Could this be the next data privacy threat?

I'm all for doing sensible things in government, especially where they result in better stewardship of resources and promote the welfare of people generally. This proposal is that government 'works smarter' with regard to its collection and use of data:

"Across the public sector, extraordinary quantities of data are amassed in the course of running public services," said Chris Yiu, author of the report. "Finding ways to share or link this data together has the potential to save time for citizens and money for taxpayers. The government will need the capability to conduct analytics effectively, and the courage to pursue this agenda with integrity."

And part of me says 'amen'. However, another part of my puts up red flags, blows a whistle and cries 'big brother'. And I'm not sure which voice is right or how right each voice is. What I do know is that there is potentially an issue, depending on what data and the way that it is used.

So, an apparently acceptable idea is this

... suggestions from the Policy Exchange is to axe the 10-yearly census and instead gather data from the electoral roll, council tax registers and other sources to estimate the total population of the UK and its breakdown according to types and sizes of household, occupations, religion and other factors. Done this way, the government could save £500m for each census, and the information could be "acceptable quality and more up to date," says the thinktank.

This seems to be almost self-evidently a good idea -and I seem to recall that the like has already been suggested in the sense that some have pointed out that our census data are often out of date before they are published and that data that could tell us similar things are available by harvesting other sources.


Where I get a bit concerned is when I read:

Tax officers could also look at how much tax people pay to company accounts and other data to highlight individuals who are paying less than expected.

Now, I don't know what this means in practice, so it may be innocuous, but then again ... so is there devil in that detail? Certainly the report recognises that there could be an issue.

It also acknowledges the risk of angering individuals who feel – or fear – their privacy is being invaded, and suggests the government adopt a code of conduct called the Code for Responsible Analytics.

I'm a bit worried that there is a slightly dismissive tone about that and whether a Code is enough -unless it is tied firmly into legislation about data protection and does not, in effect, remove protections and rights we already have -which the which the Identity Card database threatened to do.


Better use of public data could save government �33bn | Politics | guardian.co.uk: