The DOBlog

Search results for: “"electoral register"”

  • Electoral Register in Ireland

    I am a data/information quality nerd. Yes.. I admit it. However, increasingly I find that the awareness I have of Information Quality best practices gives me a different insight into items in the headlines. Recent coverage by the Sunday Tribune (an Irish sunday newspaper) about the problems in the Irish Electoral Register is one example. Simply put… there are more people registered to vote in Ireland than would meet the criteria to be voters. A lot more people. 800,000 is the estimate put forward in the media.

     This is a topic I’ve touched on before over at tuppenceworth.ie – albeit in a slightly different way and a long time ago.

     In the papers, the Minister in charge – Mr Dick Roche, Minister for the Environment, described the work of some local authorities (the local administrators of the Electoral Roll) as being “less than satisfactory”. My Information Quality senses pricked up at that because it belies a misunderstanding of how to ensure quality in a process, in particular an information process.  W.Edwards Deming put it best in his 14 points of Transformation for the organisation when he called on managers to institute leadership (not, as the minister has done, pass the buck down the food-chain), to instill pride in workmanship (not, as the minister has done, criticise the workers), to stop managing by slogan (not, as the minister has done here by pointing to some workers and holding them up as an example of what is to be achieved) and most importantly of all to seek constantly to improve the means of production (not ignore the problem).

     A suggestion for the Minister:

    • Take time to talk to the Local Authorities to see how they are doing the job. Seek to adopt/promote those practices that produce a ‘good’ electoral register across those areas that are less good. Do not do this on a blame & shame basis but on a collegiate basis to promote the ‘greater good’.
    • Look for variations in approach that might lead to differences in quality – standardise the process and invest in training for data administrators and the public where appropriate
    • Examine the process for managing the Electoral register. Is it still ‘fit for purpose’? Does it cater properly for such things as population mobility (it is estimated that up to 30% of the population might change address each year – I’ve move address 3 times in the last 6 years). If the process cannot handle changes of this nature (ie, it will allow a person to be registered in more than 1 location at at time) then the process does not meet the expectation of the legislature, the Constitution or the People (not to mention the Marketers who buy sections of it) and should be changed
    • Do not dismiss the issue as being a problem for other people. You are the minister in charge who sets the strategic ‘tone-at-the-top’ with regard to Local Authority matters. Your role should be to lead and provide the mechanism to co-ordinate.
    • Don’t immediately assume that the solution to this problem will be costly – most of the initial work will not require external consultancies or new IT systems. The initial steps will invariably require people to stop and look at what is being done and will require a statement that this is an important issue that the minister has a personal interest in and wants to start putting a strategy together to address.
    • Don’t keep siloing the problem – that may even be one of the reasons we have an overstatement on the electoral register of nearly 25% of the population.

    The existence of ‘orphan’ records on the electoral register – people who are registered to vote in more than one location is a clear and present threat to our democracy, particularly given the declining trends in voter turn out. There is no legitmate reason why elected officials within our democracy would not want to act on this issue. The minister needs to provide leadership on this – what has he got to loose by being a leader defending the quality and integrity of our democratic processes?

  • A Letter to the Editor

    Over the past few days, the Irish Times has carried a larger volume than usual of the “Data Protection Commissioner is evil” letters, giving out about her “nonsensical powers” because the bad lady won’t let them do things they want to do with data about people who are/might be alive.

    I don’t always agree with the ODPC (more often than not we have “differences of opinion” on things). But when (against all the odds) they appear to be DOING THEIR JOB, I will defend them. So, I wrote a letter to the Editor. It is probably too long and will get gutted or not published at all. Here it is (with links to the original letters)

    Sir –

    Over the past few days your letters page has carried unchallenged comments about the Data Protection Commissioner and her “nonsensical powers”.

    Robert Frewen states that Electoral register information is available in hard copy through libraries. This is true, but it differs from an on-line and searchable resource in a number of key ways, namely that each search is manual and laborious and the library staff can act as a foil against trawling for data – multiple searches will easily be spotted and librarians are a fearsome breed in my experience. He also states that electoral register information is available on-line. This is incorrect. Electoral registers are available to search online, but only if you have the exact name and address of the individual – so you are searching for information you already have in your possession, not trawling for new facts.

    Claire Bradley writes that the DPC’s decision is “small minded” and that “most of the people eligible to vote in the 1940s would be dead by now”. Unfortunately, that means that some of the people eligible to vote in the 1940s (such as my own Grandfather) are still very much alive and continue to enjoy a fundamental right to data privacy. This fundamental right is what the DPC has acted to uphold. Far from being a small minded sectoral interest, the DPC has acted in support of a broadly based fundamental principle.  

    The DPC has made similar decisions in relation to other genealogy resources, which have been widely reported by the Irish Times, and clear rules of thumb have been established for births, marriages, and deaths. Perhaps rather than bemoaning the application of fundamental human rights rules to personal data, Ms Bradley might contribute more constructively by suggesting a reasonable and proportionate rule of thumb for the publication of electoral registers in an open and searchable format. The DPC, in my experience, welcomes such constructive discussion. Perhaps a benchmark can be found in the release of the 1911 Census Records?

    It is important to note that the DPC has not said that any records should be destroyed, just that they cannot be made available for an open and unrestricted search. Yet.

    Finally, Cllr Lacey seems to bemoan the DPC’s recommendation to Local Authorities that they respect and comply with Data Protection principles such as ensuring access to data and processing of data is conducted with a specified and lawful purpose. I would suggest that rather than blaming the DPC for the loss of patronage and perceived power that Councillors may have experienced when their participation in housing allocation was curtailed, he instead address his complaint to the Department of the Environment and ensure that a clear and explicit statutory basis in primary legislation is created to clearly set out what data about Council tenants Councillors can have access to, why, and under what controls such access will operate.

    The release of Electoral Register data from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s constitutes the release of personal data of living individuals for a purpose unrelated to the purpose for which it was obtained, and brings with it a risk of identity theft. If Cllr Lacey believes that the release of this data is sufficiently important, he should seek to have every person communicated with to obtain their consent to the release of their data for this new and, at the time, unforeseen purpose.

    It is rare in recent times that I find an opportunity to fall full square behind the DPC and the actions of her office. This is one. Their function is imperfect, and in a professional context as Data Protection consultant and trainer, I have more than ample grounds to be critical of their actions at times.  But far from being nonsensical, the powers of the DPC are woefully inadequate in many ways for the challenge that they face as one of the leading Data Privacy regulators in the world upholding and protecting a fundamental right. As the Oireachtas prepares the updated Data Protection Act to beef up the DPC in line with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation, one hopes that the many weaknesses of the DPC will be addressed to make them more fit for purpose.

    “Wha!!! Data Protection laws make things hard!” is a dumb argument. Better for people who have valid interests to assess what the “win-win” outcome would be and strike an appropriate balance.

  • Insolvency Register–some quick thoughts

    So, David Hall is challenging the provisions of the Personal Insolvency Act regarding the publication of details on public registers. I’m quoted in this Irish Times article about it. My comments, which I expand on here as an update to my earlier post, where to the effect that:

    • The publication of detailed personal data on a publicly accessible register would invite the risk of identity theft in the absence of any appropriate controls over the access to that data.

    Examples of public registers where controls are in place are the Electoral Register (search one name and address at a time), and the Companies Registration Office (find out the home addresses of Directors if you pay a small admin fee), or the list of Revenue Tax defaulters (publication only over a threshold, summary personal data published).

    Public does not mean Open. Public means that it should be able to be accessed, subject to appropriate controls. The requirement to name people who are in an insolvency arrangement needs to be balanced against their right to personal data privacy and the risk of identity theft or fraud through the use of published personal data.

    The mockup Register entries presented on the ISI website may do the organisation a disservice with the level of data they suggest would be included and I await the publication of further revisions and the implementation of a control mechanism to introduce balance between the requirement to publish a Register and the need to protect personal data privacy. But of course, Section 133 of the Personal Insolvency Act is silent as to what the actual content of the published Registers should be (at least as far as I can see). So there is scope for some haggling over the content of what the final Registers will be.

    A key question to be considered here is what is the purpose of the Registers and what is the minimum data that would be adequate and relevant to be provided on a Register to meet that purpose.

    Section 133(4) allows for the public to “inspect a Register at all reasonable times" and to take extracts or copies of entries, and even allows for a small fee to be charged (the “reasonable cost of making a copy”). So there is scope for some form of access control to be put in place either with a search mechanism like the electoral register and/or the operation of a paywall for the making of copies (e.g. generating a pdf report on headed paper, at €1 a go).

    • Section 186 of the Personal Insolvency Act needs to be interpreted and applied with care.

    Section 186 of the Personal Insolvency Act purports to suspend the operation of Section 4 of the Data Protection Acts in certain circumstances. This is the section which allows a Data Subject to request a copy of their personal data. This is a basic right under the Acts.

    However the Data Protection Acts already contain provisions which allow for the suspension of Section 4 in Section 5 of the Data Protection Acts. Specifically Section 5(1)(d) allows for an exclusion for data which is being processed in the performance of a statutory function intended

    …to protect members of the public against financial loss occasioned by

    i) dishonesty, incompetence, or malpractice on the part of persons concerned in the provision of banking, insurance, investment or other financial services or in the management of companies or similar organisations

    ii) the conduct of persons who have at any time been adjudicated bankrupt

    in any case where the application of that section would be likely to prejudice the proper performance of any of those functions.

    The operation of the Insolvency Service of Ireland would appear to fall under this section. But rather than a blanket exclusion, Section 5 has a more nuanced approach – you can’t have your data if it will prejudice the proper performance of the ISI’s role. Of course, 5(1)(d) only kicks in if there has been dishonesty, incompetence, or malpractice on the part of a bank that has resulted in a financial loss or risk of financial loss to the Data Subject.

    Section 5 gives a number of other grounds for exclusion from the operation of Section 4. Among them are:

    • If disclosing the data is contrary to the interests of protection the international relations of the State (which would raise an eyebrow I’m sure if cited in an insolvency situation).
    • If legal privilege attaches to the records in the case of communications between clients and legal advisers.

    If the restriction is on disclosure of personal data during the course of an investigation then this would likely be covered under Section 5(1)(a ) and there is legislative precedent in the Property Services (Regulation) Act 2011 to extend that to an investigation undertaken by the PRA under that Act.

    An explanation and clarification?

    The ISI has similar powers of investigation and prosecution of offences (section 180 and Chapter 5 of the Personal Insolvency Act 2012). Therefore the exemption from disclosure under Section 5(1)(a ) would apply. A “belt and braces” inclusion of an exemption from section 4 of the DPA for the investigation of offences would be consistent with the Acts.

    However this would only be the case for the investigation of an offence. The processing of a general complaint would not fall within the scope of an offence under the Insolvency Act or other legislation.

    Therefore a blanket opt out would not exist. If an offence is suspected Section 186 reinforces the existing provisions of the Data Protection Acts. But general complaints to the Complaints committee would (based on my reading) not, unless the complaint wound up in an offence being detected. Of course a Data Subject would only be entitled to their own data.

    A recent case involving the DPC and Dublin Bus made it clear that the potential for civil proceedings or a complaint were not grounds to refuse a Subject Access Request.

    • Excessive Retention of Data on Public Registers is a concern.

    This, of course, is another biggie from a Data Protection point of view.How long does this data need to be held for? In the UK similar schemes have the personal data removed from the public register 3 months after the debtor exits the scheme. Here…

    Section 170 of the Personal Insolvency Act indicates that Personal Insolvency Practitioners will need to retain data for 6 years after the “completion of the activity to which the record relates”. This is consistent with the statute of limitations on a debt and makes sense – it would allow people who avail of an Arrangement to get access to information about their arrangement if required. However it is not the same as the Public Registers.

    Section 133 sets out the provisions relating to the Registers of Insolvency Arrangements. It says nothing about the length of time a person’s data will be listed on a Register. Given the purpose is to maintain a searchable register of people who are in Insolvency Arrangements, the principle of not retaining data for longer than it is required for a stated purpose kicks in.

    And, as is all to often the case in Irish legislation, we seem to be left looking to the UK for a benchmark period for retention: Duration of Arrangement plus 3 months… but that may be 3 months longer than required.

    • Personal Solvency Practitioners acting as Data Processors, and the implications for security and awareness of obligations under the Data Protection Acts

    This is a squeaky wheel issue in many respects. All too often organsiations will outsource functions or engage people to perform functions on their behalf on contract, which would set out the purposes of the processing and the role of the Processor and sanctions for breaching their obligations. The Personal Insolvency Act sets out how Personal Insolvency Practitioners will be appointed, empowers the ISI to set standards re: their level of education and skill, and imposes sanctions for breaches of the standards of conduct of the role.

    The function of a PIP is one which could have been undertaken internally within the ISI but it has been decided to outsource it to these PIPs.

    Therefore a PIP is likely to be viewed as a Data Processor acting on behalf of the Data Controller (ISI) [for more on this read here]. Therefore they need to be taking (at a minimum) appropriate security measures to prevent unauthorised access to data. The concern I expressed in the article was that it is an unknown quantity what level of understanding of their obligations under the Data Protection Acts a PIP will have and what training (if any) will be provided.

    Section 161(c) of the Personal Insolvency Act 2012 provides a mechanism for this to be addressed through the prescribing of the completion of appropriate training from a qualified trainer with a proficiency in Data Protection as one of the training requirements for authorisation as a PIP.

    [Disclosure: my company provides an extensive range of Data Protection compliance review and training services]

  • Happy Birthday DoBlog

    The DoBlog is 3 years old today. For 3 years I’ve been sharing my thoughts on topics information qualitarian and other things with a captive audience (I locked a few neighbours in the shed with an old PC and a packet of biscuits). I’ve also managed to attract a reasonable ‘free range’ following.

    Obsessive Blogger Award
    Obsessive Blogger Award

     

     

    In that time I’ve won an “attaboy” award from my peers in the Irish blogging community (but never an official Irish Blog Awards nomination… not even a mention in dispatches. Woe is me)

    The DoBlog would not be what it is today without the help and support of a number of people:

    • Mrs DoBlog. For putting up with me sneaking downstairs in the dead of night when an idea hits me.
    • Simon and Fergal over on Tuppenceworth.ie for giving me encouragement to carve out my niche in this space, and for being quick to point out errors or opportunities to improve. And also for the Obsessive Blogger award.
    • My colleagues on the Board of Directors of the IAIDQ, for their encouragement and their insights into good stories.
    • My colleagues in the Irish Computer Society (ICS)
    • Damien Mulley for creating the wonderful motiviator for self-expression that is the Fluffy Link  (an honour I still crave… c’mon Damien… give us a nod…please? Validate me!)
    • The Irish Ministers for the Environment since 2006 (Dick Roche TD and John Gormley TD), for the original and on-going issues in the Irish Electoral Register (which got me my award)
    • The Irish Ministers for Communications since 2006 (Noel Dempsey TD and Eamon Ryan TD) for the continued failure to implement a post code system in Ireland. 
    • My fellow Information Quality Bloggers – of whom there were very few in 2006 but now there is a growing community. (yes, I’m sure I’ve missed some of you out… ping me a mail or a comment to get added to my list here)

    Thanks also to everyone who has commented (either on the blog or over beers at a conference), contributed, cajoled or prodded me into writing about information quality issues. I’d particularly like to thank Tom Redman, Larry English, Danette McGilvray, Lwanga Yonke, and my IAIDQ editor-in-chief who prefers to stay in the background but has helped me hone my writing immensely.

    Finally, I’d like to thank all the people who create, process or consume information in their day to day existence, and in particular I’d like to thank everyone (me included) who has had a hand in creating some IQ trainwrecks that may have inspired posts here.

    If I’ve forgotten anyone… there’s always next year. 

    And, to cap things off… here’s a look back at the very first post on The DoBlog on the 18th April 2006.

  • Information Society – be careful what you wish for… it might come true

    Simon over at Tuppenceworth shared his thoughts yesterday on comments by our Minister for the Information Society and another Public Servant on bloggers at a conference that had nothing to do with blogging (’twas about Software Quality and testing).

    [Update – Imagine my shock when I found the speech on the Dept of the Taoiseach website…scroll down to the section on Innovation and see the exact terms used by the Minister responsible for the Information Society. On one hand he has a point, but it could have been phrased a lot more… politically]

    As usual, bloggers have shaken their fists or slapped their foreheads in disbelief at what it seems was said.

    Now now children. Comparing a Junior Minister to a scooby doo villain is impolite if chucklesomely accurate. Also, it is just possible that they may having been having a go at BOGGERS – an equally maligned group that is misunderstood and misrepresented by ‘traditional’ media. (Just watch Killnascully for the evidence). [Sadly that was not the case, as evidenced by the text of the speech]

    I was at the conference in question and having thought about it overnight I think the Local Government Computing Services person’s comments should probably be taken in the context of decisions to adopt open standards or not… bloggers are all for mashups and open standards based solutions as it is the “Web2.0 thing”. However if it all falls apart because the person making the widget that holds it together stops maintaining their stuff then you get kicked. If you are a blogger your site goes down or comments don’t work or your google maps mashup goes on its arse.

    If you’re a government organisation you end up on the front page of the Irish Times… “Government IT investment fiasco”. The we bloggers chip in and the spin and bluster gets questioned and then your day goes from ‘challenging’ to ‘fricking nightmare’ in a matter of hours. But guess what… project managers in the private sector have to put up with that stuff too. I have no sympathy. Lots of empathy though.

    Looking back at notes from that presentation, at the time he made the comments about bloggers he was discussing Open Source solutions. His point was simply that Open Source solutions bring a degree of risk with them, particularly if they are being adapted for use in a given context – if an Open Source solution falls in the forest and there is no developer community to hear it, is your solution f*cked?

    That is a risk that all companies have to balance between Open Source and Proprietary solutions. His mistake, as I would see it, has been to take criticism from bloggers about decisions a little bit too personally. Of course, if the bloggers turned out to be right in their criticisms then that might make things sting even more.

    Another presenter on the day gave a good insight into how to pick Open Source tools though.. he recommended only picking stuff from SourceForge with 90% or higher activity showing a maintained and managed piece of software, not a hobby project.

    Also bloggers are not synonymous with Open Standards/Open Source developers. We’re just as screwed if someone moves the cheese and useful piece of software or useful standard stops being supported (PHP4 vs PHP5 for example… too many webhosts are still running PHP4 while Open Source developers are moving to PHP5 based apps – I think of Drupal and CiviCRM as examples. Hosting providers who can’t support PHP5 leave organisations using Open Source tools like civicrm stuck on less effective or efficient and unsupported versions of the applications. A bit like a proprietary vendor end-of-lifing an application).

    I’ve written extensively on this blog over the past two years about information management/information quality issues in government processes (PPARS, Electoral Register, IBTS etc) so I think I might fall in to the category of annoying and obsessive bloggers. However, and I’m open to correction, I do believe that I’ve ‘played the ball and not the man’ at each turn, with my focus being on leadership (ie Ministers) and on sound practices (many people I spoke to yesterday who had happened on my blog said nice things about my IBTS posts). And I’ve never shied away from debating the point to build a better understanding of issues.

    Importantly, I believe that my posts and comments have been fairly balanced. I did my best to argue that the problem in PPARs wasn’t the software or the project team but the sheer mind numbing complexity of consoldiating non-standard data and divergent processes into a system that requires standards and standardisation. Each ‘custom’ work calendar represented a ‘customisation’ in the application – ergo the cost. The project team did a great job to achieve anything with the mess they were given to start with. The electoral register… I put the blame were it needed to be – on the Minister who is responsibile for defining strategy and allocating resources. I analysed the root causes and issues and criticsed the door to door clean up because it wasn’t a solution and it wasn’t operated consistently. I won’t mention the IBTS in detail but to say… harrumph – and watch this space (I’m not finished there).

    Tom Kitt’s comments, however, baffle me as it did seem to be a throw away remark triggered by some deep seated frustration. Perhaps my focus on Dick Roche’s bumbling mis-management of the Electoral Register issue and John Gormely’s apparent lack of a sense of urgency to implement the legislative changes required to correct the processes (rather than pissing around on the edges doing scrap and rework and working with a marketing company to design a new logo for the department that looks like three snails in an orgy) have irked the political classes? Perhaps the blogger commentary on the Mahon Tribunal have peeved the Fianna Fail leadership?

    Perhaps some blogger has written something nasty about Minister Kitt’s offsprung, the folksy crooner David Kitt? (Twenty – if you did … tut tut). Maybe he read some comments about the car in the re-invented Knightrider TV show and took them out of context?

    Who knows.

    What I do know is that an Information Society starts with an informed community that shares information. Blogs and blogging provides an opportunity for informed people with experience and insights into niche areas and obscure disciplines to share their thoughts and views on things.

    Occassionally that means that the type of person who, in the Service would never be left alone in the same timezone as a Minister because they are hard-core techie (beard, jumper and sandals with socks – and that’s just the wimmin) and are passionate about a solution or approach that is not ‘status quo’, can find a platform to make their opinion known. An occasionally a newspaper picks up on that (not, sadly, in the case of the Electoral Register) and it gets a broader airing.

    More often, it means that people who have experience in a particular industry, process or discipline but might otherwise have no access to media can peer behind the spin and bluster put out by the political classes and their handlers and by public sector organisations to raise questions about what might have happened really or suggest alternative approaches for consideration. If that makes people uncomfortable then tough. An informed society requires higher standards.

    However, Marshall McLuhan’s view that ‘the medium is the message’ has gone the way of the dodo. The medium is not the message. Not all bloggers are good. Not all bloggers are informed. Not all bloggers want to criticise constructively. But to dismiss all bloggers and their opinions with a frustrated sigh is to miss the point completely (a bit like Mr Waters did).

    The blog is the medium. The message comes from each blogger as an individual member of society.

    An Information Society. (tada!)

    Of course, to counter the criticism bloggers need to up their game and take a moment’s pause to engage their brains a bit before letting their fingers to the talking. The right speak does not guarantee you the right to be heard. But speaking well, clearly and appropriately, with sound ideas that you are willing to accept critique on (as long as that critique likewise plays the ball and not the man) increases the chance that people will want to listen to you.

    By improving the quality of your personal blogging you improve the quality of the Information Society. By ensuring that you have checked your facts (or are willing to correct errors quickly) you improve the Information Quality in this Information Society. Then we will find ourselves in a functioning, citizen supported, Information Society.

    Another aspect of Tom Kitt’s alleged comments might also relate to the fact that there are a sizeable proportion of the population who aren’t bloggers (yet). Government needs to manage for the needs of the State as a whole, not just the needs of lobby groups or hobby groups or bloggers. (I’m shitting myself laughing as I write this)

    Informed lobby groups (trade unions, IBEC, the SFA, even the late lamented IrelandOffline) influence Government policy to various extents. The media affects government policy (if it gets criticised in the media the Minister may hold off pushing the policy, particularly around election time). Grumpy old men walking around outside Leinster House with placards on their backs… well they don’t really achieve anything on their own (perhaps they should blog).

    Whether you blog or not does not deprive you of your right as a citizen to seek to affect and effect change in government. So, you can seek to influence through an established media fair play.. get your op ed piece in The Irish Times, go on Questions and Answers and rip the token politician a new one (or punch right wing columnists who haven’t got a clue about the real world), write your letters to the editor, or start a pressure group and doorstep your elected representatives. Fair play to you.

    Or you can start a blog to raise awareness of the issue (perhaps combined with the other approaches). If the handful of bloggers who have written specifically about Information Society issues or the challenges of may government/quasi-government IT projects and performed a critique of the strategy (or lack of), best practices (or lack of) or solutions (or lack of) that were delivered can raise the frustrated ire of the Minister responsible for the Information Society then we’re a pretty darned effective group.

    If the government chooses to dismiss your opinions because you are not an established lobby group or because you are just ‘citizens’ then there is something rotten in the pre-Information Society society.

    Minister for the Information Society… we’re bloggers. We’re here. We’re informed and we want to be social, socially active, active on social issues, and to build a strong foundation for a ‘realised information society’. Some of us are already elected officials, some of us might consider running for office. Some of us might be advisors to your opposition. It’s not because we’re bloggers. It’s because we’re citizens.

    Dismiss us if you want, but like the smell of boiling cabbage on a hot summer’s day we’re not going away in a hurry. To paraphrase Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman:

    “Makers of an Information Society. Creators of an Information Society.Be careful what kind of Information Society you’re producin’ here.

    hoo hah.

    (of course, that cuts both ways – bloggers need to seek to seperate the ‘signal’ from the ‘noise’ so that good blogs and bloggers can be distinguished from waffle and bile).

    But I still can’t f**king stand David Kitt’s music and the Knightrider car is just dire (sorry).

  • Getting back to my Information Quality agenda

    One or two of the comments (and emails) I received after the previous post here were enquiring about some stuff I’d written previously (2006 into 2007) about the state of the Irish Electoral Register.

    It is timely that some people visited those posts as our Local Elections are coming up in less than 18 months (June 2009) and frankly, unless there is some immense effort going on behind the scenes that I haven’t heard of, the Register is still in a poor state.

    The issue isn’t the Register per se but the processes that surround it, the apparent lack of a culture where the leadership take the quality of this information seriously enough to make the necessary changes to address the cultural, political and process problems that have resulted in it being buggered.

    There are a few consolidating posts knocking around on this blog as I’ve pulled things together before. However a quick search for “Electoral Register” will pull all the posts I’ve done on this together. (If you’ve clicked the link all the articles are presented below).

    I’ve also got a presentation on the subject over at the IQNetwork website, and I did a report (which did go to John Gormely’s predecessor) which can be found here, and I wrote Scrap and Rework articlethat I submitted to various Irish newspapers at the time to no avail but which has been published internationally (in print and on-line).

    At this stage, I sense that as it doesn’t involve mercury filled CFLs or Carbon taxes, the state of the electoral register and the legislative framework that surrounds it (a lot of the process issues require legislative changes to address them) has slipped down the list of priorities our Minister has.

    However, with Local Elections looming it is important that this issue be addressed.

  • Has our Minister for Environment lost it completely?

    The Irish Green Party recently entered coalition with the Fianna Fail party to form a government in Ireland. As part of this coalition, we now have a Green Party TD (member of parliament) as Minister for the Environment.

    Today, Mr Gormley came out in favour of Electronic Voting. Well, actually that isn’t entirely correct.. he has stated that he would like to see electronic voting in Ireland and would not like to abandon the investment made in the e-voting machines we have in mothballs if they can be adapted to secure public confidence.

    He appears to have missed the breaking news from the Netherlands where the Courts have ruled that the use of their e-voting machines is illegal because they can be hacked.

    Personally I think that the Minister should step back from the white elephant of these e-voting machines and take a look at the information quality requirments of the entire election process.

    1. Our Electoral Register is in a shambles. A key root cause is the design of the electoral register forms… they are simply appalling and do not capture information in a clear and error-proofed manner. A holistic Information Management strategy needs to be developed and implemented, along with adequate governance, funding and resources to help ensure high quality of information in the Electoral Register. This will likely require changes to legislation to allow for improvements in the Electoral Register processes and to clarify responsibilities and accountabilities for the management of this critical information.
    2. A clear and unbiased view needs to be taken of how best we can ensure a verifiable voting process so that votes dont’ go missing, get tampered with or are just not counted. Pencil and paper means that voters who mark the box with their preference can see their preference going into the ballot box… that is a level of confidence in the process that currently isn’t matched by e-voting.

    Rather than continuing to piss around with the e-voting machines, I would much rather the Minister take a strong leadership stance as regards the quality of the Electoral Register and its related processes. His predecessor tried to pass the buck and it would seem Mr Gormley hasn’t yet grasped the reins (sorry for mixing my metaphors like that). The investment in the key set of master data for our electoral processes – the Register of Electors – would be a much better spend of (increasingly constrained) government funds (ie the funds we taxpayers provide).

    In business people take investment decisions every day and spend money with the goal of making more back. But every day business managers have to draw a line under poor investments and walk away from the business idea to spend their resources on more valuable opportunities. Seeking to spend more money on a bad idea in the hope that enough money might make it a good idea is just bad business. A number of people I know, myself included, have walked away from business ideas because they weren’t working or could not be made to work with the resources available. Yes it is a pain in the arse, yes there is a sense of failure, but at least you can move forward knowing you have made a tough decision and can learn from it.

    Or perhaps Minister Gormely is auditioning for a part in a remake of Monty Python & The Holy Grail? How many castles will we need to build in the e-voting swamp before they stop sinking?

    I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show ’em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one… stayed up! And that’s what you’re gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands.

    Investing in key infrastructure and assets (the electoral register and its related processes and governance) which will be used either in the ‘as is’ world (pencil and paper voting) or the ‘to be world’ (the utopia of secure and seamless e-voting) is a better investment of resources.

    Chasing the Fianna Fail pipe dream of e-voting simply because it is what the bigger boys at the Cabinet table want you to smacks of an inability to see the wood for the trees and prioritise what will work in the lifetime of the Government (improving the Register and its governance) over what will never work in the lifetime of the Government (e-voting machines).

  • Mobile phone registration

    The Irish Government have again trundled out a proposal to force mandatory registration of pre-paid mobile phones. It is stated that this will be a wonderful weapon in the war on drugs, organised crime and pixies.

    There are two small problems with the proposal as it currently stands.

    1. It is unlikely to work as the politicians claim it will
    2. It is unlikely to work as the politicians hope it will

    Now, technically, this is just one problem but it is such a doozy I thought it would be worth mentioning at least twice.

    The reason it is unlikely to work as the politicians claim it will is that in order to ensure that the Register of Mobiles does not become filled with Michael M. Ouses or I.P Freelys the process will require some form of validation of name and address. In order to mitigate the risk of forged or fraudlent documentation being used (which would result in Mr Freely freely getting his fone phraudulently phone fraudulently) this documentation will need to be of some ‘official’ form.

    For Bill Pay phones the usual documentation required is a passport or drivers licence (a work ID on its own is not usually sufficient in my experience) and a utility bill – these prove you are who you say you are and you live where you say you live. In order for the Register of Mobiles to meet the stringent evidentiary requirements that the stated purpose require (to deter criminals using mobiles and to assist in tracking and apprehending them via their mobile records) then a very high level of validity and verifiability will be required of the information used for identification purposes when the phone is being purchased.

    The majority of Ready-to-go customers would seem to be children and teenagers (I’ve lost track of the number of phones my teenage sister-in-law has had over the past few years). They may not have a passport, are unlikely to have a driver’s licence (until they are in their late teens) and are extremely unlikely to be in possession of a valid utility bill in their name.

    So how will they register their phones? Are the Government proposing that the phones would be registered to the parents of these children and teenagers? What then if the child is involved in some criminal activity? Does the parent become a suspect because of the mobile phone records?

    “I didn’t beat up little Johnnie… I’d left my phone at home. My ma hates Johnnie – she must’ve done it!”.

    One solution proposed to this (which according to the Irish Daily Mail came from Civil Servants in a review of this idea update– thanks to Antoin at eire.com who has a blog post which quotes the Dept of Communications on this topic) would be to implement the Register of Mobiles only after a National Identity Card was introduced in Ireland. In theory, this would give a standardised, State-backed identity (and possibly a unique identifier for the person). However there are no current proposals to implement such a card and previous proposals have met with opposition from various quarters.

    A further issue is that name and address data ages over time. People move house, get married, get divorced or die. What mechanism will the Government require to ensure that the information registered on the Register of Mobiles is maintained accurately and in a form that meets or exceeds the evidentiary requirements of the legal system? This is not an issue for bill Pay phones as if the bill ceases to be paid the phone is cut off… and if the bill is still being paid but the address is no longer valid the Authorities have other investigative avenues open to them (such the payment records). For ‘ready-to-throw’ mobiles this is and will be a critical problem. Not only can the person move address, but the phone may ‘move person’ by being swapped, loaned or shared between family members (this may happen with bill pay phones but it is reasonable to assume that in the case of a bill pay phone the ‘sharing’ or ‘lending’ of the phone would be temporary).

    Currently we have a very important national register of people which is collated and maintained for a very serious and important function in the operation of the State. It’s called the Electoral Register and, not to put too fine a point on it, it has some ‘issues’ with the quality of the information there-in and the levels of duplication and inaccuracy in the data. What confidence should we have that the Government will have learned the lessons of the Electoral Register in the design and implementation of any new Register of Mobiles?

    I am not saying we should not require registration of pre-pay mobile phones (all operators currently encourage registration through ‘free credit’ bribes). However if we are to require citizens to give up elements of personal privacy and provide information about their mobile phone usage to State Agencies then it is essential that the system work as it is intended it will and that the information captured meets or exceeds the expectations of the politicians, the police and, most importantly, the citizen. Crucially this must happen with out the information captured being excessive or irrelevant to the stated purposes for registration.

    If we require people to provide information into a system and set of processes that will eventually degrade into an unmanaged cacophony of inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent and otherwise just plain awful data rather than a symphony of polished, reliable and policed information then we will have achieved nothing other than a layer of paperwork and a burden on mobile phone operators and their customers. Those with criminal intent will pervert the system – foreign SIMS, imported phones, stolen phones etc.

    By definition they don’t play by the rules.

  • Seanad elections

    The counting of votes for the Irish Senate begins today. As a graduate of the National University of Ireland, UCD I had expected to have a vote. As a member of the Alumni Association (and a regular recipient of the lovely colour magazine produced by the University Alumni office) I should have received my ballot paper by registered post.

    My wife is also a graduate of the same university and likewise has given the Alumni Association her current address (which happily is the same as mine).

    Neither of us have received ballot papers. Unfortunately I ran out of time to chase this up with the University authorities but…

    …if they can send me the Alumni newsletter to my home why didn’t I get my ballot paper? These were supposed to have been sent by registered post, so I would have expected a ‘non-delivery’ notice from An Post if we weren’t there.

    Perhaps the State Electoral register isn’t the only electoral register which has ‘issues’? I wonder if any other UCD graduates failed to receive their Senate ballot papers?

  • IQ Trainwrecks.com

    The IAIDQ, an organisation I’m involved in for Information & Data Quality, has launched IQTrainwrecks.com as a resource to collate and comment on media stories highlighting the cost and impacts of non-quality information.

    Here’s an example of one of their posts. Our Electoral Register features there as do a few other stories. The IAIDQ team hope that this site will evolve into a focal point for informed comment on the real costs and impacts of poor information quality.

More posts