Online passport project faces teething

troubles

The mega e-governance project to simplify passport processing has been hit by bugs of a different kind:
Resistance and inertia from certain MEA staff, negative propaganda by travel agents and impatience and
lack of understanding from citizens.

Some MEA (ministry of external affairs) staff attend work wearing black badges, to show their protest
against involving a private, third party company (TCS) in record processing and passport issuance, a job
which was solely done by the goverment till now.

The lack of cooperation is clear and loud on the ground, at the Passport Seva Kendra on Lal Bagh Road
and Regional Passport Office in Bangalore.

The MEA is in the process of setting up an online passport application, verification and issuance system
with the assistance of tech major Tata Consultacy Services.

The current passport system is as old as independent India and turning this legacy system online is an
extremely challenging and complex procedure. TCS has just taken over this task and the company says it
would be able to offer complete citizen satisfaction in a fortnight, though it is currently facing multiple
hurdles.

The pilot project, currently on in Bangalore, Mangalore and Hubli, is expected to be completed in 12
weeks and the country wide roll out across 77 passport seva kendras (PSK) will happen in six months.
The system has been seeing teething troubles, and there have been times when the system has been
down.

The project involves development of a new system, network, software, infrastructure and application.

‘‘The initial learning is happening. Glitches are part of the overall proposition and it is only natural. TCS is
trying to simplify the system for MEA staff and citizens alike. Certain elements always resist change.
Soon, systems will get institutionalized, citizens will realise the value of it and then all negative elements
will wither away,'' said sources close to the development.
Lessons learned from failure of online
passport application system EPA2

Summarised lessons from the report of the Identity and Passport Service on the main IT projects
implemented last year follow.

On Complexity:

- “The EPA2 [ Electronic Passport Application] system, as delivered, was considerably more
complex than initially intended.

- “In isolation each change was assessed for impact and accepted where necessary, but together
rendered the system too complex and much more difficult to test.

- “The Change Control process should be more robust in its examination of proposed changes.
Only business critical changes should be accepted.

- “When business change is accepted, the impact on the project and testing schedule must be
challenged by the independent test team as well as the project team.

- “The Change Control process should record a cumulative assessment of changes.

On Managing risk:

- “The project team acknowledged that poor performance of the system under live volume
conditions was a risk that needed to be managed, but gave it too low prominence.

- “All test plans should be reviewed by an independent Test Assurance team.

- “All risks, not only those assessed as ‘high’, should be reviewed by the Project Boards at
regular, quarterly, intervals.

- “Senior Responsible Owners have been directed to sponsor at least two detailed risk workshops
per annum on their projects.

On Contracts:

- “The sections of the contract where volume and performance requirements are detailed should
have been more clearly understood within the Identity and Passport Service. This problem was
exacerbated by changes of management during the project.
- “At the time of a change of Senior Responsible Owner there must be a formal handover. This
must include contractual information.

On testing and going live:

- “ EPA2 testing suffered from having to react to changes to Go Live date. There should have
been better planning so that test cycles were not conducted under overly tight and challenging
timescales.

- “Target Go Live dates should be confirmed by improved plans at the detailed level that are
agreed by the independent Test Assurance team.

- “Volume testing should be given greater importance in the test strategy with a better
appreciation of the risk of poor performance.

- “The Release Authority was provided with the standard reports, a “Ready for Service”
checklist, and an Impact and Mitigation Plan – and the appropriate staff were represented. On the
information provided, and on the basis that it was a live trial in Newport only, no questions on
the absence of a pilot or adequacy of testing were raised. Ready for Service” Checklists and
Impact and Mitigation Plans should seek assurance that where new business processes are being
introduced, pilots have been satisfactorily undertaken and adequate volume and performance
testing has been successfully completed.

- “There was sufficient resource and good management control of the implementation. However,
in view of the difficulties encountered at Go Live, insufficient ‘floor walkers’ and specialist
users were on hand to support the EPA2 examiner teams in the event of unexpected
difficulties/glitches.

In General:

- “In hindsight, the Identity and Passport Service placed too much reliance on Siemens Business
Systems’ own quality control and testing arrangements and assumed that a good quality product,
providing the appropriate performance, would be delivered in line with SBS’s excellent past
track record on this contract.

- “The Identity and Passport Service should develop stronger technical capability to challenge
supplier assertions. This capability is now being developed with recruitment of permanent staff
into a strengthened CIO function. For the short term, to provide more depth of client-side
technical capability, suitably skilled and experienced interims will be used.

Key lessons from other projects in 2006 of the Identity and Passport Service:

- “Ensure that client and supplier contractual responsibilities are understood. There was some
confusion over roles in the subcontract management and product acceptance process which led to
disagreement over IPS [Identity and Passport Service] involvement in the acceptance of the main
passport production equipment. This did not impact on the outcomes but responsibilities on
product acceptance need to be clear in contracts.

- “Develop and assign ownership to a contingency plan. The use of realistic effective
contingency planning proved critical to the project’s success, particularly during a period in
July/August 2006 when blank book supplies became critically low at a “pinch point” in the roll
out. The acceptance of the contingency plan by business owners meant that its implementation
when required was efficient and minimised impacts on operations.

- “Test and quality assurance criteria should be explicitly included in commercial contracts. The
inclusion of such criteria in commercial documents would give projects more control over
suppliers during product delivery and acceptance …”