Detica warns UK could lag behind in cross-border information sharing
Detica Group, the business and technology consultancy, says UK authorities must move quickly to address the challenges of international information sharing to avoid being left behind by the rest of Europe
Fear of identity theft and distrust of the Government safeguarding privacy means the UK is now falling behind Europe in cross-border sharing of personal information. Meanwhile initiatives such as the recent European e-Health Survey * have led to calls for European Governments to integrate electronic public services more widely and share information about their citizens for the benefit of all who work or travel in Europe.
Anthony Golledge, from Detica's Government division, says: "In our increasingly mobile world, cross-border travel is now fast becoming the norm, particularly in Europe with the free labour market. From a public services perspective, personal information needs to be equally mobile and travel with people across borders so that authorities can determine their entitlement to benefits such as healthcare. In the UK, we are being held back by public debate and concerns over data protection, which means that information sharing initiatives are seen as threats to our personal privacy."
Golledge continues: "We need to find ways to carefully 'open up' our benefits databases and healthcare records systems. If we get left behind, the risks are two-fold. Firstly, UK citizens will find it more difficult to get public services in Europe — such as healthcare — to which they are entitled. Secondly, information sharing between these databases and IT systems helps us close the loopholes that fraudsters can exploit to use public services like the NHS for free. Clearly, sharing information across borders to improve services and spot the digital footprints that are strong indicators of fraud or abuse will involve making some trade-offs between security and privacy, but we need to act quickly."
There are growing concerns about the exploitation of UK public services by international fraudsters — such as the 'health tourism' trend — which place further demand on over-stretched Government budgets and the total cost of the service to taxpayers. A confidential report for the Department of Health, released last year under the Freedom of Information Act, estimated that the UK lost £30m in unrecovered debts from foreign visitors in 2004. Detica argues that plugging the UK's 'information sharing gap' quickly will help to address some of these loopholes.
Golledge concludes: " The information revolution and the explosion in digital data has truly changed the world and is forcing us to rethink all aspects of our lives as a consequence — just as fraudsters and benefit cheats have been doing. There are huge potential advantages for European citizens if Governments can co-ordinate international information sharing on a much wider scale.
"In the UK, the Government's National Identity Scheme has a vital role to play in plugging our information sharing gap by giving us a 'passport' to access our personal information wherever we are. We will need to balance our very real concerns for personal privacy with the potential benefits to our health, security and way of life. Ultimately, getting this balance right will have major implications for many other aspects of our lives, from vetting foreign teachers coming to work in UK schools to deciding whether somebody should be granted asylum in the UK."
