Personal information and the business of running a Country.

[EvotingMachine0197]

The household charge is the latest episode to cause some fits and starts among the general public regarding the use of their personal information, PPS numbers, addresses of properties and whatnot.

I don't have any problem with this personally, and indeed, I wouldn't mind if it was taken further, but with huge reservations.

By taking it further, I mean having all my personal information on a single or multiple integrated databases, for use by various government services, for the purposes of planning and executing National services.

Taxation, education, healthcare, waste disposal etc all require planning, and continuous updating of plans to suit the national requirements of the day. Good planning, as I'm sure most people would agree, requires good information.

Yet, once we elect our governments, even though we trust them to legislate on our behalf (at least somewhat), we clearly do not trust them or their various Departments with our personal information.

The motivations for this mistrust are probably manyfold,
-An overall image of technical incompetence within Government Departments
-A mistrust of staff within Departments to use the data appropriately
-Some degree of paranoia on our part
-Data Protection legislation issues - data theft and misuse and accidental loss of data.
-Possible lack of quid pro quo, i.e. Government fails to use the data for the use it was intended and on the basis that it was given, instead using it for inappropriate measures.

I'm of the opinion that a much more integrated information system would reap benefits for us all. Taxation could be a more fine tuned instrument with far less regression than we have now. People in genuinely difficult circumstances could be highlighted more easily and helped more quickly. Scammers, evaders and abusers could be detected more swiftly and dealt with punitively.

Society could become more fair.

But, alas, there is always the chance that some gobshte will leave all the data in the back seat of a taxi, or sell it to a Zimbabwean glazing company.

Maybe some day.

[beanie]

I just want them to stop sending me junk mail and insincere Christmas cards.
Other than that, I've no problem with my address being shared around gov departments.

[mistercrabs]

I'm of the opinion that a much more integrated information system would reap benefits for us all. Taxation could be a more fine tuned instrument with far less regression than we have now. People in genuinely difficult circumstances could be highlighted more easily and helped more quickly. Scammers, evaders and abusers could be detected more swiftly and dealt with punitively.

I couldn't disagree more. There should be rules that information shared for one purpose not be used for others. A huge centralized database containing every scrap of information on everybody in the country is the last thing we need. That's the road to a surveillance state.

[stopdoingstuff]

To soothe paranoia, can we call it Hal?

[EvotingMachine0197]

I couldn't disagree more. There should be rules that information shared for one purpose not be used for others. A huge centralized database containing every scrap of information on everybody in the country is the last thing we need. That's the road to a surveillance state.

Yeah, but I haven't proposed getting four year olds to design this thing.

[Expose the lot of them]

I couldn't disagree more. There should be rules that information shared for one purpose not be used for others. A huge centralized database containing every scrap of information on everybody in the country is the last thing we need. That's the road to a surveillance state.

That is exactly what the Data Protection legislation does.

[Gimpanzee]

To soothe paranoia, can we call it Hal?

Are you incapable of discussing the OP, beyond a barely relevant reference to science fiction? Why not throw in a reference to Ingsoc while you're at it?

[Gimpanzee]

The household charge is the latest episode to cause some fits and starts among the general public regarding the use of their personal information, PPS numbers, addresses of properties and whatnot.

I don't have any problem with this personally, and indeed, I wouldn't mind if it was taken further, but with huge reservations.

By taking it further, I mean having all my personal information on a single or multiple integrated databases, for use by various government services, for the purposes of planning and executing National services.

Taxation, education, healthcare, waste disposal etc all require planning, and continuous updating of plans to suit the national requirements of the day. Good planning, as I'm sure most people would agree, requires good information.

Yet, once we elect our governments, even though we trust them to legislate on our behalf (at least somewhat), we clearly do not trust them or their various Departments with our personal information.

The motivations for this mistrust are probably manyfold,
-An overall image of technical incompetence within Government Departments
-A mistrust of staff within Departments to use the data appropriately
-Some degree of paranoia on our part
-Data Protection legislation issues - data theft and misuse and accidental loss of data.
-Possible lack of quid pro quo, i.e. Government fails to use the data for the use it was intended and on the basis that it was given, instead using it for inappropriate measures.

I'm of the opinion that a much more integrated information system would reap benefits for us all. Taxation could be a more fine tuned instrument with far less regression than we have now. People in genuinely difficult circumstances could be highlighted more easily and helped more quickly. Scammers, evaders and abusers could be detected more swiftly and dealt with punitively.

Society could become more fair.

But, alas, there is always the chance that some gobshte will leave all the data in the back seat of a taxi, or sell it to a Zimbabwean glazing company.

Maybe some day.

The legislation that is in place is robust and there are agencies in the government that are quite forward thinking in the architecture of this this whole area. Suffice to say that you can have a secure system - one that does not involve a single identification number or a massive centralised database, that is based on the individual maintaining control of their data by way of an encrypted key system.

The problem is implementation. You have so many stakeholders and there's no beating the public service when it comes to grinding a plan to a halt if it involves change. Integrated ticketing involved a handful of organisations and look how they managed to stall that, despite the obvious benefits. The end result is scope creep of the PPSN, which is the lazy and less secure way of going about it.

That said, in terms of security, the architecture isn't the main threat, it is slack work practices and incompentent and crooked employees. Not all of that can be mitigated by systems architecture.

[Boggle]

In a perfect or even a reasonable world, where the government could be trusted to act in the interests of the people and to legislate and enforce in a trustworthy and balanced manner then I'd have no problem with the government knowing absolutely everything about you.

Unfortunately, we are nowhere near that point.

[Gimpanzee]

In a perfect or even a reasonable world, where the government could be trusted to act in the interests of the people and to legislate and enforce in a trustworthy and balanced manner then I'd have no problem with the government knowing absolutely everything about you.

Unfortunately, we are nowhere near that point.

How is the government suppose to know everything about you? Do they have access to your Tesco club card account or your ISP account? Google probably already 'know' more about you than the government will ever know. The biggest problem is not that the government might know all about you, the biggest problem is that they don't want to know about you.