The system is fine. It's the users that don't work

Online farm payment system abandoned after

'performance problems'

It has fallen to Bryan Glick, the estimable editor of Computer Weekly, to perform the first post mortem on the Rural Payments Agency's (RPA) computerised Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) which was discontinued yesterday and replaced with paper – "successive software releases failed to resolve the problems with the mapping tool".

Agile@DEFRA

Just another government IT failure, BBC news website:

Online farm payment system abandoned after 'performance problems' A multi-million pound government IT system to process EU subsidy payments for farmers has been largely abandoned following "performance problems". The system will be re-launched next week with farmers asked to submit Basic Payment Scheme claims on paper forms. Farmers say they have struggled with the £154m website for months ...

Or is it?

Budget travel to Estonia

The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered his 2015 Budget report yesterday.

The media have clocked all the good jokes, please see for example How George Osborne's Budget jokes cost Britain £81m.

The lesson of the web? There. Is. No. Such. Thing. As. A. Secure. Website.

There is no such thing as a secure website.

You know that.

You've read the papers, listened to the radio, watched TV and browsed the web. You know Sony were hacked. You know JP Morgan Chase were hacked. And Lockheed Martin and the US State Department.

You know that. They know it and so does everyone else – there is no such thing as a secure website.

Knowing that, if someone offers you a web service and promises that it's secure, how do you react?