Thread by @Tupp_Ed

Thought I’d give you a quick round up of where we are with the Public Services Card scheme. Because these things go in months or years long arcs, it can be helpful to take stock. #PSC

The #PSC project sees the Dept of Social Protection (DEASP) acting as joint Data Controller with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER) over a database of citizen’s identity, called the Single Customer View.

The PSC is the card attached to that database.

At some point in the past, DPER decided it wanted a single ID card and database which would be used throughout the public service to gain access to services- and they preferred to call it a “Public Services Card”, instead of, you know, an ID Card.

Now DPER wanted this scheme, but needed DEASP to actually do the grunt work of getting citizens to give over their data and take a card.

That’s because this ID card scheme was never introduced to the Oireachtas and there was no law underpinning it.

And, if you ask me, THAT’s because when they did bring in a Law on an ID Card scheme in the U.K. it proved so unpopular the whole thing was scrapped.

No Law, no way to scrap the plan.

Sure, ‘tis genius that we are and no mistake.

Anyway, DEASP started using its leverage as the only source of income for significant numbers of people to call them to be carded and have a biometric image of their face taken.

The letters warned that failure to comply might result in your income being cut off.

Takeup was high, unsurprisingly, among those for whom losing social welfare payments would be catastrophic.

But then the project moved on. Universal benefits, like child benefit and pensions were threatened.

Remember, there’s no law underpinning this project. Just threats.

DEASP asserted that laws intended to simply confirm that people were getting the money that was theirs gave them the power to withhold any payment from anyone who- while happy to prove their identity- was not happy to be put in a database shared with the whole public service.

This finally erupted when one pensioner’s resistance made the front page of the Irish Times. DEASP has stopped her pension. She had been happy to prove her identity- had even been visited in her own home.

But she refused the #PSC unless it’s legal basis was shown.

As the #PSC had no legal basis, this proved a problem for the DEASP, so instead they cut off her pension and told her she’d never get it until she submitted and even then, she’d never get any backmoney.

She still refused (at personal cost, as far as she knew).

The Minister went out and explained that the card was Mandatory But Not Compulsory, a phrase which so perfectly expressed her Dept’s assertion of power without legal basis that it provoked a storm of attention.

The Dept quickly reversed itself, reinstating the pensioner’s payments, and paying her the backmoney they had spent months telling her she would never get.

But it was too late.

Because the problem with questions that aren’t answered is that they provoke even more questions.

And, so, the Data Protection Commissioner, having nodded along with the #PSC project pre-publicity, decided the whole thing needed to be investigated.

That investigation has gone on far longer than had been indicated originally.

We’ve had a leak to the Sunday Times -a draft report has been delivered to DEASP telling them that the whole ‘sharing data across the public service’ thing- the thing the plan was for, is illegal.

In the meantime, the DPER project to require people not reliant on social welfare to get #PSC cards by making them compulsory for everyday services like renewing a passport or sitting a driving test has been repeatedly reversed.

The NRA, who run the driving tests, were told to cancel the plan, after announcing it as a requirement and spending approx €20m on an online system that presumed everyone would have a #PSC.

The passport office quietly abandoned the requirement whenever the applicants had a Solicitor (usually @rossamcmahon ) wrote and asked for its legal basis.

So, just befor the new Oireachtas term starts, we can predict two things
1) the PSC project is about to become something everyone wants to explain was someone else’s idea.
2) DPER know by now that their plan to solve all this- the Data Sharing Bill- is illegal under EU law but...

Institutionally, if they don’t slam it onto the books as quickly as possible, it will have to be immediately conceded that the approx €65million spent so far on #PSC project joins E-Voting machines and PPARS as famous bonfires of money in pursuit of folly.

So, may I ask you a favour- if indeed you’re still here.

Please can you let your TDs know that you don’t like the Data Sharing and Governance Bill? Because, believe me, if the people following this account don’t do it, I don’t know who will.

Thanks!

whoismytd.com

Some references, if you’d like to read more on how the #PSC card isn’t lawful.

Shortish: mcgarrsolicitors.ie/2015/11/21/mis…

Here’s the #PSC hearing by the Oireachtas Committee overseeing Social Protection. This has @ICCLtweet @liamherrick and @maeveorourke and me too- answering questions.

oireachtas.ie/en/debates/deb…

Also, correction: the NRA don’t run the driving licence testing system, that’s the RSA.

Sorry to both three letter acronyms for the error.

And, for reasons best explained by my brain not working, I cited two different estimates for the PSC cost to date.

The correct number is approx €20m to date, with a further €9 contracted for over the next few years.

kildarestreet.com/committees/?id…

Hello, thanks to everyone who RT’d this this morning.

I wonder if you might consider giving it a (first or second) nudge, for the evening crowd.