WRITTEN ON January 14th, 2008 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Across the Board, Foundation of Trust, Political engagement, What do we want?
How I wish it were 1 April, but it’s not. Three jaw-dropping news items today, as parody becomes reality faster than we can make it up…
The US Court of Appeal has confirmed airlines can chuck you off a plane for the crime of trying to fly while appearing to be Asian (after a man of Portuguese extraction had a polite conversation with the pilot, wanted to sit by the emergency exit, and waschucked off a plane – see Boston Globe report)
Since chip implants work so well on dogs the Ministry of Justice, encouraged by Acpo, favours trying to put RFID tags into prisoners and monitoring them by satellite (Independent).
Finally, before the full intrusive folly of the electronic Common Assessment Framework (eCAF) for children has become apparent the crazed “Cab in a Toffice” wants to extend this surveillance to the whole family:
For individuals with multiple needs, an overarching assessment should bring together pieces of information that would otherwise be scattered across the system. Frontline practitioners should build on this knowledge base when reviewing progress or designing support. This assessment process should build on progress made through the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) for children and young people, implemented as part of the Every Child Matters agenda. The CAF provides a shared and holistic assessment for children and young people with additional needs. It takes account of family risk factors and can therefore also help to identify and direct support towards the unmet needs of other family members – a parent’s learning disability, or an older sibling’s substance misuse, for example.
(these last two items thanks to FIPR Alerts).
I’d love it if these were all absurd hoaxes, but I fear not. After a burst of disasters based on a toxic blend of arrogance and ignorance, the tribe has gone completely mad. There’s no sense in implementing policies which make everyne hate the police and prison officers or clam up with the GP or teacher they despreately need to talk to about personal problems. Human dignity isn’t incidental to government: it’s the underlying purpose.
Public servants should listen. Needy people are uncomplicated and articulate about what their needs are. Government should remember at all times, however clever it feels, that it is the servant not the master. While you’re at it stop bloody photographing us. As the philanderer Boris Johnson says in Taking Liberties, just butt out of it.
Please join me in letting off steam. For sanity and moral support you can turn to:
– Liberty for most things
– Action on Rights for Children (Arch) re children’s database matters
– FIPR on children’s databases and chips
– Caspian’s antichip site.
2 Responses to “Reality overtakes parody: examples”
it must be recognised that the authors [FIPR] are wanting desperately to do something about the chronic lack of join-up across public services … There is then a GIANT leap made, across the gap between well-meaning policy makers (who ARE responding to some extent to what people say they want/need) and the particular technical fix … Seems to me that there’s an urgent need for much better join-up between policy and technology, upstream in the policy making schedule.
I have been thinking about this for a couple of days, and I had every intention of saying something positive in support – eg WIBBI some critics (including myself) of Government proposals were less antagonistic, less anti-, more positive about intentions, and make more of an effort to suggest reasonable alternatives.
But according to the OGC two of the most common reasons for government IT project failure are lack of stakeholder engagement (ie, ignore or do not ask the people who will actually use it), and ‘silver bullet’ syndrome (ie, it will solve every problem in the papers). I am sure the same can be said of non-IT projects too.
And if this happens time and time again, as the OGC claims, WIBBI the Government stop effing doing it?
Taking the third example, it must be recognised that the authors are wanting desperately to do something about the chronic lack ofjoin-up across public services – the lack of join-up which sees Education welfare involved with a family whose 10 year old is Bunking school, but where no-one makes the link with the mother’s serious drug habit/deep depression, or the father’s need for a carer during waking hours due to his disabilities… etc etc. There is endless evidence that those at the bottom of the life-chances pile face multiple, inter-reacting challenges and needs (eg poor level of literacy, poor experience of education, acute mental health problems, debt problems, etc). Best case scenario is that you may receive support services for one of the above. Worst case scenario you get an ASBO served and not much else.
There is then a GIANT leap made, across the gap between well-meaning policy makers (who ARE responding to some extent to what people say they want/need) and the particular technical fix, which as you rightly point out, may reduce human dignity enormously and make people less not more likely to access the support they may need.
Seems to me that there’s an urgent need for much better join-up between policy and technology, upstream in the policy making schedule. And involvement of those practitioners who actually deliver frontline services to adults, children and families in the conversation is absolutely crucial.