Very quietly last week, the Government published this report. It's worth reading because it sets out plans to build what is effectively the ultimate 'Big Brother' database.
The project, being led by the Department for Communities and Local Government, is called EPDM, short for 'Effective Partnership Data Management'.
Though sounding fairly innocuous, EPDM has been described by those involved in the project as the 'silver bullet' for the public sector's data sharing problems.
The remark came from consultants Xantura, who were commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government last year to develop what they called
'a strategy and programme of work to challenge assumptions and constraints to the sharing of data between public sector agencies'.
The plan, it now transpires, is to give every individual an ''Integrated Citizen Record' which will track their every interaction with government and trigger automatic alerts to other databases on any change.
At the centre of this is the 'data-sharing platform' which will enable police, councils, NHS bodies and other government agencies to exchange personal information they hold on citizens.
According to the report, information currently stored in separate databases will be funnelled into a network of local 'data hubs' run by Local Strategic Partnerships. (LSPs by the way are non-statutory bodies, led by councils, which bring together government, voluntary groups and private businesses to tackle local issues).
Like a souped-up version of the Identity Cards database, EPDM will create a central record of all information held on a citizen using, says the report, 'regularly refreshed data sets extracted from LSP partners' systems'.
Similar to an advanced version of Gordon Brown's Tell Us Once project, the single change of circumstances service currently being trialled by government, EDPM will notify each partner agency of any changes to any database.
Proponents of the project claim the plans will 'significantly improve service delivery' and lead to 'improved outcomes' by 'proactive targeting of services' based on 'advanced analytics' and 'automatic triggering of citizen event notifications'.
In other words, public bodies would have such detailed information about citizens they would able to 'predict' needs and take pre-emptive action. The project proposes to test a series of what it calls 'intervention campaigns'.
However there is a further twist in that the EPDM system will have a further, core explicit purpose, namely to spot benefit fraud.
The EPDM 'data hubs' will enable records in different databases to be linked, helping to identify irregularities and discrepancies which could indicate fraud, similar to the National Fraud Initiative's 'fishing expeditions'.
According to the plans, a prototype system would be built to enable 'controlled searching across partnership data'.
The CLG report estimates that trialling the system with five Local Strategic Partnerships could save over £1 million alone in reducing fraud and overpayment of Housing Benefit.
The Department last week invited bodies to come forward to volunteer to act as pilots 'as part of a coordinated EPDM programme'.
The legal basis of the project is, however, not yet clear, as are the details of exactly who (and how many people) will be able to access these extensive – and potentially lucrative – pools of detailed personal data.
The CLG stated in its report that access would be 'strictly' controlled and the chosen solution would need 'to implement a rigorous set of control and audit reporting to eliminate inappropriate use of data. These reports will enable administrative users to view all data accesses that have been made – by whom and by data sharing protocol.'
It added: 'In this respect the solution will implement a data sharing control infrastructure that will limit access to data through either pre-approved data sharing protocols, created and managed in the system and through data sharing consents, once again recorded and managed within the system. '
The detailed report on the EPDM programme published on 30 July can be downloaded here.
This *sounds* - without having read the report (busy) - like an attempt to achieve the effect of Information Sharing Orders smuggled into Clause 152 (?) of the Coroners and Justice Bill at the start of the year, where Ministers would be able to direct data sharing across departments regardless of the Data Protection Act.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7852480.stm
The Govt backed down on that one - when rumbled:
http://www.information-age.com/channels/security-and-continuity/news/1009117/government-to-rethink-informationsharing-orders.thtml
"’strictly’ controlled" and the rest is just guff, as we have learned with other laws.
Sigh. Another intrusive fox to be shot.
Yikes. Thanks for calling attention to this, I hadn't heard about it until now.
Would you be interested in re-posting this article on Police State UK*? It's exactly the kind of content we're interested in.
* http://policestate.co.uk
Information Sharing Orders Plan B - Your Citizen Record will be Integrated not Shared | The Wardman Wire // Aug 25, 2009 at 3:00 pm
[...] Well, Plan B to circumvent the Data Protection Act may have surfaced: rather than sharing data we will all have an “Integrated Citizen Record”. Via Ian Cuddy: [...]