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

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

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

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

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

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

Something stupid.

Like ignore your recommendations.

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

And now, a cautionary tale.

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

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

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

£7.1 million.

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Hat tip: as so often, Tony Collins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In his book The Socialist Case Douglas Jay wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some food for the thoughts of Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Philip Johnston – IdA/DWP

You weren't invited to Ovum's Industry Congress on 24 May 2011, were you, so you didn't hear Phil Pavitt's talk on the "frictionless services" that he says the public is demanding from HMRC.

Still, you can read about it in Computer World UK, where you will discover that Phil is the Chief Information Officer (CIO, i.e. what we used to call the "DP Manager") at HMRC and he says frictionless services require identity assurance (IdA).

He may be right about that, after all we don't know what a frictionless service is, but he must be wrong when he says: "We don't currently have ID authentication in UK government".

That's just not true. Some of us small businesses have been submitting our VAT returns online using the UK Government Gateway every three months for several years now and that requires ID authentication by the UK government. And millions of people use HMRC's self-assessment website for income tax, again via the Government Gateway.

Why does Phil make this false statement?

Because no-one in Whitehall likes the Government Gateway. It doesn't look anything like the front end of Amazon or eBay or Facebook or Google. They want the Government Gateway to go away, it's old and ugly and not the sort of accessory a hip young CIO wants to be seen dead wearing. It cost millions. It works. It seems to be secure. But it's got to go.

What will the IdA replacement look like? Not long to wait to find out now, says Phil, "in March of this year the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) revealed plans that will see it be the first central government department to roll out identity assurance services, in a project that is set to cost £25 million".

£25 million? What's the betting that there's a 1 in front of that by the time the National Audit Office get to take a look? If we're lucky. Otherwise a 4. While even Oxfam won't want the old Government Gateway, already paid for, years of successful use behind it, but pensioned off in its prime.

What do we foresee? All together now – friction!

Some food for the thoughts of Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Philip Johnston – IdA/DWP

You weren't invited to Ovum's Industry Congress on 24 May 2011, were you, so you didn't hear Phil Pavitt's talk on the "frictionless services" that he says the public is demanding from HMRC.

Still, you can read about it in Computer World UK, where you will discover that Phil is the Chief Information Officer (CIO, i.e. what we used to call the "DP Manager") at HMRC and he says frictionless services require identity assurance (IdA).

He may be right about that, after all we don't know what a frictionless service is, but he must be wrong when he says: "We don't currently have ID authentication in UK government".

That's just not true. Some of us small businesses have been submitting our VAT returns online using the UK Government Gateway every three months for several years now and that requires ID authentication by the UK government. And millions of people use HMRC's self-assessment website for income tax, again via the Government Gateway.

Why does Phil make this false statement?

Because no-one in Whitehall likes the Government Gateway. It doesn't look anything like the front end of Amazon or eBay or Facebook or Google. They want the Government Gateway to go away, it's old and ugly and not the sort of accessory a hip young CIO wants to be seen dead wearing. It cost millions. It works. It seems to be secure. But it's got to go.

What will the IdA replacement look like? Not long to wait to find out now, says Phil, "in March of this year the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) revealed plans that will see it be the first central government department to roll out identity assurance services, in a project that is set to cost £25 million".

£25 million? What's the betting that there's a 1 in front of that by the time the National Audit Office get to take a look? If we're lucky. Otherwise a 4. While even Oxfam won't want the old Government Gateway, already paid for, years of successful use behind it, but pensioned off in its prime.

What do we foresee? All together now – friction!

Some food for the thoughts of Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Philip Johnston – IdA/GDS

Those chaps in the Government Digital Service (GDS) get about a bit. California. Estonia. And now the White House.

GDS's job is to do Martha Lane Fox's bidding and make public services digital by default. In order to achieve that, they need to deliver an identity assurance service (IdA) and they were in Washington "to share, learn and collaborate with some of the key individuals and organisations in the US wrestling with the challenges of identity in cyberspace" including Senator Barbara Mikulski.

The encounter between these wrestlers "focused on the economic necessity of creating an ecosystem of trust both for individual users of the internet, who are overwhelmed by usernames and passwords, and for businesses where the increasing cost of fraud is offsetting the efficiency benefits from digital channels".

The notion that Whitehall could create an ecosystem of trust needs to be compared with the markets they have created to date, e.g. PFI.

Far from being overwhelmed by usernames and passwords, individuals worldwide appear to be using the web more and more. Of course what GDS are offering is yet more usernames and passwords. But with this difference. Theirs will be the only usernames and passwords we have to remember. They will act as gateways to all the other services we use. We will become entirely dependent on GDS and its various unicorn-hustler agents (Facebook, Google, ..., Mydex) to conduct any transactions with anyone. Can they be trusted in this rôle?

And the cost of fraud appears to be shrinking, not increasing. The only cloud on the horizon is DWP's Universal Credit scheme which, if it follows the government's independent learning accounts and tax credits, promises to be the locus of a fraud feeding frenzy.

But apart from that – three false propositions in one sentence, a record? – after a long bout, there was one result: "the Senator made it clear that volunteers are needed if the voluntary approach in the US is to be successful".

Gluttons for punishment, our GDS delegates went on from the White House to OIX, the Open Identity Exchange, where "there was great interest in what the UK Identity Assurance Programme is doing and an offer from OIX to help us achieve our goals – which we readily accepted".

Hands up everyone who remembers voting to have their identity traded on a US exchange?

Some food for the thoughts of Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Philip Johnston – IdA/GDS

Those chaps in the Government Digital Service (GDS) get about a bit. California. Estonia. And now the White House.

GDS's job is to do Martha Lane Fox's bidding and make public services digital by default. In order to achieve that, they need to deliver an identity assurance service (IdA) and they were in Washington "to share, learn and collaborate with some of the key individuals and organisations in the US wrestling with the challenges of identity in cyberspace" including Senator Barbara Mikulski.

The encounter between these wrestlers "focused on the economic necessity of creating an ecosystem of trust both for individual users of the internet, who are overwhelmed by usernames and passwords, and for businesses where the increasing cost of fraud is offsetting the efficiency benefits from digital channels".

The notion that Whitehall could create an ecosystem of trust needs to be compared with the markets they have created to date, e.g. PFI.

Far from being overwhelmed by usernames and passwords, individuals worldwide appear to be using the web more and more. Of course what GDS are offering is yet more usernames and passwords. But with this difference. Theirs will be the only usernames and passwords we have to remember. They will act as gateways to all the other services we use. We will become entirely dependent on GDS and its various unicorn-hustler agents (Facebook, Google, ..., Mydex) to conduct any transactions with anyone. Can they be trusted in this rôle?

And the cost of fraud appears to be shrinking, not increasing. The only cloud on the horizon is DWP's Universal Credit scheme which, if it follows the government's independent learning accounts and tax credits, promises to be the locus of a fraud feeding frenzy.

But apart from that – three false propositions in one sentence, a record? – after a long bout, there was one result: "the Senator made it clear that volunteers are needed if the voluntary approach in the US is to be successful".

Gluttons for punishment, our GDS delegates went on from the White House to OIX, the Open Identity Exchange, where "there was great interest in what the UK Identity Assurance Programme is doing and an offer from OIX to help us achieve our goals – which we readily accepted".

Hands up everyone who remembers voting to have their identity traded on a US exchange?

Some food for the thoughts of Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Philip Johnston – midata/BIS

Wired magazine carried an article yesterday by Alan Mitchell promising that Personal data stores will liberate us from a toxic privacy battleground.

Alan Mitchell, you will remember, is the strategy director of Ctrl-Shift, a consultancy retained by the UK Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) to work on their midata initiative. William Heath is a non-executive director of Ctrl-Shift. Alan Mitchell and William Heath are the founders of Mydex, a company bidding to supply personal data stores in the UK, thereby supposedly liberating us from a toxic privacy battleground.

Mr Mitchell did not find space in his article to mention any of that background but he did, quite properly, emphasise that personal data stores are only recommended if the individuals who use them to disseminate their personal data are guaranteed to have control over how that data is used.

We do not currently have that control. It doesn't exist. It might do in the future but it doesn't exist now. Ctrl-Shift's strategy therefore depends on something indistinguishable from unicorns, which also don't exist. From that point of view, Ctrl-Shift has a strategy problem.

Wired magazine describe Mr Mitchell as "a strategic advisor to the UK Government's Midata project". By the same token, the UK Government therefore has a strategy problem. midata can't work. It depends on something which doesn't exist.

Given which, why do BIS continue to pursue it?

Some food for the thoughts of Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Philip Johnston – midata/BIS

Wired magazine carried an article yesterday by Alan Mitchell promising that Personal data stores will liberate us from a toxic privacy battleground.

Alan Mitchell, you will remember, is the strategy director of Ctrl-Shift, a consultancy retained by the UK Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) to work on their midata initiative. William Heath is a non-executive director of Ctrl-Shift. Alan Mitchell and William Heath are the founders of Mydex, a company bidding to supply personal data stores in the UK, thereby supposedly liberating us from a toxic privacy battleground.

Mr Mitchell did not find space in his article to mention any of that background but he did, quite properly, emphasise that personal data stores are only recommended if the individuals who use them to disseminate their personal data are guaranteed to have control over how that data is used.

We do not currently have that control. It doesn't exist. It might do in the future but it doesn't exist now. Ctrl-Shift's strategy therefore depends on something indistinguishable from unicorns, which also don't exist. From that point of view, Ctrl-Shift has a strategy problem.

Wired magazine describe Mr Mitchell as "a strategic advisor to the UK Government's Midata project". By the same token, the UK Government therefore has a strategy problem. midata can't work. It depends on something which doesn't exist.

Given which, why do BIS continue to pursue it?

A suggestion for Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Philip Johnston, published on a blog provided "free" by Google

Two articles in the Sunday Times by Jon Ungoed-Thomas – Your emails, sex secrets and health details – all harvested by Google and Google grabs secrets of private lives – and one in the Telegraph next day by Philip Johnston – That car in your street was a Google Street View search engine.

While Google was filming our streets it was also collecting information about our WiFi networks. Without permission and without telling anyone. That was a mistake, said Google when they were found out, which is an odd thing for Google to say. The whole point about Google is that they don't make mistakes.

The US Federal Communications Commission are fining Google $25,000 for impeding their investigation of the matter. Google had revenues in 2011 of $37.905 billion on which it made profits of $9.737 billion. The fine amounts to 81 seconds of profits and is thought not to have dealt a mortal blow to the company's share price.

According to Jon Ungoed-Thomas, Google's telecommunications interception system was designed by Mr Marius Milner, a Trinity College Cambridge maths graduate, who handed it over to Google recommending that they'd better get a ruling from a privacy lawyer before using it.

At which point the claim that Google's Street View cars used Mr Milner's system by mistake all over the world for several years starts to look a bit threadbare.

We all know that Google record our web searches and read our email and do something with the information they glean there about our preferences and interests. We never pay them for the use of any of their excellent services. We know there's something odd there. Where does the $38 billion annual revenue come from? We latter-day Dr Faustuses prefer not to ask.

Mr Johnston muses in his article about the attitude of the young today, incontinently spraying their personal information all over the web, no sense of decency, or privacy, no dignity. Or words to that effect. He is rewarded for this perfectly sensible observation by being called an "old fart" by one of Google's astrosurfers commenting below the line.

DMossEsq made a much politer comment but it was deleted. Several times. Every time it was submitted. So quickly that it must have been deleted by an automated old fart.

No such indignity on the Sunday Times website (a website readers pay for, incidentally), where the comment was published and is still there:

... Note that the Department of Business Innovation and Skills want Google to help provide us all with "personal data stores" as part of the department's midata project. And that the Cabinet Office look to Google to provide us with electronic identities so that public services can all become "digital by default". And that Whitehall's plans for a G-Cloud – a government cloud – rely on Google and others storing our data on their servers in a gigantic leap of faith in so-called "cloud computing". HMG seems to be desperate to invite Google into our lives and to hand over the responsibility for public administration to Google in a re-run of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, http://www.dmossesq.com/2012/04/amazon-google-facebook-et-al-latter-day.html Why? Have they given up? Is government too difficult for them?

There's the story Messrs Ungoed-Thomas and Johnston should be writing, surely – in the name of modernisation and transformational government, the middle-aged delinquents of Whitehall are openly planning to hand over our personal data en masse to Google and others. How much will that free lunch cost us?

A suggestion for Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Philip Johnston, published on a blog provided "free" by Google

Two articles in the Sunday Times by Jon Ungoed-Thomas – Your emails, sex secrets and health details – all harvested by Google and Google grabs secrets of private lives – and one in the Telegraph next day by Philip Johnston – That car in your street was a Google Street View search engine.

While Google was filming our streets it was also collecting information about our WiFi networks. Without permission and without telling anyone. That was a mistake, said Google when they were found out, which is an odd thing for Google to say. The whole point about Google is that they don't make mistakes.

The US Federal Communications Commission are fining Google $25,000 for impeding their investigation of the matter. Google had revenues in 2011 of $37.905 billion on which it made profits of $9.737 billion. The fine amounts to 81 seconds of profits and is thought not to have dealt a mortal blow to the company's share price.

Protecting civilisation from the fingers of terror

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

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

Admitted ... the police admitted ...

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

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

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

How long before we read in New Scientist that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is no good reason for this peculiar asymmetry.

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

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

Protecting civilisation from the fingers of terror

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

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

Admitted ... the police admitted ...

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

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

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

How long before we read in New Scientist that:

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

GreenInk 7 – A good day for criminals

Let's see if the Telegraph publish this:

From: David Moss Sent: 28 May 2012 12:18 To: 'dtletters@telegraph.co.uk' Subject: A good day for criminals Sir On 23 May 2012 the Metropolitan Police issued a press release announcing that they are now using mobile fingerprint equipment. Patrolling policemen will check the fingerprints of suspects they have stopped in the street and let them go if their prints are not on file, thereby saving time. The only figures published by the Home Office suggest that this fingerprinting technology fails about 20 percent of the time – in about 20 percent of cases no match will be made even if the subject's prints are on file. Which suggests that the chances of guilty people being taken down to the station and arrested have just dropped by about 20 percent. Not only in the Met but in 27 other police forces. Perhaps Nick Herbert, the policing minister at the Home Office, would like to comment on this new way of saving police time. Yours David Moss

GreenInk 7 – A good day for criminals

Let's see if the Telegraph publish this:

From: David Moss Sent: 28 May 2012 12:18 To: 'dtletters@telegraph.co.uk' Subject: A good day for criminals Sir On 23 May 2012 the Metropolitan Police issued a press release announcing that they are now using mobile fingerprint equipment. Patrolling policemen will check the fingerprints of suspects they have stopped in the street and let them go if their prints are not on file, thereby saving time. The only figures published by the Home Office suggest that this fingerprinting technology fails about 20 percent of the time – in about 20 percent of cases no match will be made even if the subject's prints are on file. Which suggests that the chances of guilty people being taken down to the station and arrested have just dropped by about 20 percent. Not only in the Met but in 27 other police forces. Perhaps Nick Herbert, the policing minister at the Home Office, would like to comment on this new way of saving police time. Yours David Moss

Police forces all over the UK are introducing mobile fingerprint equipment. Result? Approximately 20% of the criminals who would otherwise have been taken down to the station will now be asked politely to go on their way

The Guardian tell us today that the Metropolitan Police have bought themselves some new equipment – mobile fingerprint readers. They are the 25th UK force to do so.

It all seems very sensible:

One of the aims of the technology is to cut the number of trips police make to the police station, so that officers can spend more time on the frontline. Mark Rowley, assistant commissioner at the Met, said: "Evidence has shown that a full identification arrest can tie-up both the subject and the police officer for several hours. Even a traditional identity check conducted on the street can take an extended period of time to complete. "It is effective particularly in revealing serious and violent offenders who will do everything they can to prevent the police from knowing their true identities."

It isn't.

Because the failure rate on this technology is about 20%*.

In the case of people whose fingerprints are on file, about 20%* of the time that fact will not be discovered using this technology.

To be slightly more technical:

• When the Home Office tested flat print fingerprinting in the UKPS biometrics enrolment trial back in 2004 they found that the false non-match rate was 19 or 20 percent*. Nick Herbert, say, would be told by the system that he was not Nick Herbert. His prints didn't match anything on the database. A non-match. A false non-match, as it happens, as Nick Herbert had just registered his prints on the database five minutes before.
• That's how the trial was conducted. 10,000 of us registered our faces and our fingerprints and our irisprints and five minutes later we tested to see if we could have our identity verified using one or other of those biometrics. Flat print fingerprints failed 19-20 percent of the time. Face recognition failed between 31 and 52 percent of the time which is why the smart gates at our airports and every other instance of automated face recognition are guaranteed to be a waste of time and money.

Nick Herbert is the policing minister. He and the Home Office have not published the results of any flat print fingerprint trials since then. At least one trial has been performed:

The NPIA signed a contract with 3M Cogent in 2010 for mobile fingerprint identification devices. The deal followed field trials involving 28 police forces using Lantern devices to test how mobile fingerprinting performed in an operational environment.

But the Home Office refuse to publish the results. So as far as we know – we, the public – the false non-match rate remains approximately 20%.

Which means that out of all the wanted criminals who are stopped and whose prints are on IDENT1 – the national fingerprint database – 20% will falsely not match and be allowed to go on their way.

There's a question for Mr Herbert forming at the back of your mind, isn't there – do you know what you're doing?

If he wants to prove that the answer is yes, and that he's not undermining the fight against crime and wasting our money at the same time, then Mr Herbert must publish the Lantern trial results. Nothing else will be convincing.

The chances of the Home Office publishing those results? See yesterday's hell-freezes-over press release.

It's not just DMossEsq:

• See also for example the Freedom of Information work being done on Project Lantern by the indefatigable Andrew Watson.
• John Vine, the Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency has revealed the mendacity behind the use of face recognition biometrics and flat print fingerprints – see his report on the Brodie Clark affair, para.3.13, the UK Border Force have had just seven hits in over two years of using this technology on visa nationals.
• Brodie Clark told the Home Affairs Committee that fingerprint checks are the least reliable identity/security checks made by Border Force staff, their ninth and bottom priority.
• And the Home Affairs Committee are getting ever more outspoken about the recalcitrance of the Home Office, unconstitutionally refusing to disclose information to Parliament.

----------

* Please see UK Passport Service Biometrics Enrolment Trial Report May 2005, Management Summary, Key Findings, para.1.2.1.4, p.10:

Fingerprint verification success • The majority of participants achieved successful verification on fingerprint, with rates of 81% for Quota participants and 80% for Disabled participants. One of the factors influencing failure was that the single fingerprint device used for verification occasionally did not record sufficient detail from the fingers. • Younger participants had a higher fingerprint verification success rate than older participants.

Updated 20.2.18

It's nearly four years since the blog post above was published. Not a single success story for mobile fingerprinting has been told. Four years. Zero results.

Unabashed, Yorkshire cops have begun using on-the-spot fingerprint scanners.

The difference this time is that the policemen on the street will be able to interrogate not just IDENT1 – the national criminal fingerprint database – but also IABS, the Immigration and Asylum Biometrics System: "The scanners link up to an app on cops' smartphones – which is already available to all 5,500 frontline officers – and run the prints against the UK's criminal fingerprint and biometrics database (IDENT1) and the Immigration and Asylum Biometrics System (IABS)".

What is unchanged is the 20% figure. It remains the case that 20% of those stopped by the police will be falsely not matched. Thanks to this flaky biometrics technology, wanted criminals will be asked to move along when actually they should be detained.

Police forces all over the UK are introducing mobile fingerprint equipment. Result? Approximately 20% of the criminals who would otherwise have been taken down to the station will now be asked politely to go on their way

The Guardian tell us today that the Metropolitan Police have bought themselves some new equipment – mobile fingerprint readers. They are the 25th UK force to do so.

It all seems very sensible:

One of the aims of the technology is to cut the number of trips police make to the police station, so that officers can spend more time on the frontline. Mark Rowley, assistant commissioner at the Met, said: "Evidence has shown that a full identification arrest can tie-up both the subject and the police officer for several hours. Even a traditional identity check conducted on the street can take an extended period of time to complete. "It is effective particularly in revealing serious and violent offenders who will do everything they can to prevent the police from knowing their true identities."

It isn't.