UK drivers' privates fondled overseas in new outsource plan Transport for London (TfL) has proposed that the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency's (DVLA) vehicle keeper data - which includes names, addresses and registration plate numbers - should be accessed outside the UK by contractors working on the capital's congestion charge scheme. The congestion charge is run by IBM, which was …
"should be accessed outside the UK by contractors working on the capital's congestion charge scheme"
No, when setting the scheme up, TFL should have specified that all data access must be from within the UK for security porpoises. That way it is good for the employment of people (and porpoises) in the UK, and if it costs a bit more to do it that way, deduct the cost of payment of unemployment benefit for the UK based folk from your calculation and then look again.
Makes you weep.
> never heard of cameras then?
Precisely. The only way to make the data uncopiable is to make it unviewable.
I copied boot information[1] off an ATM last night. With the camera on my phone. Said ATM didn't need a printer attached, and I didn't need an app running on it...
Vic.
[1] It was a Pentium 3 / 700MHz with a gig of RAM. And it runs[2] OS/2 Warp.
[2] When I say "runs", I actually mean "continually starts and then crashes after a few minutes"[3]
[3] While my card was inside. And the cheques I was depositing. Grrr.
They may have seen my license plate many times, but they (as yet) don't know who I am as I live in a country that is not known for exchanging data for nebulous purposes. And as I don't want them to have that data I have so far always paid the congestion charge in cash. Seems that I was right to do so..
Its simple. Contracts like this should require that functions remian in the UK. My details should NOT be available on any system maintained or admined from outside of the UK where indivduals are removed from UK standards of investigation and law enforcement.
Statutory functions like this, and personal taxation/benefits should never be allowed near overseas operators at eny level. No wonder we have so much unemployment - the only export boom we have is in jobs!
If you don't think DVLA will pull off your information for a nominal fee for any old thug or spiv, think again. Private Parking Companies pass them a little £2.50 sweetener every time they want access to the RK details.
As for Swansea, since 2002 there have been multiple projects automating many of the vehicle and driver processes successfully delivering the benefits of their business cases.....except the very last part where staffing levels can be reduced because the make-work scheme that is the DVLA seems powerless to do that.
He added that all the DVLA's data is stored in the UK and there are no plans to change this, and IT systems will have to be managed to the same standards as if they were in the UK.
"We will ensure that all appropriate controls for data protection are in place, and will continue to be in place. These controls are independently validated and approved in line with government information security requirements and procedures," he said
SO expect to find unencrypted data on CD's, Mem Sticks and printed off in wads at the local Bangalore bus and taxi ranks
Somebody should tell TPTB that there saving money is less important than getting good value for the money they already pay out.
£7m is not a huge amount in the context of this contract*, and will give the negotiators something to talk about when it's time for renewal.
*In other contexts £7m is a lot of money.
We're all just supposed to nod sagely over our frapochocolatteciono deluxes and think "wow, this is so clever, why didn't anyone come up with it before?" and thank our ConDem blue sky thinkers for the opportunity to be rogered senseless sans lubrication one more bloody time. The only thing as inevitable as this going horribly wrong (like its 8742 spiritual predecessors) is BorisCameroClegg getting booted come polling day and the UK getting a terrible bunch of Twatdangles voted in instead of the incumbent terrible Twatdangles.
"We are seeking appropriate assurances that it will not be possible for the data to be printed, copied or amended in any way when it is accessed from abroad."
Yeah, fuckwits, it really work like that doesn't it?
where TPTB come up with some fruit loop idea, an uproar ensures, where the pitfalls are pointed out, then ignored, and then in 5 years time, when all the predictions are proved correct, some useless twat of a politician will go on TV and say "who'd have thunk it, we had no idea this could happen."
You forgot "I'm sorry".
Because that is all it takes when you do something wrong as an MP (even breaking the law it seems) and the sun comes out and shines on you again.
For the rest of us, we get to have a criminal record and end up on some register of undesirables so we can never work again.
Not far off Westminsters ideas for bike parking,
you get to shout out your credit card details while standing on the street to pay for parking to a foreign call centre,
Theres no cash alternative - you can only do it by fone,
If you pay annually and pay the extra for a text reminder they dont send you it and give you a ticket when it expires.......
I would have thought that the government would want to set a good example to business and the public sector in terms of how to maximise security of information.
Reading that "...Cabinet Office approved the offshoring of a number of IBM technical support roles which requires access to UK held data" made me realise how naive I am.
If the Cabinet Office says this sort of thing is OK, then why should any of the rest give a shit?
It makes you wonder whether they actually have brains inside those skulls?
No wonder our economy is in the toilet, the inmates are running the asylum!
Its like the stupid decision to buy trains from Germany when we build them in the UK, don't they realize that keeping people employed improves the economy, that in turn means more tax revenue meaning over the life of the project, keeping it in the UK is financially better.
It just goes to show that the decision makers can't handle the information..
Like the majority of UK drivers I don't drive in London (certainly not in the congestion zone) so what's it got to do with me? Still - can't be long before some starry eyed metropolitan council outside of London decides it wants its own congestion zone.
TFL != DVLA
The other correspondent's right about the spivs and crooks running private car parks. They're probably already selling on what they bought.
You're all missing the point, this will actually mean MORE jobs, because the only way to stop the data being copied is to have a guard or two stood behind everyone that's accessing the data to make sure they don't make a copy.
And obviously these guards will have to be pretty well trained so as to notice sneaky CTRL-C's etc.
See, they're actually going to be growing the job market :)
"should be accessed outside the UK by contractors working on the capital's congestion charge scheme"
So the big, and imo only, question here is why are govt agencies using public funds to pay companies in foreign countries to do sensitive work when we have a liquidity and employment crisis?
The whole outsourcing thing is a huge betrayal of your country.
1) We don't have much money in circulation, wtf are people doing sending it all abroad and out of the UK economic eco-system?
2) We're short of jobs why isn't the govt thinking to give some to residents in all it's grand plans to introduce Victorian style labour regs which even the greedy super companies think are a disgrace.
but for the IT angle:
3) Given the monumental f-up that is UK govt IT at every turn how can they have the front to say they want to expand the scope for data loss/theft?
It's a choice thing really. Taxpayers money (public funds) being used to pay overseas workers who make zero contribution to the UK. Or the same money being used to prop up gold-plated public sector pensions which the UK cannot afford.
Incidentally, it isn't all taxpayers money being used. Activities such as selling cherished number plates can actually create revenue and be profitable. The problem comes where those profits are being earned outside of the UK, and in that respect I'm not in favour of DVLA work being outsourced.
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These f***ers are useless anyway . There should be some tightening of Uk data protection laws to stop OUR personal data from being accessed by foreign nationals. BT are one of those were they have call centres in Bangalore these people are useless not one person I know thinks offshore call centres are good thing !. Just to illustrate the point I had to explain for about 20 mins to one of them what a gas pipe was !.
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