Oh, great

[webofevil]

Surely the Government’s relationship with IT can’t actually be quite as bad as we all cynically assume. Right?

[A leaked intelligence document posted on a website] was... revealing. It was a message from the head of counter-terrorism policy at the Foreign Office to the prime minister’s special foreign policy and defence adviser, dated 20 September 2000. The summary was startling: a new computer system, called Fortress, which had been designed to distribute material, had proved to be slower than the old paper-based system. It was a plea for returning to old-fashioned methods, if the system couldn’t be fixed. Fortress had gone live 12 months previously, but substantial problems had arisen and the situation had reached a point where lives were being put in danger.

It read:

These problems have been exacerbated for CTPD [Counter-Terrorism Policy Department] because we have attempted (but failed) to use FORTRESS not only as a mechanism to read reports but also in order to take action, particularly where the intelligence has indicated a threat to life.

The core problems were well known, it was argued, as there had been many meetings of a user group and discussion with ‘a succession of consultants’. They were at their wits’ end, it seems, and the man at the Foreign Office was trying to get the word out to the PM...:

the system is less reliable and often slower than paper distribution: there have been a number of occasions when immediate-threat intelligence arrived too late in CTPD, or did not arrive at all, because of technical hitches. We still receive intelligence well after most OGDs [other government departments]. Vital threat telegrams to our missions overseas have been delayed as a result, causing ambassadorial consternation...

The system made ‘crisis-management meetings impossible’ and taking action on reports received via the system was ‘impractical’. The software had in-built printing constraints as a security feature, so it was impossible for a group of people to sit around a meeting table with copies of a report in front of them. It was ‘not in the least user-friendly’, meaning that many hours were wasted by simply trying to gain access to reports. It was estimated that it took five times longer to deal with reports—forty were typically dealt with each day—by computer than it did with the paper system.

It ended by complaining that the Foreign Office understood that there was no prospect of the required modifications being made. It then pointed out that the department had to use three different terminals and five different information-retrieval systems. Its operations were being gummed up by information overload.

7. I appreciate that the office’s IT requirements are not driven by CTPD and that the Board of Management is seeking to optimise FCO systems across the board. But I felt I should warn you that, as far as we in CTPD are concerned, information handling is getting progressively more, not less, difficult.

[Another] document was dated 5 April 2001 and it suggested that the problems still hadn’t been solved. It was a memo by the head of the Balkans desk at the Foreign Office complaining that Fortress reports weren’t reaching him, because officials were presumably avoiding having to use it. ‘I know Fortress is a pig, but somebody in each Section must go through the Section’s material every day,’ he said.

Seeing as major government IT projects are almost guaranteed to go ten times over budget, regardless of which party is in power, the mind boggles at the sums that were being spent on secret computer systems—before and after 9/11. This is no place for an analysis of the vagaries of public procurement methods, mainly because it’s very boring, but the important point to make is that the documents confirmed people’s gut feeling that the wheels of officialdom were as rusty as we might have supposed.

GCHQ might have been sucking in the raw material like nobody’s business, but the process of distribution downstream of that was slower than sending papers in the internal post. The introduction of new technology in this case meant a quantum leap backwards in time. It’s simply baffling, unless we’re looking at some kind of wilful institutional technophobia within the Civil Service.

Neil Doyle, Terror Base UK

Comments

[pipistrellus.livejournal.com]

Hahahaa! The picture is great!

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Seconded. It even has an "O" before the "FFS".

[ex-cornfedpi814.livejournal.com]

It's almost like you don't appreciate what IT brings to the world.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Something at gut level tells me that anyone who can slip "ambassadorial consternation" into a communique is going to have trouble with a toaster, never mind a recalcitrant laser-guided secure system which can blow your nuts off if you press the wrong key.

They should just get me in to redesign this stuff.

[internetsdairy.livejournal.com]

I don't know how you resisted emboldening ambassadorial consternation.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

The "ambassadorial consternation" refers particularly to the awkward situation when urgent messages warning of a credible, imminent threat by bin Laden to attack NATO headquarters in Brussels arrived, thanks to Fortress, late. To the layman, that may seem like a fairly bad state of affairs. If, however, I were an IT consultant or a senior figure in the government, it would clearly be an entirely acceptable system and I would recommend extra large bonuses for everyone responsible.

[ex-cornfedpi814.livejournal.com]

GIGO