Services card data over-reach fiasco

Is it possible that the botched introduction of water charges is to lose its blue riband status as the most spectacular failure in public administration this century?

Yesterday’s ruling from the Data Protection Commission (DPC) that the State must purge “unlawful” data it holds on 3.2m citizens from its database suggests that unenviable title is again in play.

That information was collected as part of the roll-out of the Public Services Card (PSC) which began in 2011 but the DPC has found that there is no legal basis for retaining it.

In a scathing assessment of Government over-reach, the DPC ruled there was no lawful requirement for individuals to provide the card to access State services like renewing a driving licence or applying for a college grant.

This vindicates arguments made by civil liberties advocates who repeatedly expressed concerns about how the card was, in effect, becoming a national identity card in all but name.

This back-to-the-drawing-board censure is embarrassing for those who indulged Fine Gael’s instinctive authoritarianism but it is not surprising. It is, after all, almost two years to the day since Minister for Social Protection Regina Doherty said, using Humpty Dumpty’s flexibility with language, that the PSC “is not compulsory but is mandatory to claim social welfare”.

At that time, her clarification-cum-obfuscation seemed, at best, bizarre, at worst, dishonest. It also seemed a shabby kind of bullying that used citizens’ vulnerability as leverage against them. This morning, that statement just looks like bad politics likely to cause another unnecessary headache for Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s administration.

That the card may still be sought from people who wish to use services administered by the Department of Social Protection introduces an unevenness that may be challenged too.

That Helen Dixon, the Data Protection Commissioner, ruled there had been a “fundamental misunderstanding” of what the legislation allowed means the charge of over-reach is compounded by a charge of poor interpretation of legislation. The department, she said, assumed the legislation included a “legal basis for public sector bodies to mandatorily demand the card, and it doesn’t”.

Ever since it was introduced the PSC has been contentious. There are obvious arguments for such a card but the risk of a data-grab — which is what transpired — was recognised too. The misjudgement may be symptomatic too of ponderous legislatures trying to keep pace with ever-evolving technology and data capitalism.

It is chastening, too, to consider the depth of information sharing applying for DPC required with the far greater depth of information many of us voluntarily, if inadvertently, share with private social media providers.

In the grand scheme of things the specifics of the ruling are secondary. Like the water charges fiasco, this failed attempt to introduce a national identity card by a back door will delay an important project, maybe for years. Millions have been wasted, but that is not the greatest cost.

Once again we have shown an inability to deliver projects that would make this a better, safer society to live in. In doing so, considerable political capital and democratic legitimacy have been squandered.