Breaking the grip of the ‘database state’
Sam Talbot Rice writes in Public Servant magazine:
So far, we have heard the language of personalisation of public services, but have not seen the reality. Rather than devolving power and choice, ministers have set upon a course of transformational government that seeks to collect, in the words of their adviser, “a deep truth about the citizen based on their behaviour, experiences, beliefs, needs and rights”. This path to a database state is both hugely expensive and liable to spectacular breaches of security. It is also wrong in principle, as it tips the balance of power between state and citizen overwhelmingly towards the former.
If we are going to move into what David Cameron has termed the post-bureaucratic age we will need to think not just in terms of the percentage of GDP spent by the state, but also about the fundamental balance in the relationships of government, the individual, communities and businesses.
The idea that Whitehall knows best has been under attack for many years, but it is only now that we have the tools to achieve the much-promised, but rarely delivered, decentralisation of power. Indeed, true localism – with proper local accountability – will only be possible if voters have access to the information, whether it is crime maps or hospital infection rates, they need to make meaningful choices and hold those in power to account.
