The Economic Value of Data vs the Public Good? [1] care.data, Concerns and the cost of Consent

They say ‘every little helps’.  care.data needs every little it can get.

In my new lay member role on the ADRN panel, I read submissions for research requests for any ethical concerns that may be reflected in wider public opinion.

The driving force for sharing administrative data research is non-commercial, with benefits to be gained for the public good.

So how do we quantify the public good, and ‘in the public interest’?

Is there alignment between the ideology of government, the drivers of policy [for health, such as the commissioning body NHS England] and the citizens of the country on what constitutes ‘the public good’?

There is public good to be gained for example, from social and health data seen as a knowledge base,  by using it using in ‘bona fide’ research, often through linking with other data to broaden insights.

Insight that might result in improving medicines, health applications, and services. Social benefits that should help improve lives, to benefit society.

Although social benefits may be less tangible, they are no harder for the public to grasp than the economic. And often a no brainer as long as confidentiality and personal control are not disregarded.

When it comes to money making from our data the public is less happy. The economic value of data raises more questions on use.

There is economic benefit to extract from data as a knowledge base to inform decision making, being cost efficient and investing wisely. Saving money.

And there is measurable economic public good in terms of income tax from individuals and corporations who by using the data make a profit, using data as a basis from which to create tools or other knowledge. Making money for the public good through indirect sales.

Then there is economic benefit from data trading as a commodity. Direct sales.

In all of these considerations, how does what the public feels and their range of opinions, get taken into account in the public good cost and benefit accounting?

Do we have a consistent and developed understanding of ‘the public interest’ and how it is shifting to fit public expectation and use?

Public concern

“The importance of building and maintaining trust and confidence among all stakeholder groups concerned – including researchers, institutions, ethical review boards and research participants – as a basis for effective data sharing cannot be overstated.”  [Wellcome blog, April 2015]

If something is jeopardising that public good it is in the public interest to say so, and for the right reasons.

The loss of public trust in data sharing measured by public feeling in 2014 is a threat to data used in the public interest, so what are we doing to fix it and are care.data lessons being learned?

The three biggest concerns voiced by the public at care.data listening events[1] were repeatedly about commercial companies’ use, and re-use of data, third parties accessing data for unknown purposes and the resultant loss of confidentiality.

 Question from Leicester: “Are we saying there will be only clinical use of the data – no marketing, no insurance, no profit making? This is our data.” [NHS Open Day, June 2014]

While people are happy for the state to use their data without active consent for bona fide research, they are not for commercial purposes.

Much of the debate and upset caused by the revelations of how our hospital episode statistics were managed in the past centred on the sense of loss of ownership. And with that, the inability to consent to who uses it. This despite acknowledgment that patients own their data.

Significant concern centres on use of the information gleaned from data that patients consider commercial exploitation. For use segmenting the insurance markets. For consumer market research. Using data for individual targeting. And its utter lack of governance.

There is also concern about data being directly sold or exchanged as a commodity.

These concerns were raised meeting after meeting in the 2014 care.data “listening process.”

To read in Private Eye that commercially sensitive projects were discussed in various meetings between NHS England and supermarket giant Tesco throughout 2014 [2] by the Patients and Information Director, responsible for care.data, is therefore all the more surprising.

They may of course be quite unrelated.

But when transparency is the mother of trust, it’s perhaps a surprising liason while ‘listening’ to care.data concerns.

It could appear that greater confidentiality was given to the sensitivity of commercial meetings than citizens’ sensitive data.

Consent package deals may be a costly mistake

People are much more aware since care.data a year ago, that unknown third parties may access data without our consent.

Consent around secondary NHS data sharing and in wider fora is no longer an inconvenient ethical dilemma best left on the shelf, as it has been for the last 25 years in secondary use, dusted off in the care.data crisis. [3]

Consent is front and centre in the latest EU data protection discussions [4] in which consent may become a requirement for all research purposes.

How that may affect social science and health research use, its pros and cons [5] remain to be seen.

However, in principle consent has always been required and good practice in applied medicine, despite the caveat for data used in medical research. As a general rule: “An intervention in the health field may only be carried out after the person concerned has given free and informed consent to it”. But this is consent for your care. Assuming that information is shared when looking after you, for direct care, during medical treatment itself is not causes concerns.

The idea is becoming increasingly assumed in discussions I have heard, [at CCG and other public meetings] that because patients have given implied consent to sharing their information for their care, that the same data may be shared for other purposes. It is not, and it is those secondary purposes that the public has asked at care.data events, to see split up, and differentiated.

Research uses are secondary uses, and those purposes cannot ethically be assumed. However, legal gateways, access to that data which makes it possible to uses for clearly defined secondary purposes by law, may make that data sharing legal.

That legal assumption, for the majority of people polls and dialogue show [though not for everyone 6b], comes  a degree of automatic support for bona fide research in the public interest. But it’s not a blanket for all secondary uses by any means, and it is this blanket assumption which has damaged trust.

So if data use in research assumes consent, and any panel is the proxy for personal decision making, the panel must consider the public voice and public interest in its decision making.

So what does the public want?

In those cases where there is no practicable alternative [to consent], there is still pressure to respect patient privacy and to meet reasonable expectations regarding use. The stated ambition of the CAG, for example, is to only advise disclosure in those circumstances where there is reason to think patients would agree it to be reasonable.

Whether active not implied consent does or does not become a requirement for research purposes without differentiation between kinds, the public already has different expectations and trust around different users.

The biggest challenge for championing the benefits of research in the public good, may be to avoid being lumped in with commercial marketing research for private profit.

The latter’s misuse of data is an underlying cause of the mistrust now around data sharing [6]. It’s been a high price to pay for public health research and others delayed since the Partridge audit.

Consent package deals mean that the public cannot choose how data are used in what kids of research and if not happy with one kind, may refuse permission for the other.

By denying any differentiation between direct, indirect, economic and social vale derived from data uses, the public may choose to deny all researchers access to their all personal data.

That may be costly to the public good, for public health and in broader research.

A public good which takes profit into account for private companies and the state, must not be at the expense of public feeling, reasonable expectations and ethical good practice.

A state which allows profit for private companies to harm the perception of  good practice by research in the public interest has lost its principles and priorities. And lost sight of the public interest.

Understanding if the public, the research community and government have differing views on what role economic value plays in the public good matters.

It matters when we discuss how we should best protect and approach it moving towards a changing EU legal framework.

“If the law relating to health research is to be better harmonised through the passing of a Regulation (rather than the existing Directive 95/46/EC), then we need a much better developed understanding of ‘the public interest’ than is currently offered by law.”  [M Taylor, “Information Governance as a Force for Good? Lessons to be Learnt from Care.data”, (2014) 11:1 SCRIPTed 1]

In the words of Dr Mark Taylor, “we need to do this better.”

How? I took a look at some of this in more detail:

Part two: The Economic Value of Data vs the Public Good? [2] Pay-for-privacy and Defining Purposes.

Part three: The Economic Value of Data vs the Public Good? [3] The value of public voice.

Update note: A version of these three posts was combined into an opinion piece – care.data: ‘The Value of Data versus the Public Interest?’ published on StatsLife on June 3rd 2015.

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image via Tesco media

 

[1] care.data listening event questions: https://jenpersson.com/pathfinder/

[2] Private Eye – on Tesco / NHS England commercial meetings https://twitter.com/medConfidential/status/593819474807148546

[3] HSCIC audit and programme for change www.hscic.gov.uk/article/4780/HSCIC-learns-lessons-of-the-past-with-immediate-programme-for-change

[4] EU data protection discussion http://www.digitalhealth.net/news/EHI/9934/eu-ministers-back-data-privacy-changes

[5] Joint statement on EU Data Protection proposals http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/stellent/groups/corporatesite/@policy_communications/documents/web_document/WTP055584.pdf

[6] Ipsos MORI research with the Royal Statistical Society into the Trust deficit with lessons for policy makers https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3422/New-research-finds-data-trust-deficit-with-lessons-for-policymakers.aspx

[6b] The ‘Dialogue on Data’ Ipsos MORI research 2014 https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/publications/1652/Dialogue-on-Data.aspx – commissioned by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to conduct a public dialogue examining the public’s views on using linked administrative data for research purposes,

[7] AdExchanger Janaury 2015 http://adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/the-newest-asset-class-data/

[8] Tesco clubcard data sale https://jenpersson.com/public_data_in_private_hands/  / Computing 14.01.2015 – article by Sooraj Shah: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/feature/2390197/what-does-tescos-sale-of-dunnhumby-mean-for-its-data-strategy

[9] Direct Marketing 2013 http://www.dmnews.com/tesco-every-little-bit-of-customer-data-helps/article/317823/

[10] Personalisation in health data plans http://www.england.nhs.uk/iscg/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2014/01/ISCG-Paper-Ref-ISCG-009-002-Adult-Social-Care-Informatics.pdf

[11] Tim Kelsey Keynote speech at Strata November 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8HCbXsC4z8

[12] Forbes: Illumina CEO on the US$20bn DNA market http://www.forbes.com/sites/luketimmerman/2015/04/29/qa-with-jay-flatley-ceo-of-illumina-the-genomics-company-pursuing-a-20b-market/

 

The Economic Value of Data vs the Public Good? [2] Pay-for-privacy, defining purposes

Differentiation. Telling customers apart and grouping them by similarities is what commercial data managers want.

It enables them to target customers with advertising and sales promotion most effectively. They segment the market into chunks and treat one group differently from another.

They use market research data, our loyalty card data, to get that detailed information about customers, and decide how to target each group for what purposes.

As the EU states debate how research data should be used and how individuals should be both enabled and protected through it, they might consider separating research purposes by type.

While people are happy for the state to use their data without active consent for bona fide research, they are not for commercial consumer research purposes. [ref part 1].

Separating consumer and commercial market research from the definition of research purposes for the public good by the state, could be key to rebuilding people’s trust in government data use.

Having separate purposes would permit separate consent and control procedures to govern them.

But what role will profit make in the state’s definition of ‘in the public interest’ – is it in the public interest if the UK plc makes money from its citizens? and how far along any gauge of public feeling will a government be prepared to go to push making money for the UK plc at our own personal cost?

Pay-for-privacy?

In January this year, the Executive Vice President at Dunnhumby, Nishat Mehta, wrote in this article [7], about how he sees the future of data sharing between consumers and commercial traders:

“Imagine a world where data and services that are currently free had a price tag. You could choose to use Google or Facebook freely if you allowed them to monetize your expressed data through third-party advertisers […]. Alternatively, you could choose to pay a fair price for these services, but use of the data would be forbidden or limited to internal purposes.”

He too, talked about health data. Specifically about its value when accurate expressed and consensual:

“As consumers create and own even more data from health and fitness wearables, connected devices and offline social interactions, market dynamics would set the fair price that would compel customers to share that data. The data is more accurate, and therefore valuable, because it is expressed, rather than inferred, unable to be collected any other way and comes with clear permission from the user for its use.”

What his pay-for-privacy model appears to have forgotten, is that this future consensual sharing is based on the understanding that privacy has a monetary value. And that depends on understanding the status quo.

It is based on the individual realising that there is money made from their personal data by third parties today, and that there is a choice.

The extent of this commercial sharing and re-selling will be a surprise to most loyalty card holders.

“For years, market research firms and retailers have used loyalty cards to offer money back schemes or discounts in return for customer data.”

However despite being signed up for years, I believe most in the public are unaware of the implied deal. It may be in the small print. But everyone knows that few read it, in the rush to sign up to save money.

Most shoppers believe the supermarket is buying our loyalty. We return to spend more cash because of the points. Points mean prizes, petrol coupons, or pounds off.

We don’t realise our personal identity and habits are being invisibly analysed to the nth degree and sold by supermarkets as part of those sweet deals.

But is pay-for-privacy discriminatory? By creating the freedom to choose privacy as a pay-for option, it excludes those who cannot afford it.

Privacy should be seen as a human right, not as a pay-only privilege.

Today we use free services online but our data is used behind the scenes to target sales and ads often with no choice and without our awareness.

Today we can choose to opt in to loyalty schemes and trade our personal data for points and with it we accept marketing emails, and flyers through the door, and unwanted calls in our private time.

The free option is to never sign up at all, but by doing so customers pay a premium by not getting the vouchers and discounts.  Or trading convenience of online shopping.

There is a personal cost in all three cases, albeit in a rather opaque trade off.

 

Does the consumer really benefit in any of these scenarios or does the commercial company get a better deal?

In the sustainable future, only a consensual system based on understanding and trust will work well. That’s assuming by well, we mean organisations wish to prevent PR disasters and practical disruption as resulted for example to NHS data in the last year, through care.data.

For some people the personal cost to the infringement of privacy by commercial firms is great. Others care less. But once informed, there is a choice on offer even today to pay for privacy from commercial business, whether one pays the price by paying a premium for goods if not signed up for loyalty schemes or paying with our privacy.

In future we may see a more direct pay-for-privacy offering along  the lines of Nishat Mehta.

And if so, citizens will be asking ever more about how their data is used in all sorts of places beyond the supermarket.

So how can the state profit from the economic value of our data but not exploit citizens?

‘Every little bit of data’ may help consumer marketing companies.  Gaining it or using it in ways which are unethical and knowingly continue bad practices won’t win back consumers and citizens’ trust.

And whether it is a commercial consumer company or the state, people feel exploited when their information is used to make money without their knowledge and for purposes with which they disagree.

Consumer commercial use and use in bona fide research are separate in the average citizen’s mind and understood in theory.

Achieving differentiation in practice in the definition of research purposes could be key to rebuilding consumers’ trust.

And that would be valid for all their data, not only what data protection labels as ‘personal’. For the average citizen, all data about them is personal.

Separating in practice how consumer businesses are using data about customers to the benefit of company profits, how the benefits are shared on an individual basis in terms of a trade in our privacy, and how bona fide public research benefits us all, would be beneficial to win continued access to our data.

Citizens need and want to be offered paths to see how our data are used in ways which are transparent and easy to access.

Cutting away purposes which appear exploitative from purposes in the public interest could benefit commerce, industry and science.

By reducing the private cost to individuals of the loss of control and privacy of our data, citizens will be more willing to share.

That will create more opportunity for data to be used in the public interest, which will increase the public good; both economic and social which the government hopes to see expand.

And that could mean a happy ending for everyone.

The Economic Value of Data vs the Public Good?  They need not be mutually exclusive. But if one exploits the other, it has the potential to continue be corrosive. The UK plc cannot continue to assume its subjects are willing creators and repositories of information to be used for making money. [ref 1] To do so has lost trust in all uses, not only those in which citizens felt exploited.[6]

The economic value of data used in science and health, whether to individual app creators, big business or the commissioning state in planning and purchasing is clear. Perhaps not quantified or often discussed in the public domain perhaps, but it clearly exists.

Those uses can co-exist with good practices to help people understand what they are signed up to.

By defining ‘research purposes’, by making how data are used transparent, and by giving real choice in practice to consent to differentiated data for secondary uses, both commercial and state will secure their long term access to data.

Privacy, consent and separation of purposes will be wise investments for its growth across commercial and state sectors.

Let’s hope they are part of the coming ‘long-term economic plan’.

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Related to this:

Part one: The Economic Value of Data vs the Public Good? [1] Concerns and the cost of Consent

Part two: The Economic Value of Data vs the Public Good? [2] Pay-for-privacy and Defining Purposes.

Part three: The Economic Value of Data vs the Public Good? [3] The value of public voice.

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image via Tesco media

[6] Ipsos MORI research with the Royal Statistical Society into the Trust deficit with lessons for policy makers https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3422/New-research-finds-data-trust-deficit-with-lessons-for-policymakers.aspx

[7] AdExchanger Janaury 2015 http://adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/the-newest-asset-class-data/

[8] Tesco clubcard data sale https://jenpersson.com/public_data_in_private_hands/  / Computing 14.01.2015 – article by Sooraj Shah: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/feature/2390197/what-does-tescos-sale-of-dunnhumby-mean-for-its-data-strategy

[9] Direct Marketing 2013 http://www.dmnews.com/tesco-every-little-bit-of-customer-data-helps/article/317823/

 

The Economic Value of Data vs the Public Good? [3] The value of public voice.

Demonstrable value of public research to the public good, while abstract, is a concept quite clearly understood.

Demonstrating the economic value of data for private consumer companies like major supermarkets is even easier to understand.

What is less obvious is the harm that the commercial misuse of data can do to the public’s perception of all research for the public good.[6]

The personal cost of consumer data exploitation, whether through the loss of, or through paid-for privacy, must be limited to reduce the perceived personal cost of the public good.

By reducing the personal cost, we increase the value of the perceived public benefit of sharing and overall public good.

The public good may mean many things: benefits from public health research like understanding how disease travels, or good financial planning, derived from knowing what needs communities have and what services to provide.

By reducing the private cost to individuals of the loss of control and privacy of our data, citizens will be more willing to share.

It will create more opportunity for data to be used in the public interest, for both economic and social gain.

As I outlined in the previous linked blog posts, consent [part 1] and privacy [part 2] would be wise investments for its growth.

So how are consumer businesses and the state taking this into account?

Where is the dialogue we need to keep expectations and practices aligned in a changing environment and legal framework?

Personalisation: the economic value of data for companies

Any projects under discussion or in progress without adequate public consultation and real involvement, that ignore public voice,  risk their own success and with it the public good they should create.

The same is true for commercial projects.  For example, back to Tesco.

Whether the clubcard data management and processing [8] is directly or indirectly connected to Tesco, its customer data are important to the supermarket chain and are valuable.

Former Tesco executive, spoke about that value in a 2013 interview:

“These are slow-growing industries,” Leahy said. “The difference was in the use of data, in the way Tesco learned about its customers. And from that, everything flowed.”[9]

By knowing who, how and when citizens shop, it allows them to target the sales offering to make people buy more or differently. The so-called ‘nudge’ moving citizens in the direction the company wants.

He explained how, through the Clubcard loyalty program, the supermarket was able to transition from mass marketing to personalized marketing and that it works in other areas too:

“You can already see in some areas where customers are content to be priced as customers: risk pricing with insurance and so on.

“It makes a lot of sense in health pricing, but there will be certain social policy restriction in terms of fair access and so on.”

NHS patient data and commercial supermarket data may be coming closer in their use than we might think.

Not only closer in their similar desire to move towards personalisation [10] but for similar reasons, in the desire to use all the data to know all about people as health consumers and from that, to plan and purchase, best and cheapest…”in reducing overall cost.”

It is worth thinking about in an economy driven by ideological austerity, how reducing overall cost will be applied, by cutting services or reducing to whom services are offered.

What ‘nudge’ may be applied through NHS policies, to move citizens in the direction the drivers in government or civil service want to see?

What will push those who can afford it, into private care and out of those who the state has to spend money on, if they are prepared to spend their own, for example.

What is the data that citizens provide through schemes like care.data designed to achieve?

“Demonstrating The Actual Economic Value of Data”

Tim Kelsey, speaking at Strata in 2013 [11] talked about: “Demonstrating The Actual Economic Value of Data”. Our NHS data are valuable in both economic and social terms.

[From 12:17] “It will help put the UK on the map in terms of genomic research. The PM has already committed to the UK developing 100K gene sequences very rapidly. But those sequences on their own will have very limited value without the reference data that lies out there in the real world of the NHS, the data we’ll start making available form next June […]. The name of the programme by the way is care dot data.”

The long since delayed care.data programme plans to provide medical records for secondary use, as reference data for the 100K genomics programme. The programme has the intent to “create a lasting legacy for patients, the NHS and the UK economy.”

With consent.

When the CEO of Illumina talks about winning a US $20bn market [12] perhaps it also sounds economically appealing for the UK plc and the austerity-lean NHS. Illumina is the company which won the contract for the Genomics England project sequencing of course.

“The notion here is that it’s really a precursor to understand the health economics of why sequencing helps improve healthcare, both in quality of outcome, and in reducing overall cost. Presuming we meet the objectives of this three-year study–and it’s truly a pilot–then the program will expand substantially and sequence many more people in the U.K.” [Jay Flatley, CEO]

The idea of it being a precursor leaves me asking, to what?
“Will expand substantially” to whom?

As more and more becomes possible in science, there will be an ever greater need for understanding between how and why we should advance medicine, and how to protect human dignity. Because it becomes possible may not always mean it should be done.

Article 21 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with regard to the application of biology and medicine, also says:  “The human body and its parts shall not, as such, give rise to financial gain.”

How close is profit making from DNA sequencing getting to that line?

These are questions that raise ethical questions and questions of social and economic value. The social legitimacy of these programmes will depend on trust. Trust based on no surprises.

Commercial market research or real research for the public good?

Meanwhile all consenting patients can in theory now choose to access their own record [GP online].  Mr Kelsey expressed hopes in 2013 that developers would use that to help patients:

“to mash it up with other data sources to get their local retailers to tell them about their purchasing habits [16:05] so they can mash it up with their health data.”

This despite the 67% of the public concerned around health data use by commercial companies.

So what were the commercially sensitive projects discussed by NHS England and Tesco throughout 2014? It would be interesting to know whether loyalty cards and mashing up our data was part of it – or did they discuss market segmentation, personalisation and health pricing? Will we hear the ‘Transparency Tsar‘ tell NHS citizens their engagement is valued, but in reality find the public is not involved?

To do so would risk another care.data style fiasco in other fields.

Who might any plans offer most value to – the customer, the company or the country plc? Will the Goliaths focus on short term profit or fair processing and future benefits?

In the long run, ignoring public voice won’t help the UK plc or the public interest.

A balanced and sustainable research future will not centre on a consumer pay-for-privacy basis, or commercial alliances, but on a robust ethical framework for the public good.

A public good which takes profit into account for private companies and the state, but not at the expense of public feeling and ethical good practice.

A public good which we can understand in terms of social, direct and indirect economic value.

While we strive for the economic and public good in scientific and medical advances we must also champion human dignity and values.

This dialogue needs to be continued.

“The commitment must be an ongoing one to continue to consult with people, to continue to work to optimally protect both privacy and the public interest in the uses of health data. We need to use data but we need to use it in ways that people have reason to accept. Use ‘in the public interest’ must respect individual privacy. The current law of data protection, with its opposed concepts of ‘privacy’ and ‘public interest’, does not do enough to recognise the dependencies or promote the synergies between these concepts.”

[M Taylor, “Information Governance as a Force for Good? Lessons to be Learnt from Care.data”, (2014) 11:1 SCRIPTed 1]

The public voice from care.data listening and beyond, could positively help shape the developing consensual model if given genuine adequate opportunity to do so in much needed dialogue.

As they say, every little helps.

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Part one: The Economic Value of Data vs the Public Good? [1] Concerns and the cost of Consent

Part two: The Economic Value of Data vs the Public Good? [2] Pay-for-privacy and Defining Purposes.

Part three: The Economic Value of Data vs the Public Good? [3] The value of public voice.

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[1] care.data listening event questions: https://jenpersson.com/pathfinder/

[2] Private Eye – on Tesco / NHS England commercial meetings https://twitter.com/medConfidential/status/593819474807148546

[3] HSCIC audit and programme for change www.hscic.gov.uk/article/4780/HSCIC-learns-lessons-of-the-past-with-immediate-programme-for-change

[4] EU data protection discussion http://www.digitalhealth.net/news/EHI/9934/eu-ministers-back-data-privacy-changes

[5] Joint statement on EU Data Protection proposals http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/stellent/groups/corporatesite/@policy_communications/documents/web_document/WTP055584.pdf

[6] Ipsos MORI research with the Royal Statistical Society into the Trust deficit with lessons for policy makers https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3422/New-research-finds-data-trust-deficit-with-lessons-for-policymakers.aspx

[7] AdExchanger Janaury 2015 http://adexchanger.com/data-driven-thinking/the-newest-asset-class-data/

[8] Tesco clubcard data sale https://jenpersson.com/public_data_in_private_hands/  / Computing 14.01.2015 – article by Sooraj Shah: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/feature/2390197/what-does-tescos-sale-of-dunnhumby-mean-for-its-data-strategy

[9] Direct Marketing 2013 http://www.dmnews.com/tesco-every-little-bit-of-customer-data-helps/article/317823/

[10] Personalisation in health data plans http://www.england.nhs.uk/iscg/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2014/01/ISCG-Paper-Ref-ISCG-009-002-Adult-Social-Care-Informatics.pdf

[11] Tim Kelsey Keynote speech at Strata November 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8HCbXsC4z8

[12] Forbes: Illumina CEO on the US$20bn DNA market http://www.forbes.com/sites/luketimmerman/2015/04/29/qa-with-jay-flatley-ceo-of-illumina-the-genomics-company-pursuing-a-20b-market/

Sophie Scholl – post election protest, the press and public

Had she not been executed in Munich aged 21, Sophie Scholl would have celebrated her 94th birthday today.

Had she been alive, I would like to have invited her for the German tradition of afternoon coffee and cake in an artisan cafe in the student quarter of Schwabing, in the north side of central Munich. One we both once knew well and liked. One opposite a bookshop.

She famously wrote in a letter: ’Send me more new books, I’m dying of hunger!’

We might have talked of Heine’s poetry that she loved and was banned. Of Hemingway or Mann. When she was at school there was a long list of books removed which weren’t by Nazi approved authors.

I’m sure she would have approved of the literary prize – won by Glen Greenwald in 2014 – named after Sophie and her brother.

We may have strolled past the space where the Wittelsbach Palace in the Brienner Strasse once stood, Munich’s former Gestapo headquarters, where she was questioned for four days in 1943. It was torn down in 1964. She didn’t live to see that happen.

She was convicted of high treason and executed on February 22 after being caught distributing homemade anti-war and anti-Hitler leaflets at the University of Munich (LMU), with her brother Hans.

She was a courageous, bright young woman who stood up for peace, criticised the Nazi leader and government, and died for her ideals, embodied in the group the ‘White Rose’.

The media then was controlled and wrote little of what protest there was.

Some media outlets today in the UK and America have been criticised for their poor coverage of recent peaceful protests. But set fire to a police van or deface a monument and your cause might make the front page. Albeit for all the wrong reasons.

It is time for journalists to reconsider their role and responsibilities. In a world of change which may include losing the right to free speech and equality for women and minorities in the Human Rights Act, it seems odd editors of all people, would choose to be so biased.

The White Rose group called for students to fight against the party. The Nazi party. To leave the party organizations in which they saw students politically muzzled and protest contained.

Post UK General Election 2015 I wonder if there are people who are doubting their own political involvement with parties who lost seats.

Some may be joining political groups or marching under campaign groups’ banners. What will they achieve?

Post Election Protests

Of the two thirds who did not vote for the winning GE2015 party, how many people turned out in protests today?

There was more of a widespread rally reported on the stock market than on the streets since Friday morning.

“Centrica, the owner of British Gas and one of the UK’s main energy providers rose 7.4 per cent to 276.5p. Royal Bank of Scotland was one of the best-performing financial stocks, up 6 per cent at 352p.”  [FT May 9, 2015]

This week after the election, parties and large member campaign groups may be thinking hard about their messages and their audience.  If their message on the NHS for example, has hundreds of concrete case studies of moves towards outsourcing under the last five years of government, and millions of online signatures, yet they cannot convince the voting public that the state NHS as we know it is at risk, something is wrong with the message, their delivery or finding the audience they need to engage.

What matters to the majority of people everyday is more palpable than policies or protest campaigns; shelter, water, food, power, transport, our digital infrastructure and freedom of communication and travel. The protection of human dignity. To feel safe.  To have access to justice and education and health. To have freedom to love and live as you choose.

There is also another possibility. That not enough people care enough to stand up with the courage of their convictions. But perhaps it is rather that the majority are just too busy managing daily life?

Perhaps there is also an argument for campaign groups with millions of members to stop national protest and start delivery of grassroots local change. To provide the services and solutions that strengthen individuals. Their big campaigns did not turn into great electoral power.  Perhaps like twitter, there is a tendency for the message to only reach already like minded folk. Small concrete changes for individuals may have more impact on everyday lives. Through those could come cohesion. And instead of telling their already convinced supporters to sign yet another petition, they should share stories, with consent, of everyday lives.

Stories of what real life is like when you are affected by policies in practice, stories whose ripples will reach further. Show, don’t tell. Don’t tell us the NHS is in danger, show us the service rationing.

The Access to Work cuts consultation affecting the disabled has already been announced, picked up by twitter and in the Independent.

But how effective any ensuing protests may be, may depend on the press and wider public for enough support.

The Press and the Public

In the 2015 General Election campaign, many felt the biggest winner was spin.

There was the Telegraph’s last minute email to readers, and a letter so misleading reportedly from business owners that even big name companies distanced themselves from it.

Now after the result and seeing the first cuts to the disabled and threats to free speech, I really think the Telegraph editor(s) should go and sit in a corner and think about what they have done.

When on Friday I spoke with an experienced investigative journalist, his reaction to the election result was disappointment the campaign had been so bland on content yet strongly partisan.

For people who blame Scots for the outcome of the election, the political press did its job. Not only have cuts in compassionate welfare been successfully justified by blaming the demand for it on laziness, employment market failures have been left squarely at the feet of foreigners, and the press front pages managed to drive a wedge between the nations and parties.

‘Divide and conquer’ is an ancient but perhaps forgotton meme. Pushing living issues we struggle with in society back into our own hands so that we criticised each other and not the failings of parties’ policies to deal with them, was an effective tactic.

The created fear of anything foreign became not just about mugs, not just about people crossing the channel, but fear of the unknown.

So we voted for what we knew or against what we could no longer trust.

So what would Sophie have been like today?

She would no doubt find the injustice of our recent changes in the legal system abhorrent.

Solicitors tell me of rumors that people on probation in Sussex are no longer being met face-to-face since the service was privatised. She may also have had fears that an increase in juvenile behaviour legislation as was implemented in her youth in Germany, will come into Britain. Powers to search pupils, issue same day detention, exclusions & use reasonable force began in 2010. What will be next for our young people under the same leader now in charge of directly punitive services? A fan of long custodial sentences.

She would perhaps have been pretty sharp on twitter. She may have supported Millifandom. She would have stood up to the press. She would have become a pretty indomitable woman. Exactly what the judge, state and its supporters saw in her at 21.

I will not be able to indulge Sophie on her 94th birthday, as she lies buried in a tiny grave, in the Perlach cemetery on the south side of Munich next to the Stadelheim prison where she spent her final days.

It is still one of the largest prison complexes in Germany today.

She reminds us that well used peaceful protest, and print, can prick the conscience of citizens and those in power to achieve justice, fairness and a future society open to all who want to live in it.

“We will not be quiet. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace.”[Flugblatt 4]

The world is better for Sophie Scholl and friends having been there. She would have been 94 today. It wasn’t long ago she was 21.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch Sophie, meine Liebe.

*****

*****

The White Rose background:

In 1943 open protest was impossible.

Their sixth and final leaflet produced by the movement was titled: “To fellow freedom fighters in the resistance”.

Its last lines are quite hard to translate: “Frisch auf mein Volk, die Flammenzeichen rauchen!” But the spirit is this. “Wake up people, where there is smoke there is fire.”

Would the White Rose flyers have fanned the sparks of protest in Munich had she not been killed?

The state wasn’t prepared to find out.

She was convicted of high treason on February 22 after being caught distributing homemade anti-war and anti-Hitler leaflets at the University of Munich (LMU) four days earlier, with her brother Hans.

The judge, Freisler, who became later known for his ideology of the  ‘pernicious juvenile’ which helped shape Nazi law, condemned six people to death from the group the ‘White Rose’: all three defendants of the first trial of February 22, 1943: Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst; as well as Alexander Schmorell, Willi Graf and Professor Kurt Huber in the second trial on April 19, 1943.

Sophie Scholl believed she could change things. In life or death.

“It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives? What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted? Among the student body there will certainly be a revolt.”

She was given a written copy of the charges against her. In her cell she wrote one word on the back of the page. “Freedom.”

But she did not get the student revolt or the freedom she hoped for.

Of about 8,000 Munich students a maximum of 50 ever stood up for them. Neither the leaflets left in the university or the White Rose deaths sparked great protest against the Nazi regime.

The ‘seditious’ leaflet promoted peace and pointed out how many young men were losing their lives on the Russian front.  It decried gagging laws and limits to freedom of expression. It called for people, in particular students, to be individual conscious citizens with responsibility to freedom, and honour for their future.

Fatally, it also said that Hitler’s regime must fall to ensure the survival of Germany: “Hitler und seine Regime müssen fallen, damit Deutschland weiterlebt.”

 

References:
The White Rose papers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

http://www.bpb.de/geschichte/nationalsozialismus/weisse-rose/61035/zeitzeugin

Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/einestages/widerstandskaempferin-sophie-scholl-jetzt-werde-ich-etwas-tun-a-948731.html

Michael C. Schneider/ Winfried Süß: “Keine Volksgenossen. Studentischer Widerstand der Weißen Rose”LMU Müchen 1993 ISBN 3-922480-08-X

Barbara Leisner: ‘Ich würde es genauso wieder machen’. Sophie Scholl, ISBN: 3-612-65059-9

Public data in private hands – should we know who manages our data?

When Tesco reportedly planned to sell off its data arm Dunnhumby [1] in January this year, it was a big deal.

Clubcard and the data which deliver customer insights – telling the company who we are, what we buy and how and when we shop using ‘billions of lines of code’ – will clearly continue to play a vital role in the supermarket customer relations strategy, whether its further processing and analysis is in-house or outsourced.

Assuming the business is sold,  clubcard shoppers might wonder who will then own their personal data, if not the shoppers themselves? Who is the data controller and processor? Who will inform customers of any change in its management?

“Dunnhumby has functioned as a standalone outfit in the past few years, offering customer information services to other retailers around the world, and could operate in a similar way for Tesco post-acquisition.”

I haven’t seen in the same media that the Dunnhumby speculation turned into a sale. At least not yet.

In contrast to the commercial company managing customer data for those who choose to take part, the company which manages the public’s data for many state owned services, was sold in December.

For an undisclosed value, Northgate Public Services [2] part of NIS was sold in Dec 2014 to Cinven, a European private equity firm.

What value I wondered does the company have of itself, or what value is viewed intrinsic to the data it works with – health screening, the National Joint Registry and more? It formerly managed HES data. What was part of the deal? Are the data part of the package?

Does the public have transparency of who manages our data?

Northgate has, according to their website, worked with public data, national and local government administrative data since 1969, including the development and management of the NNADC, “the mission critical solution providing continuous surveillance of the UK’s road network. The NADC is integrated with other databases, including the Police National Computer, and supports more than 3 million reads a day across the country.”

Northgate manages welfare support payments for many local authorities and the Welsh Assembly Government.

Data are entrusted to these third parties by the commercial or public body, largely without informing the public.

One could argue that a ‘named owner and processor’ is irrelevant to the public, which is probably true when things are done well.

But when things go wrong or are changed, should ‘the supplier’ of the data, or rather the public whose data it is, not be told?

If so, citizens would be informed and know who now accesses or even owns our public data that Northgate had in the past. Different firms will have different levels of experience, security measures and oversight of their practices than others. To understand how this works could be an opportunity for transparency to create trust.

Trust which is badly needed to ensure consensual data sharing continues.

So what will the future hold for these systems now owned by a private equity firm?

The buyer of Northgate Public Services, Cinven, has experience making a profit in healthcare.

We hear few details of plans available in the public domain about the NHS vision for data management and its future in public research.

We generally hear even less about the current management of the public’s data unless it is in a crisis, as front page stories will testify to over the last year. care.data has been in good company generating anger, with HMRC, the electoral register and other stories of legal, but unexpected data use of citizens’ data.

As a result we don’t know what of our public data is held by whom.

The latest news reported by the DM [3] will not be popular either given that 2/3rds of people asked in research into public trust over the governance of data [4] have concerns about public data in the hands of private firms:

Controversial plans to give private companies such as Google responsibility for storing people’s private personal health data could be revived, a minister has suggested.”

Could there ever be privatisation plans afoot for HSCIC?

It’s going to be interesting to see what happens next, whoever is making these decisions on our behalf after May 7th.

Certainly the roadmap, business plan, SIAM goals, and framework agreement [5] have given me cause to consider this before. The framework agreement specifically says change to its core functions or duties would require further primary legislation.”
[HSCIC DH framework agreement]

hscic_DH_framework

 

Changes to the HSCIC core remit, such as privatising the service, would require a change in legislation which would by default inform parliament.

Should there not be the same onus to inform the public whose data they are? Especially with “protection of patients being paramount”.  One could say protections should apply to our consumer data too.

Regardless of whether data are managed in-house or by another third party, by the state or commercial enterprise, if third parties can be outsourced or even sold, should consumers not always know who owns our data and of any changes in that guardianship?

Taking into account the public mistrust of commercial companies’ data management I would like to think so.

Further privatising the workings of our state data without involving the public in the process would certainly be a roadmap to driving public confidence on data sharing into the ground.

So too, when it comes to public trust, we might find when the commercial sale of consumer Clubcard data goes ahead, every little does not help.

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Refs:

[1] Computing 14.01.2015 – article by Sooraj Shah: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/feature/2390197/what-does-tescos-sale-of-dunnhumby-mean-for-its-data-strategy

[2] Northgate sale to Cinven http://www.northgate-is.com/press-release-nps.html / http://www.northgatepublicservices.co.uk/

[3]  On the future of data handling http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3066758/Could-Google-look-NHS-data-Controversial-plans-revived-minister-says-technology-firms-best-placed-look-information-securely.html

[4] Ipsos MORI research with the Royal Statistical Society into the Trust deficit with lessons for policy makers https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3422/New-research-finds-data-trust-deficit-with-lessons-for-policymakers.aspx

[5] HSCIC DH Framework agreement http://www.hscic.gov.uk/media/13866/Framework-Agreement-between-the-Department-of-Health-and-the-HSCIC/pdf/Framework_Agreement_between_the_Department_of_Health_and_the_Health_and_Social_Care_Information_Cent.pdf