As clear as mud

Why do government departments and official bodies get in such a mess with their new computer systems? The Passport Office, Ambulance Service, Inland Revenue and Air Traffic Control all rushed in with buggy systems. My theory is that key decisions are taken by people who do not understand the technology, but dare not admit it.

I have recently been researching the central London congestion charge, due to be switched on next February, and I've come to the conclusion that it's a fiasco waiting to happen.

Most people, and the AA and RAC, agree that something must be done to ease congestion. London mayor Ken Livingstone keeps telling us that his £300m scheme, which relies on automated camera technology and optical character recognition (OCR), is the most advanced in the world.

He is effectively betting his future on OCR, and anyone who has used a PC scanner will know the pitfalls. When I offered to talk to Our Ken, I was firmly put in my place.

"Why would the mayor want to talk to you?" sniped a Transport for London (TFL) spokesman before adding the telltale admission: "He's not familiar with the details anyway."

And that's the whole point. The TFL initiative seems all at sea, too. The briefing notes, which are supposed to ensure that the press prints accurate facts, explain that the cameras use "X-wave technology to see far better in limited light conditions".

What's X-wave? I asked. No one knew. Talk to Sony, said TFL. I did, and Sony confirmed that the system is actually called Exwave. It's just the trade name for a CCD Closed Circuit TV Camera (CCTV) which is sensitive to infrared, but with less resolution than broadcast TV.

Drivers will pay their £5 a day in advance or up to midnight on the same day, by telephone, post, internet or at retail outlets. Once the fee has been paid the car's number is entered into a database.

Analogue CCTV cameras on poles will automatically photograph each car as it passes through central London. The poles are 8m tall in an attempt to give a bird's eye view through traffic.

Each pole carries two cameras: one captures an overall view in colour; the other snaps a monochrome picture of the number plate. An infrared emitter on the pole helps the IR-sensitive Exwave CCD 'see' in poor light.

TFL insists that only one in 10 cars can hope to beat the system, but offers no scientific evidence to support this claim. However, what matters much more is what happens if the system thinks it sees a car which in actual fact is nowhere near London.

In Toronto, where OCR cameras are already snapping cars on a toll road, the local press carries horror stories of innocents being intimidated by threatening letters and a recorded voice calling from a debt collection agency.

Initial Electronic Security Systems (IESS), the company supplying the equipment for London, has been told not to talk about it. Put your questions in writing, it said. I did, and heard nothing back.

IESS does, however, talk about research work done for the Highways Agency on the M3 and M7 motorways. Roadside cameras gave 80 per cent accuracy on 'valid' plates.

To be 'valid', a number plate must be clean, not muddy; British, and not italicised. There must be no fog, and the OCR should not be confused by advertising labels near the number plate.

A group of 21 experts known as Road Charging Options for London (Rocol) warned two years ago that, although "cameras would record the images of all vehicles at each site, a loss of up to 30 per cent is estimated because of number plates that are unreadable or obscured by other traffic, incomplete readings or vehicles incorrectly registered".

When giving evidence on congestion charging to the Greater London Authority in November 2000, an expert from electronics company Racal also warned of legibility problems. The owner of a car with the number plate ABO123 risked getting a penalty for car ABD123.

Rocol warned that, if one in three cars go unrecognised, a regiment of foot patrols will have to plug the gaps. So the mayor's hopes of a £150m annual profit from a fiver-a-day charge and £80 penalties goes out of the window.

Foreign vehicles, said TFL vaguely, will be "checked through links with similar agencies in other countries, and rental car companies will be entitled to pass on driver details".

However Derek Turner, managing director of TFL, dismisses Rocol's work as being out of date.

Meanwhile Paul Watters, of the AA's Motoring Policy Unit, said: "The new scheme will be an utter nightmare. The honest motorist with nice clean plates will be subsidising the people with dirty plates who don't pay."

The new mandatory font for number plates is not going to help much either. You can see it here. You'll notice that the curves have been squared, so mud blobs can convert a 3 into a 9, a 6 or a 9 into an 8, a C into a G or an O into a Q.

It is of course illegal to tamper with plates, but not to drive through mud.

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