Monday 28 November 2011

Managing the minister

There's a right way of doing these things. And a wrong way. Whitehall got it right in November 2008. And all wrong in November 2011.

2008 – the right way
November 2008. You remember. Gordon Brown is sub-Prime Minister and is busy saving the world. The economy is in meltdown and Sir Gus O'Donnell is Cabinet Secretary, Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office and Head of the home civil service, responsible for all senior appointments. Sir David Normington is Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. Bob Quick is Assistant Commissioner at the Met, Damian Green is Shadow Immigration Minister, Christopher Galley is chief Tory Mole at the Home Office, and Jacqui Smith is Home Secretary.

Information had been leaking from the Home Office for some time, allowing Damian Green to ask embarrassing questions in the House. How, for example, had 11,000 illegal immigrants been licensed by the Security Industry Authority to work as security guards?

Sir David discussed the matter with Sir Gus and between them they decided to call in the police. Why? According to the Independent, Sir Gus said it was because:
... when we started the inquiry the reason for it was we were worried certain information was getting out that was potentially very damaging to national security.

To have access to some other things that had come out in the newspapers, the kind of person (who) would have access to that material might also have access to some quite sensitive stuff ...
On 19 November 2008, Christopher Galley was arrested on suspicion of misappropriating some quite sensitive stuff and released on bail. He was subsequently charged with ... absolutely nothing.

Then, on 27 November 2008, Damian Green was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office and aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office.

He was detained for nine hours without a lawyer being present. His home was searched, his constituency office was searched and his House of Commons office was searched. His computers, and hard copy documents, were taken away.

How did Assistant Commissioner Quick's men get into the Palace of Westminster? By asking the Serjeant-at-Arms to let them in. Did they have a search warrant? No. What about Mr Speaker? He is Gatekeeper. Where was he? Good question. Was it the first time the Palace had been invaded in this way since 1642? Yes. Damian Green was subsequently charged with ... absolutely nothing.

As the BBC remind us:
Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer said there was a "high threshold before criminal proceedings can properly be brought", and that he had considered the "freedom of the press to publish information and ideas on matters of public interest". He said the information leaked was not secret information or information affecting national security and there was "insufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction against Mr Galley or Mr Green".
The Home Secretary knew nothing about these events in advance. Did she lose her rag when she found out? No.

She should have done – John Reid raps Jacqui Smith, as they put it in the Sun ...
HOME Secretary Jacqui Smith was left reeling yesterday by a vicious Commons attack over the Damian Green case by her predecessor John Reid.

Mr Reid said he was "surprised" she was not told cops were about to arrest a shadow minister.

He added: "I cannot think that if I had been told this had been done, after the event, I would have remained as placid as you have."
... but she didn't.

Arguably, Sir David went a bit far rubbing it in, when Jacqui Smith later resigned as Home Secretary. As reported on the civil service live network
The head of the Home Office has praised the secretary of state following her decision to stand down.

Permanent secretary Sir David Normington said Jacqui Smith had shown "exceptional leadership" during the her two year stint as home secretary ...

Sir David said Smith had allowed the department "to come out of our previous difficulties". The department was famously described as "not fit for purpose" by Smith's immediate predecessor, John Reid.

Smith had allowed staff to regain their confidence, Sir David said: "In private she was always challenging us to improve; in public she was always supportive. We could not really have asked for more."
Textbook. Sir David remained in control of his minister at all times. We could not really have asked for more.

2011 – the wrong way
Now roll forward three years.

Sir Gus O'Donnell is the only member of the 2008 cast still in the same job(s). He has appointed most of the members of the new cast.

On the other hand, there is no 2011 equivalent of Sir David Normington causing Sir Gus to come out into the limelight. The Head of the home civil service has remained publicly silent during an embarrassing spat in the home civil service.

John Vine is the Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency. Previously Chief Constable of Tayside Police, he is a safe pair of hands (SPOH).

Mr Vine goes to Heathrow for an inspection and interviews Brodie Clark, Head of the UK Border Force, and a SPOH.

Mr Vine is worried about the suspension of fingerprint checks and voices his concerns to Rob Whiteman, the Chief Executive of UKBA, recently appointed, presumably on the basis that he is a SPOH. Mr Whiteman offers Brodie Clark early retirement.

Dame Helen Ghosh, the successor to Sir David Normington at the Home Office, is the ultimate SPOH. She vetoes the early-retirement-with-a-bonus package and Brodie Clark is suspended.

Then the Home Secretary, Theresa May, herself no mean SPOH, goes off the deep end denouncing Brodie Clark. According to Rachel Sylvester in the Times, writing on 15 November 2011, clearly briefed by the Home Office:
She took the decision to do this, I am told, against the advice of Home Office civil servants, who thought it would be wiser to hold a swift internal inquiry and establish the full facts before suspending a senior member of staff.
So no doubt about it. Out of control. Butterfingers. How not to do it.

Updated 21 January 2014:
Richard Heaton is Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office.

Is he a Normington or a Ghosh?

His minister has just picked a fight with the Americans. Quite unnecessarily. Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude Decries 'Old Style' Obamacare Insurance Website.

More of a Ghosh, perhaps, than a Normington.

Managing the minister

There's a right way of doing these things. And a wrong way. Whitehall got it right in November 2008. And all wrong in November 2011.

2008 – the right way
November 2008. You remember. Gordon Brown is sub-Prime Minister and is busy saving the world. The economy is in meltdown and Sir Gus O'Donnell is Cabinet Secretary, Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office and Head of the home civil service, responsible for all senior appointments. Sir David Normington is Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. Bob Quick is Assistant Commissioner at the Met, Damian Green is Shadow Immigration Minister, Christopher Galley is chief Tory Mole at the Home Office, and Jacqui Smith is Home Secretary.

Information had been leaking from the Home Office for some time, allowing Damian Green to ask embarrassing questions in the House. How, for example, had 11,000 illegal immigrants been licensed by the Security Industry Authority to work as security guards?

Sunday 27 November 2011

PerishTheThought: the public interest 2

In view of the impending retirement of Sir Gus O'Donnell, Sir Richard Mottram conducted a review of Whitehall and identified seven abiding problems, problems which existed before the advent of Sir Gus and which persist still.

One of those problems is for the Cabinet Office to take control of the big departments of state, which currently operate as autonomous fiefdoms or over-powerful satrapies, way beyond the control of politicians and beyond the control even of Sir Gus:
... the coalition government has given increasing priority to improving the efficiency of the civil service and the wider public service under a Cabinet Office group ...
On 21 November 2011, Francis Maude, Cabinet Office minister, gave a speech on The Crown and suppliers: a new way of working. Mr Maude considers several ways in which Whitehall makes procurement too difficult. Among others, he lights on the use of management consultants:
... too often in the past we have defaulted into a comfort zone of hiring external consultants to run any kind of complex procurements. This has two effects.

It reduces the need and ability for public officials to develop the necessary skills. And it can happen that consultants being paid on day rates have no incentive to get procurements finished speedily, nor to drive simplicity.

Far too many procurements feature absurdly over-prescriptive requirements. We should be procuring on the basis of the outcomes and outputs we seek ...
This practice of hiring management consultants has been followed "too often" to be in the public interest. What's the minister going to do about it?
... we will ensure that in future we focus on outputs and outcomes. And we now forbid the use of consultants in central government procurements without my express agreement.
Forbid? Express agreement? Let's hope so. The minister is quite right. But will the other departments of state seek his permission to hire management consultants? And abide by his decision to forbid it? Can Maude make it stick?
Francis "Glendower" Maude:
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Sir Humphrey (shame it's not Percy) "Hotspur" Appleby:
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
That is the question.

----------
Hat tips: Tony Collins, W Shakespeare

PerishTheThought: the public interest 2

In view of the impending retirement of Sir Gus O'Donnell, Sir Richard Mottram conducted a review of Whitehall and identified seven abiding problems, problems which existed before the advent of Sir Gus and which persist still.

Saturday 26 November 2011

PerishTheThought: the public interest 1

Sir Gus O'Donnell, Cabinet Secretary, Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office and Head of the home civil service, gave evidence to the Public Administration Select Committee on 23 November 2011. No transcript available yet but, according to the Guardian:
The Freedom of Information act is a mistake, and is having a negative effect on governing, Britain's top civil servant said. Sir Gus O'Donnell told the Commons public administration select committee that it had stymied full and frank discussion of options by ministers and others in government. The 2001 act gives members of the public and journalists the right to ask for publication of official documents.

"The problem is, virtually everything [in such documents] is subject to a public interest test. If asked to give advice, I'd say I can't guarantee they can say without fear or favour if they disagree with something, and that information will remain private. Because there could be an FoI request.

"It's having a very negative impact on the freedom of policy discussions."
What possible interest could we the public have in how the unelected Sir Gus, or his unaccountable office, spends £710 billion of our money for us this year?

Whitehall often claim, as here in front of the Public Administration Select Committee, that they couldn't do their job properly if they had to operate in the open. They couldn't serve the public interest.

Whitehall do not operate in the open at the moment. Their deliberations go largely unreported. And yet, despite the putative benefit of this secrecy, when their performance is reported, mostly by the National Audit Office, after the event, all too often, it transpires that Whitehall aren't doing their job properly.

It transpires that, too often, Whitehall has become an irresponsible and unbusinesslike and undignified machine for transferring public money to a small group of management consultants, contractors and PFI financiers, against the public interest.

Pace Sir Gus, secrecy is not working. Sir Gus is wrong. The smug technocrat's insider view that Whitehall is currently doing a good job is untenable, mendacious, self-deception. Looking in from the outside, Whitehall seems regularly to be guilty of misfeasance in public office.

Openness might be part of the answer. Openness might help Whitehall to do its job properly. Openness might be in the public interest.

PerishTheThought: the public interest 1

Sir Gus O'Donnell, Cabinet Secretary, Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office and Head of the home civil service, gave evidence to the Public Administration Select Committee on 23 November 2011. No transcript available yet but, according to the Guardian:
The Freedom of Information act is a mistake, and is having a negative effect on governing, Britain's top civil servant said. Sir Gus O'Donnell told the Commons public administration select committee that it had stymied full and frank discussion of options by ministers and others in government. The 2001 act gives members of the public and journalists the right to ask for publication of official documents.

"The problem is, virtually everything [in such documents] is subject to a public interest test. If asked to give advice, I'd say I can't guarantee they can say without fear or favour if they disagree with something, and that information will remain private. Because there could be an FoI request.

"It's having a very negative impact on the freedom of policy discussions."
What possible interest could we the public have in how the unelected Sir Gus, or his unaccountable office, spends £710 billion of our money for us this year?

Thursday 24 November 2011

Your Money And How They Spend It – interim report

Episode 1 of this Nick Robinson programme went out last night. Let's wait until we've seen episode 2 before making a final judgement.

In the interim, there are a few questions:
  • Who is "they"? After watching Mr Robinson's programme, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was an unnamed politician who spent our money on a new regional network of control centres for the fire brigade. It wasn't. It was Dame Mavis McDonald and Sir Peter Housden who had control of the cheque book. They were somehow omitted from the tale.
  • Who gets "your money"? There was no mention of PA Consulting, who picked up £42 million for project management and no mention of Cassidian, who built the useless control centres.
  • And we weren't told "how" they spend it. The indefatigable Tony Collins has another story today about how public money is actually spent, Officials pay supplier invoices – then raise purchase orders, based on another report from the equally indefatigable Amyas Morse at the National Audit Office: "the Equality and Human Rights Commission, in up to 35% of cases, raises its purchase order after it gets the invoice from suppliers".
Explaining why this is the wrong way round would presumably have detracted from the agreeably chummy atmosphere of Mr Robinson's interviews with Alan Johnson et al. But it might have been a more helpful use of a whole hour of airtime.

Tony Collins has remembered another example of the scandalous insouciance with which our money is spent: "On the C-Nomis IT project for prisons, the National Offender Management Service paid £161m without keeping any record of what the payments were for".

There's a lot for him to fit into episode 2. Will Mr Robinson do his job?

Your Money And How They Spend It – interim report

Episode 1 of this Nick Robinson programme went out last night. Let's wait until we've seen episode 2 before making a final judgement.

In the interim, there are a few questions:
  • Who is "they"? After watching Mr Robinson's programme, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was an unnamed politician who spent our money on a new regional network of control centres for the fire brigade. It wasn't. It was Dame Mavis McDonald and Sir Peter Housden who had control of the cheque book. They were somehow omitted from the tale.
  • Who gets "your money"? There was no mention of PA Consulting, who picked up £42 million for project management and no mention of Cassidian, who built the useless control centres.
  • And we weren't told "how" they spend it. The indefatigable Tony Collins has another story today about how public money is actually spent, Officials pay supplier invoices – then raise purchase orders, based on another report from the equally indefatigable Amyas Morse at the National Audit Office: "the Equality and Human Rights Commission, in up to 35% of cases, raises its purchase order after it gets the invoice from suppliers".
Explaining why this is the wrong way round would presumably have detracted from the agreeably chummy atmosphere of Mr Robinson's interviews with Alan Johnson et al. But it might have been a more helpful use of a whole hour of airtime.

Tony Collins has remembered another example of the scandalous insouciance with which our money is spent: "On the C-Nomis IT project for prisons, the National Offender Management Service paid £161m without keeping any record of what the payments were for".

There's a lot for him to fit into episode 2. Will Mr Robinson do his job?

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

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

Sunday 20 November 2011

Your Money And How They Spend It – BBC2 9pm 23 & 30 November

Could be worth a watch.

The programme is made by Nick Robinson, Political Editor at the BBC, who trailed it in the Telegraph.

Will Mr Robinson observe polite convention and pretend that politicians are responsible? He might. He says:
Keeping old hospitals open is popular ... So too is building expensive new developments in the regions. Take fire control centres, which it was promised would use the latest technology to track emergency vehicles by satellite to keep us all safer in the event not just of fire, but floods and terrorist attacks. Just one problem: the technology didn’t work. Eight centres are open but empty. Just one will be costing not far short of £100,000 a month for the next 24 years.
Does he really believe that FiReControl, the disastrous project he alludes to, was all John Prescott's fault and nothing to do with officials?

Or will Mr Robinson spread the blame a little wider and recommend more openness?
We can all hope, though, that once this crisis is over we will have learnt to have a more honest, more open, more realistic debate about your money and how they spend it. 

Your Money And How They Spend It – BBC2 9pm 23 & 30 November

Could be worth a watch.

The programme is made by Nick Robinson, Political Editor at the BBC, who trailed it in the Telegraph.

Will Mr Robinson observe polite convention and pretend that politicians are responsible? He might. He says:
Keeping old hospitals open is popular ... So too is building expensive new developments in the regions. Take fire control centres, which it was promised would use the latest technology to track emergency vehicles by satellite to keep us all safer in the event not just of fire, but floods and terrorist attacks. Just one problem: the technology didn’t work. Eight centres are open but empty. Just one will be costing not far short of £100,000 a month for the next 24 years.
Does he really believe that FiReControl, the disastrous project he alludes to, was all John Prescott's fault and nothing to do with officials?

Or will Mr Robinson spread the blame a little wider and recommend more openness?
We can all hope, though, that once this crisis is over we will have learnt to have a more honest, more open, more realistic debate about your money and how they spend it. 

WrinklesInTheMatrix: Boris Johnson 1

Telegraph, 21 October 2011:
Boris Johnson rebuked over use of dodgy statistics
Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has been rebuked by the head of Britain’s statistics watchdog for repeatedly using questionable figures to overstate his claims of cutting reoffending rates.

Sir Michael Scholar, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, which scrutinises all official figures, singled out some of Mr Johnson’s comments to the Home Affairs Select Committee last month ...
Guardian, 16 November 2011:
Boris Johnson says UK Statistics Authority chair is 'Labour stooge'
Boris Johnson has accused the chair of the UK Statistics Authority of being a "Labour stooge".

The London mayor's attack came after he was put on the rack over misleading statistics he had given to a Commons committee to highlight the success of an initiative to cut crime ...
Now here's a wrinkle – three of them, actually:
  • Statistics are pre-party political, they don't "know" about Labour and Conservative
  • If doctors used statistics the way politicians do, we'd all be dead
  • Sir Michael was Private Secretary to Margaret Thatcher 1981-83
Sir Michael is a Good Thing. Boris please note, Sir Michael says:
... 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.

WrinklesInTheMatrix: Boris Johnson 1

Telegraph, 21 October 2011:
Boris Johnson rebuked over use of dodgy statistics
Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has been rebuked by the head of Britain’s statistics watchdog for repeatedly using questionable figures to overstate his claims of cutting reoffending rates.

Sir Michael Scholar, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, which scrutinises all official figures, singled out some of Mr Johnson’s comments to the Home Affairs Select Committee last month ...
Guardian, 16 November 2011:
Boris Johnson says UK Statistics Authority chair is 'Labour stooge'
Boris Johnson has accused the chair of the UK Statistics Authority of being a "Labour stooge".

The London mayor's attack came after he was put on the rack over misleading statistics he had given to a Commons committee to highlight the success of an initiative to cut crime ...
Now here's a wrinkle – three of them, actually:
  • Statistics are pre-party political, they don't "know" about Labour and Conservative
  • If doctors used statistics the way politicians do, we'd all be dead
  • Sir Michael was Private Secretary to Margaret Thatcher 1981-83
Sir Michael is a Good Thing. Boris please note, Sir Michael says:
... 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.

Friday 18 November 2011

BBC Radio Scotland – Sassenach border incursion

Tomorrow morning's Newsweek Scotland, 19 November 2011 8 a.m., presented by Derek Bateman, includes a discussion of border control, with background briefing by someone. Mr Bateman's good-humoured parting shot was that by the time someone's contributions have been edited, they'll all imply the opposite of what was said.

Three long talks with BBC producers in a week. One programme to show for it.

We'll see.

Or hear.

----------

On Derek Bateman's blog:
I suggest you turn the volume down when I speak to David Moss
On iPlayer, starting at 47'18", available for the next week or so.

BBC Radio Scotland – Sassenach border incursion

Tomorrow morning's Newsweek Scotland, 19 November 2011 8 a.m., presented by Derek Bateman, includes a discussion of border control, with background briefing by someone. Mr Bateman's good-humoured parting shot was that by the time someone's contributions have been edited, they'll all imply the opposite of what was said.

Three long talks with BBC producers in a week. One programme to show for it.

We'll see.

Or hear.

----------

On Derek Bateman's blog:
I suggest you turn the volume down when I speak to David Moss
On iPlayer, starting at 47'18", available for the next week or so.

Whitehall – SNAFU

Sir Richard Mottram will be famous in some people's minds as the Permanent Secretary at the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions when 9/11, Stephen Byers, Jo "It's now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. Councillors' expenses?" Moore and Martin Sixsmith all happened at the same time, leading Sir Richard to deliver himself of his numinous SitRep:
We're all fucked. I'm fucked. You're fucked. The whole department is fucked. It's the biggest cock-up ever. We're all completely fucked.
When Sir Gus O'Donnell retires at the end of the year, the three jobs he combined will be split between three successors – Jeremy Heywood, Ian Watmore and Bob Kerslake. That is a Whitehall shake-up.

Sir Richard published an article in Public Servant magazine on 16 November 2011, Whitehall shake-up – not all good news, in which he lists the perennial Whitehall problems:
  • how to improve the efficiency of the civil service and the wider public service
  • how the Cabinet Office can take charge of that improvement in efficiency
  • how the centre (i.e. the Cabinet Office? Number 10? Not clear) can keep control of its satrapies, the various departments of state
  • how the head of the home civil service can have any influence on the Prime Minister if he is not also Cabinet Secretary and permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office
  • how to ensure cabinet government as opposed to Blair-style sofa government
  • how to provide effective career planning/talent management for senior civil servants
  • how to provide leadership for the civil service
Sir Richard believes that splitting Sir Gus's job across three people is "not all good news", it won't help to solve the problems listed above.

He does not confront the fact that the present arrangement, with Sir Gus in charge of everything, has not worked well. It hasn't. Whitehall are not spending £710 billion of public money – this year alone – wisely. Some change is in order. Not necessarily this particular change.

He makes no reference to Bob Kerslake. His article may have been written before the announcement of Sir Bob's appointment.

He does take time out to have what could be interpreted as a bit of a swipe at Jeremy Heywood:
So is this unalloyed good news? For me there are two big reservations. Jeremy Heywood has outstanding personal qualities and skills and unrivalled experience at the centre. Indeed that is precisely where he has always worked, principally in private office roles at every level. So what became of the emphasis on seeking more effective policy implementation by ensuring policy people and delivery people had wider experience?
And, arguably, a swipe at Ian Watmore, who is not a career civil servant, rather a businessman-turned-civil servant:
It is also said that, had the reorganisation included a full-time head of the civil service, ministers would have wanted the post to be filled by a businessman – so, for the civil service, be careful what you wish for.
What Sir Richard is trying to tell us is that we're still all in a bit of a pickle.

----------

Updated 16.7.14

971 days later:
With the removal of Sir Bob Kerslake, the reform of the Civil Service has gathered pace [or possibly slowed down]
The announcement of the brutal restructuring at the very top of Whitehall has brought great sympathy for the able and well-liked Sir Bob, but also relief that Sir Jeremy Heywood is to combine his current job as Cabinet Secretary with being head of the Civil Service. The experiment of splitting the two jobs and of downgrading the latter by making it part time has failed – as many warned it would.

Whitehall – SNAFU

Sir Richard Mottram will be famous in some people's minds as the Permanent Secretary at the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions when 9/11, Stephen Byers, Jo "It's now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. Councillors' expenses?" Moore and Martin Sixsmith all happened at the same time, leading Sir Richard to deliver himself of his numinous SitRep:
We're all fucked. I'm fucked. You're fucked. The whole department is fucked. It's the biggest cock-up ever. We're all completely fucked.

Whitehall – misfeasance in public office

Dame Helen Ghosh has been Permanent Secretary at the Home Office since 1 January 2011. Before her, it was Sir David Normington. And before him, it was Sir John Gieve who signed the accounts.

On 21 July 2006, the Times published Accounts for Home Office adrift by trillions:
A National Audit Office review of transactions carried out on the Home’s Office’s financial IT system found problems with the data. “When the gross transaction value of debits and credits within this data was totalled, they each amounted to £26,527,108,436,994: almost 2,000 times higher than the Home Office’s gross expenditure for 2004-05 and approximately one and a half times higher than the estimated gross domestic product of the entire planet,” a note from the National Audit Office said.

“This suggests something has gone seriously awry. We have yet to receive an explanation for what has happened,” the note added.

Last night Richard Bacon, a Conservative member of the [Public Accounts Committee], said: “In any parish council or cricket club the person responsible would have been out on his ear. What actually happened was that Sir John was promoted to become Deputy Governor of the Bank of England in charge of financial stability in the banking system.

“You might reasonably expect to see this in a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, but not in real life.”
Make the most of any smile that brought to your lips.

On 11 November 2011, the National Audit Office published HM Revenue & Customs – The expansion of online filing of tax returns.

Unpromising material, granted. It repays attention nonetheless.

All of HMRC's IT to handle tax returns is supplied under contract. The contract is called ASPIRE and the contractors are Capgemini and Fujitsu. ASPIRE is worth £8 billion over 10 years. The NAO are talking about how HMRC spends 8,000 million of our pounds. Under the heading Operational performance, they say (pp.8-9):
HMRC uses a range of indicators to measure the performance of its ICT services, which include online services, and it measures availability that relates specifically to online filing. HMRC has a high-level view of the overall costs of ICT provision through the ASPIRE contract. It has been taking steps to improve that information and achieve cost savings. It does not yet have a detailed breakdown of the costs of online filing services, so it cannot benchmark those costs to assess their value for money. HMRC is currently negotiating with the ASPIRE contractors to obtain a clearer breakdown of the costs of ICT services provided.
What are the NAO telling us?

For anyone who missed it, the NAO provide a second chance (p.11) when they say that HMRC ...
... should proceed with its plans to identify ICT costs specific to online filing services and ensure that current negotiations with the ASPIRE contractors provide sufficient breakdown of cost information for regular benchmarking of costs.
HMRC has "a high-level view of the overall costs" of IT but not "a detailed breakdown". The contractors won't give them a detailed breakdown. HMRC are having to negotiate with the contractors to get a detailed breakdown. HMRC don't know what they're getting for our money. They just keep paying. The contractors don't tell HMRC what they're invoicing for. They just keep demanding money. Lots of money. £8,000,000,000 of our money.

This isn't Gilbert and Sullivan. This is Mario Puzo.

----------

The exegesis above is due to Tony Collins, investigative journalist and hero.

He reminisces about an earlier incidence of this irresponsible, unbusinesslike, spineless, craven, beholden behaviour of Whitehall's:
Several years ago the Conservative MP Richard Bacon asked criminal justice officials for a breakdown of costs on the “Libra” contract for magistrates’ courts IT. The Department didn’t know. So it referred Bacon to Fujitsu, Libra’s main supplier.

Fujitsu eventually provided a breakdown so vague – with high-level categories such as “network services” – that Bacon had little choice but to ask the same questions repeatedly to find out how public funds were being spent with Fujitsu.

In the end Bacon failed – and he had little support from departmental officials.
It's an ugly and horrifying subject that no-one wants to dwell on. Which may be why Mr Collins forgets another case he himself reported, the case of the NHS's £11 billion+ NPfIT contract:
I understand that when auditors carried out a check at NHS Connecting for Health they found box-loads of invoices that had not been analysed.

Auditors found that the invoices were being paid as they came in, without a reconciliation of what was being charged against what was being delivered, and without a check on the extent to which payments related to sign-off of systems by local trusts.
Richard Bacon MP, hero, has been active on all three projects – Libra, NPfIT and ASPIRE – together with Tony Collins, trying to get value for money for the public and, so far, failing.

Amyas Morse, Comptroller and Auditor General at the NAO, is unearthing tons of evidence of negligence.

Whitehall says it's doing nothing illegal, which may be true, but it's not the responsible behaviour we have a right to expect and, for the moment, the money keeps pouring out of the bucket and into the pockets of the contractors and the management consultants and the PFI financiers.

Nothing illegal? Is there a lawyer in the house? Is there a case here to bring charges of misfeasance in public office?

----------

Updated 8 November 2013:
DWP untouched by MPs’ criticisms over Universal Credit IT project
Did DWP mislead MPs and media over Universal Credit?
DWP cover-up over Universal Credit IT project?
More IT-based megaprojects derail amid claims all is well

Updated 9 November 2015
Police funding sums are totally wrong, Home Office admits

Police and crime commissioners accused the Home Office of being unable to add up after a senior civil servant admitted that the wrong data was applied in its planned overhaul of the way in which cash grants are distributed to the 43 forces in England and Wales ...

In the case of Scotland Yard, the Home Office grant estimate was said to be wrong by more than £100 million ...

Andrew White, the chief executive of Devon and Cornwall’s PCC office, uncovered the discrepancies after his own analysts were unable to make the Home Office figures add up. He said that he received a letter admitting the mistake yesterday from Mary Callum, the director-general for crime and policing ...
After signing the £26½ trillion Home Office accounts (please see above) Sir John Gieve went on to become a Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. Can Mary Callum follow this tradition?


Updated 13.4.16

UK borders safe?

A dutiful Whitehall under the political control of Westminster?

High standards of misfeasance maintained, particularly at the Home Office:
Top civil servant kicked out of Parliament committee for 'unsatisfactory' answers to MPs

A senior Whitehall mandarin refused to say whether the UK Border Force budget has been cut – before being kicked out of a hearing with MPs for giving "unsatisfactory" answers.

Oliver Robbins was threatened with being held in contempt and repeatedly criticised when he side-stepped a string of questions put to him by the home affairs select committee.

Mr Robbins, the Home office second permanent secretary, was asked nine times by Keith Vaz, the committee chairman, whether the borders budget had been finalised, without receiving an answer.

Twenty minutes later Mr Robbins was told to leave the session ...

Updated 29.6.16
Permanent Secretary appointed to lead the new EU unit in Cabinet Office

29 June 2016

Oliver Robbins has been appointed as the head of the new EU Unit in the Cabinet Office.

Oliver will have responsibility for supporting Cabinet in the examination of options for our future relationship outside the EU, with Europe, and the rest of the world as well as responsibility for the wider European and Global Issues Secretariat ...

Mark Sedwill, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, said: "... I can think of no better person to lead this work than Oliver Robbins, who, in the past year as Second Permanent Secretary for borders, immigration and citizenship, has made such a positive impact in the department, and developed considerable expertise in many of the issues central to negotiating British withdrawal and establishing a new position in the world".
Let's hope that Mr Robbins will be a little more forthcoming than he was with the Home Affairs Committee.


Whitehall – misfeasance in public office

Dame Helen Ghosh has been Permanent Secretary at the Home Office since 1 January 2011. Before her, it was Sir David Normington. And before him, it was Sir John Gieve who signed the accounts.

On 21 July 2006, the Times published Accounts for Home Office adrift by trillions:
A National Audit Office review of transactions carried out on the Home’s Office’s financial IT system found problems with the data. “When the gross transaction value of debits and credits within this data was totalled, they each amounted to £26,527,108,436,994: almost 2,000 times higher than the Home Office’s gross expenditure for 2004-05 and approximately one and a half times higher than the estimated gross domestic product of the entire planet,” a note from the National Audit Office said.

“This suggests something has gone seriously awry. We have yet to receive an explanation for what has happened,” the note added.

Last night Richard Bacon, a Conservative member of the [Public Accounts Committee], said: “In any parish council or cricket club the person responsible would have been out on his ear. What actually happened was that Sir John was promoted to become Deputy Governor of the Bank of England in charge of financial stability in the banking system.

“You might reasonably expect to see this in a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, but not in real life.”
Make the most of any smile that brought to your lips.

Wednesday 16 November 2011

Brodie Clark's evidence 2

In the opinion of this blog:
For 10 years the Home Office have been investing public money unwisely in projects which depend for their success on mass consumer biometrics technology being reliable – it isn't.
Brodie Clark gave evidence yesterday to the Home Affairs Committee. According to Public Servant magazine's report he said:
"The warnings index had not been compromised at Heathrow ... it must never be compromised. There are nine checks, the fingerprint check is the least reliable, it is a secondary and additional check to the face against document match. The policy required me to suspend watch list checking, the manager at Heathrow decided to suspend the lower level of checking and I approved."

Brodie Clark's evidence 2

In the opinion of this blog:
For 10 years the Home Office have been investing public money unwisely in projects which depend for their success on mass consumer biometrics technology being reliable – it isn't.
Brodie Clark gave evidence yesterday to the Home Affairs Committee. According to Public Servant magazine's report he said:
"The warnings index had not been compromised at Heathrow ... it must never be compromised. There are nine checks, the fingerprint check is the least reliable, it is a secondary and additional check to the face against document match. The policy required me to suspend watch list checking, the manager at Heathrow decided to suspend the lower level of checking and I approved."

GreenInk 2 – bringing the Home Office's use of biometrics under statistical control

Unpublished:
From: David Moss
Sent: 15 November 2011 17:54
To: 'letters@thetimes.co.uk'
Subject: Jenny Booth and Philippe Naughton, 15 November 2011, Theresa May ‘destroyed my reputation’

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article3227351.ece

Sir

In the matter of Brodie Clark, the public learn for the first time that "fingerprint matching ... was the lowest level of nine identity checks".

Ministers have given the impression for ten years since 9/11 that these biometrics are reliable. No statistics have ever been published to support this impression. There are no such statistics.

We have also learnt through the UK Statistics Authority that the Home Office have been misusing statistics, not for the first time, to improve the impression of their performance.

The UK Statistics Authority's stance in this matter is exemplary. I recommend that they should also be given the chance to review the statistics available on the biometrics used by the Home Office. If this technology turns out to be too unreliable, then the projects which rely on it should be discontinued to avoid any further waste of public money.

Yours
David Moss

GreenInk 2 – bringing the Home Office's use of biometrics under statistical control

Unpublished:
From: David Moss
Sent: 15 November 2011 17:54
To: 'letters@thetimes.co.uk'
Subject: Jenny Booth and Philippe Naughton, 15 November 2011, Theresa May ‘destroyed my reputation’

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article3227351.ece

Sir

In the matter of Brodie Clark, the public learn for the first time that "fingerprint matching ... was the lowest level of nine identity checks".

Ministers have given the impression for ten years since 9/11 that these biometrics are reliable. No statistics have ever been published to support this impression. There are no such statistics.

We have also learnt through the UK Statistics Authority that the Home Office have been misusing statistics, not for the first time, to improve the impression of their performance.

The UK Statistics Authority's stance in this matter is exemplary. I recommend that they should also be given the chance to review the statistics available on the biometrics used by the Home Office. If this technology turns out to be too unreliable, then the projects which rely on it should be discontinued to avoid any further waste of public money.

Yours
David Moss

GreenInk 1 – an alternative target for DfID's billions

Unpublished:
From: David Moss
Sent: 13 November 2011 12:55
To: 'dtletters@telegraph.co.uk'
Subject: UKBA and DfID

Sir

While the UK Border Agency are clearly short of money, the Department for International Development are said to be concerned at how hard it is to find worthy causes to spend their our money on. If we re-classify the activities of UKBA as international development, perhaps ...

Yours
David Moss

GreenInk 1 – an alternative target for DfID's billions

Unpublished:
From: David Moss
Sent: 13 November 2011 12:55
To: 'dtletters@telegraph.co.uk'
Subject: UKBA and DfID

Sir

While the UK Border Agency are clearly short of money, the Department for International Development are said to be concerned at how hard it is to find worthy causes to spend their our money on. If we re-classify the activities of UKBA as international development, perhaps ...

Yours
David Moss

Ed Davey, problem-solver – midata

In 1621, King James I directed the Privy Council to establish a temporary committee to investigate the causes of a decline in trade and consequent financial difficulties. The Board's formal title remains The Lords of the Committee of Privy Council appointed for the consideration of all matters relating to Trade and Foreign Plantations.
That's what it says on Wikipedia, under Board of Trade.

400 years later and not a foreign plantation in sight, this temporary committee is thriving and we still have a President of the Board of Trade – Vince Cable, Secretary of State at BIS, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

What with him ruling by divine right (James, not Vince), it's unlikely that James would have seen the need for a team of no less than five ministers of state, but that's what Vince has got, plus Ed Davey, Lib Dem MP for Kingston and Surbiton, minister for employment relations, consumer and postal affairs.

And thank goodness for Ed Davey with his PPE from Oxford and his masters in economics from the LSE because, 400 years later, here we are again with a decline in trade and consequent financial difficulties. But not for long. Mr Davey has the answer.

What's stopping the economy from growing? Businesses can't sell enough goods and services. Why can't they sell enough goods and services? Because they don't know which consumers want which goods and services. It's the consumers' fault*. Who's in charge of consumers? Ed Davey.

The right man for the job, Mr Davey proposes that consumers should collect together all their transactional history and circulate it to businesses, who can process the data and work out exactly what to sell us. Job done, economy starts growing again and never stops. Why didn't you think of that?

That's the economics sorted out. But Mr Davey is a politician as well. He needs to sort out the politics. A small but loud-mouthed minority of the generally grateful population gets a bit tetchy about protecting its privacy and guarding its dignity. What to do?

Master of more than just economics, Mr Davey comes up with a name for his scheme, "midata". My data – see what he's done, there? The security and comfort of exclusive possession all wrapped up in a friendly name, you will note, with no capital letters in it. And he's come up with two USPs. People will be "empowered" by midata because they will take "control" of their data.

That's why the BIS press release, Government, business and consumer groups commit to midata vision of consumer empowerment, uses the word "empower" and its cognates no less than 13 times. Poor old "control" only makes one appearance, but it's a starring one:
Today’s announcement marks the first time globally there has been such a Government-backed initiative to empower individuals with so much control over the use of their own data.
Who would be empowered for the first time globally by midata? Surely the businesses using it to target customers. Who would be in so much control of the data? Surely the businesses who are processing it.

Is it possible that Mr Davey has perhaps got the empowerment and control wrongly ascribed? That is the question posed by a number of contributors to his blog. Four of us. There can be only one interpretation of the silence with which Mr Davey has greeted these impertinent enquiries – diplomat to his fingertips that he is, he doesn't want to embarrass us.

Diplomacy is one thing, but don't mistake it for weakness. Mr Davey is a determined man and midata will not be derailed:
Government slams operators for failing to sign up to Midata hub
Government officials have slammed mobile operators for not signing up to its data hub project Midata ...

Consumer affairs minister Edward Davey had wanted all the operators to sign up to the voluntary scheme to ‘further assist consumers in getting the best deal on their mobile phone contract’ ...

One senior aide at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: ‘Instead of supporting the Government’s vision of endorsing the key principle that data should be released back to consumers, all of the UK’s main operators have shunned the proposals and are delaying signing up. It’s great we have Three on board, but the fact is we need all of the firms involved to really be credible ...

... the BIS aide added: ‘Consumers should be able to access, retrieve and store their data securely and mobile operators should not think themselves immune from this.’
"Voluntary", you see, another Ed Davey-inspired USP, as heralded in the press release:
midata is a voluntary partnership between the UK Government, businesses, consumer groups, regulators and trade bodies to create an agreed, common approach to empowering individuals with their personal data.
But it's "voluntary" in a sense that only ministers and Whitehall officials understand the word. No-one else, on turning down the opportunity to join an organisation voluntarily, would expect to be "slammed" for it.

How long before the woolly mitten comes off revealing the petulant fist inside, and we read:
Government slams consumers for failing to sign up to Midata hub
Government officials have slammed a small group of recalcitrant and mentally unstable subversives for not signing up to its data hub project Midata ...

Consumer affairs minister Edward Davey had wanted all patriotic citizens to sign up to the voluntary scheme to ‘further assist the economy’ ...

One senior aide at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said: ‘Instead of supporting the Government’s vision of endorsing the key principle that personal data should be available to us, a few unwise souls have shunned the proposals and are delaying signing up. It’s great we have Stephen Fry on board, but the fact is we need everyone in the UK to really be credible ...

... the BIS aide added: ‘The government should be able to access, retrieve and store personal data securely and consumers should not think themselves immune from this.’
You think you're "immune"? Why?

King James, your Majesty, your gracious bequest glows still in the hearts of these, your humble subjects.

----------
* This seems to be something of a Lib Dem tic. Remember that, according to Chris Huhne, it's our own fault, we consumers, that we pay so much for energy.

Ed Davey, problem-solver – midata

In 1621, King James I directed the Privy Council to establish a temporary committee to investigate the causes of a decline in trade and consequent financial difficulties. The Board's formal title remains The Lords of the Committee of Privy Council appointed for the consideration of all matters relating to Trade and Foreign Plantations.
That's what it says on Wikipedia, under Board of Trade.

400 years later and not a foreign plantation in sight, this temporary committee is thriving and we still have a President of the Board of Trade – Vince Cable, Secretary of State at BIS, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

What with him ruling by divine right (James, not Vince), it's unlikely that James would have seen the need for a team of no less than five ministers of state, but that's what Vince has got, plus Ed Davey, Lib Dem MP for Kingston and Surbiton, minister for employment relations, consumer and postal affairs.

And thank goodness for Ed Davey with his PPE from Oxford and his masters in economics from the LSE because, 400 years later, here we are again with a decline in trade and consequent financial difficulties. But not for long. Mr Davey has the answer.

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Whitehall waste – official statistics

From today's BBC News website:
Home Office drug seizure figures were 'highly selective'
The UK Border Agency has been "highly selective" in its use of drugs seizure figures, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority has said.

Sir Michael Scholar has written to the Home Office to seek reassurances that figures were not released to generate positive news coverage.

He said if this was the case it would be "highly corrosive and damaging" ...
Sir Michael is Chairman of the UK Statistics Authority. He is a Good Thing.

This isn't the first time he's taken the Home Office to task over its tendentious use of statistics. Public Servant magazine carried this article back in March 2009:
Statistics show this watchdog is prepared to bare its teeth
...
Government departments – notably the Home Office – are having to learn some painful lessons on the use and misuse of statistics. The Home Office has found itself in hot water a couple of times – for its fact sheet on knife crime statistics in December, and for tacking a press release on "tough border controls" onto ONS data on population figures last August.
From the same article:
Concern about declining public trust in government in general – and official statistics in particular – led ministers, with all-party support, to set up an independent watchdog in the UK Statistics Authority [chaired by Sir Michael Scholar], with a tough new code of practice for all public bodies producing any kind of official figures ...

“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”, [says Sir Michael] ...

One innovation is a national statistics publication hub website, on which all the new statistical releases are posted every day. “For the first time it completely separates the statistics from comment on them ...

The new rule that data cannot be released to the media or ministers more than 24 hours before publication is also having an effect ...

Does what is perceived as the selective release of the most favourable figures into friendly ears contribute to public distrust?

“I think it does,” Sir Michael replies. “I personally think it’s a form of corruption” ...

“… what should happen is that political debate takes place on the basis of a clean set of statistics, produced without political interference by professionals who have a clear set of values as regards the integrity, objectivity and impartiality of what they are doing” ...
Someone approached the UK Statistics Authority a few years ago and asked if they could take a look at the statistics associated with the Home Office's ID cards scheme. These statistics are so unimpressive that the project should not be allowed to proceed, said someone.

No, said the UK Statistics Authority, we can only intervene where there are official statistics. The statistics the Home Office are relying on are not official. So we can't comment.

That is one of the many problems with project management in Whitehall. That is one reason why so much public money is wasted by Whitehall. That is why someone suggested to the Home Office that they should submit themselves to the discipline of the UK Statistics Authority, see below. And that is very possibly why the Home Office have never answered that point:
I suggest that the way to overcome that scepticism is to place the matter in the hands of the Office of National Statistics. The use of mass consumer biometrics in public services, I suggest, should be based on official statistics. If rigorous academic evaluation suggests that mass consumer biometrics have a part to play, well and good. If not, then don't let's waste our time and money on them.
----------
22 November 2011 – one week later, the Guardian catch up:  In praise of … Sir Michael Scholar

Whitehall waste – official statistics

From today's BBC News website:
Home Office drug seizure figures were 'highly selective'
The UK Border Agency has been "highly selective" in its use of drugs seizure figures, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority has said.

Sir Michael Scholar has written to the Home Office to seek reassurances that figures were not released to generate positive news coverage.

He said if this was the case it would be "highly corrosive and damaging" ...
Sir Michael is Chairman of the UK Statistics Authority. He is a Good Thing.

Brodie Clark's evidence 1

In the opinion of this blog:
For 10 years the Home Office have been investing public money unwisely in projects which depend for their success on mass consumer biometrics technology being reliable – it isn't.
Brodie Clark gave evidence today to the Home Affairs Committee. According to the Guardian's live coverage:
Clark says there are nine checks. The fingerprint check is the most recent, and the least reliable. It was a lower-level check.
Lifting that check was a "sensible" thing do to.

Brodie Clark's evidence 1

In the opinion of this blog:
For 10 years the Home Office have been investing public money unwisely in projects which depend for their success on mass consumer biometrics technology being reliable – it isn't.
Brodie Clark gave evidence today to the Home Affairs Committee. According to the Guardian's live coverage:
Clark says there are nine checks. The fingerprint check is the most recent, and the least reliable. It was a lower-level check.
Lifting that check was a "sensible" thing do to.

Monday 14 November 2011

WrinklesInTheMatrix: ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken 1

The Cabinet Office want everyone to transact with government over the web.

In order to do so, the government must know who everyone is. That means everyone needs an electronic identity.

Mindful of the humiliating failure of the Home Office's identity cards scheme, the Cabinet Office have asked the private sector to devise an identity assurance service. An identity assurance service that is absolutely nothing like the Home Office scheme with its national identity register and its biometrics.

Someone has been spoiling the Cabinet Office's fun by pointing out that we already have a way to transact with government over the web, using the UK Government Gateway.

Too old-fashioned, they say, we must have a modern gateway.

And as if to prove it, the Cabinet Office have hired ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken to be executive director of government digital services and SRO of the identity assurance programme. (Keep up at the back – senior responsible owner.)

Boy. Is he ever modern. He ran the Guardian website until six months ago. He uses Apple laptops. And Google Apps. Which means Google, Julian Assange and the Chinese will all know about the identity assurance programme before we the public do.

Anyway, he's not having any of this cobwebby old Government Gateway nonsense. He says in his latest blog, Establishing trust in digital services:
... the UK assumed the federated model in the Electronic Communication Act (2000) and built the Government Gateway accordingly. But a lot has moved on in the dozen years since Government Gateway was developed and we have a lot of work to do to develop solutions that work for users in the many contexts that they’ll need them.
You may not grasp all the detail – he's talking about the federated model of identity management, not a United States of Europe – but you get the gist, "a lot has moved on", the Government Gateway is oldsville.

Why do we need to move on? Why is there a lot of work to do? Because:
There is a strong desire to work collaboratively across the public and private sectors to develop solutions that meet users differing needs. That desire is international. The USA’s National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace and the EU Project STORK pilots testify to the opportunities.
Now here's a wrinkle – if you click on that Project STORK link of his to see which opportunities are testified to, what's the first thing you see?
The aim of the STORK project is to establish a European eID Interoperability Platform that will allow citizens to establish new e-relations across borders, just by presenting their national eID.
"eID" in STORKspeak is electronic identity, and not the famous festival of the same name. Bit of a clanger for ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, that – "national eID" takes us straight back to identity cards and national identity registers.

But this time it's double wrinkle because what's the only thing everyone (else) knows about Project STORK? It's a pan-European project to share personal and business information and the UK leg of Project STORK is ... yes ... the Government Gateway.

----------

Updated 16.7.17

Nearly six years after the blog post above was written:
  • The Government Digital Service (GDS) is still there.
  • The Government Gateway is still there.
  • The Cabinet Office's identity assurance programme still isn't.
  • Mike Bracken is long gone.
  • And STORK (or at least eIDAS) is still there, please see GDS backs pilot to test digital identity for banking across borders, 12 July 2017:
    The Government Digital Service (GDS) is a member of a consortium of leading European private and public sector organisations which has said it will start a pilot into the use of a citizen’s national digital identity from France to open a bank account in the UK.
Sublimely nostalgic for old-timers, it is not six years but nearly 10 since the EU's eGovernment website published:
EU/UK: EU pilot to boost compatibility of eID kicks off in the UK, 15 October 2007

The ultimate goal of the STORK project is to implement an EU-wide interoperable system for the recognition and authentication of eIDs [electronic identities] that will enable businesses, citizens and government employees to use their national eIDs in any Member State. Once established, this would significantly facilitate migration between Member States, allowing easy access to a variety of eGovernment services including, for example, social security, medical prescriptions and pension payments. It could also ease cross-border student enrolment in colleges ...

The UK’s Identity and Passport Service (IPS) is leading the pilot project, in close co-operation with the Government Gateway, the UK’s centralised registration service. “It is about the eventual pan-European recognition of electronic IDs,” noted an IPS spokesperson.
UK progress during those 10 years?

WrinklesInTheMatrix: ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken 1

The Cabinet Office want everyone to transact with government over the web.

In order to do so, the government must know who everyone is. That means everyone needs an electronic identity.

Mindful of the humiliating failure of the Home Office's identity cards scheme, the Cabinet Office have asked the private sector to devise an identity assurance service. An identity assurance service that is absolutely nothing like the Home Office scheme with its national identity register and its biometrics.

Someone has been spoiling the Cabinet Office's fun by pointing out that we already have a way to transact with government over the web, using the UK Government Gateway.

Too old-fashioned, they say, we must have a modern gateway.

And as if to prove it, the Cabinet Office have hired ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken to be executive director of government digital services and SRO of the identity assurance programme. (Keep up at the back – senior responsible owner.)

Boy. Is he ever modern. He ran the Guardian website until six months ago. He uses Apple laptops. And Google Apps. Which means Google, Julian Assange and the Chinese will all know about the identity assurance programme before we the public do.

Sunday 13 November 2011

Zero

Q1 What is the probability that Brodie Clark woke up one morning, fancied a change, and decided to throw the borders open?

Q2 Pillorying Brodie Clark and forcing him out of UKBA is bad politics, bad management and bad manners. What is the probability that all this pillorying and forcing was Theresa May's idea?

Hint Since 2005, we have had three Prime Ministers, five Home Secretaries and only one head of the home civil service, Sir Gus O'Donnell.

Background reading

Zero

Q1 What is the probability that Brodie Clark woke up one morning, fancied a change, and decided to throw the borders open?

Q2 Pillorying Brodie Clark and forcing him out of UKBA is bad politics, bad management and bad manners. What is the probability that all this pillorying and forcing was Theresa May's idea?

Hint Since 2005, we have had three Prime Ministers, five Home Secretaries and only one head of the home civil service, Sir Gus O'Donnell.

Background reading

Thursday 10 November 2011

Whitehall on trials

Appendix
Home Secretary, somewhat late in the day, herewith the appendix promised in my open letter to you dated 8 November 2011.

The fourth enquiry – into the efficacy of the biometrics used by UKBA and the Home Office generally – has at its disposal a lot of evidence in the form of correspondence with the Home Office, the UK Border Agency, the Identity & Passport Service, the Home Office Scientific Development Branch, the Information Commissioner and the Information Rights Tribunal available here, herehere and here. The enquiry may also be assisted by reading the reports on biometrics here, here and here.

The hypothesis that the enquiry needs to test is that:
For 10 years the Home Office have been investing public money unwisely in projects which depend for their success on mass consumer biometrics technology being reliable – it isn't.
There is a lot of respectable evidence suggesting that the technology chosen by the Home Office is not reliable and no respectable evidence suggesting that it is. The enquiry may conclude that for 10 years public money has been wasted.

In the matter of Brodie Clark, the implication is that the Home Office's chosen biometrics cannot enhance border security. It is therefore inept to fire the man for not using it.

The further implication is that you, Home Secretary, have been lured by your officials into talking nonsense about strengthening and relaxing border controls – to the extent that those controls depend on biometrics, the technology available cannot enhance border security and can only weaken it by diverting UKBA staff into useless procedures.

There is so much evidence available that the enquiry may welcome some guidance on the best routes to take as they travel through it. It is suggested that the first route they take should be as shown in the timeline below. It's hard to stay awake as you read through it but there is a dénouement to look forward to, so please persevere.

Facial recognition biometrics and smart gates at UK airports
August 2008 Back in August 2008, the UK Border Agency started a trial of so-called "smart gates" at Manchester Airport. UKBA issued a press release about the trial here. Don't bother clicking on the link, the press release has been deleted.

With smart gates, travellers walk into one end of a booth, stick their ePassport (electronic passport) in a reader and stand in front of a camera. Face recognition software compares the face on camera with the "template" stored on a chip in the ePassport. If the two images match, according to the computerised threshold tests, then the exit gate opens and that's the traveller done, successfully through passport control.

No UKBA passport control staff needed. They can be laid off. There will be considerable cost savings and – the matching process having been performed by computers – it will be more reliable than mere human beings, the security of the border will have been enhanced.

That was the idea. In the event, there was some adverse coverage of the equipment in the Daily Telegraph and on the BBC News website:
19 August 2008 – Machines to scan faces of travellers at UK airports
19 August 2008 – Passengers test new face scanners
4 October 2008 – Security fear over airport face scanners
5 April 2009 – Airport face scanners 'cannot tell the difference between Osama bin Laden and Winona Ryder'

But that was just unionised UKBA staff moaning about losing their jobs. Wasn't it?
So far so simple. UKBA, playing it by the book, have got this new equipment that takes advantage of the facilities offered by ePassports. Does the equipment work? They don't know in advance. So they conduct a trial. Depending on the result of the trial, either the idea can be dropped, because the equipment doesn't work, or it works well and UKBA can start to deploy these smart gates at airports elsewhere.

24 February 2009 Six months after the start of the Manchester Airport trial, UKBA announced a 10-point delivery plan, which comprised 10 "pledges". Pledge no.7 was, by August 2009, to "have completed delivery of new facial recognition technology in 10 terminals, giving British passengers a faster, secure route through the border".

(UKBA's 10-point delivery plan used to be available here, on the bia.homeoffice.gov.uk domain. Don't bother clicking. The domain has long since disappeared. There is what looks like an accurate copy available here down at the bottom of the page.)
Presumably the Manchester Airport trial must have been a success. Presumably the equipment was found to work, presumably it was established that it was a wise investment of public money to deploy smart gates equipment at 10 airport terminals around the country, and presumably it was accurate to assure the public that their experience of automated passport control would be "faster" and "secure".

16 April 2009 Always worth checking these things. Someone wrote to Sir David Normington, permanent secretary at the Home Office, reminding him of the uninterrupted history of failure of biometrics based on facial recognition, asserting that the public would be sceptical about smart gates, and saying:
I suggest that the way to overcome that scepticism is to place the matter in the hands of the Office of National Statistics. The use of mass consumer biometrics in public services, I suggest, should be based on official statistics. If rigorous academic evaluation suggests that mass consumer biometrics have a part to play, well and good. If not, then don't let's waste our time and money on them.
There was no answer from Sir David.
26 June 2009 But a couple of months later, an answer came through from Brodie Clark, Head of the Border Force at UKBA.

"Your letter has been passed to me to respond", said Mr Clark, and:
UKBA commenced testing our Automated Clearance System (ACS) at Manchester and Stansted in August and December last year, to assess the accuracy and reliability of the technology. The Home Secretary’s pledge to introduce gates at a total of 10 UK airport terminals by August, includes the two current sites at Manchester and Stansted. It will provide a further opportunity to test the technology on larger numbers of passengers, across a broader range of locations. It also means that the gates will be available to British and EEA citizens throughout the busy summer holiday period.
Asked to confirm that smart gates would be "faster" and "secure", was Mr Clark, on behalf of Sir David, going to try to get away with saying only that they were "available"? Asked to confirm that the Manchester Airport trial had been a success, was he going to say simply that the technology would benefit from further testing?

No. Mr Clark adds:
The test’s findings demonstrated considerable improvement in this field [facial recognition], and confirmed that the technology could be applied successfully in a one-to-one (verification) mode*
and
We recognise that the vast majority of the travelling public are legitimate, law-abiding passengers and believe that the gates will deliver an improved service† to our customers whilst allowing us to deploy our staff intelligently to areas of greater risk.
----------
* Some of us harbour the suspicion that Mr Clark had to be leant on to write that.
† As we now know, the only way to deliver an improved service is to abandon use of the smart gates.
3 February 2010 The history of biometrics based on facial recognition really is a history of failure. If UKBA now had reliable facial recognition equipment, then some sort of a technology revolution must have taken place. Someone, in a letter dated 4 August 2009, asked Brodie Clark to publish the revolutionary Manchester Airport trial results. The same request was made of his boss, Lin Homer, chief executive of UKBA, in a letter dated 8 August 2009.

The trial results were not published then and still haven't been published. There is still no respectable evidence in the public domain that UKBA's facial recognition technology works.

On 3 February 2010, Lin Homer wrote:
UKBA is currently trialling the use of automated gates using facial recognition technology at 10 sites across the UK ... The technology used has proved reliable within the operational environment ...
and
Evaluation of Manchester gave us enough confidence to proceed to expand the trial.
23 February 2010 Lin Homer kindly arranged a meeting, which took place at the Home Office on 23 February 2010. The meeting was attended by someone and by Karen Kyle (UK Border Agency), Marek Rejman-Greene (Home Office Scientific Development Branch), Alex Lahood (UK Border Agency), Henry Bloomfield (Identity & Passport Service), and Mike Franklin (UK Border Agency).

No useful information about the reliability of UKBA's facial recognition technology was imparted at the meeting.

In his informal minutes of the meeting, Alex Lahood wrote:
Marek Rejman-Greene explained that we are under no illusion that the systems are 100% accurate but that there is adequate evidence/information about the level of performance to warrant embarking on a trial.
A year after the 10 "pledges" of the UKBA delivery plan assured the public that the technology works, Lin Homer and Alex Lahood are still talking about trials. Why?
It is normal to publish the results of trials. It is suspicious when trial results are not published.

The efficacy of biometrics has been asserted ever since 9/11, over 10 years ago. Public money has been spent throughout that period and continues to be spent on projects which depend for their success on biometrics being reliable.

Not once have the Home Office supplied any trial results proving that they are investing public money wisely. For all we the public know, our money is being wasted on technology that doesn't work.

If it doesn't work, using that technology cannot improve the security of the UK border. In which case the Home Secretary and the Shadow Home Secretary are talking nonsense when they say that failing to do biometric checks impairs the security of the border. And it is nonsensical to pillory Brodie Clark and force him out of UKBA for not using technology that doesn't work.

5-7 May 2010 By this stage we have had it confirmed to us by UKBA press releases, newspaper articles, letters from Brodie Clark and Lin Homer and the informal minutes produced by Alex Lahood that UKBA conducted trials of facial recognition technology at Manchester Airport.

Mr John Vine CBE QPM is the Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency. He conducted an inspection of Manchester Airport between 5 and 7 May 2010. In his report, Mr Vine lists a number of problems with the smart gates in use there. And then, at para.5.29, he writes:
We could find no overall plan to evaluate the success or otherwise of the facial recognition gates at Manchester Airport and would urge the Agency to do so [as] soon as possible.
It is hard to believe that the Home Office have been wasting public money on biometrics. But if we must entertain that thought, must we also make room for the thought that the Home Office haven't even been conducting the trials they keep talking about? How else are we to understand the Independent Chief Inspector's words, "We could find no overall plan to evaluate the success or otherwise of the facial recognition gates at Manchester Airport"?