This first post refers to the story on the BBC website that the e-borders scheme, first started as a project in 2006, has failed to deliver 9 years on.

Airports are reasonably good at registering entrants to the UK, but ports less so.

What really amazes me is the comment from immigration minister James Brokenshire: “The Border Systems Portfolio, in conjunction with a range of programmes across security and law enforcement, is working effectively to keep our citizens safe and our country secure.”

I’m sorry, but words like ‘portfolio’ and ‘a range of programmes’ do not reassure me one little bit! It sounds too much like papering over the cracks.

One of the roots of the problem is the inability of governments (not only in the UK – this applies to other countries too, such as the Netherlands) of not getting IT projects right!

I realise that 200 million journeys a year, involving 600 air, ferry and rail carriers and 30 government agencies, is a giant IT nightmare. However we are talking about the government here – they have the resources to spend on getting this right. When companies like Google – to name but one – are able to cull, sort and store information in order to send back to us what they think we might be interested in (we = users all over the world!), why cannot governments think big enough and create the systems they need?

To hide the inefficiencies of the systems they do have, they then claim that taken as a whole, the complete system works. It seems we really do suffer from an overload of ‘spin’ these days – something I know will come up in this blog again and again!