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CAMBRIDGE LETTER
A question of competence
BILL KIRKMAN
Several crises in the past week have eroded public confidence over the way institutions are managed.
To put it mildly, the past week has not been comfortable for Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alastair Darling, or the British government. The loss by Revenue and Customs of two CDs containing personal details of 25 million ci
tizens is a major disaster — as Mr. Darling has had to admit. It has opened up the nightmarish possibility of massive identity theft. Precisely who authorised the despatch of the CDs by unregistered mail is not, at the time of writing, clear, but the government’s responsibility is. The comments have been direct and brutal.
One is reminded of Oscar Wilde, in “The Importance of being Earnest”: “To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness” — but the disaster is no joke.
Meanwhile, the continuing crisis over the collapse of Northern Rock, a major Newcastle-based British bank, raises questions about the ultimate cost to the taxpayer, as a result of a huge injection of government money after the crisis broke. Gordon Brown attributed Northern Rock’s collapse to “a uniquely deficient business model”.
There is no suggestion in any of this of malign intent. No one thinks that the government deliberately set out to lose the CDs. No one thinks that the board of Northern Rock wanted to wreck it, or that the government mindlessly threw good money after bad in its rescue operation.
Accountability and trust
The issue is not one of malign intent; it is one of competence, judgment, accountability and trust. Northern Rock, to underline the point, has for many years been an iconic institution in the proud and flourishing city of Newcastle. How on earth did its management get it into this dreadful mess?
The questions raised, and the severe doubts cast, do not apply only to the specific disasters. They are far wider. Essentially, they can be summed up by the question: what confidence can the public have that major institutions, whether private or public — banks, or government departments — will be properly run?
The implications, and particularly the implications for the government, are extremely serious. The proportion of people who think Gordon Brown is doing a good job as Prime Minister has fallen dramatically in the past month. On a specific policy issue, popular hostility to the government’s wish to introduce identity cards is growing rapidly — because people do not trust the safeguards for their personal data, and this matters to them.
Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, in an article in The Independent this week, wrote: “Research by my office published earlier this month highlighted that nine out of ten people are concerned that organisations do not treat their personal information properly”. He added that people ranked protecting personal information as the second most important social issue.
As I have followed the unfolding Revenue and Customs crisis, I have had a sense of déja vu. Early in 1971, not long in post as head of the Cambridge University Careers Service, I called for a Discussion on plans to link national statistics of first destination of graduates to the national personal database of admissions information. The admissions clearly had to be linked to names. The first destination statistics did not. In 1960, when their collection began, a national decision was taken that they should remain statistical and not become personal. Eight years later, the proposal, unwittingly, involved reneging on that decision. I said in the Discussion: “It is not necessary to be particularly cynical to feel that safeguards, however sincerely intended, are not, and cannot be, absolute”. I was supported in my campaign (which made me most unpopular in official circles) by Roger Needham, sadly now dead, but already with a reputation as one of the world’s great computer experts. He made the case for making the extra effort to maintain the separation of names from the statistical record, with the comment: “It is cheaper to do any job improperly. Secondly, it is always easier to assume that things will continue to be as they are today and that what appear today to be adequate restraints on the use of information will continue to appear adequate”.
Perceptive insight
Looking at the cost-cutting merger of two departments, which produced Revenue and Customs, how perceptive the first comment appears. And in the light of the dramatic risk of identity theft, how relevant is the warning contained in the second.
With incompetence and irresponsibility of the order we now face, there is no need for malign intent. Serious risk is a reality.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, U.K. Email him at: bill.kirkman@gmail.com
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