Ian Cuddy

While penning an update for Public Sector Forums on the 'Effective Partnership Data Management' project I blogged about recently, I was alerted to the fact that a government review of information sharing legislation around benefits data is currently underway.

Given the public kerfuffle and subsequent climb-down earlier this year over the Coroners Bill, I hunted high and low for press releases, reports, or in fact  anything about this new review. I found nothing, well except for a mention buried away in the latest Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit General Information Bulletin [PDF] from the Department for Work and Pensions to council benefit staff, dated 23 November.

The review, says the bulletin, commenced 'recently' and' was prompted by growing requests from LAs keen to make use of customer data in order to deliver joined up services, or to provide more targeted take up campaigns'. It goes on to say

"The review aims to find out more about the circumstances where sharing data could be beneficial to customers and LAs. What would LAs like to do with customer data if the law allowed it? How far could service delivery be improved? What would customers be happy with in terms of sharing their personal data? We would like to build up a good picture of how customer data could be used to good effect, and how this might impact on LAs and on customers. We would also like to hear about any schemes where LAs have been able to deliver services more effectively by re-using customer data. Are there any models that can be replicated in other areas? Does customer consent work? Are these schemes operating as well as they might, or is the legal framework still proving difficult to work within?"

Councils (or those of the audience who picked on this) have been duly invited to give their input, though the consultation appears to be working to condensed timescales, as the deadline for LAs to respond to DWP is Wednesday, 16 December 2009 (i.e. now two weeks away).  By which time, the final version of the  Government's new IT Strategy will, of course, have already been published.  Unfortunately there's no mention of when the DWP plans to go about asking customers what they think about this. Though if they do, it'll have to be pretty sharpish as according to the bulletin, the Department is due to report the findings of its data sharing review in the New Year.

Now call me old-fashioned, but from a public/citizen point of view, I don't see how I  can possibly follow what's going on with my data any more.