>>The access limitations inherent in physical storage media must be painstakingly recreated in computer systems or they do not exist. The problem with security is it tends to be inconvenient.

With paper records, the more data you provide the more expensive and time-consuming it is. With computer records, the more data you provide the cheaper and quicker it is. The NAO’s file of email relating to the incident (PDF) makes this clear. What the NAO wanted (so it could check that the right people got the right benefit payments): national insurance numbers, names, and benefit numbers. What it got: everything. If the discs hadn’t gotten lost, we would never have known.>>

>>It is characteristic of our age that the favored solution is the one that creates the most data and the biggest privacy risk. No one in the cluster of organisations opposing the ID card – No2ID, Privacy International, Foundation for Information Policy Research, or Open Rights Group – wanted an incident like this week’s to happen. But it is exactly what they have been warning about: large data stores carry large risks that are poorly understood, and it is not enough for politicians to wave their hands and say we can trust them. Information may want to be free, but data want to leak.>>

The rest is here.

wg

Former CIO Ian Watmore – an excellent communicator – listened intently to IdealGov insights and gave me further platforms to spread the ideas. But the work done under his tenure did not (I felt) reflect emerging Cluetrain/Web2.0/IdealGov insights about co-creation, quick wins, feedback and the foundation of trust.

And I feel the present CIO John Suffolk, who is less of a natural communicator, is focussed more on the making the central CIO/CTO/delivery Councils and IT markets work better. There’s plenty of scope for that – I’m sure it’s at least a full time job already. But for me it misses the bigger picture of educating upwards (ie what does the Board and Cabinet need to understand about the possibilities and responsibilities of e-enabled public services) and the wider principles of customer-driven change and how to treat people’s data (which I think of as the “what every CIO needs to understand about human dignity and rights” agenda).

So if there is a big government IT culture change I STILL feel we’re at the beginning of it, and not in the final stages. But this shameful episode may be a milestone. I just hope we derive the right lessons.

“Deepak joined HMRC in June 2006 from T-Mobile where he was an Executive Vice President responsible for IT Strategy, Governance, Quality Management and Change Management.”

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/board/