Theresa May plays a familiar part in the farce of border control 4


Simon Jenkins writes in the Guardian about the eBorders database, in the context of the Home Office’s recently-announced reorganisation of the Border Agency:

As central government has burgeoned, ministers have been content with success but find blame ever harder to accept. They respond to failure not by streamlining their departments and directing resources to the frontline, but by the opposite. They hire consultants, reorganise departments and agencies and spend billions on computers. Well-publicised fiascos over the NHS computer, the ID card computer, the passports computer, the farm payments computer and innumerable defence computers make the postwar groundnuts scandal look small beer. One report last year suggested that computer failure had wasted taxpayers £26bn since 2000. The incompetence is stupendous, yet there has been no audit, no accountability, no halt to crazy procurement.

A classic was the fate of the Home Office’s “e-Borders” computer, sold by Raytheon to a gullible Jacqui Smith as home secretary in 2007. A billion pounds was blown, scanning took up to 80% longer, and there were doubts about legality. The government “lost confidence” and axed the contract in 2010, with a £500m dispute about fees. Again, there has been no apparent audit of the loss. If this was Greece we would have Germans crawling all over us.

Computer Weekly reported in 2009 that under a third of government computers are completed to anything like the original form. Yet ministers continue to buy them. Computers are the utopian answer to the ambitions of centralising ministers. No matter that they cannot deliver the subtleties of human discretion required of public servants in the “post-digital” age.

Borders can’t be made impermeable by computer. Efficient control must rely on the judgment of frontline staff, and supervisors who can permit risk. They will not permit risk if being sacked, reorganised and second-guessed by distant ministers when things go wrong. Airport queues will just get longer.


4 thoughts on “Theresa May plays a familiar part in the farce of border control

  • Tom Welsh

    While Simon Jenkins’ heart and mind are, as usual, in the right place, this extract highlights what looks like appalling ignorance of IT. Like so many other journalists and politicians, he seems to believe that Raytheon sold “a computer” to Jacqui Smith. A computer that cost over £1 billion!

    Of course, what he means is “a computer-based system”, most of whose cost lies in collecting requirements, analyzing specifications, design, and repeated coding exercises. The hardware – including hundreds or thousands of computers – and “commercial off-the-shelf” (COT) software presumably accounts for only a small fraction of the total cost.

    And the main reason why so many “political” computer systems fail to be implemented successfully as that – just as with other government schemes – there is never any final, determinate set of requirements. No sooner has work got underway than the politicians and civil servants are meddling, trying to change the requirements – as any IT-literate person knows, the perfect way of making sure that nothing will ever be accomplished.

  • Tom Welsh

    While Simon Jenkins’ heart and mind are, as usual, in the right place, this extract highlights what looks like appalling ignorance of IT. Like so many other journalists and politicians, he seems to believe that Raytheon sold “a computer” to Jacqui Smith. A computer that cost over £1 billion!

    Of course, what he means is “a computer-based system”, most of whose cost lies in collecting requirements, analyzing specifications, design, and repeated coding exercises. The hardware – including hundreds or thousands of computers – and “commercial off-the-shelf” (COT) software presumably accounts for only a small fraction of the total cost.

    And the main reason why so many “political” computer systems fail to be implemented successfully as that – just as with other government schemes – there is never any final, determinate set of requirements. No sooner has work got underway than the politicians and civil servants are meddling, trying to change the requirements – as any IT-literate person knows, the perfect way of making sure that nothing will ever be accomplished.

  • Ian Russell

    And long may they continue with their meddling and indecision with the consequence of failure of these systems. That is what has so often defeated the orignal purpose of these dreadful schemes.

    It is a pity about the cost although if this led to public outrage and the downfall of the perpetrators it might be money well spent. Unfortunately this does not happen due to public apathy.

  • Ian Russell

    And long may they continue with their meddling and indecision with the consequence of failure of these systems. That is what has so often defeated the orignal purpose of these dreadful schemes.

    It is a pity about the cost although if this led to public outrage and the downfall of the perpetrators it might be money well spent. Unfortunately this does not happen due to public apathy.

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