Tuesday 15 May 2012

Will anyone notice the difference?

When Sir Bob Kerslake took over as head of the home civil service from Sir-Gus-now-Lord O'Donnell, "oh no not another over-promoted council leader" was one of the few printable comments.

His detractors may soon revise their opinion. He has just executed stage 1 of a simple two-stage plan. Let today's Times tell the story:
Whitehall gets seven weeks at home for Olympics
Civil servants have been told they can work from home for seven weeks during the Olympics, prompting incredulity from ministers, MPs and business leaders.

Tens of thousands of civil servants based in Central London will be allowed to work from home from July 21 – six days before the opening ceremony. Flexible working arrangements will remain for the 15 days between the Olympic Games and the Paralympics, ending on September 9 after the second closing ceremony.

Business groups expressed deep dismay at the plans. A spokesman for the Business Services Association, which represents Britain’s biggest outsourcing companies, said: “Seven weeks is a long time to have the heart of government working intermittently ...
There is no need for "business groups" or anyone else to experience either "incredulity" or "dismay". Stage 2 requires nothing more from Sir Bob than on 8 September to tweet all his ex-civil servants the simple message "don't bother to come back" and ... voilà – a gold medal for Sir Bob.

UPDATE 18 May 2012Revealed: Civil servants get extra three days holiday if they work over 36 hours a week

Will anyone notice the difference?

When Sir Bob Kerslake took over as head of the home civil service from Sir-Gus-now-Lord O'Donnell, "oh no not another over-promoted council leader" was one of the few printable comments.

His detractors may soon revise their opinion. He has just executed stage 1 of a simple two-stage plan. Let today's Times tell the story:
Whitehall gets seven weeks at home for Olympics
Civil servants have been told they can work from home for seven weeks during the Olympics, prompting incredulity from ministers, MPs and business leaders.

Tens of thousands of civil servants based in Central London will be allowed to work from home from July 21 – six days before the opening ceremony. Flexible working arrangements will remain for the 15 days between the Olympic Games and the Paralympics, ending on September 9 after the second closing ceremony.

Business groups expressed deep dismay at the plans. A spokesman for the Business Services Association, which represents Britain’s biggest outsourcing companies, said: “Seven weeks is a long time to have the heart of government working intermittently ...
There is no need for "business groups" or anyone else to experience either "incredulity" or "dismay". Stage 2 requires nothing more from Sir Bob than on 8 September to tweet all his ex-civil servants the simple message "don't bother to come back" and ... voilà – a gold medal for Sir Bob.

UPDATE 18 May 2012Revealed: Civil servants get extra three days holiday if they work over 36 hours a week

Wednesday 9 May 2012

Safran's directors generously give away their shareholders' intellectual property and $1.6 billion of their shareholders' money



Safran press release, Paris 26 July 2011:
Safran completes the acquisition of L-1 Identity Solutions Becomes world leader in biometric identity solutions

After completing all required approval procedures, Safran (NYSE Euronext Paris: SAF) today announced that it has finalized the acquisition of L-1 Identity Solutions, Inc., a leading identity management solutions provider in the United States, for a total cash amount of $1.09 billion ($12 per share), which was originally announced in the press release on September 20, 2010. Following this transaction, Safran becomes the world leader in biometric identity solutions ...

L-1 will join Safran’s existing security business, operating as Morpho, and will be renamed MorphoTrust. The new company will be partly managed as a proxy structure, thus providing appropriate protection for U.S. national security ...

Jean-Paul Herteman, Chairman and CEO of Safran, said: "We are delighted to have finalized this transaction, which is perfectly aligned with the Group’s development strategy in the security business..."
At the date of purchase, L-1 Identity Solutions, Inc., had never made a profit. Hardly surprising. The company was a ragbag of failed biometrics businesses, including Visionics Corp., Identix, Inc., and Viisage.

Identix is particularly well known in the UK. In 2004, the UK Passport Service conducted a year-long trial of biometrics which proved that they are not reliable enough for use in passports, ID cards, residence permits, visas, driving licences and the like, please see cribsheet below. The trial was carried out using Identix products (Appendix C, p.254ff).

"$1.09 billion" may seem like a very precise number. It isn't. Unmentioned in the press release above, Safran took on about $500 million of L-1's debt in addition to buying the company. Safran's shareholders' initial stake is therefore a lot higher than $1.09 billion, please see for example this 16 May 2011 Bloomberg article:
Safran, a Paris-based maker of airplane engines for Airbus SAS and Boeing Co., agreed to buy L-1 for $12 a share, or 48 percent more than L-1’s 20-day trading average before it was first reported July 15 that Safran was considering a purchase of L-1. The offer is valued at $1.58 billion including net debt.
And for that, Safran doesn't even get unfettered control. There's a "proxy structure" in there "providing appropriate protection for U.S. national security". Pleading national security, Safran's US Federal and State contracts could be switched to the all-American 3M Cogent, leaving Safran with nothing to show for $1.58 billion.

You can see why L-1 would be pleased with this deal. It's not obvious what's in it for Safran.


This isn't the first time that shareholders and equity analysts will have had qualms about Safran's venture into biometrics.

On 7 October 2009, when their subsidiary Morpho was still known as "Sagem Sécurité", Safran issued this press release in Paris:
Sagem Sécurité chosen by IBM to support United Kingdom’s National Identity Assurance Service (NIAS)

Sagem Sécurité (Safran group) has signed a contract with IBM to supply and maintain a biometric management solution for British travel and identity documents, on behalf of the British Home Office’s Identity and Passport Service (IPS). The project is a core element of the Government’s plans to upgrade to biometric passports and enhance the security of the UK border.

Sagem Sécurité will provide multibiometric facial and fingerprint recognition technology that was assessed for speed, accuracy and cost in competitive trials developed and run by IBM, using in excess of 10 million images. The technology will enable IBM to help IPS and the UK Border Agency to deliver the next generation of secure and reliable identity documents to British citizens, residents and people requesting asylum, while minimising the risk of fraud ...
How did Safran/Sagem Sécurité/Morpho get this contract with IBM?

The answer is provided in a witness statement submitted by Mr Nicholas Swain in a case heard in the British courts, EA/2001/0081 (please see the entry for 20 July 2011). IBM organised a demonstration of biometric capability for the UK Home Office. Mr Swain is a Commercial Director at IBM and he says:
10. As part of IBM's bid, during late 2008 and early 2009, IBM carried out a series of tests with specialist biometric software providers who were bidding to be part of ... IBM's solution for the NBIS project as part of the Demonstration ...

11. IBM negotiated the commercial arrangements with each of the biometric service providers, including Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) to protect their commercially sensitive information (see further below). Six suppliers participated in the Demonstration ...

14. Thereafter, on 1 May 2009, IBM signed a contract to provide NBIS with the Home Office and, shortly afterwards, entered a sub-contract with Sagem (now Morpho), one of the suppliers who participated in the Demonstration, to provide the specialist biometric software needed for NBIS. In August 2010 this contract was revised and the programme was re-named IABS ...

18. All of the suppliers involved in the Demonstration made significant investment in time and provided IBM with more details about their products performance than is generally available. The information provided included business-critical intellectual property of the suppliers, representing the results of major investment in software research and development ...
In 2008 and 2009 IBM had no particular expertise in biometrics. They have remedied that thanks to Safran, who gave them "business-critical intellectual property ... representing the results of major investment in software research and development".

IBM have played a blinder. They won a £265 million contract from the British government. And they acquired the fruits of several decades of Safran's R&D. All in return for a piece of paper, an NDA. You can see why IBM would be pleased with this deal. It's not obvious what's in it for Safran.

Safran's products can be tested without handing over the crown jewels. IBM and the Home Office only need to know whether Safran's products work, not how they work.


The directors of Safran gave the shareholders' intellectual property to IBM and they gave $1.6 billion of shareholders' money to L-1. What did they give to get their contract with UIDAI, the organisation responsible for issuing electronic IDs to 1.2 billion Indians?







Cribsheet – the failure of biometrics
Using L-1/Identix biometrics technology, the Home Office conducted trials of face recognition, fingerprinting and iris scanning back in 2004. The report on the trial was published by Atos Origin in May 2005 and even after many months of massage the figures still demonstrated failure.

10% of able-bodied participants in the trial couldn't register their irisprints in the first place, and that figure rises to 39% for the disabled participants. These people would quite simply not exist if public services only recognised people by their irisprints.

Face recognition biometrics failed with 31% of the able-bodied participants and 52% of the disabled. We would all do better to toss an unbiased coin than to rely on face recognition, a technology with an uninterrupted history of failure.

Which leaves us with fingerprints.

Understand that we're not talking here about traditional fingerprinting. The technology trusted by law enforcers worldwide for over a century now. Rolled prints. Taken using ink. By a police expert. Acceptable as evidence in a court of law. A technology so accurate that when there's a disagreement independent experts are flown in to resolve the matter.

No, we're talking instead about a modern, cheap, clean, quick technology, no expert required, a sort of glorified photocopying process, utterly unreliable, with a 19 or 20 percent failure rate. 19% for the able-bodied and 20% for the disabled. A technology that doesn't work well with old people, manual labourers, people from East Asia and women (p.34).

So much for L-1's biometrics technology. No-one is going to fly in independent experts from abroad to investigate 19 or 20 percent of all disputed matches and non-matches. Flat print fingerprinting, to put it loosely, doesn't work.

If the right to public services or the right to work or the right to vote or the right to a pension or the right to get married or the right to live in your municipal area or the right to travel beyond it – the right to cross an invisible eBorder – ever depend on flat print fingerprinting, then 19 or 20 percent of people legitimately entitled to those benefits will be wrongly denied them.

Do Morpho's other biometrics products work any better than L-1's?

So far, the public has not been told. Not in the UK, not in France, nowhere. Public money – your money and mine – is being invested by the UK Home Office and by Interior Ministries around the world, with no justification given.

Given that the only report on the reliability of biometrics published to date by the UK government demonstrates that the technology doesn't work, we need to see some independent and academically scrupulous evidence that our money isn't being wasted.

For all we know, the belief in the reliability of today's mass consumer biometrics is as foolish as the belief in astrology.

As Professor Ross Anderson, the king of IT security engineering, points out, the banks don't trust mass consumer biometrics technology. Otherwise they'd use it. So why does the government trust this technology? And why should we?

With no answers forthcoming, for all we know our money is being wasted on snake oil.

Safran's directors generously give away their shareholders' intellectual property and $1.6 billion of their shareholders' money



Safran press release, Paris 26 July 2011:
Safran completes the acquisition of L-1 Identity Solutions Becomes world leader in biometric identity solutions

After completing all required approval procedures, Safran (NYSE Euronext Paris: SAF) today announced that it has finalized the acquisition of L-1 Identity Solutions, Inc., a leading identity management solutions provider in the United States, for a total cash amount of $1.09 billion ($12 per share), which was originally announced in the press release on September 20, 2010. Following this transaction, Safran becomes the world leader in biometric identity solutions ...

L-1 will join Safran’s existing security business, operating as Morpho, and will be renamed MorphoTrust. The new company will be partly managed as a proxy structure, thus providing appropriate protection for U.S. national security ...

Jean-Paul Herteman, Chairman and CEO of Safran, said: "We are delighted to have finalized this transaction, which is perfectly aligned with the Group’s development strategy in the security business..."
At the date of purchase, L-1 Identity Solutions, Inc., had never made a profit. Hardly surprising. The company was a ragbag of failed biometrics businesses, including Visionics Corp., Identix, Inc., and Viisage.

Identix is particularly well known in the UK. In 2004, the UK Passport Service conducted a year-long trial of biometrics which proved that they are not reliable enough for use in passports, ID cards, residence permits, visas, driving licences and the like, please see cribsheet below. The trial was carried out using Identix products (Appendix C, p.254ff).

"$1.09 billion" may seem like a very precise number. It isn't. Unmentioned in the press release above, Safran took on about $500 million of L-1's debt in addition to buying the company. Safran's shareholders' initial stake is therefore a lot higher than $1.09 billion, please see for example this 16 May 2011 Bloomberg article:
Safran, a Paris-based maker of airplane engines for Airbus SAS and Boeing Co., agreed to buy L-1 for $12 a share, or 48 percent more than L-1’s 20-day trading average before it was first reported July 15 that Safran was considering a purchase of L-1. The offer is valued at $1.58 billion including net debt.
And for that, Safran doesn't even get unfettered control. There's a "proxy structure" in there "providing appropriate protection for U.S. national security". Pleading national security, Safran's US Federal and State contracts could be switched to the all-American 3M Cogent, leaving Safran with nothing to show for $1.58 billion.

You can see why L-1 would be pleased with this deal. It's not obvious what's in it for Safran.


Monday 7 May 2012

Chaos at Heathrow, border security in doubt, safety of the Olympics threatened – and the unions call a strike?

Later this week, the UK Border Agency are due to go on strike.

If they do, the strike won't improve the ghastly economic situation the UK finds itself in and it won't improve UKBA's reputation with the public. All the strike will achieve is to provide opportunities for hollow laughter at jokes along the lines of how can you tell that UKBA are on strike, what difference does it make if they're working ...

At some point, hours or days after the strike has started, it will stop. And the public impression will be that there is an industrial relations problem at UKBA.

Which there may well be.

But there is also a more fundamental problem at UKBA, a problem that won't be solved by arbitration and which will persist even when the strike is over – the senior Whitehall management of UKBA appears to be irremediably incompetent.

A strike would be welcomed by Theresa May, Damian Green, Helen Ghosh and Rob Whiteman. The greatest present the unions could give them, an unexpected relief, they would think that Christmas had come early.

By focusing the public's attention on pay and pensions, the strike will divert attention from the impression that the management is hopelessly out of its depth and it will thereby to some extent let them off the hook. The unions are making a mistake. The strike, if it happens, will delay the solution to the problem of management failure at UKBA and make that solution harder to achieve.

The political leadership (Theresa May and Damian Green)
Incompetent? Out of their depth? Failure?

Yes. Just cast your mind back 10 days or so.

Heathrow at 'breaking' point as Border Force struggles to cope, leaked memos warn, said the Telegraph on Sunday 29 April 2012. Cue pictures of the huddled masses trying to get through passport control. "We are in control at Heathrow", said Damian Green the Immigration Minister, only to be corrected by Willie Walsh: ‘Minister lying over Heathrow queues,’ says BA chief. It's a mess.

A predictable mess. The Times had already told us on 23 April 2012 that:
"Theresa May will have to abandon full passport checks at Britain’s airports, the former head of the UK Border Force warns today. Brodie Clark says that the Home Secretary’s policy is causing lengthy delays for passengers at Heathrow and Gatwick and undermining security"
No longer in the job,  Brodie Clark still seems to be better informed than his successor, Brian Moore. According to a 5 April 2012 article in Public Service magazine:
The UK Border Force head Brian Moore said he was surprised by talk of chaos, saying that there is – as every year – a "very solid plan" in place and disruption will be kept to a minimum. Also, there would be extra staff brought in over Easter and for the Olympics. "We will not compromise border security," the UK Border Force said.
Mr Moore got Mr Clark's job because Mr Clark allegedly over-stepped the mark while undertaking a trial of "risk-based" or "intelligence-led" border policing. Before his suspension on 2 November 2011, the trial had been declared a success. When Mr Clark was suspended, so was the trial. Why? If it was successful, why not pursue it?

When the Home Affairs Committee reported on the Brodie Clark affair, they said that they hadn't been given enough information by UKBA to assess the trial. When John Vine, the Independent Chief Inspector of UKBA, reported on the same matter, he suggested that the trial had not been undertaken professionally, and that the successes claimed for it could not obviously be attributed to risk-based border control.

Now that the public have a good reason to doubt the success of the trial we read that the Home Secretary may re-introduce risk-based policing of the border after all, Theresa May to ease airport passport controls.

What was Brodie Clark suspended for? Relaxing passport checks and relaxing fingerprint checks on visa nationals.

What did Damian Green do in Calais in January? He relaxed fingerprint checks on visa nationals:
Damian Green, the immigration minister, has defended the abandonment of the “lengthy” process of taking fingerprints, saying UKBA staff were better served searching vehicles instead ...
What's Theresa May going to do? Relax passport checks:
Mrs May said she was ready to consider introducing “risk-based” controls as part of a long-term solution to delays at airports, despite having forced Brodie Clark, the former head of the UK Border Force, out of his job in November after she claimed he had relaxed immigration checks without her authorisation.
How long before she tries to re-appoint Brodie Clark?

Go on strike, and the unions will help to hide this worryingly erratic behaviour of UKBA's senior political leadership.

In reality, the public doesn't genuinely expect ministers like Theresa May and Damian Green to know what's going on. That's up to officials. Whitehall is expected to be a Rolls-Royce civil service. In the event, the public is going to be seriously disappointed if they ever listen to the Home Affairs Committee and find out the truth.

The Whitehall leadership (Helen Ghosh, Rob Whiteman and the Board of UKBA)
UK Border Agency News, the "bi-monthly update for partners" – what we used to call the "staff magazine" – is published by Rob Whiteman, the man who replaced Lin Homer as Chief Executive of UKBA. Page 7 of the March 2012 issue is all about IABS, the new Immigration and Asylum Biometric System, and tells us that:
Since go-live [of IABS] feedback has been very positive; the transition has been seen as ‘seamless’ and the IABS was described as ‘a significant improvement’. Users of handheld mobile biometric checking equipment are also reporting improved network reception and speedier results.

At the end of March, the IABS will deliver a mobile version of this solution for the capture of biometrics of Games Family Members at the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012.
We're all safe, then. Add biometrics and the recipe for salvation is complete.

Safe, that is, apart from the "technology glitches" that the Telegraph will keep carping about, just because Heathrow is "at breaking point":
The difficulties were exacerbated by a series of technology glitches including the failure of a finger print machine, used to check passengers who require a visa to enter Britain.

On other occasions both the Iris recognition and new automatic passport scanning gates failed, adding to the frustration of new arrivals.

"I am unsure but I do not believe our staff are trained to use these machines," one manager said. "If they were I could have deployed the kit much faster."
Not that the expensive technology failure of IABS is what makes Rob Whiteman unpopular with the Home Affairs Committee. They haven't even looked at the reliability of mass consumer biometrics yet – Jackie Keane's day will come. And Alex Lahood's. And Marek Rejman-Greene's.

Ms Keane is the senior civil servant in charge of IABS. She promised in the March 2011 issue of the staff magazine (p.5) to install it by December 2011. The date slipped by a couple of months. Which must be why the Telegraph's informant isn't sure whether UK Border Force staff know how to use the system yet.

No, what the Committee don't like is that Mr Whiteman promised to co-operate with them when he was first appointed and now he's being obstructive:
It is therefore deeply disappointing that on two occasions since our last report, the Committee has been denied access to information. The "Agency" refused to provide us with the outcome of cases of people who arrived at St Pancras via the 'Lille loophole'. The "Agency" also refused to provide us with data regarding inspections of Tier 4 sponsors on the basis that it was 'not fit for wider dissemination'.
That's what the Committee say in their 21st report of this Parliament (para.79).

It's not just his stonewalling that antagonises them.

There's also UKBA's use of a peculiar version of English which impedes communication with them and which may account for their inability to prepare consistent statistics. What's more, the Agency seems to be incapable of understanding natural English. Everyone else knows what "bogus college" means but the Agency claims not to recognise the term.

Then there's UKBA's failure to consider consistently whether foreign national prisoners should be deported, their failure to deport these people even if the Agency has whimsically decided to try, their  failure to win more than two-thirds of their appeals against asylum and their failure to win much more than half of their immigration appeals, a record not improved by the Agency's failure to attend nearly 20% of these appeals.

UKBA's Glasgow office only manages to attend 45% of its immigration appeals. How come, the Committee would like to know, following the discovery by John Vine, that figure was recorded at Head Office as 95%?

What can possibly explain the Agency's lack of the gumption to get on and solve problems like the "Lille loophole" until someone embarrasses them into action?

There is a slim possibility that eBorders might cover 100% of travellers coming into the country by air but no possibility whatever of it covering people arriving by boat or train. If eBorders doesn't have 100% coverage it can't work, it can't do its job of securing the border, the Committee say, so what's the point of it?

What's the point of all these eGates at UK airports? (Electronic gates, sometimes known as "smart gates".) Do they work or don't they? No-one knows (para.61):
The “Agency” needs to provide convincing evidence, for its own staff as well as the general public, that the e-Gates system is no less reliable than passport checks carried out by a person.
The Home Office under Sir David Normington, Dame Helen's predecessor, repeatedly claimed that eGates are being deployed at UK airports because the trials at Manchester Airport proved so successful. John Vine begs to differ in his report on the inspection of Manchester. He could find no evidence whatever of the Home Office trying to assess the trial.

And why is the system to identify air travellers by their irises being terminated? It cost millions. Was all that money wasted?

And what's happening with the visa application system? It's not working and the Committee considers it imperative to go back to "face to face interviews with entry clearance officers" (para.71-2). Now. Right now.

Apart from the other matter – financial mismanagement (para.74) – that's all the Committee have to say about UKBA. For the moment.

The problems go all the way to the top. The word "agency" appears in inverted commas throughout the Committee's report. Because UKBA isn't really an agency. It's just another bit of the Home Office. Mr Whiteman's failures, and those of his predecessors, are Dame Helen Ghosh's failures, and those of her predecessors.

Dame Helen is the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. When she gave evidence to the Committee she said:
... there are plans, over the SR10 period [2010-15], to reduce the staff of the Border Force by around 900 people, from almost 8,000 people at the start of the period. But that is driven as much by technological introductions like e-gates, as well as a risk-based approach. Border Force will be getting smaller ...
Simon Hoggart in the Guardian had fun writing about Dame Helen's appearance in front of the Home Affairs Committee on 22 November 2011. It was a great fun duel, he suggested, marvellous television, a heavyweight bout between Keith Vaz the Committee chairman and Dame Helen.

Piffle.

As the Committee make clear in their report, this is a Constitutional matter. Parliament is meant to be supreme. Not the Executive. And Parliament is being flouted by the Home Office's refusal to disclose information to the Committee (p.32):
The Committee takes our scrutiny of the UK Border “Agency” very seriously and will not be deterred by the “Agency’s” attempt to circumvent our requests for information. It is in the public interest that this “Agency”, charged with implementing the Government’s immigration policy, is held to account by Parliament. When Mr Whiteman first appeared before us, he pledged to be to be transparent and work with us on the basis of trust. We welcome those pledges and look forward to them being fulfilled.
The unions
There must be about a dozen serious problems there, identified by the Home Affairs Committee and by John Vine. Problems which affect border security and the safety of the Olympics. Political problems. Public administration problems. Constitutional problems. Technology problems.

And the unions choose this moment to call a hopeless strike and thereby divert attention from them all?

There's still time to call it off. Call it off and engage public sympathy.

Call it off and demand in the public interest that Whitehall get a grip. Demand that Sir Bob Kerslake, head of the home civil service, sort out the mess left behind by Sir Gus now Lord O'Donnell and Sir David Normington.

Demand that the Home Office stop wasting hundreds of millions of pounds of public money on technology that doesn't work and concentrate instead on border security and the safety of the Olympics. Which means adequate staffing and rational procedures. Make John Vine's job easier, not harder.

Work with the Home Affairs Committee, don't hinder them. Demand that the Home Office recognise that they operate in a democracy where they owe their duty to Parliament.


Cribsheet – money:
According to the March 2012 issue of the staff magazine, the contractors involved with IABS are IBM, Morpho, Fujitsu, Atos Origin and Software AG.

Overseas visa application checks – the work the Home Affairs Committee think should be done by UKBA "entry clearance officers" face to face – are carried out by VF Worldwide and CSC. What we are paying VF Worldwide and CSC for is to all intents and purposes stamp-collecting.

CSC also have a contract with the Identity & Passport Service, another "agency" of the Home Office, to produce ePassports, a product on which passport-holders are over-charged to the tune of about £300 million p.a.

Source: http://data.gov.uk/dataset/financial-transactions-data-ho:
Amount paid by the Home Office to contractors in respect of the given contracts
between 10 May 2010 and 29 February 2012
Contract: IABS
IBM
186,080,338.56
Morpho
965,497.45
Fujitsu
16,370,966.15
Atos Origin
44,184,946.31
Software AG
170,126.02
Contract: eBorders
VF Worldwide
78,303,369.55
CSC
45,753,757.18
Contract: ePassports
CSC
112,273,070.86
Total:
£484,102,072.08
Heathrow to raise landing fees to pay for more border staff, we read in the Guardian. A brilliant idea.

That way the Whitehall officials can carry on working on useless biometrics projects, we can carry on paying the contractors to provide useless biometrics products, Dame Helen can carry on laying off Border Force staff and replacing them with useless technology, and everyone's happy – with the possible exception of the fare-paying public, onto whom the additional landing fees will be passed in the form of increased ticket prices. But who cares about them?

Alternatively, we could just cancel the useless biometrics bits of IABS, eBorders and ePassports, use the money saved to pay for the additional Border Force staff needed, if any, and let the public keep the balance, on the principle that we know how we want to spend our money better than Whitehall.

Chaos at Heathrow, border security in doubt, safety of the Olympics threatened – and the unions call a strike?

Later this week, the UK Border Agency are due to go on strike.

If they do, the strike won't improve the ghastly economic situation the UK finds itself in and it won't improve UKBA's reputation with the public. All the strike will achieve is to provide opportunities for hollow laughter at jokes along the lines of how can you tell that UKBA are on strike, what difference does it make if they're working ...

At some point, hours or days after the strike has started, it will stop. And the public impression will be that there is an industrial relations problem at UKBA.

Which there may well be.

But there is also a more fundamental problem at UKBA, a problem that won't be solved by arbitration and which will persist even when the strike is over – the senior Whitehall management of UKBA appears to be irremediably incompetent.

A strike would be welcomed by Theresa May, Damian Green, Helen Ghosh and Rob Whiteman. The greatest present the unions could give them, an unexpected relief, they would think that Christmas had come early.

By focusing the public's attention on pay and pensions, the strike will divert attention from the impression that the management is hopelessly out of its depth and it will thereby to some extent let them off the hook. The unions are making a mistake. The strike, if it happens, will delay the solution to the problem of management failure at UKBA and make that solution harder to achieve.

Friday 4 May 2012

Francis Maude seeks future in Estonia

Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken poses
for the Brave New World Tourist Authority
Last time it was California, the Granola state, take away the nuts and the fruits and you're still left with the flakes.

Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken trundled Francis Maude round the creators of the brave new world, including Google, where the unfortunate minister was walked through the new identity ecosystem, whatever that means, please see The behaviour of the Cabinet Office is infantile.

This time it's Estonia. In his blog post Estonia’s technology economy and online service provision- back to the future? the ex-Guardian man explains: "We saw how Estonia had devised an Identity system which works for them, and we left with a keen understanding of how all this underpins the culture and economic growth".

A delightful country by all accounts where everything is computerised and in the cloud. So much so that Estonia was brought to its knees in 2007 by nothing more than a DDoS attack, a distributed denial of service attack. (This fact is currently the subject of Guardian revisionism, How tiny Estonia stepped out of USSR's shadow to become an internet titan. It remains a fact.)

That is the glorious future envisaged for our knees by ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, now a Colonel in the feared Kabinet Offiski's Government Digital Service (GDS), who tweets "I think I may stay in Estonia forever. Which may be good news at GDS....". Please ...

Has Francis Maude fallen for it?

Francis Maude seeks future in Estonia

Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken poses
for the Brave New World Tourist Authority
Last time it was California, the Granola state, take away the nuts and the fruits and you're still left with the flakes.

Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken trundled Francis Maude round the creators of the brave new world, including Google, where the unfortunate minister was walked through the new identity ecosystem, whatever that means, please see The behaviour of the Cabinet Office is infantile.

This time it's Estonia. In his blog post Estonia’s technology economy and online service provision- back to the future? the ex-Guardian man explains: "We saw how Estonia had devised an Identity system which works for them, and we left with a keen understanding of how all this underpins the culture and economic growth".

A delightful country by all accounts where everything is computerised and in the cloud. So much so that Estonia was brought to its knees in 2007 by nothing more than a DDoS attack, a distributed denial of service attack. (This fact is currently the subject of Guardian revisionism, How tiny Estonia stepped out of USSR's shadow to become an internet titan. It remains a fact.)

That is the glorious future envisaged for our knees by ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, now a Colonel in the feared Kabinet Offiski's Government Digital Service (GDS), who tweets "I think I may stay in Estonia forever. Which may be good news at GDS....". Please ...

Has Francis Maude fallen for it?

Monday 23 April 2012

Cloud computing – told you so

It's happened to Iran. Twice now. If Francis Maude and others have their way, it will happen to the UK.

The Guardian:-


Iranian oil ministry hit by cyber-attack



Iran's main oil export terminal is cut off from internet after apparent attack on website and communications systems


Saeed Kamali Dehghan
guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 April 2012 17.10 BST


Iran's oil ministry has called a crisis meeting after its main website and internal communications system were hit by an apparent cyber-attack that forced authorities to cut off the country's oil export terminal from the internet.

Local news agencies reported on Monday that a virus had struck the computer and communication systems of Iran's main oil export facilities on Kharg Island as well as the internal network and the websites of its oil ministry and subsidiary organisations.

The semi-official Mehr news agency quoted ministry officials as saying an investigation was under way. "We are making plans to neutralise this cyber-attack," said the deputy oil minister in charge of civil defence, Hamdollah Mohammadnejad ...


• Reuters: Suspected cyber attack hits Iran oil industry
• Wall Street Journal: Cyber-Attack Targets Iran Oil, But Exports Normal
• DMossEsq: Cloud computing is bonkers or, as HMG put it, a "no-brainer"


Iran can't protect its main oil refinery from cyber attack. Even Iran. Even its main oil refinery. Dependence on the web seems ill-advised.

Meanwhile HM Government is planning to move all its data into the "cloud", G-Cloud, the government cloud, i.e. the web. That seems equally ill-advised.

Shall we ask HMG please to explain themselves? Can they tell us what Francis Maude, Ian Watmore, Andy Nelson, Chris Chant and Denise McDonagh know that  Iran's top scientists operating on a permanent war footing don't know?

Maybe there's a good answer.

If not, would they please stop this imprudent waste of public money, cancel G-Cloud, cancel IdA, stop playing with techie toys and get on with the job they're paid to do, viz. competent public administration?

Cloud computing – told you so

It's happened to Iran. Twice now. If Francis Maude and others have their way, it will happen to the UK.

The Guardian:-


Iranian oil ministry hit by cyber-attack



Iran's main oil export terminal is cut off from internet after apparent attack on website and communications systems


Saeed Kamali Dehghan
guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 April 2012 17.10 BST


Iran's oil ministry has called a crisis meeting after its main website and internal communications system were hit by an apparent cyber-attack that forced authorities to cut off the country's oil export terminal from the internet.

Local news agencies reported on Monday that a virus had struck the computer and communication systems of Iran's main oil export facilities on Kharg Island as well as the internal network and the websites of its oil ministry and subsidiary organisations.

The semi-official Mehr news agency quoted ministry officials as saying an investigation was under way. "We are making plans to neutralise this cyber-attack," said the deputy oil minister in charge of civil defence, Hamdollah Mohammadnejad ...


• Reuters: Suspected cyber attack hits Iran oil industry
• Wall Street Journal: Cyber-Attack Targets Iran Oil, But Exports Normal
• DMossEsq: Cloud computing is bonkers or, as HMG put it, a "no-brainer"


Iran can't protect its main oil refinery from cyber attack. Even Iran. Even its main oil refinery. Dependence on the web seems ill-advised.

Meanwhile HM Government is planning to move all its data into the "cloud", G-Cloud, the government cloud, i.e. the web. That seems equally ill-advised.

Shall we ask HMG please to explain themselves? Can they tell us what Francis Maude, Ian Watmore, Andy Nelson, Chris Chant and Denise McDonagh know that  Iran's top scientists operating on a permanent war footing don't know?

Maybe there's a good answer.

If not, would they please stop this imprudent waste of public money, cancel G-Cloud, cancel IdA, stop playing with techie toys and get on with the job they're paid to do, viz. competent public administration?