Transparency data

6 December 2024: Accounting Officer Assessment Home Office Biometrics (HOB) Programme

Updated 6 December 2024

InvestCo approved the HOB Programme Business Case v10 on 18 July 2024.

Background and Context

It is normal practice for accounting officers to scrutinise significant policy proposals or plans to start or vary major projects and then assess whether they measure up to the standards set out in Managing Public Money. From April 2017, the government has committed to making these documents available to Parliament when an accounting officer has agreed an assessment of projects within the Government’s Major Projects Portfolio.

The Home Office Biometrics (HOB) programme is delivering capabilities to establish identity using fingerprint, DNA and facial image data, bringing biometric data collections and workflows together, developing strong governance around the management of data and providing a common biometric service for cross - government stakeholders.

A wide breadth of business operations use biometric services. In Migration and Borders Group this includes visa, immigration and asylum applications, passport applications, and border control. In the criminal justice system, the biometric identity provided by HOB enables administrative processes related to bail, police vetting, exclusions, and victim identifications as well as supporting criminal investigation at all levels, including crime scene investigation as well as counter-terrorism operations and international data exchange.

HOB is delivering a core platform for biometric matching and identification services for the UK and supporting effective national and international data sharing. The platform will initially provide capability for facial matching, fingerprints, and DNA. The platform is designed to be a scalable, and adaptable platform to enable the optimisation and enhancement of existing products whilst being responsive to new business needs or the adoption of wider biometric modalities such as voice and iris.

Since initiated, the HOB Programme Business Case has been approved at the Home Office InvestCo (or previous versions of this committee) each year. The HOB Programme Business Case v9 was approved at FIC on 19 April 2023. This AO assessment is being reissued because a new HOB Business Case v10 was approved at InvestCo on 18 July 2024 and the programme end date is now December 2026, having been extended from March 2026 as last reported to the Finance and Investment Committee on 19 April 2023. There is an updated funding requirement until the end of the programme of £120.37m, this is an additional £47.8m from the last Business Case.

The increase in Programme costs of £47.8m is due to the replan of IDENT1 modernisation to deal with urgent obsolescence issues and security vulnerabilities, increasing costs by £34m, the Livescan Upgrade increasing costs by £4.4m, the extension to the Programme increasing costs by £3.3m, IABS Cloud increases of £1.9m and Strategic Facial Matching increases of £1.2m and other year on year changes of £3m.

IDENT1 is the central national policing database for holding, searching and comparing biometric information on those who come into contact with the police. Information held includes fingerprints, palm prints and scene of crime marks. Livescan is used by Policing to collect fingerprints and facial images from those who have been arrested and are taken to a custody suite.

IABS is the Immigration and Asylum Biometrics System for holding, searching and comparing biometric information on those who make asylum claims or visa, passport and citizenship applications. Information held includes fingerprints and facial images.

Strategic Facial Matching is a project that will enable facial images, which are currently being added to IDENT1, to be searched against a high-quality custody image collection, using a high accuracy and equitable biometric algorithm, to enable suspects to be identified quickly and in greater numbers by more users.

The programme has considered alternative options for remediation of Security Vulnerabilities and of IDENT1 technical debt. The proposed technical and delivery approach was designed to ensure the stability, robustness and security of IDENT1 live service delivery and was approved by the Digital Data and Technology Technical Design Authority, with remediation at the most expedited rate the supplier can support, to prioritise making sure IDENT1 does not fail.

Run costs have increased, generally driven by supplier and market forces. The replan of IDENT1 modernisation has meant that the cloud transformation pushes out and this has had a direct impact on the run cost savings. IDENT1 costs also cover the move from the Hendon Data Centre as part of Home Office wide plans to migrate all the systems and services out of a core Police data centre located in Hendon. IABS run costs have increased in line with volumetrics for Electronic Travel Authority (ETA) work.

No changes have been made to the Regularity section. The Proprietary, Value for Money and Feasibility sections have been updated to reflect the changes above.

Assessment against the Accounting Officer Standards

Regularity

The biometric services delivered by the HOB Programme rely on existing legislation (including policing and immigration legislation) which sets down the legal requirements for collecting, storing, searching, retaining and deleting biometric data. For 2024/25, HOB is operating within the Spending Review 2021 (SR21) spending limits, including the allocation from the Police Settlement and is considered affordable. Costs are managed in line with the principles and controls set out in Managing Public Money and the HMT Green Book. Funding request for 2025/26 has been submitted via the Phase 1 Spending Review process with future years to be included under Phase 2.

HOB is currently funded on a 50 / 50 basis between the Home Office and Policing via the Police settlement, which has a separate governance route and is approved by the Home Secretary on an annual basis. Run costs for Biometric Services for Policing are funded by the Memorandum Trade Agreement (MTA) and run costs for the Home Office are funded by Enterprise Services.

The HOB Programme does not require new or amended legislation to progress. I therefore consider it to conform to the Regularity Accounting Officer standard.

Propriety

HOB provides real world outcomes (for example enabling officers to quickly confirm someone’s identity with a mobile fingerprint search on the street, improving the technology to manage DNA profiles or extending the capabilities to share biometrics with international partners). It achieves cost savings and value for money in the Home Office and provides an opportunity to achieve operational efficiency across a range of business functions. It also generates wider public benefits through the identification of new leads for criminal investigations and subsequently more crimes solved.

The Programme will consider prioritisation options as part of this work and will consider reduced programme scope and a longer delivery timeframe if required.

I consider HOB to align with the principles documented in Managing Public Money and to conform to the Propriety Accounting Officer standard. It will continue to be monitored by the Home Office (through Investco) and the National Audit Office.

Value for Money

The overall timeline of the HOB programme has been extended, and costs have increased but the programme business case still provides a good Net Present Social Value (NPSV) and delivers both cashable and wider economic benefits.

The overall cost of the Preferred Option (inclusive of inflation, Optimism Bias (OB)/Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA) and irrecoverable VAT) is £1,550m (£365m CDEL and £1,185m RDEL) in period 2014/15 to 2034/35.

In the latest business case, the cost of the do-nothing option over the period 24/25 to 33/34 (inclusive of discounting and optimism bias) is £634.1m against the preferred option of £634.9m. Non-cashable benefits (discounted) are £109.9m, with an NPSV of £109.1m when compared to the baseline option.

HOB has already delivered capabilities enabling significant benefits to be realised, including:

• searching crime marks across immigration datasets, providing more leads for crime cases.
• mobile biometric search service providing on street fingerprint identification and time saving.
• greater automation of National DNA Database processes enabling a reduction in manual processing
• prüm fingerprint collaboration with 22 EU countries providing greater intelligence for investigations.
• IABSWEB Immigration facial search - intelligence for Policing/CT on suspects and subjects of interest.
• greater deduction of fraudulent passport and reduction in fraudulent applications
• sharing of immigration biometrics with our international partners in an automated way

HOB is developing new products and capabilities for future delivery and benefits realisation including:

• continuity of services of existing fingerprint systems
• improved fingerprint matching for Policing - more identifications and crimes cleared and efficiencies for bureau.
• capability to support new data sets
• immigration matching – more identifications and efficiencies for bureau and border checks
• cost saving through provision for future biometric systems and enhancements
• increase search capabilities across biometric data sets.
• upgraded custody suite fingerprint and image matching capability
• international data sharing capabilities
• latent DNA database replacement for service continuity and future enhancements
• mobile biometric enrolment enabling time savings and increase identifications
• automated facial image matching for HMPO enabling a reduction in FOG passports

The preferred option with its positive NPSV of £109.1m demonstrates significant economic benefits to law enforcement agencies, the wider economy, and the public and HOB provides strong value for money.

Taking account of the points above, overall, I consider the project to conform to the Value for Money Accounting Officer standard.

Feasibility

Since approval of the HOB Programme Business Case 9 there has been considerable progress made in delivery of project milestones, including the successful contract award and transition to a new Strategic Matcher supplier, with delivery of Stage 1 on track for November 2024 and work in progress to bring forward delivery of Stage 3 to Q3 25/26. The programme has also connected Prüm Fingerprints capability to 22 EU member states, achieved agreement of the roadmap for delivering enhanced Facial Matching to policing, completed the migration of services that support the National DNA Database to more performant and reliable environments and supported significant changes in the management of the border, including the launch and ramp up of ETA.

The programme has worked closely with the supplier for the IABS and IDENT1 Platforms, through a cycle of replanning and reprioritisation. The Infrastructure and Projects Authority undertakes regular reviews of the programme on the approach and to monitor delivery progress.

The IPA Gate 0 Review of the Programme in early June 2024 returned a delivery confidence rating of Amber. The Review Team found that since the last review in March 2023, the programme had made good progress with the successful transition to a new supplier for the development of Matcher, with a Stage 1 release scheduled for November 2024. Lessons learned had been applied to positive effect on the new contract. The Review Team expressed concern about the SCBP Contract suppliers’ ability to support programme delivery and focussed recommendations for improvement in this area and they found that successful delivery of the programme to time, cost and quality was still feasible.

Based on the latest IPA review and scrutiny of the business case, I consider the programme to meet the feasibility test.

Conclusion

The Home Office Biometrics Programme conforms to the four Accounting Officer standards of regularity, propriety, value for money and feasibility. There are some challenges which the programme is working through with regards to delivery of changes to the core systems. However, there are mitigations and ongoing work in place. I therefore consider the programme, which contributes to the protection and safeguarding of the public by providing key facilities to Policing forensics and immigration to solve crimes and confirm identity, to warrant approval to progress.

As the Accounting Officer for Home Office Biometrics within the Home Office I considered this assessment of the Home Office Biometrics Business Case and approved it on 4 December 2024. I have prepared this document to set out the key points which informed my decision. If any of these factors change materially during the lifetime of this project, I undertake to prepare a revised version, setting out my assessment of them. This document will be published on the government’s website (GOV.UK). Copies will be deposited in the Library of the House of Commons and sent to the Comptroller and Auditor General, Treasury Officer of Accounts and the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

Matthew Rycroft KCMG CBE
Permanent Secretary for the Home Office