ContactPoint on hold

This has not been a good week for those at the DCSF responsible for ContactPoint. The project has been overtaken by human rights issues and security fears, which have resulted in its national implementation being postponed.

Yesterday, the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust published a report Database State [Executive summary; Full Report] which gave ContactPoint a red flag indicating

that a database is almost certainly illegal under human rights or data protection law and should be scrapped or substantially redesigned. The collection and sharing of sensitive personal data may be disproportionate, or done without our consent, or without a proper legal basis; or there may be other major privacy or operational problems. Most of these systems already have a high public profile.

Then today, it became apparent that they had found a number of security loopholes in the pilot studies that are taking place in the North West [See Daily Telegraph 24/03/2009].

Independent Schools are required by law to provide data for ContactPoint but, as yet, the Secretary of State has not declared the timescale on which the data needs to be provided. The Independent Schools Council [ISC] is actively involved in discussions with the DCSF on the issue and is currently working on three fronts: lobbying against ContactPoint, working on providing a simple way in which the legally required data can be provided to Local Authorities and working on how the provision of specialist services applies to the independent school sector.

Many [the ISC included] are hoping that the ContactPoint project will be delayed until the next election in the likelihood that a Conservative Government would scrap it This not only would represent an enormous waste of tax-payers money [£224m!] but is likely to be opposed by key groups such as Barnado's and Kidscape who are strong advocates of ContactPoint.

Politics aside, there is one aspect of the ContactPoint project which I hope will not be lost. At present the Government cannot distinguish between those children who have always been educated in independent schools and those who have never been registered for a school. This latter group constitutes some of the most vulnerable children in our country and, one way or another, it is important that the Government [regardless of colour] is able to identify them if it is to be able to exercise its duty of care to these innocents. ContactPoint or no ContactPoint, independent schools should work with the DCSF to help them identify these vulnerable young people.

The ContactPoint debate takes off at last

I have expressed my surprise in an earlier post that the Government’s online directory of children’s services, the "ContactPoint" database, has not attracted more attention and media coverage. Well, at last, the day after the Government announced the first steps to activate ContactPoint, parents, security experts and opposition parties have eventually found their voice. The database will contain details of all 11 million children living in England and will be available to at least 330,000 workers in the education, health, social care, youth justice and voluntary sectors.

For more, see the following stories

• First stages of ContactPoint activation starts today (DCSF)
• Children's database ContactPoint launched despite security fears (Daily Telegraph)
• Politicians and Celebrities to be protected from child database (Daily Telegraph)
• Alarm over security of children's database (Times)
• Vast databases 'no longer the answer to social work failures' (Times)
• New children's database faces criticism (Guardian)
• Them and us child register: Politicians and celebrities can keep their details off a controversial new database (Daily Mail)
• 390,000 to access child database (BBC News Online)

Independent schools are required by law to provide a certain amount of pupil and parental information to the DCFS for the ContactPoint database, although the precise details of how this will be provided have not yet been made available.

Raising public awareness of ContactPoint

Given the scale [and cost - £224m!] of the ContactPoint project, I have been surprised that it has received so little attention from both politicians and the press. This database will hold not only the details of every child under the age of 18 in the country, but also the name, address and telephone number of every parent. However, I am yet to meet anyone who has even heard of ContactPoint.

Thus the decision by The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to launch a publicity campaign to let families know how much information on them will be held by ContactPoint is to be applauded [See Daily Telegraph 27/12/2008]. There needs to be greater public awareness of this project so that it receives the appropriate amount of public and political scrutiny.

However, it would appear that Kensington and Chelsea are going further than just a publicity campaign, for they seem to be proposing to extend the facility to shield the data of vulnerable children to any parents who put in a request so to do. Thus, the child's name, date of birth, gender and unique ID number would still be visible on ContactPoint but other details would be hidden. This begs the question why this can't be the norm for all children. If the database will work for the most vulnerable children on a limited amount of data, why can't all of our data be hidden?

For more on ContactPoint see the Every Child Matters Website.

See also previous blog entry ContactPoint and Schools

ContactPoint and Schools

Coming out of the recommendations in light of the Victoria Climbié tragedy, ContactPoint is a DCFS project to create a central database that will be the "quick way for practitioners [schools, doctors, health workers etc] to find out who else is working with the same child or young person, making it easier to deliver more coordinated support." [DCFS Annex A: Q&A]

We in independent schools are being required to provide information about our pupils. Whilst it is tempting to see this as a defining step towards a Big Brother, ID cards etc or as another opportunity to share our personal data with a wider audience [see Daily Mail article 14/11/2008], there is behind this a much more reasonable rationale. It may be both worrying and surprising to learn that the Government at present do not know who is and who is not at school. The DCSF know who attend maintained sector schools and also those who are home-educated, however they cannot distinguish between pupils who go to independent schools and those children who are not being educated at all. By providing details of our pupils the DCSF will be able to do the sums and thus will be able to identify those vulnerable whose parents who have never registered their child at a school.

The data that we are required to provide is governed by the statutory instrument The Children Act 2004 Information Database (England) Regulations 2007. The personal information includes the following: name, current address, gender, date of birth, parental name and contact details.

There are three aspects to the way in which the Department is implementing this project that combine to undermine confidence in ContactPoint.

The DCFS are working with a concept of "fuzzy matching" of data - in other words ContactPoint relies on an algorithm to come up with the best fit - sadly this might not be right match. This is driven by the utilitarian idea of "useful rather than accurate information". This methodology might be acceptable if there were a rigorous data-checking procedure in place. However in the absence of any mechanism for schools to ensure that the data that they have provided has been correctly matched with the other data that the DCFS is receiving, it is deeply worrying. Mistakes in input, data transfer and matching inevitably will be made. Again, this methodology might be acceptable if there were a data field that could act as a robust unique identifier, thus allowing the database to create a perfect match. Despite every child in the country having a unique identifier, their NHS number; and, despite this number being one of the pieces of data to be held on ContactPoint, it is considered too sensitive and personal piece of information to be used in this way. The consequence of these three aspects of their methodology is that ContactPoint will not contain accurate data, which may undermine the whole usefulness of the exercise. If the DCFS is taking child protection and inter-service communication seriously, one might expect that a high level of accuracy of the data be a high priority

The DCFS' methodology may seem bizarre, but they do find themselves between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, in light of the Victoria Climbié and Child P cases, Government and local agencies are being attacked for not having effective lines of communication [I'll leave the sledge-hammer to crack nut arguments to others]. On the other hand, there have been a number of examples of Government departments not looking after our personal data. The inadequacies of the above methodology derive from an institutional paranoia that ContactPoint data will end up in the wrong hands. However, there are some indications that what the DCSF have come up with is neither going to protect children [which incidentally is not an explicit aim of ContactPoint] or to protect our data.

If the sole purpose of the database is better to facilitate communication between those who have contact with a particular child, then the DCFS only need sufficient information to be able to match school data about a pupil accurately with the information that ContactPoint is receiving from GPs and other practitioners. Independent schools routinely hold multiple addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses for a single pupil. We have a responsibility to both our parents and to our pupils to protect their personal data. Given the Government's record at looking after such data, I believe that we would be prudent to provide the DCFS with the minimum data required by the statute.

For more information: Baroness Delyth Morgan's letter to Independent School heads 25/11/2008