Councils to miss child database deadline
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'Supplier' issues slowing progress Ninety-two out of 150 councils will miss a government deadline to implement systems for sharing information about vulnerable children.â¦
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Just no time The question of whether it's necessary or desirable to take school children's fingerprints has not made it on the agenda for Parliament.â¦
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The head of the U.K. National Health Service has defended plans to build a centralized database of patient records following another embarrassing loss of personal information by the government.The U.K. Department of Health admitted this weekend that nine of its regional NHS trusts have reported losing patient data. One of the trusts, the City and Hackney Primary Care Trust, in east London, lost the medical records for about 160,000 children, according to newspaper reports. The total number of records has not been disclosed.The losses emerged as part of a wider review following similar government blunders, and have revived questions about the security of building a centralized patient records database, part of the U.K.&#39;s National Programme for IT (NPfIT). But David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS, said the project is essential and should go ahead.&quot;It&#39;s vitally important that when a doctor is sitting in front of a patient they have all the information they need at their fingertips, and that&#39;s what&#39;s been driving us through all this,&quot; Nicholson told BBC Radio 4&#39;s Today program on Monday.The proposed system will not be a single large records database, but a series of interconnected regional databases, he said. And the security system will be more rigorous than that used with most Internet banking systems, according to Nicholson.&quot;You&#39;d need a user name, a password and a smart card [to access patient records] and you would have role-controlled access,&quot; he said. &quot;So a nurse on a ward with a smart card and a password could only access a relatively small number of patient records.&quot;The information that was reported lost over the weekend was encrypted and so not vulnerable to misuse, Nicholson said.But Ross Anderson, a security expert at the University of Cambridge, told Radio 4 that whether the data is encrypted is not the main issue.&quot;One of the questions you have to ask here is not whether the data was encrypted or password protected, but why someone was able to have access to 160,000 children&#39;s records,&quot; he said. &quot;In private industry ... if someone tried to make off with hundreds of thousands of records the alarms would sound.&quot;Opposition leaders pounced on the latest misstep as evidence that the Labour government can&#39;t be trusted with its citizens&#39; data. They called for further studies to show how the proposed patient records system would protect privacy.The incident comes after the U.K.&#39;s HM Revenue and Customs lost personal records for 25 million Britons, and the Driving Standards Agency lost records for more than 3 million learner drivers.&quot;The power of technology means it can be very easy to use the information, but also very easy to lose the information,&quot; the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said on the Today program. &quot;The events of the last few weeks have woken up everybody to the importance of taking these matters seriously.&quot;&#160;
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Patients are to be given the right to opt out of having information stored on the NHS electronic database.
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Just in time for the Olympics The British government is delaying the roll out of the national ID card scheme to UK citizens, according to leaked documents obtained by the Tory party.â¦
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Details of the government's plan to tackle vulnerable children before they are born are to be revealed.
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Campaigners say Whitehall wants even litter-droppers on crime database.
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Children are having the chance to play outdoors taken away from them, a group of experts warns.
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WASHINGTON Ethical concerns have prompted the government to postpone a study of how children&#39;s bodies absorb pesticides and other chemicals.
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The government warns of "dire consequences" of not meeting the deadline for restoring NI devolution.
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The full inquests into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed are to be delayed until October.
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Maybe Santa will bring them UK police are to stop searching for the missing child benefit CDs early next week.â¦
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Local councils must act swiftly to stop minor disputes between migrants and local residents escalating, a report says.
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Wrong approach to student single ID? UK plans to build an education super-database in which everyone from age 14 is given a single ID number should be put on hold, according to a collection of academics, businessmen and local government officials.â¦
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Junior civil servants dealing with the records of 25 million child benefit claimants were not given the official instructions on how to share the data with the rest of Whitehall, the Guardian has learned
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Councils are advised to begin fortnightly rubbish collections in autumn, winter or early spring to avoid complaints.
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Â· Appeal judge urges all UK residents to be sampledÂ· No plans to widen records, says PM's spokesman