ContactPoint Database

The government is considering bringing back a version of the controversial ContactPoint children's database, just months after the original project was halted.

The ContactPoint database project was launched by the previous Labour government, but the Tories vowed to scrap it if they won power, on the grounds that it was a potential security risk to children.

After the election the coalition government announced it was pulling the plugs on the project, but now a parliamentary written answer, indicates they are having second thoughts and are considering a streamlined version of the database.

Tim Loughton, junior minister for children and families, admitted, We are exploring the practicality of an alternative national signposting service which would help practitioners find out whether a colleague elsewhere is working, or has previously worked, with the same vulnerable child. The approach would particularly take account of the needs of children who move between local authority areas or who access services in more than one local authority.

Social workers in particular, and potentially other key services like the police or accident and emergency departments, may need this information very quickly. Any new approach would seek to strengthen communication between these areas.

Loughton said it was important that information held on the new database was kept to a minimum, to allow effective identification of the individuals involved.

At noon on Friday 6th August the ContactPoint database was switched off.

A £224 million system that contained the names, ages, addresses, schools, GPs and several other private and personal details of 11 million children in the UK, disappeared at the flick of a button.

In advance of the move, Children's Minister Tim Loughton voiced a number of our stated concerns when speaking to the BBC:

We don't think that spreading very thinly a resource which contains details of all 11million children in the entire country, more than 90% of whom will never come into contact with children's services, is the best way of safeguarding children. This is a surrogate ID card scheme for children, by the back door, and we just don't think it's necessary.

The only thing worse than an unwieldy state database that opens up the personal details of millions of children, is one that is deeply flawed and dangerously unstable. Good riddance to ContactPoint.

The government has said it has begun training local authority officials to run the new ContactPoint database, which will contain personal information all 11m children in England and Wales, after months of delays and political controversy.

About 300 council workers will learn how to administer the database, and will be responsible for the quality of the information it contains, officials said. From spring, people who work with children in 19 early adopter organisations will be trained as the first ContactPoint users. ContactPoint should be fully available nationwide early next year.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have called for the system to be scrapped, claiming it will be insecure and vulnerable to government data loss. The Tories want ContactPoint to be replaced with a database that only includes information about children identified as vulnerable.

The database is loaded with data from existing government systems and will record the name, age, gender and address of every under-18, along with their guardian's contact details. This will then be associated with the contact details of their GP, school, health visitor and school nurse. No case or subjective information will be held on any child, officials said. [but of course it readily connects users to someone that does keep subjective information].

The DCSF estimates that 390,000 people will have access to ContactPoint. They will be required to undergo criminal record and identity checks, and be verified on the system by username, password, token and PIN.

The plan to shield some records on ContactPoint so that only very basic information is displayed about a child to users has proven controversial. To contact other users about a shielded child, ContactPoint users will need to make a case to the local authority to put them in touch. Officials estimated that hundreds of children will be shielded by each local authority in an ongoing process due to start as soon as administrators are trained. Supposedly shielding would protect families fleeing domestic violence or in witness protection and was not designed to guard the privacy of politicians and celebrities.

Concerns have also been raised about police access to ContactPoint and the potential for profiling young people as potential criminals.

Update: Inadequate data security for children fleeing abusive homes

25th March 2009. See article from telegraph.co.uk

ContactPoint is meant to keep tabs on England's 11 million children by giving council officers, health care professionals and police a single register of their names, ages and addresses as well as information on their schools, parents and GPs.

But its planned launch has been put on hold once again after local authority staff discovered loopholes in the system designed to hide personal details of the most vulnerable young people – meaning that adopted children or those fleeing abusive homes could be tracked down.

This is the third time that the ฃ224million computer index has been delayed, prompting fresh calls for it to be scrapped.

It comes just a day after a scathing report commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust named ContactPoint as one of 11 public sector databases that are "almost certainly illegal" because of privacy and security issues, and because there is no opt-out.

I was stunned to read this week about the stupidly named ContactPoint : the children's database that is almost ready to be launched.

When did Labour turn into the nasty party? Was it before the invasion of Iraq or after? I am beyond sick of the corrosion of my freedoms and the extent of invasion into my privacy by this Government. I liked Britain better when I knew what was allowed and what was not.

What was allowed to a freeborn Englishwoman was basically freedom. Even as a dingbat student in the mid-20th century, I knew exactly what to do if I was in a park on a sunny day vaguely "demonstrating" or "protesting" with others about apartheid or apple-picking collectives in Chile. We all knew that one's answer to a policeman demanding names was: I'm not obliged to give you my name, officer.

Read full article from telegraph.co.uk

Update: OutOfContact

2nd October 2008. Based on article from theregister.co.uk

The Tory Party will scrap the government's controversial ContactPoint child database if elected.

Shadow schools secretary Michael Gove told the Daily Telegraph: "ContactPoint can never be secure. We are taking this action because we are determined to protect vulnerable children from abuse - ContactPoint would increase that risk. The government has proved that it cannot be trusted to set up large databases, and cannot promise that inappropriate people would not be able to access the database."

Gove said the Tories would propose a smaller database for children moving from one local authority to another, if there were concerns. He said it would be irresponsible to implement a database which was likely to pose a danger to children.

A flagship database intended to protect every child in the country will be used by police to hunt for evidence of crime in a "shocking" extension of its original purpose, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

ContactPoint will include the names, ages and addresses of all 11 million under-18s in England as well as information on their parents, GPs, schools and support services such as social workers.

It has always been portrayed as a way for professionals to find out which other agencies are working with a particular child, to make their work easier and provide a better service for young people.

However, it has now emerged that police officers, council staff, head teachers, doctors and care workers will use the records to search for evidence of criminality and wrongdoing to help them launch prosecutions against those on the database - even long after they have reached adulthood.

The records will be updated until children turn 18 then kept in an archive for six years before being destroyed, meaning they can be accessed until a young person reaches 24. Those who have learning difficulties or who are in care will remain on the live system until they turn 25, so their archived records will be available into their 30s.

Little-noticed guidance published by the Government discloses that ContactPoint users can request administrators to give them archived data for a number of reasons, including for the prevention or detection of crime and for the prosecution of offenders.

ContactPoint will not include detailed case information on children, but will record if they have contact with a Youth Offending Team or sensitive services such as drug abuse workers, which critics say will mean it is obvious which young people have criminal records.

Baroness Miller, the Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesman in the House of Lords, said: This is truly shocking. It's exactly the definition of a police state. The police will have the details of a whole generation for so-called crime prevention. It raises a lot of issues and we haven't had a debate in Parliament about it.

Phil Booth, national co-ordinator for the civil liberties campaign group No2ID, added: Parents should know that this is not for the protection of their children, it could be used to prosecute them. This is a serious step on from what little has been told to the public.

ContactPoint will be put into use by 17 councils in the North West in October and then rolled out across the country.

Update: Delayed

31st August 2008

Now, just weeks before its planned launch and days after the Telegraph disclosed concerns that it will be used to increase the criminalisation and surveillance of England's youth, ministers have announced that ContactPoint will not become operational until the New Year at the earliest.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families claimed that the new delay was not down to security or privacy fears, however, but simply because of "glitches" that had emerged during testing of the system, which is being built by the IT firm CapGemini.