Annual Reports
Home Office: Over half a million sets of fingerprints - equivalent to a set checked every 30 seconds 24 hours a day - have been taken from visa applicants since the roll-out programme began last year, it was announced as UKvisas published its annual report.
Through the introduction of this measure, designed to strengthen border control, over 6,000 sets of prints have been quickly & successfully matched to individuals who are of concern. Fingerprints are taken as part of the visa application process and are then checked against UK Government records to identify if the individual is already known to the UK immigration authorities.
Once in the UK the authorities can use the same data to check if someone is eligible to work, or to help reissue travel documents if they are lost or destroyed. By April 2008 UKvisas will have completed the global roll-out of biometric data collection technology to all of our overseas missions in 135 countries and to 111 visa application centres in 53 countries.
Press release ~ UK Visas Annual Report 2006/07 ~ Biometric Passports - Identity and Passport Service ~ UKVisas
HC: Last year, heart surgeons joined forces with the healthcare watchdog, the Healthcare Commission, to make survival rates from surgery available through a public website. In the past 12 months the site has become increasingly well-regarded, receiving thousands of visitors each month and allowing patients to make more informed decisions about their treatment.
Survival rates for heart surgery in 2005/06 have now been collated and the site updated. Some of the data have also been adjusted according to a new UK model for calculating expected survival rates.
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