Atkins Breakfast Briefing (01/03/07)
Where next for Information Sharing?
A central plank of Transformational Government, a core principle of future information management and business process design but a controversial issue of personal security and civil liberties. The business benefits of wider information sharing are undeniable but it is not yet obvious how we will negotiate the minefield of real and perceived risks to make government operations more efficient, provide better service to the public and place the citizen at the centre. On March 1, guest speakers from major Government programmes and Atkins consultants led a discussion amongst senior influencers and decision-makers from across the public sector on the way ahead.
Christine Goodfellow from the DfES is Programme director of ContactPoint, which is pioneering national sharing of information between children’s practitioners and Amanda Derrick from Hertfordshire County Council is responsible for the eAdmissions National Project to streamline secondary schools applications. Christine and Amanda outlined the benefits associated with their projects, some of the challenges they face and how they are ensuring data privacy and security.
Terry Knowles of Atkins, and a nationally recognised expert on Personal Identity and Information Security, described some of the strategy challenges general to this kind of project, that have become apparent from Atkins’ wide experience of advisory, solution design, procurement and programme management. Terry highlighted the complexity of decisions that are involved in designing systems to combine ease of use, data integrity and security. Technology, he concluded was not the core challenge but he called for greater clarity on the strategy for information sharing across Government and for simplification of the array of technical standards for data exchange.
In discussion, the speakers and delegates offered more examples of projects that are now delivering benefits and breaking ground on which future projects may build. Currently each project is justified on its stand-alone business case but some in the group urged a holistic view across the Public Sector to enable quicker progress towards wider sharing of information.