By Sylvia Carr, 7 February 2007 00:02
NEWS
The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) has completed the launch of ePassports on time and on budget but question marks still surround several aspects of the project, including how defective chips on the electronic documents will be dealt with.
A report from the National Audit Office (NAO) on ePassports said the IPS has "successfully completed the project" with a total set-up cost of £61m, just under the budget of £63m.
But the report highlights uncertainties about the warranty for the chips used on the ePassports. The chips have a two-year warranty from Philips Semiconductors - now known as NXP - though the passports are issued for 10 years.
The IPS will remedy any problems during this warranty period, according to the NAO report. In addition, any passports returned to the agency will be examined and if the chip is found to have a manufacturing fault, the passport will be replaced free of charge at any time.
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But for other types of faults relating to the chip there are no assurances about who will pay for the replacement of defective passports.
A spokesman for the NAO said: "This is certainly a risk for the passport service. The question is: who will foot the bill?"
An IPS spokesman said the agency is "confident it won't be a problem" because of the "rigorous testing" of the biometric technology.
The agency said in a statement: "IPS will continue to work with both existing and new suppliers of the biometric assembly to improve the warranty on this assembly as market confidence grows."
While ePassports are now being issued at all passport offices they will not be put into action until appropriate readers are available at UK borders - which is scheduled to happen by March this year. The NAO said there was "insufficient liaison" between the IPS and the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, the agency responsible for upgrading readers at borders.
The NAO also criticised the IPS' reliance on consultants - on which it spent £4.9m - for the ePassport project. It said the IPS should "reduce its reliance on consultants and interim staff and devote greater attention to knowledge transfer".
It also recommended civil servants be used in non-technical roles such as project management and analysis in future - a move it said could save £2.5m over the next five years.
Further discussion on ePassports will take place on 27 February when IPS representatives appear before a Public Accounts Committee hearing.
Comments
There are 12 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Currently renewing my passport and the forms appear to be much easier to complete but the fee, for doing it yourself, is £66.00. If you use the Post Office recommended 'Check & Send' service you'd have to pay £90.00. Only to now be advised that it might not work for more than 2 years. What happens if you are abroad and it fails, the possible horrors don't bear thinking about.
2. Tony Darby
So they are going to examine returned chips for manufacturing faults are they. Just how are they going to do this economically. Are they really going to de pot, de bond, and examine each layer of he chips?. No, I suspect if it does not read they will blame the user.
3. Martin Petty
If a project is delivered on time and within budget I usually regard that as a result of good project management. To use civil service project management may well 'save' £2.5M in consultancy costs but at what cost? 50% overuns and several years late are not unheard of in the public sector.
NAO ought to be congratulating ISP and asking them and other ministries to repeat the successful formula. Make delivery and on time and on budget a habit.
4. Steve
How will pasport holders know that the chip is defective? Probably not until they get turned away at customs after spending their saving on a holiday of a lifetime!
5. Graham Coles
Almost 5 million pounds on consultants, presumably not one of which told them that rfid was readable from a distance and that using the passports own readable data for the encryption key was tantamount to having no encryption at all.
Money well spent?
6. Nick Cole
Non technical project managers for a technical project. Now there's an innovation guaranteed to meet neither the technical objectives nor the budgets.
Look at Holyrood! A non-technical team of politicians and civil servants masterminded that slight cost and time over-run.
Non technical people will always lack the understanding of the ramifications of introducing a new product, and inevitably make shortcuts. It was the non-technical drive to introduce technical passports that ensured that chip reliability would be an issue. And then presumably they'll expect us to pay to replace their faulty and immature components.
Why not have non-medical doctors and non-accountant bankers, or non-mechanical car mechanics, etc.
This suggestion is nothing more than the traditional British disdain towards those who have practical skills, knowledge and expertise, prefering instead those who can administer, pontificate and keep their hands clean, withno experience of life.
7. Nick Cole
No they haven't come in on budget at all. All that statement means is that they have spent what they were allocated and decided to cut short on the trivial matter of making the technology reliable enough.
Another government technology farce in the making, which will be followed up by the insincere 'we will learn lessons' mantra. Senior civil servants, politicians and administrators learning that they are not foolproof? I think not.
8. anonymous
10 year passports with 2 year guaranteed chips? I couldn't believe it when I saw it on the TV News this morning. Even the speaker (who I think was from the NAO) sniggered as she spoke about it. Another own goal for our technophobic PM & his Band of Incompetants, another nail in his coffin, another dark stain on his 'legacy'.
9. galley slave#41
Have we not been telling them so!
HA HA HA HA HA HA!
GIVE IT UP YOU JERKS!
10. Al
What about the poor bas*%!ard who is prevented (perhaps after a exhausting 12-hr flight) from entering a country where s/he is travelling to an important business meeting and arrested or detained for travelling with an ePassport with a faulty chip and is suspected by 'the authorities' of travelling illegally??? It's absolutely no good for gov'ts to say, 'oh, just send in your faulty passport and we'll fix the faulty chip it!' Will all ambassadors round the world be on 24/7 call in case of an incorrectly 'accused' traveller who needs his/her ID proven immediately? Would an embassy or consulate be able to do that? Would they issue a 'good' replacement ePassport on-the-spot (for further onward travel)? Who pays for the loss of business if that traveller is forced to fly all the way back home without ever having attended his/her meeting and who has now 'lost the deal' ??? Another gov't IT project completely SNAFU'ed! Will these gov't IT numpties never LEARN?!
11. anonymous
On time and on budget are only two key indicators of the success of a project the third one is the quality of what is delivered. Well done on the firest two. With regards to the third it seems that the discrepancy between the lifetime of a passport and that of a chip may have been "quality" oversight.
12. Radical Meldrew
I comfort myself with the thought that even at 2 years, my passport will probably outlive the present government and their osessive regime.