Birmingham City Councilis considering
giving citizens control over which public sector departments have
access to their personal data.
The council wants to introduce individual information accounts
to allow citizens to manage their own details and supply them to
the council departments they want or need to connect up to.
Glyn Evans, transformation policy leader at
Birmingham, said, "It changes the power balance - instead of
the public sector being all-powerful, members of the public should
feel they can influence things. They decide how they want
government to join up by controlling their own account."
He said the project could be the way forward for the whole
public sector, and an effective way to improve the public's trust
in government's ability to manage their data.
Recent
high profile failures in data security mean trust in
government's ability to manage individuals' data is at an all-time
low - but the government is looking to increase data sharing
between different agencies and increase the amount of information
held on people.
The answer, Evans said, is to make data services more
customer-centric. "We need to make the public feel they have a
measure of control over it, and we need to think about how to do
that within the public sector."
A spokesperson for the Information Commissioner's Office said,
"Sharing information between departments can bring clear benefits
to individuals, such as making it easier to access services.
However, where personal information is shared it must be done so in
a secure, transparent and responsible way. Public trust and
confidence will be lost if information is not kept securely or if
reasonable expectations of privacy are not met. Any system which is
designed to hold and share personal details must have security in
place that will protect individuals' personal information
effectively."