The government has been keen to prove its civil liberties credentials by abolishing the children's database for England, but it could leave a hole in child protection efforts.
Friday's termination of ContactPoint, the database designed to support child protection in England by holding information on all its children, marks the end of a messy affair in which the government sent out some confusing signals about its abolition.
It had been one of the targets for both parties of the coalition since well before the election, along with identity cards and the NHS's summary care records; both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats had picked up the privacy lobby's claim that it was an unacceptable threat to civil liberties.
Some of these criticisms have been selective. The database has been criticised for being unnecessarily intrusive, although there were always limits on the information it included, with no personal records. There was plenty of misinformation spread about its contents, and it was notable that late last year Francis Maude, now the lead minister for government IT issues, told Government Computing Magazine that he understood (incorrectly) that the database contained every child's school report.
There were also complaints about security and widespread access, voiced without acknowledgement that entry into the database demanded the use of a double factor authentication system, and that users had to be approved and were only able to see information deemed relevant to their roles.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families had been careful to control access to different types of information, and set up a parental consent mechanism. It was credible to argue that the more basic data could be misused, but the database was often unfairly attacked as providing an open invitation to people planning to abuse its contents.
It was surprising that the coalition parties were so critical of ContactPoint while having little to say about e-Borders, a much more intrusive programme that aims (in a rather clumsy way) to track the movements of UK citizens in and out of the country. It all suggested that the coalitions parties' position was based on misinformation that could be corrected soon after they took power.
Events after the election were confusing. While the new government rushed to abolish the National Identity Scheme, it stalled on ContactPoint, and in mid June issued a letter scaling down but not terminating its use. This prompted some of us to believe it was rethinking its position. But in late July it suddenly set a cut-off date of 6 August, with only a hint of developing a new system more focused on vulnerable children.
The system's abolition will leave many public servants feeling disappointed. In my experience, ContactPoint was widely welcomed in local government: all of those I spoke to from the sector took the privacy issues seriously but said it would do a lot to help their authorities protect vulnerable children in their areas.
This is unsurprising, given that whenever a story about a child dying due to mistreatment hits the press the local authority invariably takes the blame. The one criticism from a public servant I heard was from a primary school head teacher who regarded it as a bureaucratic burden.
It leaves a situation where the privacy lobby is celebrating but many public servants with obligations in child welfare will find it harder to meet the demands. When future stories come out about children being mistreated – forgive my scepticism, but it will happen – nobody is going to accept the absence of ContactPoint as a factor; but there will be a few people thinking "What if ….?"
Mark Say is editor of Government Computing magazine
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