WRITTEN ON January 27th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, Transformational Government, What do we want?

Guess what. Now we’ve spent loads of money on them and wrecked local infrasrtucture, it seems large databases are unfashionable. Richard Bacon MP of the Public Accounts Committee manages to get a word in edgeways against Johannes Humphrissimus Maximus Interromptor about the world-famous largest ever civilian IT project the NHS’s NPfIT/Connecting for Health:

“I think in its present form, with these large central contracts, its not going to work, it is never going to work and it’s a fantasy to think it will. It needs to be recast giving local hospital chief executives the spending power, making them the customers, and allowing them to choose the systems they want so long as they meet common standards.”

Someone called Rosemary Bennett (hi Rosemary! You sound cool!) in The Times on ContactPoint:

Much has changed since ministers first thought it would be a good idea to keep sensitive details on millions of children in one place. That followed the death, in 2000, of little Victoria Climbié, who might have been saved had key professionals passed their concerns about abuse to one another. No piece of evidence had been in enough in itself to sound the alarm; taken together they would have built a compelling case for the child to have been removed from harm.

But big databases are now distinctly out of fashion. The loss of many big data sets has destroyed public confidence that vast amounts of information should be held together.

Five million child benefit records, unencrypted data sticks containing details of 84,000 prisoners and information on three million learner drivers have all disappeared in the past two years. There are simply too many doubts about security for the public to have faith in this ContactPoint project, despite government assurances about PINs and passwords.

That is not all that has changed. Voters are questioning why all this information is needed in the first place. The Government has still to make a compelling case for identity cards, flitting from cutting illegal immigration to ending NHS tourism to cracking down on terrorism.

Rosemary seems to be social affairs editor at The Times. So she can’t be dismissed as an intellectual pygmy, naysayer, privacy fanatic etc.

Does it feel as if a more IdealGov-friendly set of values are becoming mainstream?