Articles about Home Office
Home Office: It's an EMERGENCY! We need proper comms
The Home Office is seeking suppliers for its Emergency Services Network contract, part of moves to replace the incumbent gaffe-prone £2.9bn Airwave contract due to expire in 2016.
Contracts will be awarded in 2015 for radio, television, communication, telecommunication and related equipment, with the new ESN will going live from …
Home Office: Fancy flogging us some SECRET SPY GEAR?
The Home Office is seeking suppliers for a £20m contract for a "bespoke tracking and surveillance system" for all law enforcement agencies.
The tender for surveillance, security systems and devices also includes software "to meet the specific and unique operational requirements of a covert surveillance systems."
Suppliers will …
More Home Office and MoJ jobs could move abroad, union warns
Jobs at the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office could be next in line to be offshored to India, the PCS union has warned, with both departments joining a £1bn shared services venture with outsourcing giant Steria.
The Shared Services Connected (SSCL) joint venture, in which Steria owns a 75 per cent stake and the Cabinet …
Home Office threw £347m in the bin on failed asylum processing IT project
The Home Office frittered away hundreds of millions of taxpayer pounds on a botched tech project designed to manage immigration and asylum applications, a National Audit Office report has revealed.
The "flagship" IT programme, the Immigration Case Work computer system, was launched in 2010 to replace fragmented systems and pull …
Home Office terminates order for 16,000 PCs from Dell
The Home Office gave Dell just a fortnight to custom build 16,000 PCs but an admin cockup led to the order being shelved, and it is not clear if it will be re-tendered.
A mini-auction took place in the first week of March with a build and delivery date set for the end of the month. Most of the tier ones competed on the deal but …
Who fancies a billion-quid bonanza? Just flog the Home Office some shiny walkie-talkies
The UK Home Office is touting a mega contract worth up to £1.2bn to build a next-generation comms network for Blighty's brave emergency services.
Led by the Crime and Policing Group, under the auspices of the Emergency Services Mobile Communications programme, the new system must provide voice calls and wireless broadband …
Home Office clumsily LEAKS data of 1,598 immigrants, blames 'transparency'
The Home Office has embarrassingly coughed to accidentally leaking the personal details of 1,598 immigrants.
Applicants in the “family returns” process had some of their personal data exposed online for nearly a fortnight, immigration minister Mark Harper admitted in a written statement to Parliament on Thursday.
He blamed the …
GOV.UK's criminal record check IT job blow: Home Office snubs new design
More rumblings of conflict between the Cabinet Office's Government Digital Service - the team creating trendy GOV.UK - and other mandarins were heard echoing around Whitehall last night.
Late on Tuesday, the Cabinet Office slipped out a statement in which it buried the news that GDS has suffered two significant blows.
It said …
Home Office boffins slip out passport-scanning Android app
Android owners with NFC handsets can now read their passports with an official Home Office app - and civil servants want to know what other features could be added to it.
UK passports have had chips in them since 2006, containing a digital version of the photograph and other details, all cryptographically signed. Phones equipped …
Home Office launches £4m cyber security awareness scheme
The UK Home Office has launched a new £4m information security awareness campaign, designed to educate businesses and consumers about rising hacker threats. The first stage of the campaign is due to get underway in the autumn.
The scheme will sit alongside other more established information security initiatives, such as Get Safe …
Watchdog drags Home Office to naughty step for dragging feet on FOIs
The Home Office may face sanctions if it fails again to reply to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests on time, the Information Commissioner warned today.
The department - run by Home Secretary Theresa May - will be monitored by the watchdog to see how fast it responds to FOIs received between 1 July and 30 September this year …
CRINGE! Home Office wants to know whether your boss BEATS YOU
Tech suppliers wading through the government's latest bizarre 150-page online questionnaire are asking if the folks in the public sector are smoking something – other than taxpayers' money, anyway.
The Supplier Information Database (SID) for Government is designed to give buyers across public sector access to information on …
Home Office opens up anonymised crime data API
Crime-conscious citizens can now view the raw data behind official stats website police.uk after the Home Office made the data freely available to download.
The police.uk site, which got off to a shaky start at its 2011 launch, offers policing and crime information for local areas, as well as a Google Maps-based visualisation of …
Apple's Mr Havisham: Tim Cook says dead Steve Jobs' office has remained untouched
Despite Apple cofounder Steve Jobs being dead nearly three years now, current Apple CEO Tim Cook has left Jobs' fourth-floor office at Apple untouched since his passing, a new interview has revealed.
Cook made the revelation during a wide-ranging talk with broadcaster Charlie Rose that will air on the PBS TV network in the US …
ICO probes Home Office refusal to reveal Snooper's Charter details
The Home Office could face legal action over its failure to explain the "Request Filter" system buried in its Communications Data Bill.
That's the draft law that allows spooks and cops to massively ramp up surveillance of British citizens online.
Critics have already lambasted the cryptically named “Request Filter” agency, …
L33t haxxors compete to p0wn popular home routers
Gird your loins router-makers: a throng of hackers are set to pry apart your woefully insecure hardware in a competition to expose bad firmware and hard-coded credentials.
The competition will take place at the DEF CON 22 conference and glories in the name "SOHOpelessly Broken". The event is the brainchild of the Electronic …
Microsoft tries to sell home Office users on subscription pricing
Updated
Microsoft has unveiled its first attempt to seduce consumers into paying subscription pricing for its Office 365 package.
For $99.99 a year, buyers get the Office 365 Home Premium, which gives them a license to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access applications on five computers in the home. …
Home Office spunks another £12.8m on face recog tech
The Home Office is offering £12.8m for new facial recognition technology according to a tender notice from Home Office Procurement published on 12 June.
The new multi-million pound face scanners would be used to determine an applicant's right to a British passport: and must be able to compare the biometric data extracted from …
Don't fret over SOHO routers and Heartbleed. But yeah, there's LOADS to fear on home kit
The infamous Heartbleed bug doesn't affect home routers in practice, according to new analysis by security researchers at TripWire.
The infosec vendor nevertheless warned that "critical security flaws" are "endemic" to small office/home office (SOHO) routers.
TripWire came to this conclusion after revisiting earlier research on …
Home Office doc 'not qualified' to assess McKinnon suicide risk
Computer hacker Gary McKinnon has refused to be assessed for suicide risk by a Home Office appointed doctor, because the doctor chosen had no experience of patients with Aspergers, his mother Janis Sharp told BBC local radio today.
McKinnon, who hacked into US government computers in 2002, has Asperger's syndrome. The 46 year- …
Government locked into £330m Oracle contract until 2016
The Home Office is locked into a £330m mega-contract with Oracle and Fujitsu until 2016 – despite recent moves to slash costs by shifting its ERP system into a shared services centre run by French mega-integrator Steria, according to a Freedom of Information response.
The contract was signed in 2009 for an Oracle E-Business …
Home Office denies reports of e-Borders closure
The Home Office has said that reports of the e-Borders programme being closed are incorrect and that it is still up and running.
Earlier this week it was reported in sources including The Scotsman and This Is London that the programme had been dropped as part of the effort, led by the Cabinet Office, to find major savings on IT …
Home Office appoints Brokenshire as security minister
James Brokenshire has taken over as the UK's security and counter-terrorism minister following the resignation of Baroness Neville-Jones on Monday.
Brokenshire, a former banker and Conservative MP since 2005, was previously parliamentary under secretary for crime reduction before receiving his promotion this week. The crime …
Home Office farms out tech deal worth £40m
The Home Office has tendered for a range of services worth £40m as part of the Employers' Checking Service (ECS), including a web-based interface, data storage, biometric chip reading technology and related support services.
The ECS is run by the UK Border Agency to enable employers to check the status of individuals to work.
A …
Most of Home Office's savings scored from haggling over ICT deals
The majority of procurement cost savings in the Home Office for the third quarter of 2011-12 came from ICT, according to its permanent secretary Dame Helen Ghosh.
According to a report by the Home Affairs committee, Ghosh said that the £24.2m came in particular from the purchase of hardware, software and ongoing support. The …
Home automation while it's hot: Winter warmth for lazy technophiles
Breaking Fad
Home is not just a place for the family; it's also becoming a place that tech companies are fighting over as they scramble to develop home automation equipment for lazy savvy suburbanites.
Video clip of TV sitcom character Frank Spencer catastrophically failing to engage with an automated home. 1980s vintage clip.
Of course, …
Home Office 'technologically clueless' on web super-snoop law
Scrambling for Safety 2012
Computer experts, politicos, civil liberty campaigners and even a retired top cop universally agreed yesterday that the Home Office's real-time mass internet surveillance plan demonstrated just how "clueless" Theresa May's govt department is on implementing such a system.
Speaking at the Scrambling for Safety event at the London …
Curious to know if the UK's Tory-led government is a MEGA SPY? Answer: Yes
It was revealed this week that Britain's surveillance of our online and telephone activity rocketed since the Tories and Lib Dems formed a Coalition government in 2010.
Home Office minister James Brokenshire published the figures on Thursday in response to a question from the chair of the cross-party home affairs select …
Home Office faces £500m demand in e-Borders sacking
Raytheon and the Home Office are in talks as the department tries to stop the company suing for unfair breach of contract over its sacking from the e-borders programme last year.
At the time, the e-borders agency said it had no confidence in the company. Immigration minister Damian Green said: "The government is determined to …
Gov.UK annual IT spend edges down... to £4.3 BEEELLION
Government IT costs edged down by 8.5 per cent across the nine biggest Whitehall spenders to £4.3bn for 2013/14 compared with the previous year.
Back office systems account for the lion's share of running costs, with more than 80 per cent of IT budgets going on this area, according to El Reg's analysis of government spending …
Social networks likely to snub Home Office in riot confab
The Home Secretary is expected to face fierce opposition from popular social network outfits today when she will ask them to consider restricting access to individuals in the aftermath of unrest in England earlier this month.
Theresa May is meeting with wonks from Blackberry, Facebook and Twitter, following evidence that, …
Thieves steal more iPhones than any other handset, warns UK government
Apple iPhone owners in England and Wales are the most likely group of citizens to have their handsets snatched by thieves, the UK government warned today.
Whitehall published its first Mobile Phone Theft Ratio report (PDF) on Sunday morning. It comes after Home Secretary Theresa May said earlier this week that the government …
Cops accessing journo sources with RIPA? Use your powers properly, moan MPs
MPs calling on an overhaul of the eight-year-old communications data guidance for UK cops and spooks who use snooping measures have accused the Tory-led government of missing its own review target.
The Home Office rebutted the criticism this morning by promising to publish a revised RIPA (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act) …
Home Office to review future of Sprint ii framework
The Home Office will review the controversial Sprint ii procurement framework once the newly created police ICT company is up and running next spring, giving hope to many suppliers that blue light business will be back in their future.
The government mandated police purchasing heads in England and Wales to buy low-end IT kit via …
Fujitsu leads Home Office supplier spending
The Home Office paid Fujitsu Services £136m in 2009-10, with CSC, Atos and Raytheon among other major suppliers.
Figures released by the Home Office to Kable under Freedom of Information have revealed the department's largest supplier of any kind in the 2009-10 financial year was an IT firm, but also that it splits its …
Lawmakers should grab red pen and let it RIPA on snoops law – experts
Legal experts have called for a full legislative review of the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) that goes "far beyond" updates to the codes of practice governing its use.
This week the Home Office published a code of practice for the use of covert surveillance under RIPA, and on Tuesday it also …
Home Office passport fraud sweep flops
The Home Office security upgrade scheme to catch passport fraudsters through face-to-face interviews has bagged just eight potential 'Jackals'.
The project, requiring first-time passport applicants to attend interviews with officials from the Identity and Passport Service (IPS), launched in 2007 and has resulted in no …
Home Secretary to decide on McKinnon extradition by October
The UK Home Secretary is due to decide by mid-October whether or not to order Gary McKinnon's extradition to the US, a hearing at the High Court heard on Tuesday.
The hearing followed a decision by McKinnon and his legal team to decline to undergo a Home Office medical test by a doctor, Professor Thomas Fahy, whom McKinnon's …
e-Borders fiasco: Brits stung for £224m after US IT giant sues UK govt
Brit taxpayers face a £224m bill in cancellation fees after the UK government scrapped a £750m contract for a passenger-checking computer system at its borders.
The contract for the e-Borders IT project, which is supposed to scrutinize the identities of people entering the country, was signed in 2007, back when the Labour Party …
Office for Android and iOS to ship by March 2013?
A product manager for Microsoft's Czech division may have let the cat out of the bag on Wednesday – almost – when he announced that versions of Microsoft Office for Android and iOS devices may ship as early as the first quarter of next year.
After spotting a report on the Czech site IHNED, The Verge was first to cite Microsoft …
Home Office signs £430m contract extensions
The Home Office is spending £330m with Fujitsu and £100m with Atos Origin to extend existing deals with the two companies.
The agreements, signed on 8 October 2009, will extend the Home Office's £550m Sirius contract with Fujitsu and the UK Borders Agency's £250m contract with Atos Origin.
Some 24,000 users across the Home …
EU, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft: We'll fight terrorists... with WORKSHOPS
The EU, and several of the world's biggest and most powerful tech companies, made little progress in finding ways to combat terrorists' use of online media, following a meeting and dinner on Wednesday night.
EU government ministers met Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft representatives.
Although terrorist groups (most …
Home Office unveils new UK passport
The Home Office has said that new UK passports with 'strengthened security features' will be issued from October.
To make the passports more secure, the chip which stores the holder's details has been moved to the inside of the passport cover so it will no longer be visible, the Home Office said.
The new 10-year passport will …
Foreign Office loses dozens of PCs and smartphones
After other government departments revealed the number of electrical goods they'd left scattered around the pubs and train seats of the country, the Foreign Office has just coughed up the statistics on how many of its gadgets went missing last year.
Since August 2010 Foreign Office bods lost 28 computers and 37 mobiles phones …
Home Office crime maps go to street-level detail
The Home Office has announced the rollout of a new online crime-map service for England and Wales that ministers describe as "more comprehensive than any other scheme" in the world. The new mapping service offers crimes arranged by street, rather than merely by ward or subdistrict as before.
Screengrab of the Home Office crime …
Final decision by Home Sec on McKinnon extradition due today
The Home Secretary is expected to announce whether or not the government will block Gary McKinnon's US extradition in Parliament today.
Theresa May is due to deliver a decision on whether the Scottish sysadmin's medical problems as an Asperger's Syndrome sufferer are sufficiently severe to block extradition. A possible appeal …
Want a customer's call records Mr Plod? No probs
Three of the UK’s four largest mobe networks run automated systems that make customers’ call records readily available to the cops without the need for any human intervention.
EE, Vodafone and Three pass on customer data ‘like a cash machine”, an employee at one phone company told The Guardian.
All operators must store …
Don't buy that phone! It ATTRACTS CRIMINALS, UK.gov will tell people
Home Secretary Theresa May announced this morning that the government plans to publish a mobile phone theft index to help Brits make informed decisions about what handsets to buy, based on which is the least likely to be nicked by wrongdoers.
The cabinet minister revealed the proposal in a speech sploshed with pre-General …
MPs to gaze upon biometric data industry's ID-gobbling tech
The growing use and slurping of biometric data is to be probed by MPs sitting on the UK's science and technology committee this autumn.
An inquiry has been opened following the failure of the Home Office's Iris Recognition Immigration System, which was axed by the Tory-led coalition government in 2012.
Politicos on the panel …
Home Sec to decide Gary McKinnon's fate by 16 October
A timetable has finally been set for the next phase of NASA hacker Gary McKinnon's long-running fight against extradition to the US.
The UK government's Home Secretary Theresa May will decide by 16 October on whether McKinnon's diagnosis as an Asperger's Syndrome sufferer is sufficient to block his extradition, according to his …
