How could the massive queue to see the Queen lying in state have been better handled?
Simple: with a ticket ballot.
The Queue started in the early morning of the 14th September, 6 days after the Queen's death. With preparation this is more than enough time to run a ticket ballot. This process, even though it requires email access, is much more accessible than "making everyone stand in a queue for 6 hours"; the Queue people are in now is only accessible to those fit and well enough to stand for hours, and with time to spare, which excludes millions who would have liked the chance to participate but are unable to. All software and hardware systems required here were proposed and should have been developed, tested, and in place many months before Operation London Bridge started.
Phase 1: Sign up
As soon as the news is confirmed, the website for signing up to the ticket ballot goes live. It's incredibly simple: you just enter your name and address and email. No logging in, no passwords, no duplicate checking. You just type your details in and they are recorded, and that's all. Libraries will be given a procedure for handling entries from people without email access (89% of the UK adult population has email). The signup would remain open until 24 hours before the hall finally closes. No one needs to rush to be the first to the website: it can't "sell out", and it makes no different whether you are the first or last person to sign up; both have an equal chance of being selected for a ticket.
Phase 2: The Draw
Unlike live first-come-first-served ticketing, there's plenty of time to clean the data between the entry and the draw. People entering the same email address 100s of times? Deleted. People entering 1000s of randomly generated email addresses from the same IP address? Deleted. People using a made-up postal address? Deleted. You don't want tickets falling into the hands of touts, you have millions of people entering, and room for only a few hundreds of thousands to shuffle through the hall, so any records that look even slightly dodgy can just not be selected. Cleaning the data will be an ongoing process.
24 hours before the first 1 hour timeslot, 1250 names are drawn from the cleaned list. And another 1250 the next hour, and the next, without replacement so that no one can be drawn twice, but also so that the ballot does not have to close, and someone can join after the first draw and still be in with a chance in subsequent draws. Each selected entry will grant 2 tickets. The draw can be weighted to favour local residents and other considerations.
Phase 3: Ticketing
Once we've got our list of 1250 people for an hour long timeslot, we then contact them with 2 emailed QR codes each, and then begin any enhanced security vetting required, verifying the identity of the winner and their good intentions. Any problems uncovered at this stage will be dealt with on the door, refusing entry and if necessary detaining the ticket holder.
Phase 4: Access Control
The whitelist of barcodes belonging to winners will then be exported to an access control system for scanning on the day. Mourners are given a 1 hour timeslot within which they need to have joined the queue - their barcode will be validated by mobile staff at the end of the line to show that they arrived in time, and then scanned upon entry.
Instead of news headlines about the length of The Queue, there would be reports of how many people have applied to the ticket ballot. The numbers would be even bigger and more impressive, and crucially, no one would have to stand for hours outside in the cold to demonstrate how much they care.
