The ongoing crisis in UK passport offices is an early instance of a Y2K problem, according to TaskForce 2000, the independent UK watchdog. Although representatives of Siemens and the UK Passport Agency have denied a link between the failure of a new computerized passport issuing system and the millennium bug, the TaskForce group has pointed out that part of the raison d’etre for installing the new system was to ensure Y2K compliance. The UK government agency’s decision to forge ahead with the product so close to the Y2K event threshold is exactly the kind of action the group has been warning against.
According to Ian Hugo, a TaskForce director, the Passport Agency problem confirms what we have been expecting. In the run up to 2000, TaskForce had warned that Y2K compliance projects which involved new systems posed a risk in their own right. The group had recommended that organizations freeze new developments in the months leading up to the millennium, and instead do what they could to check the integrity of existing systems.
The UK Passport Agency is now faced with a backlog of 566,000 outstanding passport applications, and is already faced with a bill for compensation from about 100 people that have had to cancel vacation plans because the agency failed to issue their passports in time (CI No 3,694).
Ironically, TaskForce 2000 smelled a rat earlier in the year, when its report The Public Sector and the Year 2000 Problem…Crisis or Calm, noted that the Passport Agency’s PASS project had already slipped against its March delivery date. Presciently, the report warned that anyone going on holiday should apply for their passport early.
