Public Accounts Commitee March 28th and Immigration

Watching this commitee in action, in this case with Dame Helen Ghosh, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, and Matthew Coates and Jonathan Sedgwich of the UK Borders Agency, it is to some extent surprising how few there are of members on this committee. It is however, well chaired by Margaret Hodge and you have the idiosyncratic observations and questioning by Austin Mitchell which is at least amusing. I was a little impressed by the input of Jackie Doyle-Price and also of Stephen Barclay. I was surprised by the lack of confidence and quality of questioning (just looking at basic difference in figures which was explained by them relating to different time periods) by Jo Johnson, who is a younger brother of Boris Johnson. I looked him up on Wikepedia and again with his education and background would have given to a better expectation.

Getting onto this actual event, I am amazed that as usual basic, to me, IT projects are not properly project managed and do not seem to be being delivered in a timescale that I would feel acceptable. The fact that a database upgrade to ensure that immigrants and the timestamps of certain visa agreements is not going to be fully functional until 2013.

If such a project had been broken down and prioritised then I would have expected this to be at least given a higher priority as the burden on the UK Boarders Agency is aligned with, in many cases, employers and sponsorship of employees from overseas and also therefore from outside the EEA.

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