Data Initiatives Money Pit

Luci Penn, Managing Director

You cannot fail to have noticed the previous Government's unbridled attraction to data. Personal data, including its collection, digitisation, sharing and/or usage, has driven many costly projects at the expense of our privacy.

Often their objectives are well-intentioned, but the repeated disregard for an individual’s privacy has far outweighed the potential benefits. In fact, they could well nominate themselves for a Darwin Award www.darwinawards.com which celebrates those who accidently remove themselves from the species (in this case office) through ill-conceived (or idiotic) actions. But at least they’d win something!

The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Report – Database State (www.jrrt.org.uk/uploads/database-state.pdf) illustrates this by citing 11 data related initiatives as being “almost certainly illegal” with a further 29 as having “significant problems, and may be unlawful”. Whilst development on the £224m ContactPoint (database of every child in the UK) continued despite a Deloitte & Touche report indicating that the highly sensitive information contained within it could never be secure.

The laissez-faire attitude continued when the infamous clause 152 slipped into a draft of the Coroners & Justice Bill which seemingly attempted to allow Government to obtain and use data as they pleased regardless of the Data Protection Act.

Let’s hope that the Conservatives and Lib Dem coalition government continues with its intentions to halt this fast-paced data affair by scrapping many initiatives developed or in development by Labour.

Initiatives such as ID Cards, National Identity Register, and ContactPoint were all earmarked to be abandoned, despite having cost several billions of pounds to date. It remains to be seen whether these intentions remain on the political agenda - there will certainly be huge backing for such moves.

However, I can’t help but feel a little miffed about the scale of the Investment thus far. As a nation we face the cold reality of a £164bn deficit and such initiatives (collectively running into billions themselves) have simply contributed to that debt. Let’s hope the new Government balances the drive for progress with a respect for our privacy before signing away money we don’t have.