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.
----------
* 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.
Showing posts with label eGates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eGates. Show all posts
Thursday, 10 January 2013
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.
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.
Sunday, 9 September 2012
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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
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.
Thursday, 2 August 2012
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:
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?
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:
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:
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.
... that is driven as much by technological introductions like e-gates, as well as a risk-based approach. Border Force will be getting smaller ...
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?
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?
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” ...
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.
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.
Monday, 7 May 2012
Chaos at Heathrow, border security in doubt, safety of the Olympics threatened – and the unions call a strike?
Later this week, the UK Border Agency are due to go on strike.
If they do, the strike won't improve the ghastly economic situation the UK finds itself in and it won't improve UKBA's reputation with the public. All the strike will achieve is to provide opportunities for hollow laughter at jokes along the lines of how can you tell that UKBA are on strike, what difference does it make if they're working ...
At some point, hours or days after the strike has started, it will stop. And the public impression will be that there is an industrial relations problem at UKBA.
Which there may well be.
But there is also a more fundamental problem at UKBA, a problem that won't be solved by arbitration and which will persist even when the strike is over – the senior Whitehall management of UKBA appears to be irremediably incompetent.
A strike would be welcomed by Theresa May, Damian Green, Helen Ghosh and Rob Whiteman. The greatest present the unions could give them, an unexpected relief, they would think that Christmas had come early.
By focusing the public's attention on pay and pensions, the strike will divert attention from the impression that the management is hopelessly out of its depth and it will thereby to some extent let them off the hook. The unions are making a mistake. The strike, if it happens, will delay the solution to the problem of management failure at UKBA and make that solution harder to achieve.
The political leadership (Theresa May and Damian Green)
Incompetent? Out of their depth? Failure?
Yes. Just cast your mind back 10 days or so.
Heathrow at 'breaking' point as Border Force struggles to cope, leaked memos warn, said the Telegraph on Sunday 29 April 2012. Cue pictures of the huddled masses trying to get through passport control. "We are in control at Heathrow", said Damian Green the Immigration Minister, only to be corrected by Willie Walsh: ‘Minister lying over Heathrow queues,’ says BA chief. It's a mess.
A predictable mess. The Times had already told us on 23 April 2012 that:
When the Home Affairs Committee reported on the Brodie Clark affair, they said that they hadn't been given enough information by UKBA to assess the trial. When John Vine, the Independent Chief Inspector of UKBA, reported on the same matter, he suggested that the trial had not been undertaken professionally, and that the successes claimed for it could not obviously be attributed to risk-based border control.
Now that the public have a good reason to doubt the success of the trial we read that the Home Secretary may re-introduce risk-based policing of the border after all, Theresa May to ease airport passport controls.
What was Brodie Clark suspended for? Relaxing passport checks and relaxing fingerprint checks on visa nationals.
What did Damian Green do in Calais in January? He relaxed fingerprint checks on visa nationals:
Go on strike, and the unions will help to hide this worryingly erratic behaviour of UKBA's senior political leadership.
In reality, the public doesn't genuinely expect ministers like Theresa May and Damian Green to know what's going on. That's up to officials. Whitehall is expected to be a Rolls-Royce civil service. In the event, the public is going to be seriously disappointed if they ever listen to the Home Affairs Committee and find out the truth.
The Whitehall leadership (Helen Ghosh, Rob Whiteman and the Board of UKBA)
UK Border Agency News, the "bi-monthly update for partners" – what we used to call the "staff magazine" – is published by Rob Whiteman, the man who replaced Lin Homer as Chief Executive of UKBA. Page 7 of the March 2012 issue is all about IABS, the new Immigration and Asylum Biometric System, and tells us that:
Safe, that is, apart from the "technology glitches" that the Telegraph will keep carping about, just because Heathrow is "at breaking point":
Ms Keane is the senior civil servant in charge of IABS. She promised in the March 2011 issue of the staff magazine (p.5) to install it by December 2011. The date slipped by a couple of months. Which must be why the Telegraph's informant isn't sure whether UK Border Force staff know how to use the system yet.
No, what the Committee don't like is that Mr Whiteman promised to co-operate with them when he was first appointed and now he's being obstructive:
It's not just his stonewalling that antagonises them.
There's also UKBA's use of a peculiar version of English which impedes communication with them and which may account for their inability to prepare consistent statistics. What's more, the Agency seems to be incapable of understanding natural English. Everyone else knows what "bogus college" means but the Agency claims not to recognise the term.
Then there's UKBA's failure to consider consistently whether foreign national prisoners should be deported, their failure to deport these people even if the Agency has whimsically decided to try, their failure to win more than two-thirds of their appeals against asylum and their failure to win much more than half of their immigration appeals, a record not improved by the Agency's failure to attend nearly 20% of these appeals.
UKBA's Glasgow office only manages to attend 45% of its immigration appeals. How come, the Committee would like to know, following the discovery by John Vine, that figure was recorded at Head Office as 95%?
What can possibly explain the Agency's lack of the gumption to get on and solve problems like the "Lille loophole" until someone embarrasses them into action?
There is a slim possibility that eBorders might cover 100% of travellers coming into the country by air but no possibility whatever of it covering people arriving by boat or train. If eBorders doesn't have 100% coverage it can't work, it can't do its job of securing the border, the Committee say, so what's the point of it?
What's the point of all these eGates at UK airports? (Electronic gates, sometimes known as "smart gates".) Do they work or don't they? No-one knows (para.61):
And why is the system to identify air travellers by their irises being terminated? It cost millions. Was all that money wasted?
And what's happening with the visa application system? It's not working and the Committee considers it imperative to go back to "face to face interviews with entry clearance officers" (para.71-2). Now. Right now.
Apart from the other matter – financial mismanagement (para.74) – that's all the Committee have to say about UKBA. For the moment.
The problems go all the way to the top. The word "agency" appears in inverted commas throughout the Committee's report. Because UKBA isn't really an agency. It's just another bit of the Home Office. Mr Whiteman's failures, and those of his predecessors, are Dame Helen Ghosh's failures, and those of her predecessors.
Dame Helen is the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. When she gave evidence to the Committee she said:
Piffle.
As the Committee make clear in their report, this is a Constitutional matter. Parliament is meant to be supreme. Not the Executive. And Parliament is being flouted by the Home Office's refusal to disclose information to the Committee (p.32):
There must be about a dozen serious problems there, identified by the Home Affairs Committee and by John Vine. Problems which affect border security and the safety of the Olympics. Political problems. Public administration problems. Constitutional problems. Technology problems.
And the unions choose this moment to call a hopeless strike and thereby divert attention from them all?
There's still time to call it off. Call it off and engage public sympathy.
Call it off and demand in the public interest that Whitehall get a grip. Demand that Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the home civil service, sort out the mess left behind by Sir Gus now Lord O'Donnell and Sir David Normington.
Demand that the Home Office stop wasting hundreds of millions of pounds of public money on technology that doesn't work and concentrate instead on border security and the safety of the Olympics. Which means adequate staffing and rational procedures. Make John Vine's job easier, not harder.
Work with the Home Affairs Committee, don't hinder them. Demand that the Home Office recognise that they operate in a democracy where they owe their duty to Parliament.
Cribsheet – money:
According to the March 2012 issue of the staff magazine, the contractors involved with IABS are IBM, Morpho, Fujitsu, Atos Origin and Software AG.
Overseas visa application checks – the work the Home Affairs Committee think should be done by UKBA "entry clearance officers" face to face – are carried out by VF Worldwide and CSC. What we are paying VF Worldwide and CSC for is to all intents and purposes stamp-collecting.
CSC also have a contract with the Identity & Passport Service, another "agency" of the Home Office, to produce ePassports, a product on which passport-holders are over-charged to the tune of about £300 million p.a.
Source: http://data.gov.uk/dataset/financial-transactions-data-ho:
That way the Whitehall officials can carry on working on useless biometrics projects, we can carry on paying the contractors to provide useless biometrics products, Dame Helen can carry on laying off Border Force staff and replacing them with useless technology, and everyone's happy – with the possible exception of the fare-paying public, onto whom the additional landing fees will be passed in the form of increased ticket prices. But who cares about them?
Alternatively, we could just cancel the useless biometrics bits of IABS, eBorders and ePassports, use the money saved to pay for the additional Border Force staff needed, if any, and let the public keep the balance, on the principle that we know how we want to spend our money better than Whitehall.
If they do, the strike won't improve the ghastly economic situation the UK finds itself in and it won't improve UKBA's reputation with the public. All the strike will achieve is to provide opportunities for hollow laughter at jokes along the lines of how can you tell that UKBA are on strike, what difference does it make if they're working ...
At some point, hours or days after the strike has started, it will stop. And the public impression will be that there is an industrial relations problem at UKBA.
Which there may well be.
But there is also a more fundamental problem at UKBA, a problem that won't be solved by arbitration and which will persist even when the strike is over – the senior Whitehall management of UKBA appears to be irremediably incompetent.
A strike would be welcomed by Theresa May, Damian Green, Helen Ghosh and Rob Whiteman. The greatest present the unions could give them, an unexpected relief, they would think that Christmas had come early.
By focusing the public's attention on pay and pensions, the strike will divert attention from the impression that the management is hopelessly out of its depth and it will thereby to some extent let them off the hook. The unions are making a mistake. The strike, if it happens, will delay the solution to the problem of management failure at UKBA and make that solution harder to achieve.
The political leadership (Theresa May and Damian Green)
Incompetent? Out of their depth? Failure?
Yes. Just cast your mind back 10 days or so.
Heathrow at 'breaking' point as Border Force struggles to cope, leaked memos warn, said the Telegraph on Sunday 29 April 2012. Cue pictures of the huddled masses trying to get through passport control. "We are in control at Heathrow", said Damian Green the Immigration Minister, only to be corrected by Willie Walsh: ‘Minister lying over Heathrow queues,’ says BA chief. It's a mess.
A predictable mess. The Times had already told us on 23 April 2012 that:
No longer in the job, Brodie Clark still seems to be better informed than his successor, Brian Moore. According to a 5 April 2012 article in Public Service magazine:
"Theresa May will have to abandon full passport checks at Britain’s airports, the former head of the UK Border Force warns today. Brodie Clark says that the Home Secretary’s policy is causing lengthy delays for passengers at Heathrow and Gatwick and undermining security"
Mr Moore got Mr Clark's job because Mr Clark allegedly over-stepped the mark while undertaking a trial of "risk-based" or "intelligence-led" border policing. Before his suspension on 2 November 2011, the trial had been declared a success. When Mr Clark was suspended, so was the trial. Why? If it was successful, why not pursue it?
The UK Border Force head Brian Moore said he was surprised by talk of chaos, saying that there is – as every year – a "very solid plan" in place and disruption will be kept to a minimum. Also, there would be extra staff brought in over Easter and for the Olympics. "We will not compromise border security," the UK Border Force said.
When the Home Affairs Committee reported on the Brodie Clark affair, they said that they hadn't been given enough information by UKBA to assess the trial. When John Vine, the Independent Chief Inspector of UKBA, reported on the same matter, he suggested that the trial had not been undertaken professionally, and that the successes claimed for it could not obviously be attributed to risk-based border control.
Now that the public have a good reason to doubt the success of the trial we read that the Home Secretary may re-introduce risk-based policing of the border after all, Theresa May to ease airport passport controls.
What was Brodie Clark suspended for? Relaxing passport checks and relaxing fingerprint checks on visa nationals.
What did Damian Green do in Calais in January? He relaxed fingerprint checks on visa nationals:
What's Theresa May going to do? Relax passport checks:
Damian Green, the immigration minister, has defended the abandonment of the “lengthy” process of taking fingerprints, saying UKBA staff were better served searching vehicles instead ...
How long before she tries to re-appoint Brodie Clark?
Mrs May said she was ready to consider introducing “risk-based” controls as part of a long-term solution to delays at airports, despite having forced Brodie Clark, the former head of the UK Border Force, out of his job in November after she claimed he had relaxed immigration checks without her authorisation.
Go on strike, and the unions will help to hide this worryingly erratic behaviour of UKBA's senior political leadership.
In reality, the public doesn't genuinely expect ministers like Theresa May and Damian Green to know what's going on. That's up to officials. Whitehall is expected to be a Rolls-Royce civil service. In the event, the public is going to be seriously disappointed if they ever listen to the Home Affairs Committee and find out the truth.
The Whitehall leadership (Helen Ghosh, Rob Whiteman and the Board of UKBA)
UK Border Agency News, the "bi-monthly update for partners" – what we used to call the "staff magazine" – is published by Rob Whiteman, the man who replaced Lin Homer as Chief Executive of UKBA. Page 7 of the March 2012 issue is all about IABS, the new Immigration and Asylum Biometric System, and tells us that:
We're all safe, then. Add biometrics and the recipe for salvation is complete.
Since go-live [of IABS] feedback has been very positive; the transition has been seen as ‘seamless’ and the IABS was described as ‘a significant improvement’. Users of handheld mobile biometric checking equipment are also reporting improved network reception and speedier results.
At the end of March, the IABS will deliver a mobile version of this solution for the capture of biometrics of Games Family Members at the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012.
Safe, that is, apart from the "technology glitches" that the Telegraph will keep carping about, just because Heathrow is "at breaking point":
Not that the expensive technology failure of IABS is what makes Rob Whiteman unpopular with the Home Affairs Committee. They haven't even looked at the reliability of mass consumer biometrics yet – Jackie Keane's day will come. And Alex Lahood's. And Marek Rejman-Greene's.
The difficulties were exacerbated by a series of technology glitches including the failure of a finger print machine, used to check passengers who require a visa to enter Britain.
On other occasions both the Iris recognition and new automatic passport scanning gates failed, adding to the frustration of new arrivals.
"I am unsure but I do not believe our staff are trained to use these machines," one manager said. "If they were I could have deployed the kit much faster."
Ms Keane is the senior civil servant in charge of IABS. She promised in the March 2011 issue of the staff magazine (p.5) to install it by December 2011. The date slipped by a couple of months. Which must be why the Telegraph's informant isn't sure whether UK Border Force staff know how to use the system yet.
No, what the Committee don't like is that Mr Whiteman promised to co-operate with them when he was first appointed and now he's being obstructive:
That's what the Committee say in their 21st report of this Parliament (para.79).
It is therefore deeply disappointing that on two occasions since our last report, the Committee has been denied access to information. The "Agency" refused to provide us with the outcome of cases of people who arrived at St Pancras via the 'Lille loophole'. The "Agency" also refused to provide us with data regarding inspections of Tier 4 sponsors on the basis that it was 'not fit for wider dissemination'.
It's not just his stonewalling that antagonises them.
There's also UKBA's use of a peculiar version of English which impedes communication with them and which may account for their inability to prepare consistent statistics. What's more, the Agency seems to be incapable of understanding natural English. Everyone else knows what "bogus college" means but the Agency claims not to recognise the term.
Then there's UKBA's failure to consider consistently whether foreign national prisoners should be deported, their failure to deport these people even if the Agency has whimsically decided to try, their failure to win more than two-thirds of their appeals against asylum and their failure to win much more than half of their immigration appeals, a record not improved by the Agency's failure to attend nearly 20% of these appeals.
UKBA's Glasgow office only manages to attend 45% of its immigration appeals. How come, the Committee would like to know, following the discovery by John Vine, that figure was recorded at Head Office as 95%?
What can possibly explain the Agency's lack of the gumption to get on and solve problems like the "Lille loophole" until someone embarrasses them into action?
There is a slim possibility that eBorders might cover 100% of travellers coming into the country by air but no possibility whatever of it covering people arriving by boat or train. If eBorders doesn't have 100% coverage it can't work, it can't do its job of securing the border, the Committee say, so what's the point of it?
What's the point of all these eGates at UK airports? (Electronic gates, sometimes known as "smart gates".) Do they work or don't they? No-one knows (para.61):
The Home Office under Sir David Normington, Dame Helen's predecessor, repeatedly claimed that eGates are being deployed at UK airports because the trials at Manchester Airport proved so successful. John Vine begs to differ in his report on the inspection of Manchester. He could find no evidence whatever of the Home Office trying to assess the trial.
The “Agency” needs to provide convincing evidence, for its own staff as well as the general public, that the e-Gates system is no less reliable than passport checks carried out by a person.
And why is the system to identify air travellers by their irises being terminated? It cost millions. Was all that money wasted?
And what's happening with the visa application system? It's not working and the Committee considers it imperative to go back to "face to face interviews with entry clearance officers" (para.71-2). Now. Right now.
Apart from the other matter – financial mismanagement (para.74) – that's all the Committee have to say about UKBA. For the moment.
The problems go all the way to the top. The word "agency" appears in inverted commas throughout the Committee's report. Because UKBA isn't really an agency. It's just another bit of the Home Office. Mr Whiteman's failures, and those of his predecessors, are Dame Helen Ghosh's failures, and those of her predecessors.
Dame Helen is the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. When she gave evidence to the Committee she said:
Simon Hoggart in the Guardian had fun writing about Dame Helen's appearance in front of the Home Affairs Committee on 22 November 2011. It was a great fun duel, he suggested, marvellous television, a heavyweight bout between Keith Vaz the Committee chairman and Dame Helen.
... there are plans, over the SR10 period [2010-15], to reduce the staff of the Border Force by around 900 people, from almost 8,000 people at the start of the period. But that is driven as much by technological introductions like e-gates, as well as a risk-based approach. Border Force will be getting smaller ...
Piffle.
As the Committee make clear in their report, this is a Constitutional matter. Parliament is meant to be supreme. Not the Executive. And Parliament is being flouted by the Home Office's refusal to disclose information to the Committee (p.32):
The unions
The Committee takes our scrutiny of the UK Border “Agency” very seriously and will not be deterred by the “Agency’s” attempt to circumvent our requests for information. It is in the public interest that this “Agency”, charged with implementing the Government’s immigration policy, is held to account by Parliament. When Mr Whiteman first appeared before us, he pledged to be to be transparent and work with us on the basis of trust. We welcome those pledges and look forward to them being fulfilled.
There must be about a dozen serious problems there, identified by the Home Affairs Committee and by John Vine. Problems which affect border security and the safety of the Olympics. Political problems. Public administration problems. Constitutional problems. Technology problems.
And the unions choose this moment to call a hopeless strike and thereby divert attention from them all?
There's still time to call it off. Call it off and engage public sympathy.
Call it off and demand in the public interest that Whitehall get a grip. Demand that Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the home civil service, sort out the mess left behind by Sir Gus now Lord O'Donnell and Sir David Normington.
Demand that the Home Office stop wasting hundreds of millions of pounds of public money on technology that doesn't work and concentrate instead on border security and the safety of the Olympics. Which means adequate staffing and rational procedures. Make John Vine's job easier, not harder.
Work with the Home Affairs Committee, don't hinder them. Demand that the Home Office recognise that they operate in a democracy where they owe their duty to Parliament.
Cribsheet – money:
According to the March 2012 issue of the staff magazine, the contractors involved with IABS are IBM, Morpho, Fujitsu, Atos Origin and Software AG.
Overseas visa application checks – the work the Home Affairs Committee think should be done by UKBA "entry clearance officers" face to face – are carried out by VF Worldwide and CSC. What we are paying VF Worldwide and CSC for is to all intents and purposes stamp-collecting.
CSC also have a contract with the Identity & Passport Service, another "agency" of the Home Office, to produce ePassports, a product on which passport-holders are over-charged to the tune of about £300 million p.a.
Source: http://data.gov.uk/dataset/financial-transactions-data-ho:
Heathrow to raise landing fees to pay for more border staff, we read in the Guardian. A brilliant idea.
between 10 May 2010 and 29 February 2012Contract: IABS IBM Morpho Fujitsu Atos Origin Software AG Contract: eBorders VF Worldwide CSC Contract: ePassports CSC
That way the Whitehall officials can carry on working on useless biometrics projects, we can carry on paying the contractors to provide useless biometrics products, Dame Helen can carry on laying off Border Force staff and replacing them with useless technology, and everyone's happy – with the possible exception of the fare-paying public, onto whom the additional landing fees will be passed in the form of increased ticket prices. But who cares about them?
Alternatively, we could just cancel the useless biometrics bits of IABS, eBorders and ePassports, use the money saved to pay for the additional Border Force staff needed, if any, and let the public keep the balance, on the principle that we know how we want to spend our money better than Whitehall.
Chaos at Heathrow, border security in doubt, safety of the Olympics threatened – and the unions call a strike?
Later this week, the UK Border Agency are due to go on strike.
If they do, the strike won't improve the ghastly economic situation the UK finds itself in and it won't improve UKBA's reputation with the public. All the strike will achieve is to provide opportunities for hollow laughter at jokes along the lines of how can you tell that UKBA are on strike, what difference does it make if they're working ...
At some point, hours or days after the strike has started, it will stop. And the public impression will be that there is an industrial relations problem at UKBA.
Which there may well be.
But there is also a more fundamental problem at UKBA, a problem that won't be solved by arbitration and which will persist even when the strike is over – the senior Whitehall management of UKBA appears to be irremediably incompetent.
A strike would be welcomed by Theresa May, Damian Green, Helen Ghosh and Rob Whiteman. The greatest present the unions could give them, an unexpected relief, they would think that Christmas had come early.
By focusing the public's attention on pay and pensions, the strike will divert attention from the impression that the management is hopelessly out of its depth and it will thereby to some extent let them off the hook. The unions are making a mistake. The strike, if it happens, will delay the solution to the problem of management failure at UKBA and make that solution harder to achieve.
If they do, the strike won't improve the ghastly economic situation the UK finds itself in and it won't improve UKBA's reputation with the public. All the strike will achieve is to provide opportunities for hollow laughter at jokes along the lines of how can you tell that UKBA are on strike, what difference does it make if they're working ...
At some point, hours or days after the strike has started, it will stop. And the public impression will be that there is an industrial relations problem at UKBA.
Which there may well be.
But there is also a more fundamental problem at UKBA, a problem that won't be solved by arbitration and which will persist even when the strike is over – the senior Whitehall management of UKBA appears to be irremediably incompetent.
A strike would be welcomed by Theresa May, Damian Green, Helen Ghosh and Rob Whiteman. The greatest present the unions could give them, an unexpected relief, they would think that Christmas had come early.
By focusing the public's attention on pay and pensions, the strike will divert attention from the impression that the management is hopelessly out of its depth and it will thereby to some extent let them off the hook. The unions are making a mistake. The strike, if it happens, will delay the solution to the problem of management failure at UKBA and make that solution harder to achieve.
Friday, 16 December 2011
The on the spot answer
This is the (draft and subject to change) answer to a comment posted by one Mr Reader:
Dear Mr Reader
Thank you for trying to put me on the spot. I’ve been trying to put myself on the spot for years. And failing.
Assuming that that continues, when the final enquiry report is in at the end of next month, the most likely outcome is that everyone’s reputation will be tarnished – Brodie Clark, Theresa May and Helen Ghosh – but the daily round will revert to its pre-4 November 2011 pattern, the usual dismal calm will prevail in the Dark Department, there will be no more sense of sudden explosions, nasty surprises and unexpected eruptions.
That’s the 98%+ likely scenario. A dirty taste in the mouth, business as usual re-established.
The outcome with the 2%- probability of happening?
Consider the following Economist article, Friday 11 May 2012:
Brodie Clark speaks quietly and at first no-one heard him say that fingerprint verification is the ninth and lowest priority security/identity check at the border, the least reliable check and the most sensible check to suspend when the disorderly queues in Arrivals begin to threaten safety.
Well everyone’s heard him now, thanks to the alliance between Theresa May, the UK’s Home Secretary, and Helen Ghosh, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. Their careers both shipped a lot of water in the days following 4 November 2011 and they were determined to find out why.
Clark was supposed to have endangered UK border security by suspending fingerprint checks. But May and Ghosh could find no evidence that fingerprint checks promote border security. There is none. So he hadn’t endangered anything.
True, he had arguably disobeyed his minister. She had specifically instructed that fingerprint checks were not to be relaxed for non-EEA nationals. But did that instruction refer exclusively to the new intelligence-led border security scheme being piloted? Was the suspension of fingerprint checks covered by the 2007 HOWI procedures?
Pure noise. The real question was: why did the Home Secretary instruct that fingerprint checks should not be suspended, given that they’re no use? Answer, because she had been told by her officials that the technology is reliable. Who told her that? And why?
As May and Ghosh looked deeper and deeper into the affair, the tangled web of today’s mass consumer biometrics industry began to unravel. First in the UK Border Agency, where IBM’s National Identity Assurance Service contract was cancelled. That took out Morpho at the same time. (Morpho is a subsidiary of France’s Safran Group, their answer to our BAE Systems.) And Computer Sciences Corporation and VFS Global.
The damage spread to the National Policing Improvement Agency, where they were using Morpho’s products for mobile fingerprinting by police patrols – not any more they’re not. And to the Identity & Passport Service, where they use Morpho for biometrics in ePassports. For the moment. And to DWP, who were going to use voice biometrics for their Universal Credit system, but can only be described now as tight-lipped about their plans.
Who advised the Home office on biometrics? They got internal advice from the Home Office Scientific Development Branch and external consultancy advice from PA Consulting. Not any more they don’t.
How did this fiasco persist, the Prime Minister wants to know, under the leadership of Lord O'Donnell, until last years head of the home civil service, and Sir David Normington, Dame Helen's predecessor? We await the answer with interest.
Projects that depend on these biometrics being reliable were being cancelled all over Whitehall. The taxpayer didn’t know whether to be furious about being deceived for so long by the Home Office or deliriously happy when the savings from all these cancelled projects over the next 10 years topped £20 billion.
This sort of news doesn’t respect borders. Safran Group were relying on Morpho for 20% of their turnover. Once the news had rowed across the channel, their turnover was down by 20%. Former President Sarkozy tried to blame the Anglo-Saxons but then turned on the European Commission, blaming their 2003 OSCIE specification for a pan-European biometric ID card. The European Commission blamed the US Department of Homeland Security and the DHS blamed NIST, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Which was too much for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in India, where they’re spending billions on Aadhaar, a biometrics-based identity management scheme for 1.2 billion people. At least they were.
And so the truth rolls on, bowling around the world, knocking over civil servants like ninepins wherever it fetches up. In China, one day Dr Tieniu Tan was a research professor with dozens of successful spin-off companies and, next day, he wasn’t. In Pakistan, first Brigadier Saleem Ahmed Moeen (Retd) was Chairman of NADRA, then there was no NADRA and now the Brigadier really is retired.
And all because of a quietly-spoken Glaswegian, speaking quietly on 15 November 2011, giving evidence to the Home Affairs Committee. Listen to him here. The good bit starts at 12:18.
The on the spot answer
This is the (draft and subject to change) answer to a comment posted by one Mr Reader:
Dear Mr Reader
Thank you for trying to put me on the spot. I’ve been trying to put myself on the spot for years. And failing.
Assuming that that continues, when the final enquiry report is in at the end of next month, the most likely outcome is that everyone’s reputation will be tarnished – Brodie Clark, Theresa May and Helen Ghosh – but the daily round will revert to its pre-4 November 2011 pattern, the usual dismal calm will prevail in the Dark Department, there will be no more sense of sudden explosions, nasty surprises and unexpected eruptions.
That’s the 98%+ likely scenario. A dirty taste in the mouth, business as usual re-established.
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Technology securing the border
Poor ... inefficient ... over-hyped ... real risk to the integrity of the control ... immature ... poor quality ... unreliable ... completely fails ... not joined up ... comical ... erroneous ... laughable ... these are just some of the words of praise heaped on the electronic face recognition gates used for passport control at Heathrow Airport, and on the eBorders scheme in general, in Nicola Stanbridge's eulogy broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning.
Hat tip: JGM
Hat tip: JGM
Technology securing the border
Poor ... inefficient ... over-hyped ... real risk to the integrity of the control ... immature ... poor quality ... unreliable ... completely fails ... not joined up ... comical ... erroneous ... laughable ... these are just some of the words of praise heaped on the electronic face recognition gates used for passport control at Heathrow Airport, and on the eBorders scheme in general, in Nicola Stanbridge's eulogy broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning.
Hat tip: JGM
Hat tip: JGM