Data Sharing between Public Bodies

In case you missed it, The Law Commission published its Scoping Report, 'Data Sharing between Public Bodies' in July 2014.

 

The recommendations were:

 

1. We recommend that a full law reform project should be carried out in order to create a principled and clear legal structure for data sharing, which will meet the needs of society. These needs include efficient and effective government, the delivery of public services and the protection of privacy. Data sharing law must accord with emerging European law and cope with technological advances. The project should include work to map, modernise, simplify and clarify the statutory provisions that permit and control data sharing and review the common law.  
2. The scope of the review should extend beyond data sharing between public bodies to the disclosure of information between public bodies and other organisations carrying out public functions.
3. The project should be conducted on a tripartite basis by the Law Commission of England and Wales, together with the Scottish Law Commission and the Northern Ireland Law Commission. 

 The full text can be downloaded at:

http://lawcommission.justice.gov.uk/areas/data-sharing.htm

Data Sharing in the UK Public Sector, the Norm or the Exception?

Since I last wrote about data sharing in the public sector there has been a lot of interest about the growing volumes of personal data all organisations are accumulating. In the private sector customer data is treasured, analysed and reused (with the customer's permission of course). Companies talk of Big Data and hail it as 'the next big thing'. Follow #bigdata or Google it and you will see the bold claims that are made for this new era.

But what about the public sector? We still hear of councils and other public sector organisations resolutely pronouncing that they can't share data because the law prohibits them. When I wrote the first article in August 2012 I set out what I thought was the most challenging of the 4 barriers to successful data sharing. Just to recap these were:

• Legal
• Cultural
• Organisational
• Technical

The most challenging? Culture, people just don't want to change and will use the other 3 to support this. But we all know that the technology can do whatever we want it to do, so people tend to hang on to the 'we can't share because the law says so' argument but cannot really back it up when challenged.

So it was a great relief when Dame Caldicott produced her second report earlier in the year 'Information, to share or not to share' and started to deconstruct some of the 'myths' but perhaps more importantly suggested that culturally we should move towards 'how we can' and move away from 'why we can't'. Dame Caldicott added a seventh principle to the six she established in her first review in 1997

The duty to share information can be as important as the duty to protect patient confidentiality.

This seventh principle was added in response to the growing concern that in healthcare at least, barriers were being erected that were putting patients at risk.

So if our colleagues in healthcare 'get it' what about the other public sectors? One recent case brought to my attention is the DVLA's information about registered keepers of motor vehicles. As part of the Civil Enforcement process (parking tickets to the everyday person) local authorities can request details of registered keepers from DVLA so that they can serve a Notice to Owner (NTO) when a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) remains unpaid.

For the moment let's not comment on the 20% of cars that have outstanding PCNs that have no registered keeper, or the most recent revelation that some drivers are still driving despite having amassed 42 penalty points http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23967547 and focus on what happens to the information provided by the DVLA.

The DVLA contend that information supplied by them to local authorities for the purpose of Civil Enforcement of PCNs cannot be used by the authority for other purposes. This may be true, so for example routinely adding this data to a 'citizen's index' might be unlawful. For example, a matching of unpaid PCN information to Blue Badges issued (an exercise that has routinely produced some interesting results and successful prosecution for fraud, would appear to be unlawful as the data supplied by the DVLA was being used for a purpose other than the one it was registered for. As yet I haven't seen if a registration under the Data Protection Act for DVLA supplied data would be acceptable to the ICO.

But what isn't unlawful is to use the other information that the local authority holds to trace people who have not paid their PCNs. In a recent study I was involved in, of the 9,000 unpaid PCNs that had been returned 'Gone Away' over 1/3rd of those people still lived within the council area and of those, over 1,000 were in council owned housing. So some part of the council knew where the person was, but not the Parking Services people who were using out of date DVLA information.

Sharing data between services in the council netted another £200,000 of unpaid PCNs. Despite the emotive talk of 'cash cows' that often accompanies any discussion on parking, I think most would agree that it is beholden on councils to use whatever information they have to maximise their income and reduce administration costs. After all, collection rates for PCNs hover around 75% which is probably the lowest collection rate of anything local and central government collects, so there is ample room for improvement. Strange how the media interest in this subject never brings out the poor collection rates, but that's another story.

Returning to the topic of Big Data, most commercial organisations are beginning to tune into the value and importance of this to future customer satisfaction and retention. Local councils are just beginning to grasp this concept and re-evaluate the way they have implemented CRM systems. The initial use as a 'front office' system to manage and monitor phone calls is now giving way to more elaborate systems that can tell the council what its customers actually want.

Be this from self-service web based system or face to face and telephone contact, modern systems can now identify exactly what customers want and provide empirical evidence to enable the council to plan future service delivery. The current push by the public sector to provide services that are 'digital by default' offers the potential for significant cost savings, but, providing self-service intelligent forms on the web site is only part of the story.

If councils are going to weather the current 'austerity storm' chances are they will have to STOP doing some of the things they are currently doing. Enabling self-service can just provide 'mess for less' rather than truly transform services.

Without the relevant data, and implicitly the sharing of data, how will local authorities plan to deliver what their customers want, AND dynamically change this as requirements change? Or will they just use the trusted methods of Citizen Surveys back up by some good old Mosaic demographics data?

One recent development that may further the debate is the changes to the Freedom of Information Act that came into effect on 1st September 2013. These changes allow individuals and organisations to demand data sets from local councils in a re-usable format. Although this data is anonymised the fact that the data can be re-used may bring about a glut of FOI requests in the next few months. The changes also allow the local council to charge for the supply of this re-usable data, so this might well fuel the 'cash cow' argument, or further the debate about data sharing.

I suspect this debate will continue for the next few years and there will be many barriers to overcome until we achieve what Dame Caldicott so eloquently expressed.

The duty to share information can be as important as the duty to protect patient confidentiality

There are some good places to continue this discussion. You can try my blog at http://e-mpirical.blogspot.co.uk/ or visit our website at www.e-mpirical.com Tony Worsdall has worked in the public sector for over 30 years and has managed major transformational change programmes in local government and the NHS. Dame Caldicott's report http://tinyurl.com/bn93l57

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tony_Worsdall


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Datasharing Summary

GP data won't be shared if patient objects, DH says#datasharing ow.ly/ku2hS

Data from GP records will not be shared outside practices without patient consent except in emergencies, health secretary Jeremy Hunt has said.

Millennials More Comfortable Than Their Elders Sharing Personal Data Online

Millennials (18-34) are getting somewhat comfortable with the idea of personal data sharing, at least when it comes with tangible benefits, according to survey results from the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future and Bovitz Inc

http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/interactive/millennials-more-comfortable-than-their-elders-sharing-personal-data-online-28919/

The Dame is not for turning - Data Sharing part deux

So Dame Caldicott is going to have a second bash at data sharing.

Dame Fiona Caldicott is preparing her second review of data sharing and will report in April 2013.

 Long after her influential report of 1997, the effects of Caldicott are being felt and most recently they have come to the fore in the context of the Government’s ‘Troubled Families’ agenda.  Currently the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) are suggesting that local authorities attempt to use health data to help them identify those families most at risk.

Clearly there is often a correlation between health and other  family related issues, but many feel that using health information to ‘target’ families is one step too far. However, Dame Caldicott suggest in a recent interview with Local Government Chronicle, that her second report might suggest a ‘duty of care’ form the healthcare professional to share information that they think will benefit the individual they are dealing with.

This does not suggest a ‘carte blanche’ approach to data sharing but, as Dame Caldicott suggests might create a cultural shift away from the reluctance to share.

Clearly in the context of troubled families and all of the terrible cases that have emerged in the past few years where sharing information between public services may have seem different results, the argument for data sharing seems well made. But will the general public accept that sharing data should be the default option for the future of pubic service delivery?

We can all make the case on the grounds of cost, total place, one point of contact and tell us once, but can we accept that Digital by Default also means that all public servants will have all of our citizens information at their disposal?

Caldicott wil report in the next few weeks, I suspect that the debate on data sharing will rage for a few more months yet.

Lack of data sharing allows drivers to escape speeding points

Now here's another example of poor data sharing.... If you get a speeding ticket and get offered Speed Awareness Training as an option you should only be able to do this once in three years.

Guess what, if you get the tickets in different areas of the country (usually run on County boundaries).... they don't talk to each other so you can get away with taking the course more than once and avoid the penalty points.

Rather a topical subject today methinks.

Full story here

Can the Public Sector in the UK afford not to share data?

A recent report by Chris Yiu at The Policy Exchange suggests that £33bn per year could be saved with better use of citizen data. But is the public sector ready to take a leap of faith and start using their own citizen data in a much more joined up manner. Read the recent White Paper

Audit Commission publishes report on use of information in the public sector

This report looks at how councils use information to make decisions. It encourages chief executives, senior officers and lead members to be more demanding about the information they seek and use when making decisions. The report also suggests ways to improve in both these areas.

http://tinyurl.com/mhbn39

Police start data matching records

New powers will allow the poice to match DVLA records to Insurance records. See the full story http://tinyurl.com/amfwy8