07 Oct 2008

The credit crunch and the car-park cameras

Sir Bonar writes

Since I’ve been asked this month to address a couple of issues in our staff newsletter Saturn I thought I might share my answers with the readers of Ideal Government. You might find it in some small way instructive of what goes on inside the Whitehall machine.

First we had a question about the global credit crunch and how it would affect our futures.

The credit crunch is a financial and economic squeeze that is bringing a number of previously high-flying City institutions to their knees. As a consequence of that there is likely to be a deep and prolonged recession in th private sector part of the so-called real economy.

On the whole, I’m able to reassure Saturn readers, this is not something we in the public sector need to worry about. Our salaries and pensions are secure. We have not gambled them on financial derivative instruments; they will simply continue to be paid out of tax. These City highfliers have been driven by the rule of Mammon, and will suffer accordingly. While regrettable, this is no great concern to us. In fact, the wider public and the news media may feel it less appropriate to “bash” the public sector in future now that we in Whitehall are having to use our money to bail everyone else out.

The other question concerned what happens to data derived from the new numberplate cameras installed in the office car parks and eye scanners in reception areas in Milton Keynes. This is fascinating.

What happens is this. As the car enters our premises our service providers Euroserv captures the registration data and transmits a copy to its headquarters in Utah. They then apply to DVLA for release under the Road Vehicles (Registration and Licensing) Regulations 2002 of the full details of the registered keeper (DVLA is required by law to provide information about the vehicle keeper to anyone that has demonstrated reasonable cause to receive that information). This is then cross-checked with their customer history and credit rating from Experian and Axciom to both of whose services we subscribe.

As the suspect enters our reception area we then capture their iris and cross check that against staff records, no-fly lists from our friends in the US and the register of known sex offenders. If there is no cause for suspicion the data is merely submitted to the personnel department to be marked on attendance records, copied to my own “ring of soup” and then retained for stastical and other routine administrative purposes permitted by law.

If there is a match, however, we can disable the doors, IT systems and vending machines, thus disruping their visit and interdicting any undesirable activity. This can be done without arresting them, or indeed even telling them and arousing any suspicion.

This brings many benefits. If someone innocently leaves their sidelights on, for example, we are quickly able to trace them through their mobile phone serivce provider and send them a text message. In one recent case this text message was hand-delivered using mobile phone location data.

Equaly, it is clearly vital if we are to continue with popular activities such as “bring your daughter to work day”, that the appropriate authotirites should be entirely satisfied than there are no known sex offenders at loose on our premises (or at the very least that if there are, they’re not able to avail themselves of our bottled water or our library services).

That’s why we’re trialling the car park and foyer cameras at 17 of our officess around the country. Response had been remarkably good, with 34% of staff saying they feel more secure as a result of the new system, and 42% saying they woud be happy to bring their child to work.

So there we are. I hope these examples give some flavour of day-to-day life here.

 
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