midata, the loneliest initiative in Whitehall – 3

The prospectus for midata, the new stock being touted around the market by the department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS), offers consumers not just access to their transaction data but also control of it. Due diligence reveals that this is just hot air. Control of your data is not on the menu. This sort of deception annoys subscribers. No reputable stockbroker would back the issue and no stock exchange would list it.

There's not much more than that to say – BIS is trying to float a wrong 'un – but for train-spotters, chapter and verse are quoted below:

On 3 November 2011 the Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) issued a press release about midata:

The Government today announced a ground-breaking partnership with 26 major organisations that will see them working together to deliver a new era of consumer empowerment ... Today’s announcement marks the first time globally there has been such a Government-backed initiative to empower individuals with so much control over the use of their own data ...

Heady stuff. midata was going to empower us. What does "empower" mean?

Control. We were going to get unprecedented control over our data.

But what does that mean?

Take an example. When you book a flight, for example, the travel agent/website passes on your data to the airline. Your name and address, starting point and destination, dates and times, credit card number, expiry date and security number, your passport number, your date of birth and so on. Obviously. They have to.

• ALON, the Airline Liaison Officer Network, operated by UKBA, Airline Liaison Officers' "main tasks include the provision of comprehensive training for airline staff on the United Kingdom's passport and visa requirements as well as basic techniques of passenger profiling and forgery awareness"
• ATC, the Authority To Carry scheme operated by UKBA, based on API/PNR and watchlists, airlines and other carriers can have their authority to carry refused
• BERR, the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, previously the DTI, Department of Trade and Industry
• BIODEV, an EU project to study the use of biometrics in visa applications
• Business Express, a registered traveller scheme like IRIS and miSense Plus
• CTA, the Common Travel Area = the UK + the Channel Islands + the Isle of Man + the Republic of Ireland
• DCMS, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport
• DCSF, the Department of Children, Schools and Families
• DfT, the Department for Transport
• DIUS, the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills
• Eurodac, the "European fingerprint database designed solely to identify asylum seekers"
• FCO, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
• Frontex, an intelligence driven "EU agency [which] complements and provides particular added value to the national border management systems of the Member States"
• HMRC, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs
• IATA, the International Air Transport Association = 265 airlines
• Interpol, "the world’s largest international police organization, with 187 member countries"
• IPS, the Identity and Passport Service, an executive agency of the Home Office
• IRIS, the Iris Recognition Immigration System, a registered traveller scheme like Business Express and miSense Plus
• J-BOC, the Joint e-Borders Operations Centre, part of UKBA
• members of the travel, tourism and hospitality sectors
• miSense Plus, a registered traveller scheme like Business Express and IRIS
• NDFU, the National Document Fraud Unit, part of UKBA
• other organisations, professional, educational and NGOs with an interest in migration and border and visa issues
• overseas law enforcement and security agencies
• Project Semaphore, the database system operated under contract by IBM to collect and disseminate advance passenger information and passenger name records (API/PNR), this is presumably the database that will now be sited in Wythenshawe, as Jacqui Smith inadvertently told everyone, and used by J-BOC
• Registered Traveller Schemes, including Business Express, miSense Plus and IRIS, any accelerated entry scheme, often biometrics-based
• Sea Carrier Liaison, an equivalent to ALON, being considered, may never exist
• SISII, the Schengen Information System II, "a database containing alerts on stolen objects and persons who are wanted for extradition, who are missing or who are subject to an entry ban for a particular country", the UK failed to connect to SIS for several years and may similarly fail with SISII
• SOCA, the Serious Organised Crime Agency
• SPT, Simplifying Passenger Travel, "a joint initiative amongst a number of key parties involved in the passenger's journey: passengers, airlines, airports, control authorities, and technological suppliers"
• the EU
• the Four Countries Group = UK + US + Canada + Australia
• the Islamabad Consular Immigration Link Team
• the police
• the Risk Assessment Unit (RAU) in Accra, RAUs process 90% of visa applications at FCO overseas posts on behalf of UKVisas
• the Sponsored Family Visitor scheme, one of four categories of visa, the other three being tourist, business and student
• the Welcome to Britain Group, brings together "representatives from transport, travel, hospitality, border processes and public diplomacy organisations" under the aegis of VisitBritain
• UKBA, the UK Border Agency, previously the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND), = Home Office + FCO + HMRC
• UKTI, UK Trade and Investment, part of BERR, "can help you rise to the exciting opportunities and challenges that globalisation offers"
• UKvisas, previously a joint venture between the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, now part of UKBA
• VisitBritain, "Britain's national tourism agency"

But it doesn't stop there. Your data goes further. We live in a big and complicated world and if you care to read the joint Home Office and FCO paper on eBorders, you'll find that your travel data is passed on to all or some of the hundreds of organisations listed alongside.

If you had control over your personal data, you'd be able to delete it from ALON's database. If ATC had made a mistake in recording your personal data, you'd be able to correct it. You could say which individuals at BERR could see your personal data and which individuals couldn't. At BIODEV, you could say that you only want people to see if you're over 21, yes or no, not your actual birthday.

That sort of control would be revolutionary – as things stand, you have no control whatsoever over your personal data once you've handed it over. It would take a worldwide change of the law to give you control. That would be a revolution. Without that revolution, you can't properly be said to have control. Was midata intended to be a revolution?

Several of us asked Ed Davey, the minister responsible for midata at the time. There was no answer.

That was back in 2011. Now roll forward to the joint BIS/Behavioural Insights Team document, midata 2012 review and consultation.

Norman Lamb has replaced Ed Davey as the minister responsible for midata, and in his Foreword he says (p.8):

A key project in the [consumer empowerment/economic growth] strategy is ‘midata’ which aims to give consumers more control and access to their personal data.

There it is again. "Control". And this time there's an explanation (p.23):

The programme defined the initial vision and principles and adopted “TACT” (Transparency, Access, Control and Transfer) as key stages in the sharing of data ...

where "control" is defined as:

Providers give consumers the ability to correct, update, change settings, preferences, permissions etc.

Those quotations seem to suggest that a revolution is on offer.

Against that, the midata consultation issued by BIS (pp.10-19) makes no reference to consumers being able to correct or delete the data held on them by suppliers and there is no hint that the laws concerning access to that data by consumers are about to be changed in the UK or anywhere else. Despite all the talk, control does not seem really to be on offer, midata is arguably a false prospectus.

At the midata open forum held on 9 August 2012, Kirstin Green seemed to confirm that point – access is on offer but not control. If anyone is going to the 23 August 2012 open forum, or the newly arranged forums on 4 and 6 September 2012, perhaps they could check this point with her. You can invite yourself. As BIS say, "... please email midata@bis.gsi.gov.uk to attend").

midata, the loneliest initiative in Whitehall – 3

The prospectus for midata, the new stock being touted around the market by the department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS), offers consumers not just access to their transaction data but also control of it. Due diligence reveals that this is just hot air. Control of your data is not on the menu. This sort of deception annoys subscribers. No reputable stockbroker would back the issue and no stock exchange would list it.

There's not much more than that to say – BIS is trying to float a wrong 'un – but for train-spotters, chapter and verse are quoted below:

Cloud computing – we hold these truths to be self-evident ... and we're plumb wrong

Much of government IT is a mess.

That's the problem.

And cloud computing is the solution. What the UK Constitution needs is a government cloud, a G-Cloud.

Is that true? You know it is – it's a no-brainer.

Cloud computing is cheaper than the alternative and it always will be. You know that. It's more flexible – you can spin up new capacity whenever volumes rise, just like that, and switch it off at no cost the minute it's not needed. You don't need to worry, the level of security is higher than could be achieved in-house, someone else does the backups for you and keeps all the applications you have licences for up to date.

That's the sales pitch of the big suppliers of cloud computing services – Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, ... And coincidentally it's the UK government's IT strategy. There can be no doubt.

Now consider this 6 August 2012 article in Wired magazine by Mat Honan:

In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed. First my Google account was taken over, then deleted. Next my Twitter account was compromised, and used as a platform to broadcast racist and homophobic messages. And worst of all, my AppleID account was broken into, and my hackers used it to remotely erase all of the data on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook. In many ways, this was all my fault. My accounts were daisy-chained together. Getting into Amazon let my hackers get into my Apple ID account, which helped them get into Gmail, which gave them access to Twitter. Had I used two-factor authentication for my Google account, it’s possible that none of this would have happened, because their ultimate goal was always to take over my Twitter account and wreak havoc. Lulz. Had I been regularly backing up the data on my MacBook, I wouldn’t have had to worry about losing more than a year’s worth of photos, covering the entire lifespan of my daughter, or documents and e-mails that I had stored in no other location. Those security lapses are my fault, and I deeply, deeply regret them. But what happened to me exposes vital security flaws in several customer service systems, most notably Apple’s and Amazon’s ...

Where was Apple's security? And Amazon's? Where were their backups? Why can't they just go to their backups and retrieve Mr Honan's digital life?

Still. Don't let this dent your confidence in G-Cloud.

Cloud computing – we hold these truths to be self-evident ... and we're plumb wrong

Much of government IT is a mess.

That's the problem.

And cloud computing is the solution. What the UK Constitution needs is a government cloud, a G-Cloud.

Is that true? You know it is – it's a no-brainer.

Cloud computing is cheaper than the alternative and it always will be. You know that. It's more flexible – you can spin up new capacity whenever volumes rise, just like that, and switch it off at no cost the minute it's not needed. You don't need to worry, the level of security is higher than could be achieved in-house, someone else does the backups for you and keeps all the applications you have licences for up to date.

That's the sales pitch of the big suppliers of cloud computing services – Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, ... And coincidentally it's the UK government's IT strategy. There can be no doubt.

Now consider this 6 August 2012 article in Wired magazine by Mat Honan:

Home Office soon to be Ghoshless

Home Office press release, 13 August 2012:

Dame Helen Ghosh to leave civil service Dame Helen Ghosh DCB is to step down as Permanent Secretary of the Home Office to take up the role of Director General of the National Trust, she announced today. Dame Helen will leave the department in September after a 33 year career in the civil service ... Head of the Civil Service Sir Bob Kerslake said: 'As Permanent Secretary at Defra and the Home Office, Helen has delivered extraordinary change including departmental reform, the independent UK Border Force and support for the successful London Olympics. 'She has been an inspiring leader, who has made a very strong corporate contribution, both via the Civil Service Board, leading the capability strand of our Civil Service Reform Programme and as a vibrant role model and champion of talent and diversity. I wish her every success in her new leadership role at the National Trust.' Helen Kilpatrick, Director General of the Financial and Commercial Group, will stand in as interim Permanent Secretary until a replacement for Helen Ghosh is appointed.

National Trust press release, 13 August 2012:

Dame Helen Ghosh DCB will be the next Director-General of the National Trust ... She will take over from Fiona Reynolds who has been at the helm for nearly 12 years ... Fiona Reynolds ... moves on to become Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 2013 ...

Emmanuel College past events, 6 March 2012:

London Drinks Café Koha in London’s Leicester Square once again played host to informal drinks on the evening of Tuesday 6th March ... The timing of the event meant that members were able to mark the sad passing of Lord St. John of Fawsley (which meant a wealth of affectionate anecdotes about his time as Master) and also celebrate the news from earlier in the day of the appointment of Dame Fiona Reynolds as our next Master.

Emmanuel can give six months notice of the Master's successor. The National Trust can give six weeks notice of the Director-General's successor. That is orderly and proper. The Home Office can't tell us who Dame Helen's successor will be, six weeks or so before she leaves. That looks messy – lessons there for Sir Bob from Emma and the NT.

Dame Helen's move could hardly be announced before the Olympics were over. They didn't exactly wait for long after the closing ceremony, though, did they.

The Sunday Times told us on 15 July 2012:

Originally, it was decided that 10,000 guards, including any military contingent, would be required on peak days. By December, that figure was revised up to 23,700 with G4S providing 13,700 trained guards, including 3,300 students. Dame Helen Ghosh, the Home Office permanent secretary, admitted last December that the initial estimate had been a “finger in the air” estimate, based on information from the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester and the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin.

That finger in the air was Sir David Normington's, Dame Helen's slippery predecessor. He left her a mess. She didn't sort it out and the army had to be called in at undignified short notice.

The independent UK Border Force, for the creation of which Sir Bob praises Dame Helen, was the clumsy response to an absolute fiasco – the Brodie Clark affair.

Dame Helen will find it very different working with the great Simon Jenkins at the National Trust after decades of more or less biddable ministers.

Who called the shots in what looks like Dame Helen's ejection? Ministers? Maybe. Sir Bob Kerslake? Sir Jeremy Heywood? Maybe. Considerable power lies with the suppliers these days, IBM, CapGemini, HP, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Fujitsu, CSC, Atos and suchlike. Did they want her out? Was she standing up to them? Will we miss her as a result? None of us on the outside has a clue what's going on. We are left making convoluted surmises like this because so much of Whitehall is cloaked in secrecy. That is not, in the end, did they but know it, to the advantage of senior civil servants.

And for us, the public? Dame Helen's successor? We'll see. Let's hope for one who is more open with the Home Affairs Committee and, indeed, the public.

----------

BBC Radio 4, Profile: Dame Helen Ghosh

Home Office soon to be Ghoshless

Home Office press release, 13 August 2012:

Dame Helen Ghosh to leave civil service Dame Helen Ghosh DCB is to step down as Permanent Secretary of the Home Office to take up the role of Director General of the National Trust, she announced today. Dame Helen will leave the department in September after a 33 year career in the civil service ... Head of the Civil Service Sir Bob Kerslake said: 'As Permanent Secretary at Defra and the Home Office, Helen has delivered extraordinary change including departmental reform, the independent UK Border Force and support for the successful London Olympics. 'She has been an inspiring leader, who has made a very strong corporate contribution, both via the Civil Service Board, leading the capability strand of our Civil Service Reform Programme and as a vibrant role model and champion of talent and diversity. I wish her every success in her new leadership role at the National Trust.' Helen Kilpatrick, Director General of the Financial and Commercial Group, will stand in as interim Permanent Secretary until a replacement for Helen Ghosh is appointed.

National Trust press release, 13 August 2012:

midata, the loneliest initiative in Whitehall – 2

You will recall the Behavioural Insights Team and its work, the initiative being sponsored by Francis Maude's Cabinet Office.

At least you will if you have that annoying capacity for retaining trivial information which afflicts some people.

For the rest of you, a refresher ...

According to their website:

The Behavioural Insights Team was set up in July 2010 with a remit to find innovative ways of encouraging, enabling and supporting people to make better choices for themselves. The Team’s work draws on insights from the growing body of academic research in the fields of behavioural economics and psychology which show how often subtle changes to the way in which decisions are framed can have big impacts on how people respond to them. The Team’s remit is to apply these insights to public policy making in the UK ...

Governments devise policies. They want to achieve certain ends. They are more or less successful in that endeavour. Sometimes we proletarians accede in the government's wishes – we tend to put on our safety belts, for example, when driving. And sometimes we don't – there is no sign of us proletarians at large giving up the illegal use of recreational drugs, for example.

How do we proletarians decide whether to accede or to disobey? If only legislators knew the answers to that question, then maybe they could influence us to improve their success rate and, in their eyes, improve our lives.

The answers are deemed to lie in the insights of behavioural psychology and behavioural economics – "nudge theory", for short. There are various expressions of the gospel. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein, for example, and Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini.

The marketing tricks used can be subtle, clever and effective in achieving quite unimpeachable objectives. There could be less legislation and regulation, less fining and imprisonment, more carrot and less stick. But somehow Rt Hon Oliver Letwin MP manages to make all this nudging look downright sinister:

Cameron Conservatism puts no faith in central direction and control. Instead, it seeks to identify social and environmental responsibilities that participants in the free market are likely to neglect, and then establish frameworks that will lead people and organisations to act of their own volition in ways that will improve society by increasing general wellbeing.

There is considerable skill required to nudge opinion and while they were still in opposition, David Cameron and his merry men displayed no facility whatever to influence people successfully.

So you might hope that they gave up on nudging when they came to power. But no. Instead, they set up the Behavioural Insights Team, with an advisory panel headed by Sir-Gus-now-Lord O'Donnell. The team met recently in Taunton to take stock and there is a presentation of their deliberations available here.

But perhaps we could make our own assessment.

The Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) issued a press release on 3 November 2011 according to which:

midata is a voluntary programme the Government is undertaking with industry, which over time will give consumers increasing access to their personal data in a portable, electronic format. Individuals will then be able to use this data to gain insights into their own behaviour, make more informed choices about products and services, and manage their lives more efficiently ... The midata programme marks a non-regulatory approach to consumer empowerment and is in keeping with the Government’s broader focus on transparency and openness.

Being a voluntary and non-regulatory initiative designed to help people manage their lives more efficiently, midata is definitively a candidate for the Behavioural Insights Team's skills. And, indeed, the recent midata 2012 review and consultation is published jointly by BIS and the Behavioural Insights Team:

Since the launch of Better Choices Better Deals: Consumers Powering Growth the midata programme has proceeded on a voluntary basis ... (p.11) In the last year progress towards these goals has been made using the voluntary approach to the midata programme ... (p.13) During the past year midata has been a voluntary partnership between the UK Government, businesses, consumer groups, regulators and trade bodies ... (p.20) These are encouraging developments and we will continue to push forward midata on a voluntary basis ... (p.27)

The task is to nudge organisations into voluntarily giving people access to the personal data those organisations hold. And what subtle means have been devised by the Behavioural Insights Team to achieve that end?

This initial promise has convinced the Government that more should be done to unlock the benefits of this data revolution. That is why we are consulting on the possibility of taking an order making power. If utilised, this will compel suppliers of services and goods to provide to their customers, upon request, historic transaction data in a machine readable format ... (p.11) The power would grant the Secretary of State the power to compel suppliers of goods/services to supply, at a consumer’s request, personal transaction data relating to their purchase/ consumption of products and services from that supplier in a machine readable format ... (p.13) An order making power, if utilised, would compel suppliers of services and goods to provide to their customers, upon request, historic transaction/ consumption data in a machine readable format ... (p.14) ... we are exploring the option of taking an order making power that would enable us to compel suppliers of goods and services to provide their customers’ transaction/consumption data in a machine readable format ... (p.27)

The nudgers are meant to operate, remember, through "innovative ways of encouraging, enabling and supporting". All very modern and all flannel apparently. Faced with recalcitrance, what they propose is good old-fashioned compulsion through legislation.

midata, the loneliest initiative in Whitehall – 2

You will recall the Behavioural Insights Team and its work, the initiative being sponsored by Francis Maude's Cabinet Office.

At least you will if you have that annoying capacity for retaining trivial information which afflicts some people.

For the rest of you, a refresher ...

midata, the loneliest initiative in Whitehall – 1

You will recall midata, the initiative being sponsored by Vince Cable's Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS).

At least you will if you have that annoying capacity for retaining trivial information which afflicts some people.

For the rest of you, a refresher ...

midata is founded on the questionable belief that if the companies we deal with would only hand back all the details of business we have transacted with them in a standard, portable, digital format, then the economy would grow. These personal data stores (PDSs), so it is said, would foster innovation and competition and they would drive prices down and quality up. And we proletarians, armed with the record of our purchases, could at last start to make rational choices.

What kind of rational choices? At one end of the scale, fairly sensible ones, such as whether to switch to a different electricity supplier. At the other end, midata seems to be aimed at under-employed narcissists fascinated by how much coffee they drink, and chronic exhibitionists who want to let everyone else know when they mow the lawn:

Tallyzoo, a service dedicated to self monitoring, allows users to measure anything from their caffeine intake to the number of times they cut their grass. Users collect data using a mobile device or website program which creates interactive flashbased graphs enabling them to spot trends and patterns in their consumption habits, work, health and fitness goals. Data is manipulated so that users can share statistics and compare the end results.

The midata prospectus was for a voluntary scheme but its advocates are surprisingly tetchy about suppliers who won't join in, please see for example Government slams [mobile phone] operators for failing to sign up to Midata hub.

With next to no take-up among suppliers and next to no interest from consumers and no PDSs, clearly midata was in a bit of a mess under the nominal leadership of Ed Davey, the Lib Dem MP for Kingston and Surbiton, and minister for employment relations, consumer and postal affairs at BIS.

Then it got into more of a mess, when it lost its sponsor – Mr Davey went to Energy after Chris Huhne had to resign.

But the orphan midata didn't die. There's a new minister ready to bring it up, Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem MP for North Norfolk. And there's a review of midata progress to date and there's a public consultation to look forward to and there are three open forums you can attend at the London offices of BIS on 9, 16 and 23 August 2012.

DMossEsq attended the first forum for you and strongly recommends that you attend the other two. The event was hosted by Kirstin Green, a deputy director at BIS, flanked by David Miller, a BIS economist, and Gemma Lobb, another consumer empowerment strategist. So that's three of them – three BIS people – and there were three of us. Yes, three. Such is the interest inspired by midata.

Please try to get along to 1 Victoria St London SW1H 0ET. Please help. Kirstin, David and Gemma are utterly charming. It's not their fault that they've been landed with midata, a hopeless and friendless and pointless initiative on which their talents are indubitably wasted, and DMossEsq simply can't stand the idea of no-one turning up to their party on 16 and 23 August.

midata, the loneliest initiative in Whitehall – 1

You will recall midata, the initiative being sponsored by Vince Cable's Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS).

At least you will if you have that annoying capacity for retaining trivial information which afflicts some people.

For the rest of you, a refresher ...