason for this peculiar asymmetry.

How do we avoid the recurrence of Newham-style embarrassments?

It's about time the Office for National Statistics was involved in Whitehall technology decisions and that initiatives which depend on reliable technology should not be allowed to incur substantial public expenditure before and unless the ONS has agreed and published official statistics supporting the business case.

Protecting civilisation from the fingers of terror

Here's a quotation from an article in New Scientist magazine. You need to know that Visionics is a biometrics company that specialises in face recognition. Now you're an expert:

Airport security isn't the only use for face-recognition software: it has been put through its paces in other settings, too. One example is "face in the crowd" on-street surveillance, made notorious by a trial in the London Borough of Newham. Since 1998, some of the borough's CCTV cameras have been feeding images to a face-recognition system supplied by Visionics, and Newham has been cited by the company as a success and a vision of the future of policing. But in June this year, the police admitted to The Guardian newspaper that the Newham system had never even matched the face of a person on the street to a photo in its database of known offenders, let alone led to an arrest.

Admitted ... the police admitted ...

Clearly, the Newham police, for all sorts of human reasons, somehow entrapped themselves in a deception perpetrated on the public at public expense. Has it happened again?

Last week, Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley was singing the praises of the mobile fingerprint readers now issued to policemen patrolling in 28 of the UK's 56 police forces. Home Office figures suggest that the flat print fingerprint technology used in these devices fails about 20% of the time.

Equally clearly, and to the credit of the Newham police, they finally extricated themselves from this fraud with their admission. Will that happen again?

How long before we read in New Scientist that:

... Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley admitted to __________ that the MobileID initiative had never even matched the fingerprints of a person on the street to a set of dabs in its database of known offenders, let alone led to an arrest. In fact all it had achieved was to reduce the chances of a felon being taken down to the nick by a straight 20% at a stroke.