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Comment by dofm | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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.

This is a question about numeracy, not "flawless rollouts." It certainly isn't a question about Brexit.

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.

The eVisa system launched on 1st Jan 2025 (https://righttoremain.org.uk/update-on-evisa-transition/).

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.

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.

That does make the 10 million figure more meaningful but I still think it is doing a lot of work rhetorically

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