Border Force ‘using obsolete technology amid delays in plan’
B order Force staff are using o u t - o f - d a t e t e c h n o l o g y t o decide who is allowed into the UK after a Home Office plan to upgrade computer systems was delayed by three years, according to a report.
Whitehall's spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO) found the Government depar tment "did not deliver improved digital border systems to its planned timeta - ble of March 2019" which has "increased costs by £173 million and means it continues to rely on legacy technology".
The rollout of the new system has been pushed back to the end of March 2022, the NAO said, adding: "The Home Office has made improvements, but it still faces significant risks in delivering and integrating its new systems against a challenging timetable."
B o r d e r F o r c e i s u s i n g a 2 6 - y e a r - o l d s y s t e m f o r i t s passenger watchlist to check
whether suspects and persons of interest are tr ying to enter the country, while another system which analyses passenger data is 16 years old, according to the findings.
The depar tment set out to u p g r a d e t h e o l d c o mp u t e r systems in 2014 because they were "increasingly expensive", difficult to maintain and unfit for work to be carried out in the future.
Improvements were intended to provide UK Border Force staff with "better information to make decisions about people crossing the border and to track goods entering and exiting the UK," the NAO said.
But the plan lacked a time - table and clear objectives as well as a budget. The amount of work needing to b e done was also underestimated by the Home Office, according to the body.
In July last year, the Home Office updated the plan as it worked to tighten control over who enters the UK and decided to delay its introduction by three years, adding hundreds of millions of pounds to the bill for the work.
The department "estimates that the net impact of its failure to deliver the programme by the end of March 2019 as originally planned is an additional cost of £173 million," the NAO said.
The rep or t also warned of technical problems with the H o me O f f i c e ' s n e w s y s t e m to moni to r t h e watc h l i s t o f suspects and people of interest, which will check details against electronic visas.