Thetravel industryis likely to have to
redevelop its reservation systems and websites to the government's
newe-Borderspassenger screening project,
but is unlikely to recover some £200m in costs from the Home
Office.
An impact assessment of the project put the travel industry's
costs at £202m. A Home Office spokesman told Computer Weekly that
the impact paper suggested that the industry would have to pick up
"some costs".
"The government has effectively outsourced immigration to the
travel industry, so we would like some of the costs back," said
Danielle Chapman, manager of industry affairs at Thomsonfly, the
UK's largest charter airline. Chapman has been involved in industry
negotiations with government on this subject since 2003.
Chapman said the industry is waiting to see the specifcations
that emerge from the project, which will require up to 53 passenger
data items to be collected, stored and transmitted to border
authorities before passengers embark. In some cases this will
require the redevelopment of reservations systems and websites.
Chapman pointed out there will be associated running costs to
capture and store the data, as well as to transmit it to the
authorities. She said passengers will be encouraged to provide the
data before they leave for their embarcation point. This should
allow enough time for the authorities to receive the data, process
it, and provide permission to travel at check-in.
She appealed for governments to agree what data they require.
She said presently there are differnent needs for the UK, US, and
Spain, and with Germany, Cambodia, Australia and other countries
all starting to require similar data, a global standard would be
helpful, she said.
The
Home Office yesterday awarded a 10-year contract worth £650m to
the Raytheon-led Trusted
Borders consortium for a screening system to count travellers in
and out of the UK using fingerprint and other biometric and
biographic data.
The government will use the data to screen all visitors to the
UK against immigration, customs, police and national security watch
lists. Data collected will also be analysed, risk-assessed and
shared between UK border agencies.
"Information captured through the e-Borders programme will help
build more accurate pictures of risk in advance so that there is a
better awareness of suspect passengers, travel patterns and
networks," the Home Office said.
The system is expected to go live on "high risk routes" by mid
2009, with 95% of travellers covered by 2010, and 100% by 2014. A
Home Office spokesman said the final 5% would include visitors such
as yachts and other rarely-used routes.
e-Borders is a joint project, led by the Border and Immigration
Agency in partnership with the Police, HM Revenue and Customs and
UKVisas. It requires commercial carriers and owner/operators of all
vessels to submit detailed passenger, service and crew data prior
to their departure to and from the UK.
Other members of the consortium are Accenture, Detica, Serco,
QinetiQ, Steria, Capgemini, and DAON.