Tag Archives: care.data

care.data, change management, datasharing, engagement, ethics, HSCIC, human rights, NHS England, politics, privacy

A vanquished ghost returns as details of distress required in NHS opt out

January 6, 2017 jenpersson

It seems the ugly ghosts of care.data past were alive and well at NHS Digital this Christmas.

Old style thinking, the top-down patriarchal ‘no one who uses a public service should be allowed to opt out of sharing their records. Nor can people rely on their record being anonymised,‘ that you thought was vanquished, has returned with a vengeance.

The Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, has reportedly done a U-turn on opt out of the transfer of our medical records to third parties without consent.

That backtracks on what he said in Parliament on January 25th, 2014 on opt out of anonymous data transfers, despite the right to object in the NHS constitution [1].

So what’s the solution? If the new opt out methods aren’t working, then back to the old ones and making Section 10 requests? But it seems the Information Centre isn’t keen on making that work either.

All the data the HSCIC holds is sensitive and as such, its release risks patients’ significant harm or distress [2] so it shouldn’t be difficult to tell them to cease and desist, when it comes to data about you.

But how is NHS Digital responding to people who make the effort to write directly?

Someone who “got a very unhelpful reply” is being made to jump through hoops.

If anyone asks that their hospital data should not be used in any format and passed to third parties, that’s surely for them to decide.

Let’s take the case study of a woman who spoke to me during the whole care.data debacle who had been let down by the records system after rape. Her NHS records subsequently about her mental health care were inaccurate, and had led to her being denied the benefit of private health insurance at a new job.

Would she have to detail why selling her medical records would cause her distress? What level of detail is fair and who decides? The whole point is, you want to keep info confidential.

Should you have to state what you fear? “I have future distress, what you might do to me?” Once you lose control of data, it’s gone. Based on past planning secrecy and ideas for the future, like mashing up health data with retail loyalty cards as suggested at Strata in November 2013 [from 16:00] [2] no wonder people are sceptical.

Given the long list of commercial companies, charities, think tanks and others that passing out our sensitive data puts at risk and given the Information Centre’s past record, HSCIC might be grateful they have only opt out requests to deal with, and not millions of medical ethics court summonses. So far.

HSCIC / NHS Digital has extracted our identifiable records and has given them away, including for commercial product use, and continues give them away , without informing us. We’ve accepted Ministers’ statements and that a solution would be found. Two years on, patience wears thin.

“Without that external trust, we risk losing our public mandate and then cannot offer the vital insights that quality healthcare requires.”

— Sir Nick Partridge on publication of the audit report of 10% of 3,059 releases by the HSCIC between 2005-13

— Andy WIlliams said, “We want people to be certain their choices will be followed.”

Jeremy Hunt said everyone should be able to opt out of having their anonymised data used. David Cameron did too when the plan was announced in 2012.

In 2014 the public was told there should be no more surprises. This latest response is not only a surprise but enormously disrespectful.

When you’re trying to rebuild trust, assuming that we accept that ‘is’ the aim, you can’t say one thing, and do another. Perhaps the Department for Health doesn’t like the public answer to what the public wants from opt out, but that doesn’t make the DH view right.

Perhaps NHS Digital doesn’t want to deal with lots of individual opt out requests, that doesn’t make their refusal right.

Kingsley Manning recognised in July 2014, that the Information Centre “had made big mistakes over the last 10 years.” And there was “a once-in-a-generation chance to get it right.”

I didn’t think I’d have to move into the next one before they fix it.

The recent round of 2016 public feedback was the same as care.data 1.0. Respect nuanced opt outs and you will have all the identifiable public interest research data you want. Solutions must be better for other uses, opt out requests must be respected without distressing patients further in the process, and anonymous must mean anonymous.

“Pseudonymised data requests that go through the DARS process so that a Data Sharing Framework Contract and Data Sharing Agreement are in place are considered to be compliant with the ICO code of practice“ – fine, but they are not anonymous. If DARS is still giving my family’s data to Experian, Harvey Walsh, and co, despite opt out, I’ll be furious.

The [Caldicott 2] Review Panel found “that commissioners do not need dispensation from confidentiality, human rights & data protection law.”

Neither do our politicians, their policies or ALBs.

[1] https://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/tsd/ig/ig-fair-process/further-info-gps/

“A patient can object to their confidential personal information from being disclosed out of the GP Practice and/or from being shared onwards by the HSCIC for non-direct care purposes (secondary purposes).”

[2] Minimum Mandatory Measures http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/cross-govt-actions.pdf p7

#caredata, care.data, change management, consent, datasharing, engagement, HSCIC, NHS, NHS England, privacy, trust

care.data listening events and consultation: The same notes again?

September 3, 2016 jenpersson

If lots of things get said in a programme of events, and nothing is left around to read about it, did they happen?

The care.data programme 2014-15 listening exercise and action plan has become impossible to find online. That’s OK, you might think, the programme has been scrapped. Not quite.

You can give your views online until September 7th on the new consultation, “New data security standards and opt-out models for health and social care” and/or attend the new listening events, September 26th in London, October 3rd in Southampton and October 10th in Leeds.

The Ministerial statement on July 6, announced that NHS England had taken the decision to close the care.data programme after the review of data security and consent by Dame Fiona Caldicott, the National Data Guardian for Health and Care.

But the same questions are being asked again around consent and use of your medical data, from primary and secondary care. What a very long questionnaire asks is in effect, do you want to keep your medical history private? You can answer only Q 15 if you want.

Ambiguity again surrounds what constitutes “de-identified” patient information.

What is clear is that public voice seems to have been deleted or lost from the care.data programme along with the feedback and brand.

People spoke up in 2014, and acted. The opt out that 1 in 45 people chose between January and March 2014 was put into effect by the HSCIC in April 2016. Now it seems, that might be revoked.

We’ve been here before. There is no way that primary care data can be extracted without consent without it causing further disruption and damage to public trust and public interest research. The future plans for linkage between all primary care data and secondary data and genomics for secondary uses, is untenable without consent.

Upcoming events cost time and money and will almost certainly go over the same ground that hours and hours were spent on in 2014. However if they do achieve a meaningful response rate, then I hope the results will not be lost and will be combined with those already captured under the ‘care.data listening events’ responses. Will they have any impact on what consent model there may be in future?

So what we gonna do? I don’t know, whatcha wanna do? Let’s do something.

Let’s have accredited access and security fixed. While there may now be a higher transparency and process around release, there are still problems about who gets data and what they do with it.

Let’s have clear future scope and control. There is still no plan to give the public rights to control or delete data if we change our minds who can have it or for what purposes. And that is very uncertain. After all, they might decide to privatise or outsource the whole thing as was planned for the CSUs.

Let’s have answers to everything already asked but unknown. The questions in the previous Caldicott review have still to be answered.

We have the possibility to see health data used wisely, safely, and with public trust. But we seem stuck with the same notes again. And the public seem to be the last to be invited to participate and views once gathered, seem to be disregarded. I hope to be proved wrong.

Might, perhaps, the consultation deliver the nuanced consent model discussed at public listening exercises that many asked for?

Will the care.data listening events feedback summary be found, and will its 2014 conclusions and the enacted opt out be ignored? Will the new listening event view make more difference than in 2014?

Is public engagement, engagement, if nobody hears what was said?

#caredata, care.data, choice, engagement, ethics, trust

Care.data, the King and I: an eternal illusion of control and consent?

August 16, 2016 jenpersson

King: “Who is king here? I remind you, so you remember that? I do not remember any promises. I do not remember anything, except that you are my servant.” Anna: “No, your majesty, that is not true.”

What if people controlled their own health data?

This is the question Matthew Honeyman of the policy team at The King’s Fund asked in a mix of fact and fiction in his recent feature that describes a future scenario in which a widespread breakdown in trust has lasting harmful consequences for public interest research.

He argues that, ‘the health system needs to work hard to make sure the scenario achieved is one that realises the full potential of using health data, rather than seeing people opt out because they don’t see the benefits or their trust ebbs away.’

Anyone attending umpteen public engagement events in 2014-15 about using care.data in the health system, knows it was clear that understanding the benefits was not the real issue, no matter how often the NHS England leadership team said that was the outcome.

People understood how data are used to support commissioning and how everyone’s treatment can be compared to see whether care is equitable. What the leadership was unwilling to answer was why individual identifiable data extraction was the only solution they would accept in order to achieve those ‘benefits’. Because the benefits were not hard to understand. It was just hard to accept they outweighed the risks and loss people felt giving up their confidentiality.

Many people simply didn’t trust that these data would be used to benefit them as individuals and society, but that ‘the public interest’ would be interpreted by government as finding the lowest cost, minimal service options that would meet the demands of the NHS constitution on service delivery, or worse, that data would be used to best analyse the GP care ‘market’ and used to deliver private service provision and reshape the national primary care system.

There were many questions asked that never received answers.

Questions such as:

1. Clearly stating what parts of our personal, confidential records, sensitive or otherwise are to be extracted now, and How will we be informed if that scope changes in future and we then object if we want data not to be used at all? Since the plan right now is we could only ask for it to be ‘pseudonymised’?

2. What do we do, if we object to any use on any grounds, such as ethical or conscientious grounds for objection to use in research about contraceptives or pregnancy terminations?

3. How will we know in future that there are no plans to release my data outside the UK and EU, as HES has been in the past, and if that changes what guarantee is there we could object at that point?

4. How will objection management (storing our opt out decision) be implemented with other data sharing? (SCR, Electronic Prescription Service, OOH access, Proactive care at local level) so we understand it?

5.Will the views of Dr. Mike Bewick, deputy medical director at NHS England, also be ignored, who said parts (referring to commercial use) should be ‘opt-in’ only? [Pulse, June 2014]

6. What will ensure opt out remains more than just Mr.Hunt’s word, if it has no legislative backing?

Leadership underestimated the damage done to confidence since the public found out who their data had been given to without their knowledge or consent over several years. And ignored the difficult questions.

To insist that the public ‘didn’t get it’, deriding participants effectively as too stupid to see the purposes of the leadership plan, simply wasn’t true, especially of the people who came to the events as they did so with some idea of what was at stake, understanding or questions.

People ‘get it’ more than some want to admit. But that outcome doesn’t suit what they wanted.

Even for commissioning purposes it was previously unclear how these datasharing reasons are justified when the Caldicott Review said extracting identifiable data for risk stratification or commissioning could not be assumed under some sort of ‘consent deal’ which was trying to work around confidentiality.

“The Review Panel found that commissioners do not need dispensation from confidentiality, human rights and data protection law…” [The Information Governance review, ch7]

What *is* still an issue of truly communicating understanding, is where information is not being fully transparent. Particularly around planned future scope change and how signing up to one thing today, might mean something quite different in future.

care.data as a brand may be defunct, but the use of our health data in all its forms from all souces is still very much on the table in play.

care.data risks becoming pseudonymous with an eternal illusion of control and consent.

Now models of consent are under consideration again.

Promises made and the Public Interest

Promises made must be kept if the giver is to remain trustworthy. Agreements must be consensual if they are to be valid.

So what happens when an imbalance of power means that the promise-maker has the opportunity to revoke a promise made, and the subject is told they should be happy that they have been left with the outcome of this benevolent choice, made in their best interest?

In the 1956 classic, The King and I, Anna makes it quite clear. She is in charge of her own choices. And left with none that are consensual, aligned with what she wants, she will take the only way out that is left to her, to deny the King what he wants, and she plans to leave, even though she would rather not.

What if promises are made by the State and ‘in your best interest’ is intended to be the Public Interest? What happens if people decide that the choice on offer ‘in the public interest’ and their personal interests conflict, and they choose to leave?

This is one risk of some of the proposals in the current Caldicott consultation on “New data security standards and opt-out models for health and social care”.

2.2% of people, who knew about care.data plans in 2014, that is 2.2 per cent, one in forty-five, or 1.2 million of the NHS’s 56 million patients opted out of their confidential records being handed over to the national body the Health and Social Care Information Centre and from there being handed over to commercial companies among other third parties and from there…. etcetera etcetera etcetera.

And why? Because we have been given an artificial choice. The choice we have been left with, is as data subjects we are told we should be happy to be left with the outcome of a benevolent choice, made in our best interest by those in power. Real choice is not on offer if “anonymised” secondary use is mandatory.

The Proposed Consent/Opt-out Model offers choices

You can give your views here by the deadline of September 7th, and can choose to reply only to all or part of the consultation, questions on consent are pages 5-7, questions 11-15: https://consultations.dh.gov.uk/information/ndg-review-of-data-security-consent-and-opt-outs/consultation/subpage.2016-06-22.1760366280/view

‘This choice could be presented as two separate opt-outs. Or there could be a single opt-out covering personal confidential information being used both in running the health and social care system and to support research and improve treatment and care.’

However, The opt-out will not apply to anonymised information.

I would like to understand what ‘anonymised’ means in these discussions. Is it aligned with the newly published Anonymisation Decision Making Network, from UKAN? Anonymous and pseudonymous are often used interchangeably in discussions of health data secondary use. They are not the same thing at all.

What anonymous means is still unclear because language in the past care.data discussions over what ‘anonymous’ really means was conflated with pseudonymous, with deidentified or to mean any data that was not in the category of personal confidential data. [NHS England care.data presentation, pp7-10] Can we trust that anonymous means anonymous, i.e. what NHS England labelled on p.7 as ‘green’ data – aggregated and can be published, not what it called ‘amber data’, or pseudonymous potentially identifying data, and that cannot be freely published. And what guarantee has the public, that definition will not be changed?

I would challenge any policy maker who thinks revoking the promise made by the Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt, under care.data was a good idea. It was in fact not only a promise to opt out of identifiable data uses but anonymous use too:

“we said that if we are going to use anonymised data for the benefit of scientific discovery in the NHS, people should have the right to opt out.”

[Hansard, February 2014, col.147 Jeremy Hunt]

Suggesting therefore that all data would be mandatory to extract from primary care to a central database, and the only control patients would have, is to stop identifiable data leaving the palace walls, but that de-identifed data or anonymous data would be beyond our control is not only unethical but would break past promises made. It will also enable identifiable data to be used ‘inside’ or to be linked with all sorts of other data ‘inside’ before the identifiers being removed and ‘anonymous data’ released outside.

If people object to their data used in research, whether on conscientious or private grounds, is that to be disrespected?

And once this consultation is complete, and the new model is in place, the Review recommends that existing arrangements should be replaced. This could mean choices made under care.data are revoked. “Some patients will have already made choices about the sharing of their information under the existing opt-out framework, and it will need to be decided how these opt-outs will be treated under any new consent/opt-out model.”

If people objected to their data used in research, whether on conscientious or private grounds, is that to be overruled and be valid? How on earth would they justify overruling GPs data controller duties to patient confidentiality and control?

The difference between use and sue, is only a matter of position.

The public benefit will be squandered if purposes continue to be conflated

Very recently, at an event about academic use of public data I was told by an eminent and well respected academic that if ‘he who shall remain nameless hadn’t sold the DH a plan to make money out of selling public data to him and his mates, we wouldn’t be in this mess to start with.‘ End quote.

Intentions of current leadership may be well meant, but refusing to see fatal flaws in the national plan will make it fail. It’s the elephant in the room few want to acknowledge, but this does not make it any less real.

Scope change cannot be open-ended and be trusted. We cannot sign up to one thing with meaningful consent, without guarantees of what that means for the future. It’s said and repeated and said again. It must be taken seriously. It’s what happened to school pupils data, given in trust, now given out to journalists, charities, commercial companies and others beyond our control. Consent is an illusion and not valid.

It goes straight back to the original care.data plan, of trust us, give us all your data, then we will do what we want anyway.

The opt out on offer at Christmas 2014 was to restrict identifiable data sharing. There was “no need” to take into account individual objection to pseudonymous data sharing said the September 13th NHS England directions. There was no business case for the longest time. Most of the questions, the Caldicott tests, remain unanswered.

This consultation is unlikely to bring a vast reponse rate, given the limited communication it is getting. There have already been consultation responses. The care.data events were held. Public feedback was clear. Their questions and concerns are being ignored. In fact, even the care.data listening events’ feedback seems now impossble to find.(care.data documents at NHS England leads from ‘Care.data listening exercise and action plan’ to a 404)

Leadership continues to argue that they are right, that there are long term benefits and it is part of a bigger vision for healthcare. Even that is described in terms that are at best woolly.

In order to have access to quality information, with integrity and completeness, there can be no shortcuts in ethical extraction or use. Lack of a techncal solution to using all data in truly anonymous ways is a choice, which should not default to making individual identifiable use a requirement.

Shortsightedness of how much people value privacy is stopping them from seeing how this will undermine what they want to achieve. And potentially will store up bigger problems for future.

King: “Pairs of male elephants to be released into the forests of America. There it is hoped that they will grow in number and the people can tame them and use them as beasts of burden.”

Anna: “But your majesty, I don’t think you mean pairs of MALE elephants.”

An illusion of control: power imbalance of service provider and service user

So what happens if those in charge determine that no one should be able to withhold access to their data?

The other, less transparent, less ethical way to achieve the same purpose, is to insist that in using a service, users must agree to secondary uses of their data. To say that “no one who uses a public service should be allowed to opt out of sharing their records. Nor can people rely on their record being anonymised.”

If in order to use the service, they demand our data is also used for secondary purposes, there can be no semblance of ethical consent.

And the final part of control, is in the event of complaint, being able to ask for redress, What intervention can be meaningful to exercise control of who has that data for legitimate and necessary purposes if we ask for redress, if only the ICO can challenge the outcome of the decision, which takes interminably long, by which time you may have needed the service and data has long and irrecoverably gone to third parties.

The risk of ‘control’ being handed to patients in the NHS by the people who currently control it, and under their terms and conditions, with its current degree of transparency, is that it is very likely an illusion. Real control will only be meaningful with real transparency of use and users, and communication of any change.

Control of our own data is what most people want. But it will only meet public expectations if it also honest, and meets other conditions they key to which is that consent to one thing today, does not mean consent to more tomorrow:

purposes for which data are shared are clear and limited
users of the data are defined, described and designated

What health data will mean in future will not be the same as it does today. How can we really know what we sign up to means and what we are agreeing to take control *of*?

Do we trust private companies who are working for-profit to take decisions with the greatest ethical interest, rather than the commercially driven one?

Do we trust a system that cannot tell us what scope changes to use or users will be made in future? The care.data roadmap plans change to purposes, users and use, so how can we have meaningful control of that?

Control is often offered on data use in the form of a privacy policy. We ‘agree’ to the small print. Privacy policies are a mess that no one reads, yet we continue to accept them because there is nothing better. While there is value in work done to improve them, a simple privacy policy for care.data is not a solution. It’s not even on offer.

There is no simple, clear plan which says, this is what purposes and users of your personal data will be restricted to. This is what we will do to inform you if we changes those purposes. This is how you can then object and have your data completely removed at that point. This applies to all your data.

If leadership wants to foster genuine trust we need something better than an illusion of consent and an illusion of honesty. Public trust will not be built on a broken promise.

****

Don’t forget: You can give your views here, and can choose to reply to it all, or only to the part on consent pages 5-7, questions 11-15, by the deadline of September 7th: https://consultations.dh.gov.uk/information/ndg-review-of-data-security-consent-and-opt-outs/consultation/subpage.2016-06-22.1760366280/view

image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vaishali-ahuja CC BY-NC 2.0

care.data, change management, communications, consent, engagement, genomics, National Pupil Database, privacy, transparency

Can new datasharing laws win social legitimacy, public trust and support without public engagement?

April 8, 2016 jenpersson

I’ve been struck by stories I’ve heard on the datasharing consultation, on data science, and on data infrastructures as part of ‘government as a platform’ (#GaaPFuture) in recent weeks. The audio recorded by the Royal Statistical Society on March 17th is excellent, and there were some good questions asked.

There were even questions from insurance backed panels to open up more data for commercial users, and calls for journalists to be seen as accredited researchers, as well as to include health data sharing. Three things that some stakeholders, all users of data, feel are missing from consultation, and possibly some of those with the most widespread public concern and lowest levels of public trust. [1]

What I feel is missing in consultation discussions are:

a representative range of independent public voice
a compelling story of needs – why tailored public services benefits citizens from whom data is taken, not only benefits data users
the impacts we expect to see in local government
any cost/risk/benefit assessment of those impacts, or for citizens
how the changes will be independently evaluated – as some are to be reviewed

The Royal Statistical Society and ODI have good summaries here of their thoughts, more geared towards the statistical and research aspects of data, infrastructure and the consultation.

I focus on the other strands that use identifiable data for targeted interventions. Tailored public services, Debt, Fraud, Energy Companies’ use. I think we talk too little of people, and real needs.

Why the State wants more datasharing is not yet a compelling story and public need and benefit seem weak.

So far the creation of new data intermediaries, giving copies of our personal data to other public bodies – and let’s be clear that this often means through commercial representatives like G4S, Atos, Management consultancies and more – is yet to convince me of true public needs for the people, versus wants from parts of the State.

What the consultation hopes to achieve, is new powers of law, to give increased data sharing increased legal authority. However this alone will not bring about the social legitimacy of datasharing that the consultation appears to seek through ‘open policy making’.

Legitimacy is badly needed if there is to be public and professional support for change and increased use of our personal data as held by the State, which is missing today, as care.data starkly exposed . [2]

The gap between Social Legitimacy and the Law

Almost 8 months ago now, before I knew about the datasharing consultation work-in-progress, I suggested to BIS that there was an opportunity for the UK to drive excellence in public involvement in the use of public data by getting real engagement, through pro-active consent.

The carrot for this, is achieving the goal that government wants – greater legal clarity, the use of a significant number of consented people’s personal data for complex range of secondary uses as a secondary benefit.

It was ignored.

If some feel entitled to the right to infringe on citizens’ privacy through a new legal gateway because they believe the public benefit outweighs private rights, then they must also take on the increased balance of risk of doing so, and a responsibility to do so safely. It is in principle a slippery slope. Any new safeguards and ethics for how this will be done are however unclear in those data strands which are for targeted individual interventions. Especially if predictive.

Upcoming discussions on codes of practice [which have still to be shared] should demonstrate how this is to happen in practice, but codes are not sufficient. Laws which enable will be pushed to their borderline of legal and beyond that of ethical.

In England who would have thought that the 2013 changes that permitted individual children’s data to be given to third parties [3] for educational purposes, would mean giving highly sensitive, identifiable data to journalists without pupils or parental consent? The wording allows it. It is legal. However it fails the DPA Act legal requirement of fair processing. Above all, it lacks social legitimacy and common sense.

In Scotland, there is current anger over the intrusive ‘named person’ laws which lack both professional and public support and intrude on privacy. Concerns raised should be lessons to learn from in England.

Common sense says laws must take into account social legitimacy.

We have been told at the open policy meetings that this change will not remove the need for informed consent. To be informed, means creating the opportunity for proper communications, and also knowing how you can use the service without coercion, i.e. not having to consent to secondary data uses in order to get the service, and knowing to withdraw consent at any later date. How will that be offered with ways of achieving the removal of data after sharing?

The stick for change, is the legal duty that the recent 2015 CJEU ruling reiterating the legal duty to fair processing [4] waved about. Not just a nice to have, but State bodies’ responsibility to inform citizens when their personal data are used for purposes other than those for which those data had initially been consented and given. New legislation will not remove this legal duty.

How will it be achieved without public engagement?

Engagement is not PR

Failure to act on what you hear from listening to the public is costly.

Engagement is not done *to* people, don’t think ‘explain why we need the data and its public benefit’ will work. Policy makers must engage with fears and not seek to dismiss or diminish them, but acknowledge and mitigate them by designing technically acceptable solutions. Solutions that enable data sharing in a strong framework of privacy and ethics, not that sees these concepts as barriers. Solutions that have social legitimacy because people support them.

Mr Hunt’s promised February 2014 opt out of anonymised data being used in health research, has yet to be put in place and has had immeasurable costs for delayed public research, and public trust.

How long before people consider suing the DH as data controller for misuse? From where does the arrogance stem that decides to ignore legal rights, moral rights and public opinion of more people than those who voted for the Minister responsible for its delay?

Two years ago #nhs patients in England were made a promise that is still to be kept #caredata #datasharing @hscic pic.twitter.com/9Y83mce1DH

— Jen Persson ⭐️ (@TheABB) February 25, 2016

This attitude is what fails care.data and the harm is ongoing to public trust and to confidence for researchers’ continued access to data.

The same failure was pointed out by the public members of the tiny Genomics England public engagement meeting two years ago in March 2014, called to respond to concerns over the lack of engagement and potential harm for existing research. The comms lead made a suggestion that the new model of the commercialisation of the human genome in England, to be embedded in the NHS by 2017 as standard clinical practice, was like steam trains in Victorian England opening up the country to new commercial markets. The analogy was felt by the lay attendees to be, and I quote, ‘ridiculous.’

Exploiting confidential personal data for public good must have support and good two-way engagement if it is to get that support, and what is said and agreed must be acted on to be trustworthy.

Policy makers must take into account broad public opinion, and that is unlikely to be submitted to a Parliamentary consultation. (Personally, I first knew such processes existed only when care.data was brought before the Select Committee in 2014.) We already know what many in the public think about sharing their confidential data from the work with care.data and objections to third party access, to lack of consent. Just because some policy makers don’t like what was said, doesn’t make that public opinion any less valid.

We must bring to the table the public voice from past but recent public engagement work on administrative datasharing [5], the voice of the non-research community, and from those who are not stakeholders who will use the data but the ‘data subjects’, the public whose data are to be used.

Policy Making must be built on Public Trust

Open policy making is not open just because it says it is. Who has been invited, participated, and how their views actually make a difference on content and implementation is what matters.

Adding controversial ideas at the last minute is terrible engagement, its makes the process less trustworthy and diminishes its legitimacy.

This last minute change suggests some datasharing will be dictated despite critical views in the policy making and without any public engagement. If so, we should ask policy makers on what mandate?

Democracy depends on social legitimacy. Once you lose public trust, it is not easy to restore.

Can new datasharing laws win social legitimacy, public trust and support without public engagement?

In my next post I’ll post look at some of the public engagement work done on datasharing to date, and think about ethics in how data are applied.

*************

References:

[1] The Royal Statistical Society data trust deficit

[2] “The social licence for research: why care.data ran into trouble,” by Carter et al.

[3] FAQs: Campaign for safe and ethical National Pupil Data

[4] CJEU Bara 2015 Ruling – fair processing between public bodies

[5] Public Dialogues using Administrative data (ESRC / ADRN)

img credit: flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/

care.data, change management, commercial, engagement, human rights, scope, Tech, transparency

A data sharing fairytale (3): transformation and impact

March 21, 2016 jenpersson

Part three: It is vital that the data sharing consultation is not seen in a silo, or even a set of silos each particular to its own stakeholder. To do it justice and ensure the questions that should be asked are answered, we must look instead at the whole story and the background setting. And we must ask each stakeholder, what does your happy ending look like?

Parts one and two to follow address public engagement and ethics, this focuses on current national data practice, tailored public services, and local impact of the change and transformation that will result.

What is your happy ending?

This data sharing consultation is gradually revealing to me how disjoined government appears in practice and strategy. Our digital future, a society that is more inclusive and more just, supported by better uses of technology and data in ‘dot everyone’ will not happen if they cannot first join the dots across all of Cabinet thinking and good practice, and align policies that are out of step with each other.

Last Thursday night’s “Government as a Platform Future” panel discussion (#GaaPFuture) took me back to memories of my old job, working in business implementations of process and cutting edge systems. Our finest hour was showing leadership why success would depend on neither. Success was down to local change management and communications, because change is about people, not the tech.

People in this data sharing consultation, means the public, means the staff of local government public bodies, as well as the people working at national stakeholders of the UKSA (statistics strand), ADRN (de-identified research strand), Home Office (GRO strand), DWP (Fraud and Debt strands), and DECC (energy) and staff at the national driver, the Cabinet Office.

I’ve attended two of the 2016 datasharing meetings, and am most interested from three points of view – because I am directly involved in the de-identified data strand, campaign for privacy, and believe in public engagement.

Engagement with civil society, after almost 2 years of involvement on three projects, and an almost ten month pause in between, the projects had suddenly become six in 2016, so the most sensitive strands of the datasharing legislation have been the least openly discussed.

At the end of the first 2016 meeting, I asked one question.

How will local change management be handled and the consultation tailored to local organisations’ understanding and expectations of its outcome?

Why? Because a top down data extraction programme from all public services opens up the extraction of personal data as business intelligence to national level, of all local services interactions with citizens’ data. Or at least, those parts they have collected or may collect in future.

That means a change in how the process works today. Global business intelligence/data extractions are designed to make processes more efficient, through reductions in current delivery, yet concrete public benefits for citizens are hard to see that would be different from today, so why make this change in practice?

What it might mean for example, would be to enable collection of all citizens’ debt information into one place, and that would allow the service to centralise chasing debt and enforce its collection, outsourced to a single national commercial provider.

So what does the future look like from the top? What is the happy ending for each strand, that will be achieved should this legislation be passed? What will success for each set of plans look like?

What will we stop doing, what will we start doing differently and how will services concretely change from today, the current state, to the future?

Most importantly to understand its implications for citizens and staff, we should ask how will this transformation be managed well to see the benefits we are told it will deliver?

Can we avoid being left holding a pumpkin, after the glitter of ‘use more shiny tech’ and government love affair with the promises of Big Data wear off?

Look into the local future

Those with the vision of the future on a panel at the GDS meeting this week, the new local government model enabled by GaaP, also identified, there are implications for potential loss of local jobs, and “turkeys won’t vote for Christmas”. So who is packaging this change to make it successfully deliverable?

If we can’t be told easily in consultation, then it is not a clear enough policy to deliver. If there is a clear end-state, then we should ask what the applied implications in practice are going to be?

It is vital that the data sharing consultation is not seen in a silo, or even a set of silos each particular to its own stakeholder, about copying datasets to share them more widely, but that we look instead at the whole story and the background setting.

The Tailored Reviews: public bodies guidance suggests massive reform of local government, looking for additional savings, looking to cut back office functions and commercial plans. It asks “What workforce reductions have already been agreed for the body? Is there potential to go further? Are these linked to digital savings referenced earlier?”

Options include ‘abolish, move out of central government, commercial model, bring in-house, merge with another body.’

So where is the local government public bodies engagement with change management plans in the datasharing consultation as a change process? Does it not exist?

I asked at the end of the first datasharing meeting in January and everyone looked a bit blank. A question ‘to take away’ turned into nothing.

Yet to make this work, the buy-in of local public bodies is vital. So why skirt round this issue in local government, if there are plans to address it properly?

If there are none, then with all the data in the world, public services delivery will not be improved, because the issues are friction not of interference by consent, or privacy issues, but working practices.

If the idea is to avoid this ‘friction’ by removing it, then where is the change management plan for public services and our public staff?

Trust depends on transparency

John Pullinger, our National Statistician, this week also said on datasharing we need a social charter on data to develop trust.

Trust can only be built between public and state if the organisations, and all the people in them, are trustworthy.

To implement process change successfully, the people involved in these affected organisations, the staff, must trust that change will mean positive improvement and risks explained.

For the public, what defined levels of data access, privacy protection, and scope limitation that this new consultation will permit in practice, are clearly going to be vital to define if the public will trust its purposes.

The consultation does not do this, and there is no draft code of conduct yet, and no one is willing to define ‘research’ or ‘public interest’.

Public interest models or ‘charter’ for collection and use of research data in health, concluded that ofr ethical purposes, time also mattered. Benefits must be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. So let’s talk about the intended end state that is to be achieved from these changes, and identify how its benefits are to meet those objectives – change without an intended end state will almost never be successful, if you don’t know start knowing what it looks like.

For public trust, that means scope boundaries. Sharing now, with today’s laws and ethics is only fully meaningful if we trust that today’s governance, ethics and safeguards will be changeable in future to the benefit of the citizen, not ever greater powers to the state at the expense of the individual. Where is scope defined?

There is very little information about where limits would be on what data could not be shared, or when it would not be possible to do so without explicit consent. Permissive powers put the onus onto the data controller to share, and given ‘a new law says you should share’ would become the mantra, it is likely to mean less individual accountability. Where are those lines to be drawn to support the staff and public, the data user and the data subject?

So to summarise, so far I have six key questions:

What does your happy ending look like for each data strand?
How will bad practices which conflict with the current consultation proposals be stopped?
How will the ongoing balance of use of data for government purposes, privacy and information rights be decided and by whom?
In what context will the ethical principles be shaped today?
How will the transformation from the current to that future end state be supported, paid for and delivered?
Who will oversee new policies and ensure good data science practices, protection and ethics are applied in practice?

This datasharing consultation is not entirely for something new, but expansion of what is done already. And in some places is done very badly.

How will the old stories and new be reconciled?

Wearing my privacy and public engagement hats, here’s an idea.

Perhaps before the central State starts collecting more, sharing more, and using more of our personal data for ‘tailored public services’ and more, the government should ask for a data amnesty?

It’s time to draw a line under bad practice. Clear out the ethics drawers of bad historical practice, and start again, with a fresh chapter. Because current practices are not future-proofed and covering them up in the language of ‘better data ethics’ will fail.

The consultation assures us that: “These proposals are not about selling public or personal data, collecting new data from citizens or weakening the Data Protection Act 1998.”

However it does already sell out personal data from at least BIS. How will these contradictory positions across all Departments be resolved?

The left hand gives out de-identified data in safe settings for public benefit research while the right hands out over 10 million records to the Telegraph and The Times without parental or schools’ consent. Only in la-la land are these both considered ethical.

Will somebody at the data sharing meeting please ask, “when will this stop?” It is wrong. These are our individual children’s identifiable personal data. Stop giving them away to press and charities and commercial users without informed consent. It’s ludicrous. Yet it is real.

Policy makers should provide an assurance there are plans for this to change as part of this consultation.

Without it, the consultation line about commercial use, is at best disingenuous, at worst a bare cheeked lie.

“These powers will also ensure we can improve the safe handling of citizen data by bringing consistency and improved safeguards to the way it is handled.”

Will it? Show me how and I might believe it.

Privacy, it was said at the RSS event, is the biggest concern in this consultation:

“includes proposals to expand the use of appropriate and ethical data science techniques to help tailor interventions to the public”

“also to start fixing government’s data infrastructure to better support public services.”

The techniques need outlined what they mean, and practices fixed now, because many stand on shaky legal ground. These privacy issues have come about over cumulative governments of different parties in the last ten years, so the problems are non-partisan, but need practical fixes.

Today, less than transparent international agreements push ‘very far-reaching chapters on the liberalisation of data trading’ while according to the European Court of Justice these practices lack a solid legal basis.

Today our government already gives our children’s personal data to commercial third parties and sells our higher education data without informed consent, while the DfE and BIS both know they fail processing and its potential consequences: the European Court reaffirmed in 2015 “persons whose personal data are subject to transfer and processing between two public administrative bodies must be informed in advance” in Judgment in Case C-201/14.

In a time that actively cultivates universal public fear, it is time for individuals to be brave and ask the awkward questions because you either solve them up front, or hit the problems later. The child who stood up and said The Emperor has on no clothes, was right.

What’s missing?

The consultation conversation will only be genuine, once the policy makers acknowledge and address solutions regards:

those data practices that are currently unethical and must change
how the tailored public services datasharing legislation will shape the delivery of government services’ infrastructure and staff, as well as the service to the individual in the public.

If we start by understanding what the happy ending looks like, we are much more likely to arrive there, and how to measure success.

The datasharing consultation engagement, the ethics of data science, and impact on data infrastructures as part of ‘government as a platform’ need seen as a whole joined up story if we are each to consider what success for us as stakeholders, looks like.

We need to call out current data failings and things that are missing, to get them fixed.

Without a strong, consistent ethical framework you risk 3 things:

data misuse and loss of public trust
data non-use because your staff don’t trust they’re doing it right
data is becoming a toxic asset

The upcoming meetings should address this and ask practically:

How the codes of conduct, and ethics, are to be shaped, and by whom, if outwith the consultation?
What is planned to manage and pay for the future changes in our data infrastructures; ie the models of local government delivery?
What is the happy ending that each data strand wants to achieve through this and how will the success criteria be measured?

Public benefit is supposed to be at the heart of this change. For UK statistics, for academic public benefit research, they are clear.

For some of the other strands, local public benefits that outweigh the privacy risks and do not jeopardise public trust seem like magical unicorns dancing in the land far, far away of centralised government; hard to imagine, and even harder to capture.

*****

Part one: A data sharing fairytale: Engagement
Part two: A data sharing fairytale: Ethics
Part three: A data sharing fairytale: Impact (this post)

Tailored public bodies review: Feb 2016

img credit: Hermann Vogel illustration ‘Cinderella’

#caredata, care.data, change management, choice, consent, engagement, genomics, health, HSCIC, NHS England, transparency

Thoughts since #UKHC15. UK health datasharing.

January 6, 2016 jenpersson

The world you will release your technology into, is the world you are familiar with, which is already of the past. Based on old data.

How can you design tools and systems fit for the future? And for all?

For my 100th post and the first of 2016, here is a summary of some of my thoughts prompted by #ukhc15 . Several grains of thought related to UK heath data that have been growing for some time.

1000 words on “Hard things: identity, data sharing and consent.” The fun run version.

Do we confuse hard with complex? Hard does not have to mean difficult. Some things seem to be harder than necessary, because of politics. I’ve found this hard to write. Where to start?

The search to capture solutions has been elusive.

The starting line: Identity

Then my first thoughts on identity got taken care of by Vinay Gupta in this post, better than I could. (If you want a long read about identity, you might want to get a hot drink like I did and read and re-read. It says it’ll take an hour. It took me several, in absorption and thinking time. And worth it.)

That leaves data sharing and consent. Both of which I have written many of my other 99 posts about in the last year. So what’s new?

Why are we doing this: why aren’t we there yet?

It still feels very much that many parts of the health service and broader government thinking on ‘digital’ is we need to do something. Why is missing, and therefore achieving and measuring success is hard.

Often we start with a good idea and set about finding a solution how to achieve it. But if the ‘why’ behind the idea is shaky to start with, the solution may falter, as soon as it gets difficult. No one seems to know what #paperless actually means in practice.

So why try and change things? Fixing problems, rather than coming up with good ideas is another way to think of it as they suggested at #ukhc15, it was a meet-up for people who want to make things better, usually for others, and sometimes that involves improving the systems they worked with directly, or supported others in.

I no longer work in systems’ introductions, or enhancement processes, although I have a lay role in research and admin data, but regular readers know, most of the last two years has been all about the data. care.data.

More often than not, in #ukhc2015 discussions that focused on “the data” I would try and bring people back to thinking about what the change is trying to solve, what it wants to “make better” and why.

There’s a broad tendency to simply think more data = better. Not true, and I’ll show later a case study why. We must question why.

Why doesn’t everyone volunteer or not want to join in?

Very many people who have spoken with me over the last two years have shared their concrete concerns over the plans to share GP data and they do not get heard. They did not see a need to share their identifiable personal confidential data, or see why truly anonymous data would not be sufficient for health planning, for example.

Homeless men, and women at risk, people from the travelling community, those with disabilities, questions on patients with stigmatising conditions, minorities, children, sexual orientation – not to mention from lawyers or agencies representing them. Or the 11 million of our adult population not online. Few of whom we spoke about. Few of whom we heard from at #ukhc15. Yet put together, these individuals make up not only a significant number of people, but make up a disproportionately high proportion of the highest demands on our health and social care services.

The inverse care law appears magnified in its potential when applied to digital, and should magnify the importance of thinking about access. How will care.data make things better for them, and how will the risks be mitigated? And are those costs being properly assessed if there is no assessment of the current care.data business case and seemingly, since 2012 at least, no serious effort to look at alternatives?

The finish line? We can’t see what it looks like yet.

The #ukhc2015 event was well run, and I liked the spontaneity of people braver than me who were keen to lead sessions and did it well. As someone who is white, living in a ‘nice’ area, I am privileged. It was a privilege to spend a day with #UKHC15 and packed with people who clearly think about hard things all the time. People who want to make things better. People who were welcoming to nervous first-timers at an ‘un’conference over a shared lunch.

I hope the voices of those who can’t attend these events, and outside London, are equally accounted for in all government 2016 datasharing plans.

This may be the last chance after years of similar consultations have failed to deliver workable, consensual public data sharing policies.

We have vast streams of population-wide data stored in the UK, about which, the population is largely ignorant. But while the data may be from 25 years ago, whatever is designed today is going to need to think long term, not how do we solve what we know, but how do we design solutions that will work for what we don’t.

Transparency here will be paramount to trust if future decisions are made for us, or those we make for ourselves are ‘influenced’ by machine learning, by algorithms, machine learning and ‘mindspace’ work.

As Thurgood Marshall said,

“Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.”

Control over who we are and who the system thinks we are becomes a whole new level of discussion, if we are being told how to make a decision, especially where the decision is toward a direction of public policy based on political choice. If pensions are not being properly funded, to not allocate taxes differently and fund them, is a choice the current government has made, while the DWP seeks to influence our decison, to make us save more in private pensions.

And how about in data discussions make an effort to start talking a little more clearly in the same terms – and stop packaging ‘sharing’ as if it is something voluntary in population-wide compulsory policy.

It’s done to us, not with us, in far too many areas of government we do not see. Perhaps this consultation might change that, but it’s the ‘nth’ number of consulations and I want to be convinvced this one is intentional of real change. It’s only open for a few weeks, and this meet up for discussion appeared to be something only organised in London.

I hope we’ll hear committment to real change in support of people and the uses of our personal data by the state in the new #UkDigiStrategy, not simply more blue skythinking and drinking the ‘datasharing’ kool-aid. We’ve been talking in the UK for far too long about getting this right.

Let’s see the government serious about making it happen. Not for government, but in the public interest, in a respectful and ethical partnership with people, and not find changes forced upon us.

No other foundation will be fit for a future in which care.data, the phenotype data, is to be the basis for an NHS so totally personalised.

If you want a longer read, read on below for my ten things in detail.

Comment welcome.

########

Hard things: The marathon version, below.
Continue reading Thoughts since #UKHC15. UK health datasharing. →

#caredata, care.data, confidentiality, consent, human rights, National Pupil Database, politics, pupils, surveillance, Tech, transparency, trust

Parliament’s talking about Talk Talk and Big Data, like some parents talk about sex. Too little, too late.

November 2, 2015 jenpersson

Parliament’s talking about Talk Talk and Big Data, like some parents talk about sex ed. They should be discussing prevention and personal data protection for all our personal data, not just one company, after the event.

Everyone’s been talking about TalkTalk and for all the wrong reasons. Data loss and a 15-year-old combined with a reportedly reckless response to data protection, compounded by lack of care.

As Rory Cellan-Jones wrote [1] rebuilding its reputation with customers and security analysts is going to be a lengthy job.

In Parliament Chi Onwarah, Shadow Minister for Culture & the Digital Economy, summed up in her question, asking the Minister to acknowledge “that all the innovation has come from the criminals while the Government sit on their hands, leaving it to businesses and consumers to suffer the consequences?” [Hansard 2]

MPs were concerned for the 4 million* customers’ loss of name, date of birth, email, and other sensitive data, and called for an inquiry. [It may now be fewer*.] [3] The SciTech committee got involved too.

I hope this means Parliament will talk about TalkTalk not as the problem to be solved, but as one case study in a review of contemporary policy and practices in personal data handling.

Government spends money in data protection work in the [4] “National Cyber Security Programme”. [NCSP] What is the measurable outcome – particularly for TalkTalk customers and public confidence – from its £860M budget? If you look at the breakdown of those sums, with little going towards data protection and security compared with the Home Office and Defence, we should ask if government is spending our money in an appropriately balanced way on the different threats it perceives. Keith Vaz suggested British companies that lose £34 billion every year to cybercrime. Perhaps this question will come into the inquiry.

This all comes after things have gone wrong. Again [5]. An organisation we trusted has abused that trust by not looking after data with the stringency that customers should be able to expect in the 21st century, and reportedly not making preventative changes, apparent a year ago. Will there be consequences this time?

The government now saying it is talking about data protection and consequences, is like saying they’re talking sex education with teens, but only giving out condoms to the boys.

It could be too little too late. And they want above all to avoid talking about their own practices. Let’s change that.

Will this mean a review to end risky behaviour, bring in change, and be wiser in future?

If MPs explore what the NCSP does, then we the public, should learn more about what government’s expectations of commercial companies is in regards modern practices.

In addition, any MPs’ inquiry should address government’s own role in its own handling of the public’s personal data. Will members of government act in a responsible manner or simply tell others how to do so?

Public discussion around both commercial and state use of our personal data, should mean genuine public engagement. It should involve a discussion of consent where necessary for purposes beyond those we expect or have explained when we submit our data, and there needs to be a change in risky behaviour in terms of physical storage and release practices, or all the talk, is wasted.

Some say TalkTalk’s practices mean they have broken their contract along with consumer trust. Government departments should also be asking whether their data handling would constitute a breach of the public’s trust and reasonable expectations.

Mr Vaizey should apply his same logic to government handling data as he does to commercial handling. He said he is open to suggestions for improvement. [6]

Let’s not just talk about TalkTalk.

Let’s Talk Consequences: organisations taking risk seriously and meaningful consequences if not [7]
Let’s Talk Education: the education of the public on personal data use by others and rights and responsibilities we have [8]
Let’s Talk Parliament’s Policies and Practices: about its own complementary lack of data understanding in government and understand what good practice is in physical storage, good governance and transparent oversight
Let’s Talk Public Trust: and the question whether government can be trusted with public data it already has and whether its current handling makes it trustworthy to take more [9]

Vaizey said of the ICO now in his own department: “The Government take the UK’s cyber-security extremely seriously and we will continue to do everything in our power to protect organisations and individuals from attacks.”

“I will certainly meet the Information Commissioner to look at what further changes may be needed in the light of this data breach. [..] It has extensive powers to take action and, indeed, to levy significant fines. “

So what about consequences when data are used in ways the public would consider a loss, and not through an attack or a breach, but government policy? [10]

Let’s Talk Parliament’s Policies and Practices

Commercial companies are not alone in screwing up the use and processing [11] management of our personal data. The civil service under current policy seems perfectly capable of doing by itself. [12]

Government data policy has not kept up with 21st century practices and to me seems to work in the dark, as Chi Onwarah said,

‘illuminated by occasional flashes of incompetence.’

This incompetence can risk harm to people’s lives, to business and to public confidence.

And once given, trust would be undermined by changing the purposes or scope of use for which it was given, for example as care.data plans to do after the pilot. A most risky idea.

Trust in these systems, whether commercial or state, is crucial. Yet reviews which highlight this, and make suggestions to support trust such as ‘data should never be (and currently is never) released with personal identifiers‘ in The Shakespeare Review have been ignored by government.

Where our personal data are not used well in government departments by the department themselves, they seem content to date to rely on public ignorance to get away with current shoddy practices.

Practices such as not knowing who all your customers are, because they pass data on to others. Practices, such as giving individual level identifiable personal data to third parties without informing the public, or asking for consent. Practices, such as never auditing or measuring any benefit of giving away others personal data.

“It is very important that all businesses, particularly those handling significant amounts of sensitive customer data, have robust procedures in place to protect those data and to inform customers when there may have been a data breach.” Ed Vaizey, Oct 26th, HOC

If government departments prove to be unfit to handle the personal data we submit in trust to the state today, would we be right to trust them with even more?

While the government is busy wagging fingers at commercial data use poor practices, the care.data debacle is evidence that not all its MPs or civil service understand how data are used in commercial business or through government departments.

MPs calling for commercial companies to sharpen up their data protection must understand how commercial use of data often piggy-backs the public use of our personal data, or others getting access to it via government for purposes that were unintended.

Let’s Talk Education

If the public is to understand how personal data are to be kept securely with commercial organisations, why should they not equally ask to understand how the state secures their personal data? Educating the public could lead to better engagement with research, better understanding of how we can use digital services and a better educated society as a whole. It seems common sense.

At a recent public event [13], I asked civil servants talking about big upcoming data plans they announced, linking school data with more further education and employment data, I asked how they planned to involve the people whose data they would use. There was no public engagement to mention. Why not? Inexcusable in this climate.

Public engagement is a matter of trust and developing understanding in a relationship. Organisations must get this right.[14]

If government is discussing risky practices by commercial companies, they also need to look closer to home and fix what is broken in government data handling where it exposes us to risk through loss of control of our personal data.

The National Pupil Database for example, stores and onwardly shares identifiable individual sensitive data of at least 8m children’s records from age 2 -19. That’s twice as big as the TalkTalk loss was first thought to be.

Prevention not protection is what we should champion. Rather than protection after the events, MPs and public must demand emphasis on prevention measures in our personal data use.

This week sees more debate on how and why the government will legislate to have more powers to capture more data about all the people in the country. But are government policy, process and practices fit to handle our personal data, what they do with it and who they give it to?

Population-wide gathering of data surveillance in any of its many forms is not any less real just because you don’t see it. Children’s health, schools, increases in volume of tax data collection. We don’t discuss enough how these policies can be used every day without the right oversight. MPs are like the conservative parents not comfortable talking to their teens about sleeping with someone. Just because you don’t know, it doesn’t mean they’re not doing it. [15] It just means you don’t want to know because if you find out they’re not doing it safely, you’ll have to do something about it.

And it might be awkward. (Meanwhile in schools real, meaningful PHSE has been left off the curriculum.)

Mr. Vaizey asked in the Commons for suggestions for improvement.

My suggestion is this. How government manages data has many options. But the principle should be simple. Our personal data needs not only protected, but not exposed to unnecessary risk in the first place, by commercial or state bodies. Doing nothing, is not an option.

Let’s Talk about more than TalkTalk

Teens will be teens. If commercial companies can’t manage their systems better to prevent a child successfully hacking it, then it’s not enough to point at criminal behaviour. There is fault to learn from on all sides. In commercial and state uses of personal data.

There is talk of new, and bigger, data sharing plans. [16]

Will the government wait to see and keep its fingers crossed each month to see if our data are used safely at unsecured settings with some of these unknown partners data might be onwardly shared with, hoping we won’t find out and they won’t need to talk about it, or have a grown up public debate based on public education?

Will it put preventative measures in place appropriate to the sensitivity and volume of the data it is itself responsible for?

Will moving forward with new plans mean safer practices?

If government genuinely wants our administrative data at the heart of digital government fit for the 21st century, it must first understand how all government departments collect and use public data. And it must educate the public in this and commercial data use.

We need a fundamental shift in the way the government respects public opinion and shift towards legal and privacy compliance – both of which are lacking.

Let’s not talk about TalkTalk. Let’s have meaningful grown up debate with genuine engagement. Let’s talk about prevention measures in our data protection. Let’s talk about consent. It’s personal.

******

[1] Questions for TalkTalk: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34636308

[2] Hansard: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmhansrd/cm151026/debtext/151026-0001.htm#15102612000004

[3] TalkTalk update: http://www.talktalkgroup.com/press/press-releases/2015/cyber-attack-update-tuesday-october-30-2015.aspx

[4] The Cyber Security Programme: http://www.civilserviceworld.com/articles/feature/depth-look-national-cyber-security-programme

[5] Paul reviews TalkTalk; https://paul.reviews/value-security-avoid-talktalk/

[6] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/conditions-for-processing/

[7] Let’s talk Consequences: the consequences of current failures to meet customers’ reasonable expectations of acceptable risk, are low compared with elsewhere. As John Nicolson (East Dunbartonshire) SNP pointed out in the debate, “In the United States, AT&T was fined £17 million for failing to protect customer data. In the United Kingdom, the ICO can only place fines of up to £500,000. For a company that received an annual revenue of nearly £1.8 billion, a fine that small will clearly not be terrifying. The regulation of telecoms must be strengthened to protect consumers.”

[8] Let’s talk education: FOI request revealing a samples of some individual level data released to members of the press: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2015-10-26b.32.0

The CMA brought out a report in June, on the use of consumer data, the topic should be familiar in parliament, but little engagement has come about as a result. It suggested the benefit:

“will only be realised if consumers continue to provide data and this relies on them being able to trust the firms that collect and use it”, and that “consumers should know when and how their data is being collected and used and be able to decide whether and how to participate. They should have access to information from firms about how they are collecting, storing and using data.”

[9] Let’s Talk Public Trust – are the bodies involved Trustworthy? Government lacks an effective data policy and is resistant to change. Yet it wants to collect ever more personal and individual level for unknown purposes from the majority of 60m people, with an unprecedented PR campaign. When I heard the words ‘we want a mature debate’ it was reminiscent of HSCIC’s ‘intelligent grown up debate’ requested by Kinglsey Manning, in a speech when he admitted lack of public knowledge was akin to a measure of past success, and effectively they would rather have kept the use of population wide health data ‘below the radar’.

Change: We need change, the old way after all, didn’t work, according to Minister Matt Hancock: “The old model of government has failed, so we will build a new one.” I’d like to see what that new one will look like. Does he mean to expand only data sharing policy, or the powers of the civil service?

[10] National Pupil Database detailed data releases to third parties https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/pupil_data_national_pupil_databa

[11] http://adrn.ac.uk/news-events/latest-news/adrn-rssevent

[12] https://jenpersson.com/public-trust-datasharing-nib-caredata-change/

[13] https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-rights/privacy/state-surveillance

[14] http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500256274/Government-will-tackle-barriers-to-sharing-and-linking-data-says-Cabinet-Office-minister-Hancock

#caredata, care.data, HSCIC, NHS, NHS England

care.data: delayed or not delayed? The train wreck that is always on time

September 12, 2015 jenpersson

If you cancel a train does it still show up in the delayed trains statistics?

care.data plans are not delayed (just don’t ask Healthwatch)

Somerset CCG’s announcement [1] of the delay in their care.data plans came as no surprise, except perhaps to NHS England who effectively denied it, reportedly saying work continues. [2] Both public statements may be true but it would have been good professional practice to publicly recognise that a top down delay affects others who are working hard on the ground to contribute to the effective rollout of the project. Causing confusion and delay is hard to work with. Change and technology projects run on timelines. Deadlines mean that different teams can each do their part and the whole gets done. Or not.

Healthwatch [3] has cancelled their planned public meetings. Given that one of the reasons stated in the care.data CCG selection process was support from local patient groups including Healthwatch, this appears poor public relations. It almost wouldn’t matter, but in addition to the practicalities, the organisation and leadership are trying to prove it is trustworthy. [4]

Somerset’s statement is straightforward and says it is applies to all pathfinders:

“Following a speech by Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Health this week (3-9-15), in which he outlined his vision for the future use of technology across NHS, NHS England has asked the four care.data pathfinder pilots areas in England (Leeds, Blackburn and Derwent, West Hampshire and Somerset) to temporarily pause their activities.” [Sept 4, Somerset statement]

From when I first read of the GPES IAG concerns [5] I have seen the care.data programme hurtle from one crisis to another. But this is now a train wreck. A very quiet train wreck. No one has cried out much.[6] And yet I think the project, professionals, and the public should be shouting from the top of the carriages that this programme needs help if it is ever to reach its destination.

care.data plans are not late against its business plan (there is none)

Where’s the business case? Why can’t it define deadlines that it can achieve? In February 2015, I suggested the mentality that allows these unaccountable monster programmes to grow unchecked must die out.

I can’t even buy an Oyster card if I don’t know if there is money in my pocket. How can a programme which has already spent multi millions of pounds keep driving on without a budget? There is no transparency of what financial and non-financial benefits are to be expected to justify the cost. There is no accountable public measure of success checking it stays on track.

While it may be more comfortable for the organisation to deny problems, I do not believe it serves the public interest to hide information. This is supported by the very reason for being of the MPA process and its ‘challenge to Whitehall secrecy‘ [7] who rated the care.data rollout red [8] in last years audit. This requires scrutiny to find solutions.

care.data plans do not need to use lessons learned (do they?)

I hope at least there are lessons learned here in the pathfinder on what not to do before the communications rollout to 60m people. In the words of Richard Feynman, “For successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations.”

NHS England is using the public interest test to withhold information: “the particular public interest in preserving confidential communications between NHS England and its sponsoring department [the DH].” I do not believe this serves the public interest if it is used to hide issues and critical external opinion. The argument made is that there is “stronger public interest in maintaining the exemption where it allows the effective development of policy and operational matters on an ongoing basis.” The Public Accounts Committee in 2013 called for early transparency and intervention which prevents the ongoing waste of “billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money” in their report into the NPfIT. [9] It showed that a lack of transparency and oversight contributed to public harm, not benefit, in that project, under the watch of the Department of Health. The report said:

“Parliament needs to be kept informed not only of what additional costs are being incurred, but also of exactly what has been delivered so far for the billions of pounds spent on the National Programme. The benefits flowing from the National Programme to date are extremely disappointing. The Department estimates £3.7 billion of benefits to March 2012, just half of the costs incurred. This saga [NPfIT] is one of the worst and most expensive contracting fiascos in the history of the public sector.”

And the Public Accounts Committee made a recommendation in 2013:

“If the Department is to deliver a paperless NHS, it needs to draw on the lessons from the National Programme and develop a clear plan, including estimates of costs and benefits and a realistic timetable.” [PAC 2013][9]

Can we see any lessons drawn on today in care.data? Or any in Jeremy Hunt’s speech or his refusal to comment on costs for the paperless NHS plans reported by HSJ journal at NHSExpo15?

While history repeats itself and “estimates of costs and benefits and a realistic timetable” continue to be absent in the care.data programme, the only reason given by Somerset for delay is to fix the specific issue of opt out:

“The National Data Guardian for health and care, Dame Fiona Caldicott, will… provide advice on the wording for a new model of consents and opt-outs to be used by the care.data programme that is so vital for the future of the NHS. The work will be completed by January [2016]…”

Perhaps delay will buy NHS England some time to get itself on track and not only respect public choice on consent, but also deliver a data usage report to shore up trust, and tell us what benefits the programme will deliver that cannot already be delivered today (through existing means, like the CPRD for research [10]).

Perhaps.

care.data plans will only deliver benefits (if you don’t measure costs)

I’ve been told “the realisation of the benefits, which serve the public interest, is dependent on the care.data programme going ahead.” We should be able to see this programme’s costs AND benefits. It is we collectively after all who are paying for it, and for whom we are told the benefits are to be delivered. DH should release the business plan and all cost/benefit/savings plans. This is a reasonable thing to ask. What is there to hide?

The risk has been repeatedly documented in 2014-15 board meetings that “the project continues without an approved business case”.

The public and medical profession are directly affected by the lack of money given by the Department of Health as the reason for the reductions in service in health and social care. What are we missing out on to deliver what benefit that we do not already get elsewhere today?

On the pilot work continuing, the statement from NHS England reads: “The public interest is best served by a proper debate about the nature of a person’s right to opt out of data sharing and we will now have clarity on the wording for the next steps in the programme,”

I’d like to see that ‘proper debate’ at public events. The NIB leadership avoids answering hard questions even if asked in advance, as requested. Questions such as mine go unanswered::

“How does NHS England plan to future proof trust and deliver a process of communications for the planned future changes in scope, users or uses?”

We’re expected to jump on for the benefits, but not ask about the cost.

care.data plans have no future costs (just as long as they’re unknown)

care.data isn’t only an IT infrastructure enhancement and the world’s first population wide database of 60m primary care records. It’s a massive change platform through which the NHS England Commissioning Board will use individual level business intelligence to reshape the health service. A massive change programme that commodifies patient confidentiality as a kick-starter for economic growth. This is often packaged together with improvements for patients, requirements for patient safety, often meaning explanations talk about use of records in direct care conflated with secondary uses.

“Without interoperable digital data, high quality effective local services cannot be delivered; nor can we achieve a transformation in patient access to new online services and ‘apps’; nor will the NHS maximise its opportunity to be a world centre in medical science and research.” [NHS England, September 1 2015]

So who will this transformation benefit? Who and what are all its drivers? Change is expensive. It costs time and effort and needs investment.

Blackburn and Darwen’s Healthwatch appear to have received £10K for care.data engagement as stated in their annual report. Somerset’s less clear. We can only assume that Hampshire, expecting a go live ‘later in 2015’ has also had costs. Were any of their patient facing materials already printed for distribution, their ‘allocated-under-austerity’ budgets spent?

care.data is not a single destination but a long journey with a roadmap of plans for incremental new datasets and expansion of new users.

The programme should already know and be able to communicate the process behind informing the public of future changes to ensure future use will meet public expectations in advance of any change taking place. And we should know who is going to pay for that project lifetime process, and ongoing change management. I keep asking what that process will be and how it will be managed:

June 17 2015, NIB meeting at the King’s Fund Digital Conference on Health & Social Care:

September 2 2015, NIB Meeting at NHS Expo 15:

It goes unanswered time and time again despite all the plans and roadmaps and plans for change.

These projects are too costly to fail. They are too costly to justify only having transparency applied after the event, when forced to do so.

care.data plans are never late (just as long as there is no artificial deadline)

So back to my original question. If you cancel a train does it still show up in the delayed trains statistics? I suppose if the care.data programme claims there is no artificial deadline, it can never be late. If you stop setting measurable deadlines to deliver against, the programme can never be delayed. If there is no budget set, it can never be over it. The programme will only deliver benefits, if you never measure costs.

The programme can claim it is in the public interest for as long as we are prepared to pay with an open public purse and wait for it to be on track. Wait until data are ready to be extracted, which the notice said:

…” is thought to remain a long way off.”

All I can say to that, is I sure hope so. Right now, it’s not fit for purpose. There must be decisions on content and process arrived at first. But we also deserve to know what we are expecting of the long journey ahead.

On time, under budget, and in the public interest?

As long as NHS England is the body both applying and measuring the criteria, it fulfils them all.

*******

[1] Somerset CCG announces delay to care.data plans https://www.somersetlmc.co.uk/caredatapaused

[2] NHS England reply to Somerset announcement reported in Government Computing http://healthcare.governmentcomputing.com/news/ccg-caredata-pilot-work-continues-4668290

[3] Healthwatch bulletin: care.data meetings cancelled http://us7.campaign-archive1.com/?u=16b067dc44422096602892350&id=5dbdfc924c

[4] Building public trust: after the NIB public engagement in Bristol https://jenpersson.com/public-trust-datasharing-nib-caredata-change/

[5] GPES IAG http://www.hscic.gov.uk/media/12911/GPES-IAG-Minutes-12-September-2013/pdf/GPES_IAG_Minutes_12.09.13.pdf

[6] The Register – Right, opt out everybody! hated care.data programme paused again http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/08/hated_caredata_paused_again_opt_out/

[7] Pulse Today care.data MPA rating http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/your-practice/practice-topics/it/caredata-looks-unachievable-says-whitehall-watchdog/20010381.article#.VfMXYlbtiyM

[8] Major Projects Authority https://engage.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/major-projects-authority/

[9] The PAC 2013 ttp://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-accounts-committee/news/npfit-report/

[10] Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD)

***

image source: http://glaconservatives.co.uk/news/london-commuters-owed-56million-in-unclaimed-refunds-by-rail-operators/

#caredata, care.data, change

Building Public Trust [5]: Future solutions for health data sharing in care.data

August 17, 2015 jenpersson

This wraps up my series of thoughts on ‘Building Public Trust’ since the NIB Bristol meeting on July 24th.

It has looked at how to stop chasing public trust and instead the need to become organisations that can be trustworthy [part 1]. What behaviours make an organisation trustworthy [part 2]. Why fixing the Type 2 opt out is a vital first step [part 3], and why being blinded by ‘the benefits’ is not the answer [part 4], but giving balanced and fair explanations of programme purposes, commissioning and research, is beneficial to communicate.

So I want to wrap up by suggesting how communications can be improved in content and delivery. Some ideas will challenge the current approach.

Here in part five: Future solutions, I suggest why aiming to “Build Public Trust” through a new communications approach may work better for the public than the past. I’ll propose communications on care.data:

Review content: what would ethical, accurate content look like
Strengthen relationships for delivery: don’t attempt to rebuild trust where there is now none, but strengthen the channels that are already viewed by the public to be trustworthy
Rethink why you communicate and the plan for when: All communications need delivered through a conversation with real listening and action based upon it. Equal priority must be given to both a communications plan for today and for the future. It must set out a mechanism for future change communications now, before the pathfinders begin
Since writing this, the Leeds area CCGs have released their ‘data sharing’ comms leaflet. I have reviewed this in detail and give my opinions as a case study.

NIB workstream 4, underpins the NHS digital future, and aims to build and sustain public trust, delivering plans for consent based information sharing and assurance of safeguards. It focuses on 4 areas: governance and oversight, project risks, consent and genomics:

“The work will begin in 2015 and is expected to include deliberative groups to discuss complex issues and engagement events, as well as use of existing organisations and ways to listen. There will also be a need to listen to professional audiences.” [NIB work stream 4] [ref 1]

Today’s starting point in trust, trust that enables two-way communication, could hardly be worse, with professionals and public audiences. Communications are packaged in mistrust:

“Relations between the doctors’ union and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt hit a new low following his announcement in July that he was prepared to impose seven-day working on hospital doctors in England.” [BBC news, Aug 15, 2015]

There appears to be divided opinion between politicians and civil servants.

Right now, the Department of Health seems to be sabotaging its own plans for success at every turn.

What reason can there be for denying debate in the public domain of the very plans it says are the life blood of the savings central to the NHS future?

Has the Department learned nothing from the loss of public and professional trust in 2014?

And as regards the public in engagement work, Hetan Shah, executive director of the Royal Statistical Society said in 2014, “Our research shows a “data trust deficit”. In this data rich world, companies and government have to earn citizens’ trust in how they manage and use data – and those that get it wrong will pay the price.’ [RSS Data Trust Deficit, lessons for policymakers, 2014] [2]

Where do the NIB work stream discussions want to reach by 2020?

“The emergence of genomics requires a conversation about what kind of consent is appropriate by 2020. The work stream will investigate a strand of work to be led by an ethicist.” [NIB work stream 4]

Why is genomics here in workstream 4, when datasharing for genomics is with active consent from volunteers? Why will a strand of work be led by an ethicist for this, and not other work strands? Is there a gap in how their consent is managed today or in how consent is to be handled for genomics for the future? It seems to me there is a gap in what is planned and what the public is being told here. It is high time for an overdue public debate on what future today’s population-wide data sharing programme is building. Good communication must ensure there are no surprises.

The words I underlined from the work stream 4 paper, highlight the importance of communication; to listen and to have a conversation. Despite all the engagement work of 2014 I feel that is still to happen. As one participant summed up later, “They seem hell bent on going ahead. I know they listened, but what did they hear?” [3]

care.data pathfinder practices are apparently ready to roll out communications materials: “Extraction is likely to take place between September and November depending on how fair processing testing communications was conducted” [Blackburn and Darwen HW]

So what will patient facing materials look like in content? How will they be rolled out?

Are pathfinder communications more robust than 2014 materials?

I hope the creatives will also think carefully, what is the intent of communications to be delivered. Is it to fully and ethically inform patients about their choice whether to accept or opt out from changes in their data access, management, use and oversight? Or is the programme guidance to minimise the opt out numbers?

The participants are not signing up to a one time, single use marketing campaign, but to a lifetime of data use by third parties. Third parties who remain in role and purposes, loosely defined.

It is important when balancing this decision not to forget that data that is available and not used wisely could fail to mitigate risk; for example in identifying pharmaceutical harms.

At the same time to collect all data for all purposes under that ‘patient safety and quality’ umbrella theme is simplistic, and lends itself in some ways, to lazy communications.

Patients must also feel free and able to make an informed decision without coercion, that includes not making opting out feel guilty.

The wording used in the past was weighted towards the organisation’s preference. The very concept of “data sharing” is weighted positively towards the organisation. Even though in reality the default is for data to be taken by the organisation, not donated by the citizen. In other areas of life, this is recognised as an unwilling position for the citizen to be in.

At the moment I feel that the scope of purposes both today and future are not clearly defined enough in communications or plans for me personally to be able to trust them. Withholding information about how digital plans will fit into the broader NHS landscape and what data sharing will mean beyond 2020 appears rightly or wrongly, suspicious. Department of Health, what are you thinking?

What the organisation says it will do, it must do and be seen to do, to be demonstrably trustworthy.

This workstream carries two important strands of governance and oversight which now need to be seen to happen. Implementing the statutory footing of the National Data Guardian, which has been talked about since October 2014 and ‘at the earliest opportunity’ seems to have been rather long in coming, and ‘a whole system’ that respects patient choice. What will this look like and how will it take into account the granular level of choices asked for at care.data listening events through 2014?

“By April 2016 NIB will publish, in partnership with civil society and patient leaders, a roadmap for moving to a whole-system, consent-based approach, which respects citizens’ preferences and objections about how their personal and confidential data is used, with the goal of implementing that approach by December 2020.”

‘By December 2020’ is still some time away, yet the pathfinders for care.data rolls on now regardless. The proof that will demonstrate what was said about data use actually is what happens to data, that what is communicated is trustworthy, is part of a system that can communicate this by recording and sharing consent decisions, “and can provide information on the use to which an individual’s data has been put. Over the longer term, digital solutions will be developed that automate as far as possible these processes.”

Until then what will underpin trust to show that what is communicated is done, in the short term?

Future proofing Communications must start now

Since 2013 the NHS England care.data approach appeared to want a quick data grab without long term future-proofed plans. Like the hook-up app approach to dating.

To enable the NIB 2020 plans and beyond, to safeguard research in the public interest, all communications must shape a trusted long term relationship.

To ensure public trust, communications content and delivery can only come after changes. Which is again why focusing only on communicate the benefits without discussing balance of risk does not work. That’s what 2014 patient facing communications tried.

In 2014 there were challenges on communications that were asked but not answered, on reaching those who are digitally excluded, on reaching those for whom reading text was a challenge, and deciding who the target audience will be, considering people with delegated authority young and old, as well as those who go in and out of GP care throughout their lives, such as some military. Has that changed?

In February 2014 Health Select Committee member Sarah Wollaston, now Chair, said: “There are very serious underlying problems here that need to be addressed.”

If you change nothing, you can expect nothing to change in public and professional feeling about the programme. Communications cannot in 2015 simply revamp the layout and pacakging. There must be a change in content and in the support given in its delivery. Change means that you need to stop doing some things and start doing others.

In summary for future communications to support trust, I suggest:

1. STOP: delivering content that is biased towards what the organsation wants to achieve often with a focus on fair processing requirement, under a coercive veil of patient safety and research

START: communicating with an entirely ethical based approach reconsidering all patient data held at HSCIC and whether omission of ‘commercial use’, balanced risks as identified in the privacy impact assessment and stating ‘your name is not included’ is right.

2. STOP: Consider all the releases of health data held by HSCIC again and decide for each type if they are going to deliver public confidence that your organisations are trustworthy.

START: communicate publicly which commercial companies, re-users and back office would no longer be legally eligible to receive data and why. Demonstrate organisations who received data in the past that will not in future.

3. STOP: the Department of Health and NHS England must stop undermining trust in its own leadership, through public communications that voice opposition to medical professional bodies. Doctors are trusted much more than politicians.

START: strengthen the public-GP relationship that is already well trusted. Strengthen the GP position that will in turn support the organisational-trust-chain that you need to sustain public support.

4. STOP: stop delaying the legislative changes needed on Data Guardian and penalties for data misuse

START: implement them and clearly explain them in Parliament and press

5. STOP: don’t rush through short term short-cuts to get ‘some’ data but ignore the listening from the public that asked for choice.

START: design a thorough granular consent model fit for the 21stC and beyond and explain to the public what it will offer, the buy in for bona fide research will be much greater (be prepared to define ‘research’!

6. STOP: saying that future practices have been changed and that security and uses are now more trustworthy than in the past. Don’t rush to extract data until you can prove you are trustworthy.

START: Demonstrate in future who receives data to individuals through a data use report. Who future users are in practice can only be shown through a demonstrable tool to see your word can be relied upon in practice. This will I am convinced, lower the opt out rate.

Point 6 is apparently work-in-progress. [p58]

7. STOP: rolling out the current communications approach without any public position on what changes will mean they are notified before a new purpose and user in future of our data

START: design a thorough change communications model fit for the 21stC and beyond and tell the public in THIS round of communications what changes of user or purposes will trigger a notification to enable them to opt out in future BEFORE a future change i.e. in a fictional future – if the government decided that the population wide database should be further commercialised ‘for the purposes of health’, linked to the NHSBT blood donor registry and sold to genomic research companies, how would I as a donor be told, BEFORE the event?

There are still unknowns in content and future scope that mean communications are difficult. If you don’t know what you’re saying how to say it is hard. But what is certain is that there are future changes in the programme planned, and how to communicate these these with the public and professionals must be designed for now, so that what we are signed up for today, stays what we signed up for.

Delivering messages about data sharing and the broader NHS, the DH/NHS England should consider carefully their relationships and behaviours, all communication becomes relevant to trust.

Solutions cannot only be thought of in terms tools, not of what can be imposed on people, but of what can be achieved with people.

That’s people from the public and professionals and the programme working with the same understanding of the plans together, in a trusted long term relationship.

For more detail including my case study comments on the Leeds area CCGs comms leaflet, continue reading below.

Thanks for sharing in discussions of ideas in my five part post on Building public trust – a New Approach. Comments welcome.

Continue reading Building Public Trust [5]: Future solutions for health data sharing in care.data →

#caredata, care.data

Building Public Trust [4]: “Communicate the Benefits” won’t work for care.data

August 12, 2015 jenpersson

care.data communicating the benefits as its response to the failed communications in spring 2014, has failed to deliver public trust, here’s why:

To focus on the benefits is a shortcut for avoiding the real issues

Talking about benefits is about telling people what the organisation wants to tell them. This fails to address what the public and professionals want to know. The result is not communication, but a PR exercise.

Talking about benefits in response to the failed communications in spring 2014 and failing to address criticism since, ignores concerns that public and professionals raised at macro and micro level. It appears disingenuous about real engagement despite saying ‘we’re listening’ and seems uncaring.

Talking about only the benefits does not provide any solution to demonstrably outweigh the potential risk of individual and public health harm through loss of trust in the confidential GP relationship, or data inaccuracy, or loss, and by ignoring these, seems unrealistic.

Talking about short term benefits and not long term solutions [to the broken opt out, long term security, long term scope change of uses and users and how those will be communicated] does not demonstrate competency or reliability.

Talking about only the benefits of commissioning, and research for the merged dataset CES, doesn’t mention all the secondary uses to which all HSCIC patient level health data are put, [those reflected in Type 2 opt out] including commercial re-use and National Back Office: “2073 releases made from the National Back Office between April 2013 and December 2013. This includes 313 releases to police forces, 1531 to the Home Office and 229 to the National Crime Agency.” [HSCIC, July2, 2014].

This use of hospital records and other secondary data by the back office, without openly telling the public, does not feel ethical and transparent.

Another example, is the past patient communications that expressly said, ‘we do not collect name’, the intent of which would appear to be to assure patients of anonymity, without saying name is already stored at HSCIC on the Personal Demographics Service, or that name is not needed to be identifiable.

We hear a lot about transparency. But is transparent the same fully accurate, complete and honest? Honest about the intended outcomes of the programme. Honest about all the uses to which health data are put. Honest about potential future scope changes and those already planned.

Being completely truthful in communications is fundamental to future-proofing trust in the programme.

NHS England’s care.data programme through the focus on ‘the benefits’ lacks balance and appears disingenuous, disinterested, unrealistic and lacking in reliability, competency and honesty. Through these actions it does not demonstrate the organisation is trustworthy. This could be changed.

care.data fundamentally got it wrong with the intention to not communicate the programme at all. It got it wrong in the tool and tone of communications in the patient leaflet. There is a chance to get it right now, if the organisation would only stop the focus on communicating the benefits.

I’m going to step through with a couple of examples why to-date, some communications on care.data and use of NHS data are not conducive to trust.

Communication designed to ‘future-proof’ an ongoing relationship and trust must be by design, not afterthought.

Communications need to start addressing the changes that are happening and how they make people feel and address the changes that create concern – in the public and professionals – not address the goals that the organisation has.

Sound familiar? Communications to date have been flawed in the same way that the concept of ‘building trust’ has been flawed. It has aimed to achieve the wrong thing and with the wrong audience.

Communications in care.data needs to stop focussing on what the organisation wants from the public and professionals – the benefits it sees of getting data – and address instead firstly at a macro level, why the change is necessary and why the organisation should be trusted to bring it about.

When explaining benefits there are clearly positives to be had from using primary and secondary data in the public interest. But what benefits will be delivered in care.data that are not already on offer today?

Why if commissioning is done today with less identifiable data, can there be no alternative to the care.data level of identifiable data extraction? Why if the CPRD offers research in both primary and secondary care today, will care.data offer better research possibilities? And secondly at a micro level, must address questions individuals asked up and down the country in 2014.

What’s missing and possible to be done?

aim to meet genuine ongoing communication needs not just legal data protection fair processing tick-boxes
change organisational attitude that encourages people to ask what they each want to know at macro and micro level – why the programme at all, and what’s in it for me? What’s new and a benefit that differs from the status quo? This is only possible if you will answer what is asked.
deliver robust explanations of the reason why the macro and micro benefits demonstrably outweigh the risk of individual potential harms
demonstrate reliability, honesty, competency and you are trustworthy
agree how scope changes will trigger communication to ‘future-proof’ an ongoing relationship and trust by design.

As the NIB work stream on Public Trust says, “This is not merely a technical exercise to counter negative media attention; substantial change and long-term work is needed to deliver the benefits of data use.”

If they’re serious about that long term work, then why continue to roll out pathfinder communications based on a model that doesn’t work, with an opt out that doesn’t work? Communications isn’t an afterthought to public trust. It’s key.

If you’re interested in details and my proposals for success in communications I’ve outlined in depth below:

Why Communicate Changes at all?
What is change in care.data about?
Is NHS England being honest about why this is hard?
Communicate the Benefits is not working
A mock case study in why ‘communicate the benefits’ will fail
Long term trust needs a long term communications solution
How a new model for NHS care.data Communication could deliver

Continue reading Building Public Trust [4]: “Communicate the Benefits” won’t work for care.data →

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Tag Archives: care.data

Care.data, the King and I: an eternal illusion of control and consent?

What if people controlled their own health data?

Promises made and the Public Interest

The Proposed Consent/Opt-out Model offers choices

“we said that if we are going to use anonymised data for the benefit of scientific discovery in the NHS, people should have the right to opt out.”

The public benefit will be squandered if purposes continue to be conflated

An illusion of control: power imbalance of service provider and service user

A data sharing fairytale (3): transformation and impact

What is your happy ending?

Look into the local future

Trust depends on transparency

So to summarise, so far I have six key questions:

How will the old stories and new be reconciled?

What’s missing?

Building Public Trust [5]: Future solutions for health data sharing in care.data

Thinking to some purpose

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Promises made and the Public Interest

The Proposed Consent/Opt-out Model offers choices

“we said that if we are going to use anonymised data for the benefit of scientific discovery in the NHS, people should have the right to opt out.”

The public benefit will be squandered if purposes continue to be conflated

An illusion of control: power imbalance of service provider and service user

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The gap between Social Legitimacy and the Law

Engagement is not PR

Policy Making must be built on Public Trust

Share

What is your happy ending?

Look into the local future

Trust depends on transparency

So to summarise, so far I have six key questions:

How will the old stories and new be reconciled?

What’s missing?

Share

Share

Share

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Thinking to some purpose