Home Office recruiting senior official to oversee UK border IT systems

Image credit: Steve Parsons/PA Wire/Press Association Images

The Home Office is recruiting a director of borders IT to oversee technology and IT staff working on border controls.

The director’s role, which will pay £130,000, is to implement Border Force’s digital transformation agenda and will involve working with third party suppliers as well as senior staff in the Home Office and security and intelligence agencies.

The position is a broader version of an existing role of director for digital services, which will see the director reporting to Home Office Technology, rather than Border Force.

According to the Home Office, the change reflects the Home Office's plan to bring the full range of IT services under one roof.

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The new director will have oversight of services designed to ease passage into the UK, such as the one that allows approved people to pass through UK borders faster and the network of electronic ePassport gates.

There will also be responsibility for the mobile working of Border Force’s maritime and remote operations and the IT systems that are used to collect information about people leaving the UK.

The job specification stresses the importance of the role's responsibility for the £307m Digital Services at the Border programme to update old border security systems, which was recently rated as ‘amber-red’ by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, meaning that successful delivery of the project is in doubt.

The project, which began in February 2014 and is due to end in March 2019, aims to replace the Warnings Index system – used to run checks against individuals of interest to UK authorities – and Semaphone – used to gather data on flights to the UK.

Since the IPA’s assessment – which was carried out in September, but announced earlier this month – the Home Office said that it had been directing more efforts to validating the forecast delivery timetables, but that it remained on-track for its pilot phase.

The move to bring all of the Home Office's borders IT systems under one roof follows critical reports on the Home Office’s management of border technology services, particularly those around e-borders.

In December 2015, the National Audit Office published a damning report into the Home Office’s e-borders programme, which collected, recorded and analysed information on people entering and leaving the UK.

Then, in April 2016, the Public Accounts Committee said that the Home Office was “complacent” and had failed to take responsibility for e-Borders.