Posted by: @toodles

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am currently waiting for Gov Uk to resolve this, but, I suppose I may have to wait until I exist in 2047 for a reply! Ho-Hum. Regards, Toodles.

Is this the millennium bug.  That's a faintly serious comment; it's entirely possible that DoB is coded with a 2 digit year (although THE millennium bug has slightly different origins).  Were you born in 1947?

This is a failure in the code in the App you used to read the Passport chip.

There are directions issued by the Home Office to developers who intend using the passport chip.

The instructions include this paragraph:

The App you used on the iPhone is not compliant,
and @jamespa correctly guessed what the problem is.

One wonders why the data format uses calendar dates anyway.
Since this scanning operation is being done by a computer (a smartphone), there are better formats which could've been used, such as UTC

@jamespa Yes, indeed I was. (Or maybe will be in 2047?) Toodles.

@transparent I find it difficult to believe that this problem is only now showing up and that no other passport holders born in the 1900’s have had a similar experience! The app has shown one or two updates since I installed it too! Methinks that another update should be in the offing…

It's not that other passport users may or may not have had a similar experience, but that the particular App doesn't conform to the specification.

Perhaps others have been using a different App.

In your case, that suggested dialogue box should've shown up on screen, but it doesn't do so.

Moreover, common sense tells us that the programmer should've got the App to check the retrieved data against the current date which the iPhone already knows! That most basic of checks would've filtered out the possibility of the passport holder having been born on a date which hasn't yet occurred!

It's unbelievably sloppy programming.  Either a complete rookie or AI must have been responsible for omitting the most basic and blindingly obvious of checks.

@toodles, are you sure the app is an official one from HMRC? From what you've described, it's unlikely to be otherwise but worth a check first.

As for @transparent's and @jamespa's points, I agree that this is very lazy programming. However, and assuming it is an official HMRC app, what is rather more worrying is not that there was a lazy programmer involved but that such a basic and glaring issue could have got through the subsequent testing before release to the general public. Software development is a process rather than just someone writing some code and hoping it'll work, so a failure of an HMRC coder to follow Home Office directions about how to implement a Home Office function and then the failure of an HMRC user acceptance testing process to pick up a bug that will affect a significant proportion of the population seems like a development process that's unfit for purpose at almost every stage.

My experience of many parts of www.gov.uk has been a surprisingly cohesive and robust IT offering overall considering the breadth of scope, so a developmental issue as fundamental as this has more far-reaching effects than might otherwise be immediately obvious. 

@majordennisbloodnok This app is the one that HMRC wish everyone to use, it appears to be the only route from the combination of options I have to use. I only have a passport for ID porpoises - never used it for anything else; as a non driver and of British birth, I have very few means using documentation to prove my ID. Due to the somewhat restrictive range of options open to me, HMRC direct me to use this Gov UK app and provide a qr code to open it for me on my iPhone (I do have it installed but the only way to initiate the procedure that I can find is to use the qr code on the HMRC site.) As you and others mention, very sloppy indeed! Toodles.

@toodles - UK Immigration also offers an App which you can use to verify that your passport NFC chip is correct.

Try downloading that from the iPhone App Store.

Does it have the same issues as that from HMRC?

@transparent Thank you, I tried this with trepidation; to initiate the procedure in that app, I need details I do not possess and a whole long list of options for non UK applicants to use. I’ll play safe and wait until GOV UK get their rear end enmeshed with the other cogs. HMRC will just have to wait for my ‘NIL’ submission!😉 Toodles.

Posted by: @toodles

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I need details I do not possess and a whole long list of options for non UK applicants to use.

There's usually a group of people on the beach at Dover who know what details can be used to populate option-fields in UK Government forms.