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Today Philip Johnston wrote a “concerned” article in the Daily Telegraph with regard to the “Ministry of Justice 1984 Straw” publishing something called the “Data Sharing Review” which will effectively enable them to by-pass any legal constraints to accessing database information from any person or organisation, including one assumes from the private sector, they pick upon and without giving any reason.

Should we be concerned ? The answer is very much that we should but not because of an Orwellian State the Labour Government is far too incompetent for that but simply because neither the Government nor the Civil Service, have a clue what they are dealing with and that is dangerous.

Basic Access to Data

As my recent post on the subject, the ID Cards ‘caper’ is a prime example of how not to do IT, it is fundamentally flawed from a technical perspective and will never work in terms of its stated purpose and will either wither on the vine or be withdrawn within a year. I won’t go across the reasons again but it represents a total waste of at least £5.5 billion of taxpayer’s money.

However the following may help in describing just why when dealing with IT systems generally one needs to apply a basic level of commonsense.

In any computer network there are “users” of the system who have to have an account and a login to access it. They are allocated access to information based upon what they need to do their job and on a “need to know” basis; this is called a Security Model. As an example, it would not be a good idea for the average office worker to be able to know how much their Boss is being paid; there is no need for the Accounts Department to access Research & Development data and so on.

Security Models

Now whilst this is a technical topic that is almost as boring as databases, it is crucial and none more so than in a complex environment like a nominally democratic Government where efficiency must coexist with the rights of individual citizens to be protected from both an overbearing State and as shown in the UK, an incompetent one.

The thing to understand is that Security Models should reflect the reality of any job, the access to information being tied to the job function. If a Policeman wanted to confirm your identity, he does not need to know how much you earn or whether you windsurf as a hobby, he needs to know that you are who you say you are. All any IT system needs to tell him is “true or false” which is actually all that computers do as it happens.

Commercially, the access to information not only reflects a need to know but also a chain of command that generates an audit trail of who accessed what information and exactly when. So if we put this question; “Do I believe that the British Government has a comprehensive security model ? My guess would be almost certainly NOT because they don’t understand the concept although one hopes the Security Services and Military do.

Security Models and Citizen’s Rights

If they do, it should be published as a “workflow procedure” which would be something like: “A complaint received at a tax office is dealt with and escalated in the following way…” Or say someone was arrested and the Police wanted access to personal taxation information, here too a formal process with an audit trail available to the suspect’s solicitor should exist.

This all hinges not just around an official of the State having a right to know but as importantly, that the citizen can demand the “audit trail” and an explanation as to why that information was accessed in the first place. And just like Auditors in accounting, the IT Audit needs to be done by an outside body annually and be the source from which previous year’s data access information can be obtained by the public or their representatives.

The problem with this particular Government which is totally incompetent and secretive by nature, is that they want our information but will not do the job properly, legally, securely and for the mutual benefit of us all. They are intellectually lazy and the Civil Service as evidenced by a penchant for losing data are just not up to the task of dealing with electronic information.

Conclusion

As per the comments in my blog on scrapping the ID Card Project, one of the principle reasons is that the Government and Parliament had absolutely no idea what they were authorizing and principally because they are not technically qualified to assess such a project. The second ‘issue’ was that it was presented as a “quick fix technical project” all spangles and whizz bang clever stuff so 99% of the House didn’t even bother to come to grips with it at any meaningful level.

The proof of this lies in people objecting on “Civil Liberties” grounds and defending on the basis of “Nothing to Hide”. I have never even bothered to waste time on the Civil Liberties argument because with ID Cards, it stops at the technical nonsense which says it is totally flawed end of story.

If we ignore the technical IT issues for a moment and instead concentrate on modelling the flow of information – it matters not how it flows, electronically or on bits of paper, we will arrive at a real world model that says: “Under what circumstances should this person be able to view this information and how would those circumstances arise ?” If you keep asking that same question for every level of Government you will arrive at a “Security Model”. If this is then translated to an IT System with an audit trail and a cast iron “Right to Know” for individual citizens, then both efficiency and civil liberties can be upheld.

With external auditing and access data held in the private sector outside of the control of Government, it imposes a duty of care on the holder of that data, that could lead to criminal or civil actions against public servants which includes MPs who abused the system.