FIPR Press Release - Government Data Sharing Report is Late and Deeply Disappointing

FOR IMMEDIATE USE : 11 April 2002

The Cabinet Office Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) has the job of "thinking the unthinkable". Their paper "Privacy and Data-Sharing: TheWay Forward for Public Services" has finally appeared today, after a very substantial delay.

FIPR welcomes some aspects of the paper. It has turned out that the unthinkable inside of government has been relatively self-evident elsewhere and thus some of what the paper says makes sense.

However, on closer inspection the paper is deeply disappointing. The PIU authors propose to override privacy by regulation, they have put the tasks of data sharing and maintaining privacy into the hands of single officers, and they seem to have been misled by many of the other departments from whom they sought evidence.

FIPR supports:

• the importance of getting consent to data sharing from data subjects
• the notion that protecting privacy is integral to public service; indeed that protection of privacy is a public service
• the principle that public services should be provided based on minimal intrusion into people's private details

FIPR calls attention to the failures:

• The process is far too slow

  Preparing this paper has taken PIU far longer than anyone involved in the process was ever led to believe. Further consultation, possible preparation of new legislation, and implementation will take even longer. Moving from the current unsatisfactory arrangements to a new culture where data is shared responsibly while respecting people's privacy will be slow. This new culture, and the technical infrastructure on which it will need to be based, will be far too late to provide a basis for meeting the "e-government" deadlines of 2005.

• Compulsory data sharing will be introduced by secondary legislation

  The report envisages that data sharing through gateways between departments may sometimes have to occur without the data subjects' consent. Legislation is clearly needed for people's privacy to be overridden in this way - but the PIU merely proposes the use of Regulations, where Parliament will be unable to amend the proposals if indeed they are ever debated at all.

• Chief Knowledge Officers will be both poacher and gamekeeper

  The CKOs in every public sector body will handle IT strategy, customer relationships, data management and privacy. The same person will be charged with keeping data as private as possible, and simultaneously disclosing it to other departments.

Commenting on the proposals, FIPR Chairman Ross Anderson said, "the PIU proposals are from the 'just one more heave' school of thought. No lessons appear to have been learnt from the rich history of computerisation failures in Government. Auditors and Select Committees have been reporting for a decade on why these big projects fail, but the PIU authors seem to have been taken in by the excuses and the grandiose plans of Whitehall."

FIPR Vice-Chairman, William Heath said, "it's not clear from the PIU report who is to decide what is 'minimally intrusive' and how. Existing service providers will come up with a very different answer from user panels with access to independent advice. The principles here are fine, but implementation is everything."

Contacts for enquiries:

Notes for editors

1. The Foundation for Information Policy Research (www.fipr.org), is a non-profit think-tank for Internet and Information Technology policy, governed by an independent Board of Trustees with an Advisory Council of experts.
2. The PIU report "Privacy and data-sharing: The way forward for public services" can be found at: http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/innovation/2002/privacy/report/index.htm