The Institute for Government has printed a coverage doc warning government not to draw flawed lessons from information sharing throughout pandemic
By
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Brian McKenna,
Business Applications Editor
Published: 22 Feb 2023 10:15
The Institute for Government has printed a report that signifies the government is at risk of drawing false lessons from the sharing of information throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
Written by Gavin Freeguard and Paul Shepley, the report, Data sharing throughout coronavirus: Lessons for government, relies on six roundtables carried out by the IfG in the summertime of 2022 amongst civil servants and information practitioners. The suppose tank has written up every roundtable, offering video and audio. They cowl subjects similar to legislating to help information sharing, information sharing to fight fraud and the experiences of the NHS Covid-19 Data Store.
The report notes that the info retailer attracted controversy due to how open mission house owners had been in regards to the involvement of sure suppliers. “Openness about the private companies involved in the project led to several stories in the press,” mentioned the report authors, coyly. Palantir has proved to be a controversial agency within the context of this mission as a result of it’s a favorite goal of civil libertarian organisations, similar to Privacy International, Big Brother Watch and authorized firm Foxglove.
The report places into query the government’s self-congratulation about information sharing throughout the pandemic. It factors to the findings of two parliamentary committees, the House of Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee, and the Science and Technology Select Committee, which had been vital of the government’s response to the pandemic.
“A country with a world-class expertise in data analysis should not have faced the biggest health crisis in 100 years with virtually no data to analyse,” one mentioned. Also registered within the IfG report was the style through which establishing NHS Test and Trace “as a new organisation outside the healthcare system created technical challenges that hindered the sharing of positive infection cases and their locations with local authorities”.
The report expresses reservations in regards to the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill going via Parliament this yr. Of the roundtable on that topic, the authors mentioned: “The most significant challenges with data sharing identified by our roundtable participants were not legislative, but cultural and organisational, meaning further legislation may fail to resolve (and might instead distract from) the problems that actually posed a barrier to effective data sharing.”
The report recommends that government ought to rethink a number of of its proposed modifications to the invoice. These would, say the report’s authors, “remove the requirement for several measures that were highlighted as useful by roundtable participants, such as data protection impact assessments [DPIAs] and data protection officers. The bill should retain these aspects.”
The report notes that the invoice has been framed by the government as delivering a number of the so-called “benefits of Brexit” via making a “pro-growth and innovation-friendly data protection regime”. This is as a result of Brexit permits the UK to diverge from the European model of the General Data Protection Regulation. However, the report’s authors preserve that “a key lesson from the pandemic has been that existing legislation is largely fit for both emergency and non-emergency situations, and allowed the government to respond swiftly when data sharing was required”.
They go on to word that the brand new invoice may “destabilise the present authorized setting, which remains to be bedding in, and take away some vital protections and processes.
“Data protection officers and DPIAs were frequently highlighted by participants in our roundtables as useful, and remain recommended by the ICO as a useful tool even when not mandatory,” it mentioned.
The report additionally recommends that the Central Digital and Data Office ought to produce a so-called information sharing “playbook” to assist public sector staff construct new providers based on using information. The aim there can be to “minimise barriers to civil servants establishing new data sharing agreements for public benefit, while respecting the rights and views of the public and aligning with the Information Commissioner’s Office [ICO] guidance”. The report identifies a number one position to be performed by the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation in growing this “playbook”.
Though it’s not talked about within the report, germane to the “playbook” idea is that the government plans to arrange what it calls a “data marketplace” as a part of its Roadmap for digital and information, 2022-2025. The coverage paper describing this “roadmap” says all government departments “will have access to a Data Marketplace (including a Data Catalogue, standards and governance models) to rival best practice across public and private sectors”.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson confirmed to Computer Weekly {that a} blogpost from the Central Digital and Data Office is within the works that may put flesh on the thought of a “data marketplace”.
The IfG report authors conclude, of their report, that: “The pandemic showed what can be achieved and highlighted how a clear purpose and urgent need could overcome some of the traditionally cited barriers to data sharing. But it also showed which barriers remain to data sharing in the public interest.”
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