I cant help, even in this season of goodwill, feeling schadenfreude about the data protection problems being experienced by government at the moment
One of the most vacuous slogans - Joined Up Government - is not heard so much of now. It was one of those things that made me shout at the radio, especially when someone was explaining that it was ridiculous that you might have to give the same piece of information to different departments, rather than them all being able to rely on just one central source
Well that can have problems too - & not just because if one loses it they all lose it. Government only gets one chance to get it right
One example being quoted a while ago was the apparent need for someone to produce a death certificate 37 times over.
When a newspaper made a mistake about Mark Twain he had merely to write that Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. It would have been much more awkward for him if every government database had been convinced of the veracity of those reports
