Data Handling Procedures in Government: Interim Progress Report

[Peter Tomlinson]

David Hansen wrote:
> On 18 Jan 2008 at 21:11, Peter Tomlinson wrote:
>
>   
>>> _http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/reports/data_handling.aspx_
>>>       
>> [I] doubt that things will get much better until the ICO has 
>> both the teeth and the resources to police this area.
>>     
> I'm not convinced. The current bod shows little desire to police 
> information properly and many of his staff appear entirely 
> disinterested. Any revolution in this regard would probably need to 
> include taking the lot of them out and lining them upagainst a wall, to 
> encourage their replacements to be rather more dilligent.
>
>   
The ICO has in public told DoH that they will be prosecuted if they 
again allow the exposure that happened with the junior doctors 
recruitment system MTAS, and has obtained a written commitment from them 
(see the ICO press release).

In my case, the ICO got tough with DfT, much more so than I expected.
>> The really annoying thing is that I'm convinced that the intention at 
>> the top is for service delivery to be done properly.
>>     
> I have a simple approach when evaluating the claims of those at "the 
> top".
>
> Things occasionally go wrong, but if things consistently go wrong then 
> I become increasingly disbelieving about the assertions of those at 
> "the top" and wonder what they really want to happen.
>
>   
Remember that we are less than a year into the new administration, and 
things have been going wrong for a long time before that took over. Yes, 
I would have preferred an agreement, first with the First Division Assn 
and then further down the string of unions, for business process 
re-engineering throughout the civil service (and, it now seems, the 
armed forces), but that would probably put some Sir Humphreys more at 
risk of early retirement than anyone else. (No, I'm not afraid to say 
that: those of my contemporaries at university who went into the civil 
service will all be retired by now.)

Peter