certain transfers (US/UK data bridge) – that’s the kind of thing you have to be all over. But regulatory load quite often comes with other problems, like dead- lines. FOI is a good example, you get 20 days to do it, and anything from a public inquiry will come with a challenging deadline and little appreciation of how difficult it may be to find some material.” But he says “collaboration is impor- tant when thinking about the regulatory load because there is so much sharing of information, and joint working between Government organisations. Gone are the days when you could say ‘this is how we do it in this department’. The question now is what do you do about the areas where there are several information owners jointly working? Do they have different tolerances to information management risk? Who has the regu- latory responsibility? Who answers the FOI requests? Whose retention policies do you follow? I think that’s becoming increasingly important as KIM seeks to facilitate better information handling and sharing.”
Technology has revolutionised sharing, but it brings new challenges. “At the start of the Grenfell Tower inquiry in 2017 we shared some of our material with a third party linked to the Public Inquiry. It involved enabling a USB port on a PC – in most Government departments USB ports are disabled for security reasons – copying the information onto a pen drive which a member of staff took on a bus to a building on The Strand. Sharepoint came in 2018 and we could give named individuals in that third party company access to a particular area of our Share- point where we transferred the material due for the Public Inquiry. It is so much easier but it comes with new issues, such as ensuring access to our network from external players is tightly controlled.”
October-November 2023
David Smith. Real difference
These challenges between Government departments’ approaches to KIM cannot be easily overcome as they are based on real differences in their functions. David says that about half of the 55 government departments don’t have ministers, HMRC or OFGEN for example. “They operate sim- ilarly to normal government Departments in the functions they perform, though usu- ally more specialised, and generally cover matters for which direct political oversight is judged unnecessary or inappropriate.” In Ministerial departments, KIM staff are working with Ministers and their Special Advisors, and need to be aware of changes in Government policies and challenges that arise.
Non-Corporate Communications The subsequent differences in approaches to KIM mean big differences in attitudes to technology. “We allow people – we don’t actively approve – but we allow people to use WhatsApp to transact government business because it is one of the principal ways private offices communicate with ministers. In some departments, the use of WhatsApp to transact departmental business is prohibited.” Consequently one of David’s many roles has included work on the Government’s
guidance for the use of Non Corporate Communications Channels (NCCC). This says that the use of NCCCs for transacting Government business should be kept to a minimum and that “departments should, as far as reasonably practicable, enable ap- proaches in their core systems that reduce the need for NCCCs”. Then, accepting that it is used in some areas, it points out that individuals need to be careful: “Use NCCCs with care and be prepared to explain and defend your choices.”
This is because NCCCs like WhatsApp are often used for work and personal life and the responsibility for untangling these two areas will lie with individuals, as the guid- ance states: “This guidance does not cover the use of NCCCs for personal, political, constituency or parliamentary purposes. Where such conversations on NCCCs ‘drift’ into government business, individuals must consider the responsibilities outlined below.”
(Published in March at
https://bit.ly/3M55HKL) Porous perimeter
But he says that despite the problems posed by implementing new tools, new difficulties proliferate at a much more fun- damental level for those trying to capture history and knowledge.
“The key thing for me in terms of the reg- INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 25
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
