The national identity scheme (NIS) stands or falls on biometrics (It is time for privacy debates to grow up, governmentinsider.computing.co.uk).

If the biometrics are reliable, the NIS could work. Take away the biometrics, and there is nothing left. ID cards, biometric visas and e-passports would be no better than any other fallible forms of identification.
What biometrics are on offer? The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) offered three: facial geometry, fingerprints and iris prints. These were the subject of the Passport Service biometrics enrolment trial.

The results are there for all to see. Thirty-one per cent of able-bodied participants could not prove their identity on the basis of facial geometry; 19 per cent could not prove who they were on the basis of their fingerprints; and 10 per cent could not even register their iris prints in the first place, let alone use them to prove who they were.

Furthermore, for fingerprints there is a 19 per cent false non-match rate - meaning that 19 per cent of people will have trouble proving that they have the right to work in the UK, will have trouble getting state education for their children and non-emergency state healthcare. That is unworkable.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee asked IPS what were the acceptance criteria for fingerprints. The answer - a one per cent false non-match rate. As 19 is greater than one, fingerprints are unacceptable.

That is the conclusion any rational person would draw. But not IPS. It is proceeding with fingerprints. With eyes tight shut and hands over ears and calling detractors hysterical and immature, IPS is going to burn billions of your pounds and mine on a scheme that it knows cannot work.

David Moss

Your article (It is time for privacy debates to grow up, governmentinsider.computing.co.uk) apparently acknowledges that people are entitled to privacy but would rather we didn't make too much of a fuss about it.

It might be less disingenuous to call the real threat of Big Brother hysterical if the government hadn't systematically avoided safeguards against it, wasn't dismantling the Data Protection Act, wasn't constantly being deceitful about the supposed benefits and real threats, was prepared to debate the issue in public, and wasn't building unnecessary and highly abusable databases for our medical files and children.

If we want safeguards against mass surveillance, we can demand them, and then implement them in law.

Dave Gould

In your editorial comment on 6 September you asked: "Is e-invoicing a government issue?"

The simple answer is that the invoice is not just a commercial document, it is also the key document for VAT, which is very much a government concern. With the best of intentions, the European Commission has legislated to allow the use of electronic invoices for VAT purposes.

Unfortunately, implementations across the community are not uniform and, as a result, there is a lack of interoperability. Overcoming this does not need a new IT system, it needs agreement on standardisation between businesses and commercial providers, and the adoption of  a common approach by the various tax authorities in member states.

This is exactly what the Commission's taskforce - made up of industry specialists - has recommended. It is challenging but achievable, and will bring enormous benefits to business throughout Europe.

Tim Lambertstock
VocaLink

Regarding Rob Hindle's letter in the 6 September issue of Computing (UK software prices shiver me timbers, letters.computing.co.uk).

I am an IT manager and have previously bought multiple Adobe software products. I have noticed for years that Adobe prices in the UK are unjustifiably too high compared with the US prices, no matter what the exchange rate at the time. However, with the recent release of Adobe Creative Suite 3, and the continuing decline in the value of the US dollar, this has gone from being merely outrageous to what should be criminal.

I will not be upgrading our existing Adobe software and I will not be buying any additional Adobe software until Adobe comes to its senses and stops ripping off UK and European customers.

The excuses Adobe gives for UK prices being higher than the US include higher cost of wages, higher cost of office space, other higher costs of doing business, currency fluctuations and tax.

While the above may justify some price premium, they do not justify, for example, Creative Suite 3 Design Premium Upgrade costing more than double the US price.

While our software licences are legal, such punitive pricing by Adobe hardly discourages piracy.

John Lockwood

I educate my children at home, and have heard several parents who do likewise say that qualifications mean nothing to employers and aren't worth the paper they are printed on (Why IT exams are a waste of time, Editor's diary, editor.computing.co.uk).

The majority of home-educated children do not sit any GCSEs or gain any qualifications at all. Instead, they learn life skills and how to succeed as an adult.

Despite the howls of anguish from those who believe in the state school system and the importance of GCSEs, most home-educated children succeed in the job market and few end up unemployed.

The state education system teaches a load of theoretical rubbish that is of no use as an adult. University is just a con trick for the naive of society unless you are studying medicine or law.

Home education and self-education are the way forwards. Institutionalised education and exams are relics of the 20th century.

JC, submitted on the web

I have been reading the correspondence about graduates, recruitment and training with an increasing sense of deja vu (Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk/skills).

I remember the BCS and the NCC both pushing the professional training message in the early 1970s with a similar level of success.

More to the point, I have been recruiting and managing IT people for 30 years, and have come to the conclusion that the "professionalisation" of the industry is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the work.

IT is primarily a craft skill that depends on aptitude and experience.

The aptitude includes not just the ability to think in the correct way, but a willingness to engage imaginatively with problems and to absorb and apply knowledge appropriately. The experience is needed to test and hone the aptitude.

This is why I have found recruitment, of graduates in particular, a chancey business. Institutes of learning need to impart a body of knowledge that is defined so that it can be tested. Unfortunately, IT systems are undefined in the round, depending on circumstance of need and history in each case.

So a graduate may be successful at university by virtue of an ability to learn and perform some well-defined tasks, yet may be ineffective in the world of IT because they lack a required aptitude, such as the ability to recognise common patterns.

Jim Blair

Municipal WiFi continues to struggle, Computing reports. I work as a consultant designing rooms so I'm often in several different locations during the day. I had planned a web conference with voice conferencing; however, changing client needs meant I could not be in my office for that conference.

No problem though. Thanks to The Cloud and my laptop PC, I was able to participate in the full web conference. At the same time Skype handled the connection to the two-way voice part of the conference. It was all low-cost, easy to use and had a reliable fast connection.

Charles Smith

Fibre is all well and good for the urban environment, (UK needs broadband offensive) but for those of us in rural areas - yet only 15 miles from the hotbed of technological innovation that is Cambridge - it is unlikely that the case for high investment will justify deployment until the copper needs replacing.

Yet most places are served by mobile phones. What is now needed is for the mobile networks to stop trying to force broadband users to use their phone networks to access the internet but to branch out into WiFi, using their extensive aerial networks to bring high speeds universally.

John Loader

A recent report by the Lords' science and technology committee described the internet as "the playground of criminals", creating momentary hysteria about the threat of hackers, cyber criminals and data theft through malware and other means (The internet is the new wild west say MPs).

The report cited a government survey that suggested more Britons feared internet crime than burglary.

While these threats should not be underestimated, the stories failed to acknowledge a significant reality - that the vast majority of data leakage is a result of accidental not malicious activity. When confidential data is lost it is usually through human error.

Though the majority of businesses now have technology in place to protect them from external threats, far fewer are adopting measures to combat the greater threat  posed by their own staff. Yet there are a number of simple technologies  and processes that companies can adopt.

Thus, while calls for legislative changes to help tackle online crime should not go unsupported, companies should carefully assess and identify the most critical risk to their business and take the measures necessary to protect themselves.

For many, further investigation of the tools they possess will reveal that they already have the ability to control access to and limit the distribution of confidential information.

Stephen Partridge

A story in a recent issue of Computing  (Decline in IT students threatens UK success) attracted my attention. I suspect there are two reasons for this decline.

A large number of people consider themselves experts because they use Microsoft packages, have set up a basic home network and surf the net. Twenty years ago many people serviced their own cars but beyond the basics this has now much declined. The oft-cited reason is that modern cars are more complex with computer-controlled engine management systems. Odd, considering everybody is an "expert".

The message has to be put across that the IT profession requires genuine experts, therefore the people will become professionals. Here we hit the next problem.

Youngsters see their and their friends' fathers being put out to pasture in their mid-40s, yet the government claims there is a skills shortage. Some degree of updating and retraining may be
required but there is no skills shortage, just ageism.

Why the IT industry behaves in this way when other professions such as law, accountancy and medicine do not is inexplicable. If I were in my 20s I do not think I would move over to IT.

David Clark

I write in response to the patronising tosh written by Bob Wilkins on the subject of finding jobs in IT (Mailshot for jobs, Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk).

His low-tech solution for finding a job in IT bears the hallmark of someone who has not had to look for such a position - yet. His suggested method was just one of many that I and others have used to find work.

I decided long ago that anyone over the age of 40 is considered dead from the neck up as far as IT recruiters are concerned. Despite legislation, the IT industry  remains staunchly ageist.

I now earn less than I once did as a project manager via three different income strands, but with an incomparably improved quality of life. Far from "moaning or  blaming everyone else" I am only too pleased to have given up the rat race.

I invite Mr Wilkins to get off his own backside so he has a suitable place to  deposit his unwanted advice.

Mike Gibson

Until such time as readers secure accreditation as professional careers advisers, they should refrain from
issuing half-baked advice which was frankly way out of date in the 1990s (Mailshot for jobs, Letters blog,
letters.computing.co.uk).

Perhaps if Bob Wilkins had demonstrated some initiative in this regard, he would have understood the job search process before putting pen to paper and offering advice that was practically redundant and would impose an excessive cost burden on job applicants.

Perhaps Bob is unemployed. And if he is, perhaps he thinks wasting money on postage in todayÕs electronic commerce climate is the most efficient method of job searching. Read What Colour is Your Parachute, or other books on "guerilla job search" before issuing any more half-baked advice, Bob.

Rebecca Pidgeon

Pushing back the start date of the faster payments initiative is the only course of action for the industry (Faster payment scheme slows down). For such a sophisticated system to reach its full potential every component must be right from day one.

The arrival of faster payments is eagerly awaited and the benefits it will bring will be tremendous.

When expert advice was sought on the viability of launching in November, the advice stated that technically more time was needed.

Testing is a crucial part of the development process as it prevents a great deal of problems further down the line. If additional rigorous testing is required it should be carried out. The industry will just have to hold its breath a little longer.

When faster payments is launched it will revolutionise the payments landscape, opening up a much more cost-effective and efficient service to a much broader  spectrum of customers, both consumer and corporate. We need to make absolutely  sure faster payments is robust and successful from day one, and the extra time  will be useful for further preparation. It will be worth the wait.

Georgia Leybourne

As a mature student at the University of Bedfordshire I tend to agree with Nigel Barker that courses do not reflect what industry wants (Universities fail to develop IT talent, Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk).

Perhaps he or others can suggest 24 module subjects each of 12 weeks for a computer science degree. On second thoughts, perhaps I should email Backbytes.

Don Moon

ID cards may have commercial advantages for banks and other institutions requiring secure authentication (It is time for privacy debates to grow up, governmentinsider.computing.co.uk).

But those commercial organisations should own the project so that it delivers a proportionate and timely solution. The government is the last organisation that should be running it.

When I go to my bank's web site, I authenticate and do not need to identify myself in the overweening sense that this government sees identification. I see no reason why the national identity register should hold a record of every time I authenticate to my bank.

Stephen Thomas

In her comment piece, Sarah Arnott suggests we should give the Home Office the benefit of the doubt about the ID card scheme (It is time for privacy debates to grow up, governmentinsider.computing.co.uk).

Those who accuse government of designing a system tailored for social control are apparently guilty of "shrill narrow-mindedness". However, when the London School of Economics proposed an alternative scheme,  the Home Office refused to engage in debate about it, instead launching attacks on one of the authors.

It doesn't matter whether the Home Office meant to create the infrastructure for social control or not. The system of online chip-and-PIN card verification they propose would allow central government to exercise a case-by-case veto on every transaction.

Even if this centralised control was not intended, the infrastructure allows it,  so the law of function creep says that some future government will do it. That's why we must stop them building the ID card system in the first place.

Andrew Watson

Blame the schools (Why IT exams are a waste of time, Editor's diary, editor.computing.co.uk). At 14 my son sat the IT Olympiad exams and finished in the top 10 per cent at the under-19 standard. His school refused to let him sit a GCSE, describing it as a subject with no value for his future.

Instead he did Latin and designed a clay shoe for graphics, both of which will really benefit him later.

Brian, submitted on the web

How about an article on "Men in childminding are scarce and underpaid" too (Women in IT are scarce and underpaid). I think you get the picture.

Jason, submitted on the web

I've noticed articles in Computing about changes to the Data Protection Act due largely to its inconvenience to business (New scrutiny on data laws).

Businesses in the rest of Europe manage to comply with far stricter data protection laws than the UK. This is because the laws are simple and ask if you have the subject's permission to hold the data, if the data is accurate, if it is being held securely and if you still need to hold it for your business to function for the benefit of the subject. This is not complex.

The irony is that the UK has the weakest and least-effective data protection legislation in the EU and yet the most complexly written. The law should be simplified to reflect the purpose of European data protection Ð if you abuse someone elseÕs data there will be a penalty which rightfully hurts.

In most of the EU a single non-corrected failure of data protection laws can result in a criminal prosecution for the offender and perhaps a custodial sentence. This tends to focus the minds of CIOs.

Jonathan Eaton

In paraphrasing the famous quotation: 'Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt', it would be an accurate assessment to presume that the contributor (We are learning irrelevant skills, letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk), as an employee, has never actually participated in any form of training.Conversely, we may also presume that if the contributor is an employer, then unless that employer actively commits towards any form of candidate training, they have absolutely no contribution to make where IT training is concerned.

More importantly, if the employer makes no contribution to training for existing staff or the up-and-coming generation, then we should wish that employer well as it begins to wonder why competitors are eroding its market position.

Rebecca Pidgeon

Although I understand the plight of IT graduates and others looking for work I think I have a duty to provide a different point of view (IT undergraduates have UK's highest dropout rate).

Employers do not owe anybody a living. We struggle, and I mean really struggle, to make a living for ourselves. We have to deal with the government holding its hand out at every turn, red tape and other nonsense in place to trip us up if we are not on our guard, and every month we have to somehow pay our staff and make ends meet.We donÕt exist to provide graduates or anyone else with a rite of passage. I agree the IT industry is ageist, sexist and no doubt many other 'ists', but employers are just cogs in the machine. Some 95 per cent of UK businesses employ five people or less and many of us would love to have the money to pay for someone to learn. Sadly we do not.

Dave Robinson

The need to enhance IT professional development in the UK is clear (The Pros of improving IT skills, e-Skills UK blog, eskillsuk.computing.co.uk).

Recent moves by government to give employers a greater say in driving improved high-end skills as part of its skills master plan is not only timely but essential.As an independent professional body representing some of the largest corporates in the telecommunications and IT sector, we have found that employers continue to see a significant mismatch here. Specifically, the IT-related qualifications that new young recruits bring with them to the workplace all too frequently fail to meet the needs of the business.

One of the principal causes of this shortfall in relevant skills would seem to be that, until now, such qualifications have typically been developed almost exclusively by academic institutions, with only limited input from industry.We are working with a consortium of leading employers to develop a foundation degree geared to addressing the requirements of the IT and telecoms sector. For the first time this will be an employer-led initiative in partnership with the government body Foundation Degree Forward.

In contrast to more academic programmes, this employer-led foundation degree will incorporate a balanced curriculum of academic and work-based learning. This 'learning in action' approach includes technology, commercial and softer skills, such as communications and problem solving.

If, as the Leitch Review indicates, the UK will have to double basic skills levels by 2020 to compete successfully with emerging economies such as India and China, now is the time to act.

Brendan O'Mahony
The Communications Network

I read with interest, and not a little anger mixed with disgust, the story concerning the decline in students taking IT studies at A-level (Decline in IT students threatens UK success). My hackles rose even more when I delved further through the newspaper, and read about HCL (HCL outperforms rival Indian outsourcers).

Perhaps IT managers should stop and think for a while. The people complaining about the skills shortage are the same people who make decisions to outsource IT roles, successfully exporting jobs and skills.
Any 16-year-old with half a brain, seeing the mania for outsourcing and offshoring that has prevailed in the UK in the past few years, will surely think twice about pursuing IT as a career. Result? The decline in students, and not so much loss as complete evaporation of skills.

So come on all you clever managers out there - take a look at what you're really achieving. You are the people who can stop the leeching of talent and ability from the UK, by showing there is a future in an IT career here.

Ted Tann-Watson

I would like to respond to all wireless worriers and radio-sensitive people (Wireless worries, Letters blog,
letters computing.co.uk).

For many years humans have been subjected to a variety of natural and unnatural products, yet we are still here to tell the tale.

Experiments have shown that people differ in sensitivity to their environment. Some suffer hay fever, yet we do not ban plants.

Is the onus on the employer to reduce the workplace to a sterile environment? Does this extend to removing services such as wireless networks to accommodate a minority?

Radio waves are everywhere at different frequencies and strengths. The so-called damage to human cells is no greater than the other risks we take for granted each day.

Sensitivity to the workplace should now be added to an employee risk assessment, maybe even added to the recruitment specification.

Mark Christian

I agree with Joel Mansford's comments (No substitute for enthusiasm, letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk) that you are not going to find postgraduates or school-leavers with the experience you want. This was, after all, the whole point of the old but much killed-off use of apprenticeships.

Employers should expect to give on-the-job training and provide desperately-needed experience. Also, planning for job roles to have a lifecycle will ensure you have keen and dedicated first-line staff. With the addition of investing in IT careers, that may also benefit your organisation in the future.With this mindset we can answer the repeated issues of employers asking for experience that naturally the candidate will not have. So many large organisations stopped 'expensive' apprenticeships and now it is slowly coming back to haunt us.

Simon Eady

The main concern with ID cards is forgery (Treasury pulls in different direction over ID card
technology timetable).

Bypassing the implementation of biometric technology in favour of photographs is making a mockery of the whole ID card system. Photographic identification is always going to be open to forgery and the government has chosen biometrics to prevent this.

The government now needs to tread carefully or the seeds of disaster will be there from the making.
Storing the full biometric data as originally intended will make it impossible for even the most sophisticated fraudster to read or substitute Ð whereas any professional fraudster can easily modify a photograph.

Stewart Hefferman

This government hardly has an unblemished record when it comes to complicated systems integration. Aside from the moral dilemma, I have serious concerns for the safety and security of my private information (The surveillance society).

Putting health records, criminal records and bank details all in one place strikes me as the very worst thing to do in a climate in which identity theft is such a major issue.

Tom French

The UK, with one of the lowest rates of piracy, must be the most profitable market for the US software industry given its widespread policy of converting the dollar price to sterling at a rate approaching 1:1. For example Adobe CS3 Web Premium is $1600 or £1400; Microsoft Vista Ultimate is $400 or £370 (Businesses must crack down on piracy).

Those are UK VAT-inclusive list prices and reflect what a private individual will be paying. The price differential will contribute to the incentive to use an illegal copy, as does our lower average per capita income and higher cost of living.

Comparing the VAT-free prices, Adobe and Microsoft are still valuing the pound at $0.74 and $0.79 respectively compared with today's market rate of $0.49 - on that basis we are paying 50 per cent more than the US. Maybe if the manufacturers were to bring UK prices in to line with the US, our piracy rate would fall still further.

Rob Hindle

You are wrong to describe the GSM-R system as obsolete (Rail system will be obsolete).

It may no longer be state-of-the-art or leading edge, but a system is not obsolete until it is no longer capable of doing the job for which it was designed Ð which you do not suggest it is - or it can no longer be maintained because of a shortage of parts, which your article explicitly denies.

The question is not whether it is the latest available technology, but whether it will do the job it was designed to do economically and reliably.

Industries with large capital investments and stringent safety requirements will always lag the technology curve, and rail is not alone in this.

The airline industry continues to operate 30-year-old aircraft, and even the newest aircraft are using technologies that are five or eight years behind the trend.

Time and again it has been found that attempts to leapfrog such industries to the bleeding edge of technology get bogged in delays and consequent cost overruns. From your article, this seems already to have happened with GSM-R.

Far better to pick up tested and mature mainstream components and implement cheaply and quickly whatever this technology has proved it can do, than attempt to do that which has not been done before and fail.

Alec Cawley

I have been giving consideration to lifecycle ownership of computer equipment following the setting up of an environment committee at my firm.

The article by the chief executive of Computer Aid International (Don't recycle your computer - reuse it instead), made lots of sense. But I get the feeling that we are moving the issue of landfill from a highly-regulated region to an area of the world that is already struggling with the effects of industrialisation and global warming. I agree that schools will be able to make use of what we throw out from business for at least a couple of years, but what do they do with the equipment when they have finished with it?

We are all obliged to follow the WEEE directive or risk punitive damages for our corporate paymasters. In Africa I fear that when these computers are no longer of any use, they will simply be left to rot and bleed into the Earth.Are companies taking their responsibilities beyond the deployment of these computers to Africa? Are they collecting the end-of-life equipment from this heavily-scarred continent then breaking them down to their composite components for recycling? This should be considered as part of the lifecycle of the computer.

Gavin Jones

Partnership in an outsourcing contract runs both ways - with the service provider and the customer (The price of partnership, Outsourcing blog, markkobayashihillary.computing.co.uk).

In a number of instances the customer is the one that takes the 'high road' and does not communicate the partnership message within its organisation. It also becomes a cultural issue when vendors in India are not willing to say no to push more work for themselves.

I advise smaller firms to realise that they are small in size, and go with suppliers who will meet their needs rather than major players such as Infosys or TCS. There is an opportunity to create a true partnership model with suppliers who will give you the tier-one client status.

Prashant Kumar

Are there really any companies still transferring encryption keys? (A quantum leap of faith).
I was under the impression that most encryption techniques relied on public key technologies, rendering most of the reasoning behind the article invalid, barring the invention of a viable quantum computer.
Public key technologies are allegedly so strong the governments of the 'free' world battled to keep them out of the hands of the public, and even went as far as to tip the law on its head with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act when attempting to force an individual to reveal encryption keys. If I find out my bank is using encryption that requires the transfer of encryption keys over external network links, I'll be voting with my feet.

Clint Sharp

All the letters about how hard it is to find a job in IT because a person is the wrong age, doesn't have the right qualifications or does not have enough experience seem to have a common denominator: a lack of initiative (Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk/skills).

If you find the going tough, don't rely on job adverts or recruitment agencies. Go through the phone book and put together a database of local companies. Write a letter in Word and have Word mailmerge using the database. Sign each letter, add a CV and send it. If you do 50 of these a week, you'll get interviews and you'll get a job.

So stop moaning. Stop blaming everyone else. Get off your backside and do something about it.

Bob Wilkins

I work in an education institution where computer science student numbers, like most other places, have fallen progressively in recent years. Coupled with this, a change in funding has strangled our ability to provide the specialist support and teaching that we used to (IT skills crisis requires a joint effort, Newsdesk blog, newsdesk.computing.co.uk).

We have recently been assimilated into an arts department to create a single arts/media unit. In the past, those of us who worked in industry were able to imprint at least some of the ethos of being in the workplace.

Our progressive and inexorable enervation has now bled all of this away, and I am convinced that we are turning out graduates without the right creative or even technical skills. At the same time we are having the soft and transferable skills agenda rammed down our throats, which is forcing us to compromise in many other areas.

The business world cannot have it both ways. They simply cannot have graduates with all of these skills in the numbers they are demanding. The economics do not add up. Perhaps the business world should be starting to accept some more responsibility for the training of new graduates?

Name withheld on request

I can tell you a few secrets I've discovered about Google, the basis of which, as an IT professional and systems manager, I believe are of some concern (I know Google's secret - but I can't tell you, Editor's Diary, editor.computing.co.uk).

My first secret is that a laptop user was having serious performance issues which turned out to be partly down to a whole gamut of Google downloads, installs, cookies, and so on.

Simple, one might think, just remove the Google installs. However, removing the Google toolbar from Firefox proved to be a marathon task requiring changes to the registry, deleting Firefox profiles and completely reinstalling Firefox. Simply selecting Firefox add-ons and clicking uninstall is the recommended method but when relaunching Firefox a screen appears thanking you for installing the Google toolbar and one is obliged to tick one or more boxes to continue with the installation; cancelling is not an option. This reminded me of the problem one might experience when digging out a Trojan or self-replicating worm.

My second Google secret is that our revised rule is that no Google material is to be installed on our in-house networks. Our Firefox browser installations are all set to block Google cookies and scripting. My final Google secret is that in my opinion, Google is not to be trusted.

Chris Thompson