Home Office denies reports of e-Borders closure

Not chucked out in public cuts

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 projects. But a Home Office spokesman told GGC this was down to "innacurate reporting" and that e-Borders is continuing.

The programme to monitor movements of people in and out of the UK has run into a series of problems. In July 2010, Raytheon was sacked as the prime contractor, and in October IBM was awarded a deal to run the Semaphore pilot project. It has attracted criticisms around its legality and failed to reach a target for the number of passenger movements checked.

This article was originally published at Guardian Government Computing.

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