If the ONS is outsourcing the Census to the private sphere, presumably the
contracting company will expect to be paid. If previous rounds of
outsourcing are any guide, the cost in shillings and pence is likely to
exceed the cost of keeping it in house. If I'm right about Lockheed
demanding some remuneration for their services, cost is not really the
issue. So the question about whether to abandon the Census rather than
hand it over to a disreputable foreign company would be moot. The history
of outsourcing also suggests that quality will suffer in the process.
But money is not the only cost to consider. Whether the contractor is
British or not, they will have access to a dataset of great value,
including identified personal details on just about every one in the
country on Census night. I would suspect any profit making company to
succumb to the temptation to turnt he information into at least an unfair
business advantage, if not just sold off to the highest bidder. The
company may not be constrained by any restrictions on data sharing and data
matching among government departments. I suspect many Britons will have
similar concerns. Under the circumstances, rthey are less likely to answer
questions as fully and honestly as they otherwise might. The real rulers
of society need statistical data they can trust. While outsourcing the
Census may provide some short term advantage to someone, it's unlikely to
meet their needs, much less our need for robust data for our own social and
economic analyses.
In solidarity,
Harry
Ursula
ursulahuws@ANALYTICARESE
ARCH.CO.UK To
Sent by: email list for [log in to unmask]
Radical Statistics cc
<[log in to unmask]
> Subject
Re: More about Lockheed Martin and the census
Protective Mark
27/10/2007 03:48 AM
Please respond to
Ursula
<ursulahuws@ANALYTICARES
EARCH.CO.UK>
sorry to butt into this discussion rather late in the day & not having read
all the previous contributions (I am travelling and checking my email on a
mobile phone) but shouldn't someone be challenging the legality of this?
Under EU data protection directives (integrated into national law in most
member states albeit with some national variation) it is explicitly
prohibited to export personal data about EU citizens to states that do not
adhere to the rather rigorous EU standards. the last time i looked (about 3
years ago) the only non EU states that conformed to this were Switzerland &
Norway but more may be included by now. Admittedly this regulation has been
breached on a daily basis since 2001/2 by European airlines passing
information on their passengers to the US department of homeland security
but still it would seem to me that there is a legal case to be made. I am
away from my PC so cannot give you a direct link but there is a lot of
information on this on http://www.respectproject.org (you would have to
follow the links to the sections on data protection law...
best wishes
Ursula Huws
_____ Original message _____
Subject: Re: More about Lockheed Martin and the census
Author: "Paul Bivand" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 26th October 2007 4:0:16 PM
Of course the Government used to do this itself, and a sample census
mid-term.
That was in the days before electronic processing and therefore was
presumably far more costly in terms of temporary and permanent staff...
Equally of course many researchers would like the census to be more
frequent so the issue of doing it once every 10 years would not apply. The
cost implications of so doing would be large.
I think the issue is more of handing over a complete population register to
a company that operates under foreign legislation (and in this case it
matters not whether the company is US, Russian, Chinese or a Dubai company)
and therefore whether UK citizens have confidence that their information,
however minimal, would not be handed to foreign organisations with
interests that cannot be controlled by IK democratic institutions. Suppose
this was 1937 and the company in question was a IG Farben subsidiary... And
we had the religion question in...
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-----Original Message-----
From: email list for Radical Statistics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of John Whittington
Sent: 26 October 2007 13:36
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: More about Lockheed Martin and the census
At 09:16 25/10/07 +0100, ScienceSources wrote:
>Many thanks for bringing this situation to the attention of the
>RadStats list - I for one greatly appreciate the information. Despite
>the views of a minority on the list, it does matter a great deal just
>who is involved with confidential and sensitive information for profit.
>For those who are happy with having the military corporations and their
>apologists and lobbyists involved with ordinary people's lives a
>glimpse at the publications from Scientists for Global Responsibility
might open their eyes.
>Let's be vigilant on this aspect of the creeping militarisation of our
lives.
It unfortunately is an imperfect world, in which pragmatic compromises and
trade-offs which would not be needed in an ideal world seem only-too-often
to be the 'least of the evils'.
As has already been pointed out, any organisation large and good enough to
be able to deal with the UK Census well will probably have (if one looks
hard enough) military and/or governmental associations which some might
reasonably regard as undesirable.
That leads to a question. Given that it would probably be inappropriate
(and quite probably doomed to failure!) for the government to attempt to
acquire its own resources for this essentially once-per-decade task, if the
only organisations willing and able to do the job competently proved to be
those with 'undesirable connections' would those who are very concerned
about this prefer to see us abandon the UK Census, rather tahn involve one
of the 'undesirable' organisations ?
Kind Regards,
John
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