Roll up! Buy your data here…

From the Register:

A third (34 per cent) of discarded hard disk drives still contain confidential data, according to a new study which unearthed copies of hospital records and sensitive military information on eBayed kit.

The child protection mess

The National Association of Head Teachers warns:

Vulnerable children are being left in danger because a system designed to get them help quickly is not working…Schools in England must fill in a 16-page form to report concerns about a child’s welfare or safety.

The form in question is the CAF, mentioned many times before on this blog. In particular, we’ve always been concerned that it would become a barrier to children’s fast access to child protection services.

Most of the examples that the NAHT cite are pretty clear examples of neglect that reaches the threshold for intervention under s47 Children Act 1989 – a child at risk of significant harm from abuse or neglect. They should not even be going through the CAF process, which is for children in need of services under s17 Children Act. you might want to compare and contrast these two sections.

A child in the care of a passed-out, alcoholic parent needs emergency protection right now, not ’services’ in a month’s time. Forget filling in forms. We hope that tonight’s Panorama (BBC1 at 8.30) might show something of the chaos that the ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda has brought to child protection. As we have repeatedly said (banging our heads on a brick wall) it is dangerous to confuse child protection with the more general – and often unrelated – category of child welfare.

Careful with those words

According to the Minister, the recent security problems haven’t halted Contactpoint – the project is merely having a ‘pause’ (pdf).

How could Ideal Government possibly be so cynical about it?

…and another new site

ORG has been pretty busy. As well as helping get the ‘Reclaim Your DNA’ site up and running, they’ve launched Statebook, based on information in the ‘Database State’ report. (pdf)

It’s alarming and funny at the same time – go and take a look.

Reclaim Your DNA

There’s a brand new website to help anyone who wants to get their DNA off the National DNA Database and back under their own control. It will even help you write that crucial letter to the Chief Constable.

‘Reclaim Your DNA’ has been set up by Genewatch, assisted by No2ID and ORG, and supported by ARCH, Privacy International, BMH UK and Liberty.

A familiar tune

A predictable response to the Rowntree ‘Database State’ report:

But the government says the report contains “no substantive evidence” on which to base its conclusions.

As we’ve observed in the past, this is pretty standard stuff. Some of you may remember the exchange on the letters page of the Daily Telegraph when FIPR brought out the Children’s Databases report 18 months ago. The Minister for Children said that our research was flawed and this was our reply.

We’re in good company: the Audit Commission didn’t half catch it when it dared to suggest that the ‘Every Child Matters’ reforms weren’t working.

The Database State report

We’ve just been given the go-ahead to reveal the location of the Rowntree ‘Database State’ report.

It’s here.

New ARCH website URL

NB the ARCH website has a new URL: http://www.archrights.org.uk/

We won’t be updating the old site any more, and just as soon as we can actually get into it (the problem that has led to our move) we will put a re-direct on it.

Children’s consent to information sharing

We have finally published the results of our research into children’s capacity to consent to information sharing.

The full report ‘Protecting the Virtual Child – the law and children’s consent to sharing personal data‘ can be downloaded from our website.

The sound of Sorry

For anyone who missed the sound of bankers apologising to the Treasury Select Committee last week, Tonus Peregrinus has mashed up the edited highlights. Wonderful.

Every parent untrustworthy

On the number10 website:

‘We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to remind his government that parents must remain responsible in law for ensuring the welfare and education of their children and that the state should not seek to appropriate these responsibilities.’

The petition has its roots in the Home Education community, but it involves a far bigger principle about responsibility for bringing children up. I’ll declare an interest straight away as a retired home educator (our sons are now at university and 6th form college).

Local authorities have always been responsible for assessing education provision but the government now wants all children to be evaluated against the Every Child Matters ‘five outcomes’ welfare framework. This follows LA complaints that they had no way of meeting their targets where home educated children are concerned because they don’t have the data. Government has initiated yet another consultation on home education – the 5th in 3 years – in order to establish an inspection regime for the five outcomes.

Although the previous consultations have concluded that the present regime offers sufficient protection to children, the government has turned it into a child protection issue, saying that home education is being used as a cover for abuse and forced marriage, and they have garnered the support of the NSPCC. Government has been put under pressure to supply the evidence to support their claims, but none has been forthcoming.

At stake is the far wider issue of whether parents can by default be assumed capable of raising children without state oversight. Government and LAs have become increasingly edgy about home education because they can’t see what’s going on from day to day. Are they really saying that parents can’t be trusted to promote their children’s wellbeing unless they are monitored?

When you’re in a hole…

It’s probably time the government stopped digging themselves even deeper into the mire they created with their dodgy knife-crime stats. From Mark Easton’s blog:

The row over the release of unchecked knife crime stats by the Home office last December has taken an extraordinary new twist today with the government’s account of what happened looking increasingly shaky.

This afternoon, cabinet office Minister Kevin Brennan told committee of MPs that “the statistics produced within the Home Office on that fact sheet were approved by statisticians in the Home Office before publication”.

Startled by a suggestion made by the committee chair (and revealed on this blog a few weeks ago) that the stats guys had done no such thing, a flustered Mr Brennan replied: “That is the information I have, but if that is incorrect, Chair, I’ll correct the record”.

That’s only the start – go and read the rest of it.

DNA collection – where there’s a will, there’s a way

Unabashed by their resounding defeat in the European Court of Human Rights, government plans to collect everyone’s DNA have shifted to a different arena:

The Government has admitted it wants to store patients’ DNA samples on the new NHS computer system.

Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo says her ‘long-term objective’ is to put people’s genetic profiles on the £12billion Connecting For Health database. And Prof Dame Sally Davies, chief scientific adviser at the Department of Health, admitted the Government was ‘determined’ to proceed with the plan.

It really is worth taking some time to read the information on the Genewatch site in order to understand the involvement of pharmaceutical and private healthcare companies, and the relevance of the information sharing powers contained in the Coroners and Justice Bill currently going through Parliament. (If you don’t already know what these are, Computer Weekly explains.)

The results of Genewatch’s meticulous research are shocking. You may want to have smelling salts or a stiff drink to hand.

Connexions – NEETer than ever

We haven’t talked about Connexions for a long time, but were prompted to do some number-crunching by an item on the BBC site today.

The number of young people in England not earning or learning is increasing, figures suggest.

People aged 16 to 24 not in work, education or training went up by 94,000 to 850,000 between 2003 and 2007.

The reason that the Connexions service was set up in 2001, with an annual budget of around £6 billion, was to reduce the number of ‘NEETs’ – the official acronym for young people not in education, employment or training. So has it worked?

Skills Minister David Lammy insisted that the figures are unreliable because they include youngsters who care for parents or children, people on gap years, the independently wealthy who own their own properties, disabled people and those with mental health problems.

“Strip those young people out and actually the numbers are going in the right direction,” he told the BBC.

We downloaded the DCSF NEET statistics for the past 14 years from their website – if you like spreadsheets, you can find them here – and compared the NEET figures for 2000 (the year before Connexions began) with the most recent ones for 2007. The came out looking like this:

Total % of NEETS aged 16-18
2000: 8.7%
2007: 9.4%

% 16-18s in education
2000: 76.5
2007: 78.7

% of 16-18s in employment
2000: 14.8
2007: 11.9

The Government has cited an increase in education participation as evidence that their strategy has worked, but this is actually more than cancelled out by the decline in employment. The figures have simply shuffled across from one category to another, and in fact there has been an overall increase in NEETS of 0.7%. In other words the underlying problem has not in any way been resolved by the introduction of Connexions.

Given that the Connexions profiling and information-sharing model was the dummy-run for the whole ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda, what exactly is the evidence base for expanding its principles to the whole of the child population, and setting up Contactpoint and eCAF?

You looking at my tax data?

It seems that some local authority employees have been using the Department for Work and Pensions’ Customer Information System to carry out their own private research. Not that it appears to be a big deal – the following security notice is tucked away in a regular DWP bulletin:

Security notice – CIS access to HMRC and DWP data

LAs access customer information through DWP’s CIS. From July 2008 this has included access to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ (HMRC) tax credit data. Desktop access to CIS has helped to significantly improve service delivery to customers. However, DWP and HMRC customer information is shared with LAs on the understanding that only authorised access is permitted.

DWP’s Local Authority Support Team (LAST) carries out checks on a sample of system-generated Test Checks, which LAs have conducted. In addition, DWP and HMRC interrogate CIS to carry out independent data matches and checks of accesses made by both LA and DWP staff.

These checks are carried out to provide assurance to DWP and HMRC that accesses to CIS are appropriate and that information obtained is used correctly.

Regrettably checks have identified some LA staff are committing serious security breaches.

To be absolutely clear, and by way of reminder to all LA users accessing CIS, users should not

• access their own records or the records of friends, relatives, partners, or acquaintances
• make enquiries on behalf of colleagues in respect of their friends, relatives, partners, or acquaintances
• share their system, Government Gateway or other identity password with their colleagues
• access CIS for any unauthorised purpose

Not very reassuring at all, is it?