Here's an interesting page I found recently; it's simply a list of Cabinet committees and their members.
As is often the case in the UK Civil Service, the vocabulary can be
opaque. The Cabinet is the meeting of Ministers who (mostly) head
government departments. They are all politicians.
The Cabinet's work is supported by a Secretariat, called the Cabinet
Secretariat... which organises the work of the Cabinet committees in
the list. The civil servant in charge of the Cabinet Secretariat is
called the Cabinet Secretary - a gentleman called Gus O'Donnell. He is
not a secretary in the sense of someone who does your typing for you.
He is a career civil servant, as opposed to a political appointee or
elected official.
He is also the head of a department called the Cabinet Office, which
exists to optimise the administrative affairs of central government (in
roughly the same way as the Treasury exists to optimise its financial
operations). The Cabinet Office is not the room in which the Cabinet
meets; that's called the Cabinet room.
If any of this reminds you of a certain 'Yes, Minister' episode, I can't say I'm surprised ;^)
Anyway, back to that list of Cabinet Committees. Thought the lens of my
peculiar bigotry, the two committees which it's interesting to see on
the list are 'IM - Identity Management' and 'MISC31 - Data Sharing'.
The name of the first committee is pretty self-explanatory, and its
terms of reference are very clearly expressed:
'To co-ordinate the Government's policy and strategy on identity
management in the public and private sectors, and to drive forward the
delivery of transformational benefits across government'.
Note the explicit link between identity management and delivering the
benefits of transformational government, and the inclusion of private
sector identity management.
The other committee's name is - you guessed it - somewhat opaque. Its terms of reference are even more succinct:
'To develop the Government's strategy on data-sharing across the public sector.'
It all sounds a bit... well, dull, to be honest. However, this bland
phrasing is likely to veil some very far-reaching policy changes -
every bit as radical as, say, nuclear disarmament, trial by jury, the
burden of proof or proportional representation. Early indications are
that parts of the public sector are starting to grapple with the
conflicting pressures of 'data sharing' on one hand, and the Data
Protection Act (1998) on the other.
To refresh your memory, Principle 2 of the Data Protection Act says:
"2. Personal data shall be obtained only for one or
more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed
in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes."
It may not get dislodge Palestine or Tony Blair's departure timetable
from the headlines, but this issue is likely to affect every UK
citizen. I'll be keeping an eye on it and posting updates if I see any
interesting developments, so y'all come back, now.
- Blogroll
- Alan Mather
- Alec Muffett
- Bill Vass
- Bill Walker
- Burningbird
- CPO - Michelle Dennedy
- Conor Cahill... has an opinion or two
- Consult Hyperion
- Don't Panic - Trust blog
- Eric Mahe
- Eve Maler
- Geoff Arnold
- Gerry Beuchelt
- Greg Matters
- Hubert Le Van Gong
- Ideal Government
- John Sandell's Photography
- Kim Cameron
- Lauren Wood
- Ludovic Poitou
- Mark Dixon
- Masood Mortazavi
- Monkchips - James Governor
- New Drew...
- Oz Yigit's brainstorms
-
POSIWID
- Paul Walker's Getting His Coat...
- Peter Davis
- PlanetIdentity
- Stefan Brands
- Superpat
- Tatsuo-san
- Tim Bray
- Toby Stevens
- Tom Gordon
- Vikram Kumar (NZ)
- Wayne Horkan's eclectic
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