Just because it's digital doesn't mean it's safe.

The Daily Telegraph – 26/11/2007

PHILIP JOHNSTON
It stands to reason, does it not, that all paper records should be put in digital form so that they can be accessed online. It is simpler, quicker, cheaper and more efficient. Who wants to plough through lots of dusty files when the information can be available at the click of a mouse? This is the rationale behind a three year project called Dove the Digitisation of Vital Events. The births, marriages and deaths records of 259 million people in England and Wales held by the General Register Office (GRO) since 1837 are being scanned for a searchable electronic index. This month, all the paper records were removed from the Family Records Centre (FRC) in Islington, north London, and taken into storage in Christchurch, Dorset. But the records have not yet been digitised because the project as is now routine for most public IT schemes is running behind schedule and over budget.

People who rely upon the Family Records Centre for genealogical research are now required to use microfiche, which is often difficult to decipher, especially with older records. Family research has become a huge growth hobby, encouraged by TV shows such as Who Do You Think You Are? and practitioners amateur and professional are furious with the General Register Office for removing the 6,550 ledgers before the digital version is available. A petition has been posted on the Downing Street website urging the Government to get on with it. The Society of Genealogists says that England is without a public records search room for the first time since the year Victoria ascended the throne, and is concerned that funding will not be available to create a promised online search facility acronym Magpie (Multiple Access to GRO published index of events).

The service is operated by the Office for National Statistics, which has a statutory obligation to maintain a public accessible index to births, marriages and deaths. The ONS maintains this duty has been fulfilled by providing existing online images and the microfiche indexes. When the Dove project began, it was due to be completed by next year, but this has now been put back by at least 12 months. The earliest it will be ready is mid2009.

The contract for the project was won by Siemens Business Services, which outsourced the work to India, where the records are being inputted. Information on all of us that would be valuable to ID thieves is being sent abroad, which is a bit alarming when you consider the loss of the child benefit records held on just two CDs.

The ONS says the contractor has taken great care to avoid compromising the security of these records. The IT workers are not allowed to take laptops or mobiles into the room where they are inputting the data and they sit at "dumb" terminals with no internet access to avoid the information being sent out electronically. Once the work is completed, says the ONS, "all details will be deleted from any offshore computers".

We must take their word for it that the security arrangements are watertight; but it does not matter whether the work is done in India or Britain. Simply taking all these records and centralising them in computer data form makes them vulnerable to theft, hacking or loss in a way they were not when they were in paper form held in the Family Records Centre.

The real reason it is being done, of course, is for the great ID card project. A few weeks ago, it was announced that the General Register Office is to be transferred to the Identity and Passport Agency from April so that the database can be used to double check identity documents submitted with passport applications. Dead or alive, we are all becoming part of a giant interconnecting database.

But if it is going to be done, let it be done properly and proportionately. Another innovation, this time with the acronym Ron registration online is intended to replace the age old practice of registering births and deaths by hand into a ledger and issuing a written certificate. Yet when the new system was introduced this spring, it failed. Software kept crashing, often when registrars were trying to take details from recently bereaved people who were understandably upset. The system did not allow the issuing of multiple certificates which are needed for probate since copies are often not accepted. Eventually, registrars in many parts of the country were told to abandon the Ron system, which cost millions to develop, while efforts were made to resolve the problems.

The principal cause of all these problems is the obsession with holding all records on centrally accessible databases. The same is happening with NHS data, which for years have been retained, either in paper form or on computer, in GP surgeries and hospitals. At a time when our Government is penny-pinching in its support of soldiers sent to fight in foreign lands, it is nevertheless content to spend the mind-boggling sum of £12 billion on the so-called Spine system, uploading all these records to a single database. Is this a sensible and proportionate use of taxpayers' money when there are so many other, equally pressing, calls upon it? It would make more sense if we were offered the choice of carrying our own records with us on a smart card. Does anyone do cost benefit analysis any more in Whitehall?

At the risk of sounding Luddite, what is wrong with paper records? And even if it is a good idea to put them into digital form, a choice should be available. The belief that if records are held electronically they are somehow more likely to last is almost certainly mistaken. Some archives have paper documents dating back nearly 2,000 years. Digitisation may be the modern way; but just because something can be done does not mean it must be done. Meanwhile, the police continue their slightly ridiculous hunt for two CDs containing the nation's child benefit records. They should extend their search. A comment posted on The Daily Telegraph's website gives the most plausible account of what happened: "Don't worry," it says. "The discs were only borrowed and will be returned shortly. I'm just using them to update my Reindeer Positioning System." It is signed Santa Claus.

© 2007 Associated Newspapers. All rights reserved
Date: 26/11/2007
Publication: The Daily Telegraph