| ▲ | poizan42 4 hours ago |
| > A Home Office spokesperson said: “Over 10 million people have already successfully used eVisas to prove their immigration status. ..." So how many people did not successfully use it? Could be 100 million for all we know. Do they think just throwing out a large number without anything to compare it to is somehow proving something? |
|
| ▲ | citrin_ru 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| I would say what we do care about is the number of people who were not able to use the system successfully through no fault of their own. Even 0.001% failure rate is too high when is affects more than a few people per year. Especially so when there is no easy way to rectify the problem. |
|
| ▲ | walthamstow 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Do they think just throwing out a large number without anything to compare it to is somehow proving something? Welcome to the last 20 years of UK public policy communications. Politicians know that people do not question big numbers or have the skills to put them in context. I remember the May government shouting that "more children go to schools rated good+ by Ofsted than ever before". Me and you would say, well, there's more children alive than ever before, so it's hardly an achievement. |
|
| ▲ | iso1631 13 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What was the failure rate on the earlier system, the mean time to resolution, and the maximum time to resolution, and how does that compare with the current system. |
|
| ▲ | dofm 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It only launched in the middle of April (edit: middle of February was the switchover at the border where no other fallback would have been possible) It sounds to me like this number indicates broad success. The rough estimate seems to be that only about two per cent of border crossings use an eVisa anyway (British passport holders don't and non-immigrating visitors don't). Even over summer that would probably only mean maybe 2.5 million border crossings, so the other uses are not at the border — they will instead be employment/landlord/benefit/healthcare checks using the online systems. So for example, renting a new property, starting a new job, applying for a new benefit, or needing non-emergency healthcare etc. |
| |
| ▲ | poizan42 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | How? How can a single absolute number indicate broad success? You can't read from it if failure rate is 1% (completely unacceptable) or 0.01% (probably acceptable as long as problems are quickly mitigated). Also what do they even count as a success? If someone is stranded somewhere for a month and the problem then gets mitigated, they did eventually successfully use it, didn't they? The strongest indicator that the system is riddled with issues is in what they did not say. If they had less than 100 cases where the system initially failed and the issues got resolved within a few hours I'd bet they would brag about it. | | |
| ▲ | 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | dofm 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > If they had less than 100 cases where the system initially failed and the issues got resolved within a few hours I'd bet they would brag about it. That's a bit of a straw man though isn't it — could there ever have been as few as a hundred problems in a system of this complexity with four million users? (It also moves away from your "hundred million people" somewhat does it not?) I am sure it has not been a flawless rollout but I don't really understand the outrage here. It's worth understanding that much of the news media coverage of this is tinged with anger, regret and disappointment: this is a system we would not have needed in this formulation if we had not done Brexit. Small problems with existing immigration and border systems would not have made any news but they could also have been happening at a higher rate, yes? We shouldn't have done Brexit, but we do need a system, and therefore we have a system that is less joined-up than it could be. | | |
| ▲ | pessimizer 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is a question about numeracy, not "flawless rollouts." It certainly isn't a question about Brexit. | | |
| ▲ | dofm 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Bias in media reporting is a factor here. That bias is driven in part by feelings about Brexit and about a system that exists in this form because of it. Either way, the fact that it has been used ten million times successfully strongly suggests it is basically doing OK, since it's hard to imagine many more than ten million uses since the alternatives became unavailable. Glad to have your obviously authoritative review of the subject, though. I am suitably chastened for trying to show the broader picture. |
|
|
| |
| ▲ | rwmj 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The eVisa system launched on 1st Jan 2025 (https://righttoremain.org.uk/update-on-evisa-transition/). | | |
| ▲ | dofm 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I misread a thing. Actually the system went into force at the border in February — that is when people have only been using their eVisas instead of alternative methods, as it's when the border switched to using the readers. The government did not even stop issuing physical visa stickers until the beginning of last month. So again, this ten million figure does not seem to indicate a likelihood of massive, systemic failure. If there has been massive failure, then I guess the government department and the two US tech multinationals (Accenture's global HQ is only in Dublin for tax purposes) will have to figure it out. | |
| ▲ | mytailorisrich 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's older than that. It started in 2018. January 2025 was when the system became eVisa only. In this case I suspect that either there was a recent mix-up or that person hasn't travelled since she came to the UK or got settled status and never noticed the problem. EU citizens in the UK since before Brexit only got an eVisa when their status transitioned to "Settled status" for instance and never had anything in their passports. But as long as their online account is up-to-date (i.e. linked to current passport) they can even use the automated passport check gates on arrival into the UK. Only issue since ~last year and especially now that ETA is mandatory for non-residents is to prove status to airline staff on departure otherwise they deny boarding, this is done through online account. |
| |
| ▲ | MarceliusK 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That does make the 10 million figure more meaningful but I still think it is doing a lot of work rhetorically |
|
|
| ▲ | MarceliusK 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Without the total number of attempts, number of failures and ideally how those failures are distributed, it tells us almost nothing |
| |
| ▲ | dofm 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | There simply cannot have been that many border crossings that failed this way — the eVisa system has only been in force without any fallback alternatives for a few months and only four million people hold them anyway. Proportionally speaking most of the failures will surely have been non-crossing uses (electronically proving right to work/receive benefits/not have to ultimately pay/claim on insurance for non-emergency care). |
|
|
| ▲ | micromacrofoot 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Look, I'm robbing you but you have to consider that 99.9% of people never get robbed so really it's not something anyone should care about. |
| |
|
| ▲ | threatofrain an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Why do you have to ask? Because you don't have easy access to the data. Whether or not your nation has a culture of honesty, big scale communication is always going to be dumbed down. |
