Government IT policy is spoiling those Tories rotten 1


Michael Cross, writing in the Guardian, thinks the Database State is an electoral gift to the Conservative Party:

These gifts are likely to be deployed in the Conservatives’ first potentially election-winning manifesto in a generation. We have already been promised measures to cancel the ID card, and the government this week handed the opposition another treat by placing the largest chunk of the business with US-based firms. The legally compromised national DNA database would also be scrapped.

If the government doesn’t get there first, the Tories have promised a close look at the NHS’s “hubristic supercomputer”, a reference to the NHS National Programme for IT in England. This too will be popular – though it could be awkward if the review concludes the problem is that the programme has spent too little, rather than too much, money.


One thought on “Government IT policy is spoiling those Tories rotten

  • andrew

    Michael Cross says that under a Conservative government “The legally compromised national DNA database would also be scrapped”. Not so.

    Instead, the Conservatives are proposing that the English DNA database be run on the same lines as the Scottish one – retain crime scene samples and the DNA of those convicted of crimes. Those acquitted, or never charged, would in most cases be able to have their DNA removed from the database.

    This article is Another Paper lists what it says are the the Conservative’s ten principles on for the retention of DNA: http://tinyurl.com/cdkqgq

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