Maude: civil servants must ‘overhaul’ personal data sharing 3


According to Public Servant magazine:

Public servants have not been ‘clever’ when it comes to sharing people’s data, with many lacking an understanding of the rules, Francis Maude has said, arguing that a complete overhaul of outdated cultural practises is now needed so that the government can get on with improving services.

In a speech where he said alternatives were needed to a census that hadn’t fundamentally changed since 1801, the Cabinet Office minister said the public sector had not caught up with the digital age and that it needed to bring its data sharing into the 21st Century.

Maude told the Information Commissioner’s annual data protection conference that the government would now change the way the public sector worked and that new proposals would be released in May to make data sharing easier. He called on people to challenge assumptions that things could not be done and to tell government about legal and cultural barriers to data sharing.

The previous (Labour) government also tried to introduce legislation to “change the way the public sector worked and … make data sharing easier”, under Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009:

The bill also originally contained measures to allow the widespread sharing of personal data across Whitehall departments and throughout the public sector. Clause 152 was designed to introduce a fast-track process to allow ministers to share sensitive data held by the government, individuals or private companies “for any public policy purpose”, reversing the data protection principle that information provided to one government agency for one purpose should not normally be used by another for a different purpose.

The clause attracted a diverse collection of critics, including former home secretary David Blunkett, who suggested the provisions needed to be “examined thoroughly” to determine whether the powers were likely to be misused, and in March 2009 the government abandoned its data-sharing plans.

For more information, see Richard Taylor’s extended, contemporary analysis of Clause 152.


3 thoughts on “Maude: civil servants must ‘overhaul’ personal data sharing

  • Tom Welsh

    Oh, public servants are “clever” enough. In case of doubt, check their salaries and benefits, luxurious offices and cars, houses, etc.

    What Mr Maude no doubt meant was that public servants have not “given a damn”. That I can easily believe. After all, for the most part it is not their data – and no doubt there will be exceptions for the most important people in society (such as them).

  • Cynthia Godfrey

    I cannot believe after all the hard work by NO2ID that this present government are now considering personal data sharing once more.

    It was bad enough that the last election was carried out by a US company, that our emails are being read by ‘whoever’; our phone calls are being monitored, all probably by the same people.

    Of course, our socalled ‘public servants’ will have their privacy protected whilst the rest of us will be at the mercy of any clever person who understands the vulnerability of computers.

    We can only hope that with so much inefficiency within government departments this latest exercise will be dismal failure.

  • Cynthia Godfrey

    I cannot believe after all the hard work by NO2ID that this present government are now considering personal data sharing once more.

    It was bad enough that the last election was carried out by a US company, that our emails are being read by ‘whoever’; our phone calls are being monitored, all probably by the same people.

    Of course, our socalled ‘public servants’ will have their privacy protected whilst the rest of us will be at the mercy of any clever person who understands the vulnerability of computers.

    We can only hope that with so much inefficiency within government departments this latest exercise will be dismal failure.

Comments are closed.