Tuesday, July 19, 2005

UK Governmment press ahead with child database

The UK government have decided to go ahead with plans for an electronic database to track every child in the country in response to the appalling child murder cases of recent years. (They actually have little choice, having passed the Children Act last year, which provides the legal basis for it).

The House of Commons Education and Skills committee produced their response to the government's plans in March this year. The government released their response to the committee's response last month.

From the summary of the committee's report:

"The government needs to be commended at the outset for embarking on such an ambitious and wide-ranging programme of root-and-branch reform.

We have been impressed by the commitment, dedication and enthusiasm demonstrated by those responsible for delivering the reforms at the front line...

Some specific aspects of the reforms give us cause for concern. The government has proposed the establishment of a network of 'child indexes' (or databases) containing basic details on all children in England, to aid communication between professionals. These proposals are not currently well-grounded in research evidence. Crucial decisions to go ahead in principle were taken before it could be demonstrated that the indexes would be worthwhile and that practical problems with security and with keeping information up to date could be overcome. We welcome reassurances given to us by the Minister for Children, Young People and Families that she could proceed slowly and would not enter into commissioning arrangements for child indexes lightly, and that more research will be undertaken before going ahead."

It goes on to say that resourcing of the proposals will be a challenge and that the government notion that resources should be found through local savings in existing budgets are unrealistic.

The government's response effectively rejects the committee's more serious criticisms and welcomes their helpful advice, particularly suggestions to do more research before proceeding too quickly.

I have a couple of questions.

Firstly why didn't the committee report their views before the 2004 Children Act was passed? In relation to the information systems that the heart of the proposals the committee's questions about security and integrity of the information are pretty fundamental.

Secondly, when the government mentions doing more research before proceeding, does this mean real independent research or just commissioning consultants to tell them what they are doing is a good idea? This is neither a criticism of the government nor of the consultants. It is a well known tenet of modern management that you have to pay your own employees whether you listen to them or not. If, however, you pay external consultants a lot of money to conduct a study, then that money is wasted if you don't listen to their opinion (the fact that this is a sunk cost, the spending of which should be irrelevant to the decision making, is always overlooked). Therefore, in commissioning consultants it is politically expedient to ensure that they have clear objectives right from the start, including a knowledge of what the commissioner would wish the commissioning organisation to hear on the subject.

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