Congestion charging
The BBC and others report on Finland's plans to use position data from mobile phones to locate traffic jams and warn drivers of congestion. Pilots are already under way, the plan being to monitor 5% of mobiles, with updated information being supplied every 30 seconds...The effect of everyone then responding in the same way to the same information will be interesting to study.

Meanwhile in London - with far greater traffic congestion problems than Helsinki - a new congestion charging system is due to start on 17 February, and nobody really knows what's going to happen. A planned deal with the Post Office to enable drivers to pay daily charges has fallen through, hardly any residents have registered for their discounts, and the Evening Standard newspaper reports difficulties with machines able to supply tickets (but then the ES has always had a gripe with London's mayor, Ken Livingstone).

It's unclear what kind of design or testing process the self-service machines have gone through, but some of the few early users report frustration and failure. Shop assistants working in outlets with machines have not been shown how to operate them. The internet facility has failed to accept bank debit cards, and is also has not permitted card expiry information to be entered. The Guardian reports "the launch of cclondon.com was beset by crashes", while the mayor himself saying that telephone menu options - on the charging telephone hotline - need clarifying. There is also an option to pay by mobile phone text - but this requires credit card expiry details in date/month/year format, while credit cards only provide month and year information.

While "the system as a whole has been working perfectly okay", according to a Transport for London spokesperson, it has to be said that this was during a period with virtually no users. The contractor responsible for all this is one of the usual suspects, Capita. UK readers may recall that this was the firm behind the Individual Learning Accounts, an IT training grant scheme that turned into a fiasco, when the Capita website allowed dozens of training organisations to fraudulently claim government funds, sometimes amounting to millions of pounds - the entire scheme was abandoned and the IT training sector thrown into turmoil as a result. Capita was also behind the passport agency fiasco a few years back as well as the 2002 failure of a national security checking system for teachers.