IMPACT®

When Governments Get it wrong

I spotted a bizarre story on the WebProNews.com website yesterday about the Cabinet Office posting a video on YouTube, the self-broadcasting video website. The story says that the Cabinet Office posted a video but had to remove it because it had used it without the permission of another part of the Government, the Central Office of Information. Have a read of the article.

I tried to find the video on YouTube and found only one. I couldn't get it to play but the comments make colourful reading. Have a look yourself at the video page.

I've asked the Cabinet Office for some comments, I'll be interested to see what they have to say about it.

Obtaining information can be a criminal offence

The Data Protection Act 1998 deals with the rights and obligations surrounding personal data. Section 55 of the DPA sets out the offence of obtaining information. It says:

"A person must not knowingly or recklessly, without the consent of the data controller-
 
  (a) obtain or disclose personal data or the information contained in personal data, or
  (b) procure the disclosure to another person of the information contained in personal data."

This provision can even cover employees misusing their employer's computer systems. A good case illustrating this was reported in an article on Life Style Extra website yesterday. The story is about a policeman who claimed to be off sick but was secretly running a bathroom-fitting business.

MoD school fees bill hits £100m

I noticed an article in the Guardian yesterday that said, "The Ministry of Defence is reviewing its policy of paying for military families to send their children to private schools after the annual bill topped £100m".

It is interesting to see how much the FOIA is being used by journalists as a matter of routine nowadays.

New direct marketing guidance

The Information Commissioner's Office has released 2 new sets of guidance dealing with direct marketing, one for individual and one for businesses.

Individuals

The guidance for individuals deals with the rights under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 and the Data Protection Act 1998. The guidance explains:

• The rights of individuals to prevent their personal details being used for direct marketing;
• The steps an individual can take if they receive marketing they believe may be breaking the law; and
• What companies need to do if they wish to send individuals direct marketing.

Of course, whilst this note is aimed at individuals, any company involved in direct marketing ought to be aware of the individual's view of the law given by this sort of guidance.

View the Guidance Note (you will need PDF).

Businesses

The guidance for businesses and organisations deals with Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS). It explains how:

• Organisations can register their number on the CTPS to help them reduce the number of unwanted direct marketing calls they receive; and
• The rules regarding the CTPS for organisations making direct marketing calls.

It also outlines the steps organisations can take if they believe that a caller is breaking the law.

The Telephone Preference Service and the Corporate Telephone Preference Service are operated by the Direct Marketing Association. Visit the telephone preference service website for more informaiton.

View the Guidance Note (you will need PDF).

Accessibility means usability

I noticed a great  story on the BBC News website about an initiative to make technology more usable. The story drives homes the point that accessibility isn't just of benefit to those with disabilities. Accessibility means greater usability of technology, something of benefit to all.

Accountants get criminal conviction for failing to comply with Data Protection Act

Alex has already posted some useful information about the Data Protection Act on the blog already.

One of the requirements under the Data Protection Act is that people and organisations that process personal data about others must register what they do by notifying the Information Commissioner. Processing personal data without a notification is, generally, a criminal offence that can attach personal liablity to employeers and officers of a business too.

The Information Commissioner last issued a press release about successful convictions of an accountant's business.

A couple of interesting things to note here:

• The company pleaded guilty as did three of the company's officers. They all got criminal convictions and had to pay fines in the £200 to £300 bracket and contributions to the legal costs. The point is that the individuals got criminal records, which is never a good thing.
• The Information Commissioner gave them every opportunity to sort things out first: the investigator phoned, visited and wrote over a period of 2 years beforehand.

You can't help thinking that this is all a bit ineffective in the long run.

BP uh-Oh

Furrowed brows in outsourcing circles this week, as industry analysts Gartner have issued a report predicting no less than half (check that - half) of all Business Process Outsourcing or BPO deals will be in trouble within 3 years. Read one of the available articles here.

The outsourcing market is generally thought to be booming, so why the doom and gloom? The answer is apparently simple - suppliers of BPO services are it seems "over-hyping" their offerings, and this will lead to customer disillusionment and maybe even formal disputes further down the line when reality bites.

I'm reluctant to contradict the experts, but can this really be it ? Certainly, the outsourcing marketplace is patrolled by some very large and sophisticated service providers fielding teams of highly-skilled sales staff on incentive-led packages. Surely though, they are not always selling to gullible, trusting types, but often large customer businesses with experienced staff of their own who are used to handling large budgets, and these businesses didn't get that way by accident. Maybe the customers need to look at their own behaviour too.

there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that customers have if anything got more tough and more savvy in recent years, and are adopting increasingly sophisticated approaches to securing maximum benefit from BPO providers for minimum cost. Even the public sector, traditionally painted as the "soft target" for the outsourcing giants, has seen customers trying more and more to outsource risk and liability while retaining a stranglehold on day to day control to sometimes micro-management levels. This must reflect warped expectations on the customer side, which cannot lay firm foundations for a rewarding and fruitful relationship over the long haul. 

So come on, fair's fair - maybe we need to look at both sides of the deal. 

Yes I'm generalising, but let's remember where we came in - if half the deals being made are heading for trouble, there must be some pretty general forces at work.

Same old song

There's an interesting story on the New York Times website about the efforts of sheet music and tablature publishers to remove free websites that help guitarists to play well-known songs such as those by Guns'n'Roses. These songs and the tablature to them have copyright protection and the songwriters and/or publishers receive royalties from sheet music and tablature that they sell. The websites in question are giving the same or equivalent information for free and the publishers don't like it one bit. It will be interesting to see how this struggle develops.

I'm experiencing deja-vu about this story. It seems to be a repeat of the struggle between music publishers and the free P2P file sharing services such as Napster (in its previous incarnation). Rather than legal action against the free services, should music publishers be concentrating their efforts on providing legal, fee-paying, alternatives that guitarists will want to use because of the clear advantages over the free sites? When there's a legal online alternative, the free websites have little excuse for their activities. For now there is not and the onus would seem to me to be on the music publishers to rectify the situation, through services not lawyers letters.

Computer Misuse Act: teen pleads guilty to breach and gets curfew

28 November 2006 note: This post refers to an old version of the Computer Misuse Act. We have posted a new guide to the Computer Misuse Act which should be referred to for the current version of the Act.

On 23 August David Lennon, the British teenager who in 2004 performed a Denial of Service attack on his former employer:

• pleaded guilty to breach of section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990; and
• was sentenced to a 2 month curfew.

This is the first time that someone has been successfully prosecuted under the Act for performing a Denial of Service attack.

You can read more about the Lennon case in our post on this subject earlier this week.

This story follows neatly on from our series this week on the Act. We've:

• given an overview of the offences under the Act;
• outlined the key criticisms of the Act;
• discussed some of the prosecutions made under the Act (including the Lennon case);
• looked at the changes to the Act that are coming into force later this year.

Freedom of Information Act 2000: IMPACT guide to the essentials

Introduction

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 was designed to promote greater transparency and openness by public bodies. The Act came into full effect on 1 January 2005 and gives individuals a ‘right to know’ what information is held by such bodies.

Generally, any authority that exercises public functions will fall within the Act  - these include central government; local authorities, the NHS, maintained schools and educational institutes, and the police.

The Secretary of State can designate as a public authority any person who exercises functions of a public nature or works under a contract for a public authority – this could catch information held, for example, by sub-contractors.