National Border Targeting Centre - staff training delays

The opening of the operations centre at the heart of a new £1.2bn computer system - planned to monitor every person who enters or leaves the UK - has been delayed by staff training.

The National Border Targeting Centre (NBTC), the Manchester-based  clearing house for the e-Borders program, was scheduled to open this month, but to allow for staff training it will not be operational until the first quarter of 2010.

The centre will employ 250 "match analysts" who will judge the strength of computer-generated alerts when a traveller is flagged as suspicious against a domestic or international watch list. They will also decide which law enforcement or intelligence agency each alert should be passed on to.

The minimum educational requirement for a match analyst is two GCSEs, 1 of which must be English Language, but there is no requirement to have GCSE in Mathematics. Default starting salary is £14,000 for a 42 hour week (plus shift allowance). The interviews included a 5-minute duration, 150-question test to "assess ability to compare and check accuracy of data, attention to detail".

Over 12 million visitors per annum are subject to Immigration Control, so maybe they're having difficulty getting through the worklists?