This is a list of just some of the information used by the Cabinet Office together with an account of the 'data analytics' used. This confirms that 'data analytics' is used to 'assess any likely fraudulent activity of an individual' and that the CO uses the full electoral register. You can see why Lord Wallace was taken aback. The information released by Snowden's is on a similarly shocking level, yet nobody moans when it's Tom Dick and Harry being snooped on instead of Agular Merkell!
2.1.7 Data obtained should allow for predictive analysis for fraud and compliance
purposes. Predictive analysis may also be used in broader business decision
making and risk management, for example where data is used to support
forecasting.
So it is more or less certain that the use of the full electoral register to produce lists of hundreds of thousands of people who are likely to engaging in fraudulent activity will continue. Whether the NFI will be allowed by the Cabinet Office to continue to produce 'bogus' figures for fraud and 'error' remains to be seen. One supposes that much will depend upon the political will and if past experience at a local level is anythiing to go by, which 'moral hobby horse' the civil servants are on. Clearly the principle of subjecting a person to a fraud investigation on the basis of 'data analytics' and the use of the term 'data matching' to include broader data analytics which have nothing to do with identifying inconsistencies requiring investigation is well established within the Cabinet Office.
Unfortunately the Cabinet Office doesn't appear to have caught up with the point that the NFI has altered the statutory code of DM practice, as it is still cooperating in putting out false information to the effect that it governs all NFI matching when as we know when the NFI says 'have regard to' it means think about whether or not to comply and feel free to decide that it doesn't if you can get away with it (as in the case of getting information on disc not through the secure web site).
And let's face it if Darren Shillington can get excuses like 'It's the fault of councils for sending us incorrect data' past Brandon Lewis, Minister in the bloody DCLG he will probably find the people in the Cabinet Office a pushover.
Monday, 10 February 2014
Monday, 3 February 2014
Maidstone
Maidstone, Kent, lists categories of disregarded people as 'exemptions' and tells people they have to apply for an exemption. What utter nonsense.
Thursday, 23 January 2014
It was bound to happen
Yes it was. Councils are so keen to get at people on discounts that at least one is now telling people in receipt of a discount under Section 11(1) of the Act that not telling it about changes in circumstances which there is no duty to report under council tax discount law is a criminal offence under the Council Tax Reduction Regulations.
Here they are:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/501/regulation/13/made
Can't recall if this one of of the outsourced services or not, but this sort of mess was predictable and this threat will no doubt be used by more than one council trying to bully taxpayers.
Here they are:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/501/regulation/13/made
Can't recall if this one of of the outsourced services or not, but this sort of mess was predictable and this threat will no doubt be used by more than one council trying to bully taxpayers.
Saturday, 28 December 2013
Sheer cheek of the Audit Commission
You will now find the following astonishing piece on the web site of the Audit Commission:
Please note the following:“Where a match is found it may indicate
- The Commission has made a very minor amendment to one sentence of the full text as it is produced on the Fair processing notice – Full text web page but not as it appears in the Code. The amendment is to the second paragraph and is shown below in tracked changes.
sthat there is an inconsistency that requires further investigation.”
This amendment was made to more fully align the full text with the relevant text in the Code, which states at paragraph 2.2.2. that “where a match is found, it indicates that there may be an inconsistency that requires further investigation”.
The full facts of the matter are that this change happened because the Independent Complaints reviewer, when dealing with a complaint that it was perfectly legal to be in receipt of a 'single person discount' when more than one adult was legally entitled to vote at an address, concluded, incorrectly in my view, that the Code was ambiguous between asserting that a match indicated that there was an inconsistency and that a match may indicate that there is an inconsistency. In deciding that the Code was 'ambiguous' she ignored the fact that the Code states that the aim of matching is to identify inconsistencies, and the fact that the arguments for such processing by national audit bodies and auditors were precisely that it was a cheap way of identifying discrepancies which provided reasonable grounds to suspect fraud.
The response of the Commission at that time was a) to modify its FPN and b) to ask participants to alter theirs, thereby avoiding the significant problems caused by the fact that from the outset it had asserted falsely that certain people could be certified by local councils as receiving or claiming a 'single person' discount on the basis that they lived alone, excluding cases where the discount was being applied on the basis that there was more than one sole or main resident but all except one fell to be disregarded.
The change was not made to bring the FPN 'into line' with the relevant text in the code, as the relevant text is the code as a whole and not this one section. As usual we get a biased and misleading account of history from the Audit Commission.
It is arrogance of the highest sort to make this sort of change, which affects the whole basis of the code fundamentally, without alerting or asking the permission of Parliament, without, apparently consulting counsel or any unbiased expert, or the Information Commissioner, while claiming that it is a 'minor' change. The definition of data matching as matching to identify actual inconsistencies was so firmly fixed in the minds of those involved that Barbara Follet, when Minister, wrote that 'by definition' all NFI data matching indicated discrepancies or inconsistencies. She cannot be blamed for this: it is what the NFI always said and what Parliament was told.
Wednesday, 18 December 2013
Single Person Discount Review
You may receive a 'review letter' from your council saying something like the following: 'Our records show that you are receiving a discount as you live alone. We are required to verify whether you are still entitled to this discount'.
The councils records cannot properly show that a situation which cannot arise in law applies to your finances. You are, or should be, receiving a discount of the appropriate amount on the assumption that the same rate will apply on every day of the coming year. If there is more than one entitled voter resident or if another person uses your address as a 'care of' address, this is in itself perfectly legal and does not constitute an irregularity. What would constitute an irregularity would be if there were two of you living there as your main home, and neither of you were disregarded. In which case you would owe the council more tax as the discount would not apply. But the odds are overwhelming that a person in receipt of one of these investigation letters is not guilty of any wrong-doing.
Beware of promising to inform the council if anybody moves in to your property. You have no such duty in law, but at least one council deliberately misleads people as to their obligations in this respect and several falsely state that not doing this means the council can penalise you. There are even council web pages which state that it is an offence and that you can be 'fined'.
Your council ought not to be providing you with false or misleading information, and such letters are valid grounds for complaints on the grounds of maladministration.
You might also ask your MP to write to Brandon Lewis asking him why he is providing incorrect information on official notepaper in this way, especially given the messages put out by his predecessor Bob Neill.
A good, if incomplete, research review of council tax discount law, dated early 2009 may be obtained from the Audit Commission and is also available on the Internet.
NB Dishonestly making false or misleading statements to obtain a financial gain can amount to fraud and should in all circumstances be avoided!
Wednesday, 20 November 2013
Andy Sawford and the Audit Commission
Andy Sawford seems to be a nice chap but he is naive.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmpublic/localaudit/131119/am/131119s01.htm
In the debate on the Local Audit Bill, he says that he is putting forward amendments which the Audit Commission wants. These are amendments which even the government has rejected. I suppose that for a politician taking a position suggested by an Audit Commission looks like a safe bet. The problem is that the Audit Commission is a strategic and political organisation with an agenda that goes far beyond mere audit functions. It is of course, also a business, which has 'commercial' interests in getting the powers to require councils to buy its products. Not many businesses have such instant access to public funds. One has to look for the sub text.
One cannot of course assume that word for word Mr Sawford is merely parroting Audit Commission briefings or policies but it is depressing to see how his words show lack of understanding of how the NFI actually works.
the Audit Commission has a wide range of powers, some of which it has used to good effect; its appointed power to ensure that bodies subject to data matching follow up on data-matching exercises could be lost
The Audit Commission has no powers at all to make councils 'follow up' matches which are risk-based or which indicate no fraud, error or maladministration. There is nothing to follow up. Moreover, some councils have pointed out that the costs of following up on hit lists with high false positive rates outweighs the income. Indeed, at one point the Commission stated that councils had a 'moral duty' to investigate anybody it decided might not be entitled to a council tax discount. Really? Maybe they have a 'moral duty' not to pester, intimidate and misinform taxpayers in line with the 'good practice' guidelines produced by the Audit Commission.
Mr Sawford may not be aware that on the CT discount 'high risk' matches the Audit Commission has stated a view that a council has a 'moral duty' to investigate people it thinks 'might not' be entitled to their discount, even though there is no evidence of fraud, error or maladministration. This is political, not purely financial. Do politicians never learn that they are not the only ones scoring political points?
Game set and match to the Audit Commission.
One can only hope that Mr Sawford gets subjected to a fraud investigation on such a basis, and that all his future potential employers and bankers are told that he was found to be a fraud risk. Because this is how, quite blithely, he is encouraging the NFI to behave. And of course they won't have bothered to say this in their briefings. Indeed, their local representatives are blithely making false allegations about people all over the country and putting these on line.
When Mr Sawford says that there will be no power to ensure that councils follow up on matches and that such powers currently exist, he is talking through his hat, and basing his arguments on false beliefs, which are positively and actively encouraged by the Audit Commission, about how the whole thing works.
What does the Minister say
Discussion on the arrangements for the governance of the national fraud initiative will continue with representation from interested parties.
These won't include any of the hundreds of thousands of innocent people who have been subjected to unlawful 'investigations' by councils following the false legal guidance put out by Experian and since then other bodies. But it will include the credit reference agencies which make money out of the whole thing!
You have to fall about laughing when Mr Sawford goes on to mention maladministration and auditor powers to deal with this. The Audit Commission actively encourages maladministration as Mr Brandon Lewis's own comments have made clear. It is the tail which wags the dog. The chances of it accepting publicly its own massive and long-standing administrative errors are null. When told by its own legal department that something could more accurately reflect the law and is less than ideal, it in effect ignores it and carries on telling the same old lies about people as it did before, with the effect that credulous people relying on its advice then go on to administer people's financial affairs in ways which flout the law. Heads of Revenue Services stating that the council tax regulations are 'wrong' are merely stating explicitly the way things have been working since Experian and the other data merchants got the Audit Commission on in its Act. The NFI cannot put its own house in order and the government intends to let these people loose on even more data.
THe Government says that discussions on the governance of the NFI are underway. My view is that if the NFI gets its way there won't be any governance of it. It will produce a code giving it free rein to use data mining to finger people as fraud investigation targets on an evidence-free basis. The abortive investigations and false positives will continue. It may even continue to modify its own code while not even bothering to give the Minister a copy of the amendment to lay before Parliament. Would or would not this amount to a deception of Parliament? I think it would.
The rejection of this amendment is a good sign, as otherwise the NFI could broaden the data it gets its hands on and also pretend even more appallingly than ever that fraud suspects are not fraud suspects.
A small ray of hope, perhaps.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmpublic/localaudit/131119/am/131119s01.htm
In the debate on the Local Audit Bill, he says that he is putting forward amendments which the Audit Commission wants. These are amendments which even the government has rejected. I suppose that for a politician taking a position suggested by an Audit Commission looks like a safe bet. The problem is that the Audit Commission is a strategic and political organisation with an agenda that goes far beyond mere audit functions. It is of course, also a business, which has 'commercial' interests in getting the powers to require councils to buy its products. Not many businesses have such instant access to public funds. One has to look for the sub text.
One cannot of course assume that word for word Mr Sawford is merely parroting Audit Commission briefings or policies but it is depressing to see how his words show lack of understanding of how the NFI actually works.
the Audit Commission has a wide range of powers, some of which it has used to good effect; its appointed power to ensure that bodies subject to data matching follow up on data-matching exercises could be lost
The Audit Commission has no powers at all to make councils 'follow up' matches which are risk-based or which indicate no fraud, error or maladministration. There is nothing to follow up. Moreover, some councils have pointed out that the costs of following up on hit lists with high false positive rates outweighs the income. Indeed, at one point the Commission stated that councils had a 'moral duty' to investigate anybody it decided might not be entitled to a council tax discount. Really? Maybe they have a 'moral duty' not to pester, intimidate and misinform taxpayers in line with the 'good practice' guidelines produced by the Audit Commission.
Mr Sawford may not be aware that on the CT discount 'high risk' matches the Audit Commission has stated a view that a council has a 'moral duty' to investigate people it thinks 'might not' be entitled to their discount, even though there is no evidence of fraud, error or maladministration. This is political, not purely financial. Do politicians never learn that they are not the only ones scoring political points?
Game set and match to the Audit Commission.
One can only hope that Mr Sawford gets subjected to a fraud investigation on such a basis, and that all his future potential employers and bankers are told that he was found to be a fraud risk. Because this is how, quite blithely, he is encouraging the NFI to behave. And of course they won't have bothered to say this in their briefings. Indeed, their local representatives are blithely making false allegations about people all over the country and putting these on line.
When Mr Sawford says that there will be no power to ensure that councils follow up on matches and that such powers currently exist, he is talking through his hat, and basing his arguments on false beliefs, which are positively and actively encouraged by the Audit Commission, about how the whole thing works.
What does the Minister say
Discussion on the arrangements for the governance of the national fraud initiative will continue with representation from interested parties.
These won't include any of the hundreds of thousands of innocent people who have been subjected to unlawful 'investigations' by councils following the false legal guidance put out by Experian and since then other bodies. But it will include the credit reference agencies which make money out of the whole thing!
You have to fall about laughing when Mr Sawford goes on to mention maladministration and auditor powers to deal with this. The Audit Commission actively encourages maladministration as Mr Brandon Lewis's own comments have made clear. It is the tail which wags the dog. The chances of it accepting publicly its own massive and long-standing administrative errors are null. When told by its own legal department that something could more accurately reflect the law and is less than ideal, it in effect ignores it and carries on telling the same old lies about people as it did before, with the effect that credulous people relying on its advice then go on to administer people's financial affairs in ways which flout the law. Heads of Revenue Services stating that the council tax regulations are 'wrong' are merely stating explicitly the way things have been working since Experian and the other data merchants got the Audit Commission on in its Act. The NFI cannot put its own house in order and the government intends to let these people loose on even more data.
THe Government says that discussions on the governance of the NFI are underway. My view is that if the NFI gets its way there won't be any governance of it. It will produce a code giving it free rein to use data mining to finger people as fraud investigation targets on an evidence-free basis. The abortive investigations and false positives will continue. It may even continue to modify its own code while not even bothering to give the Minister a copy of the amendment to lay before Parliament. Would or would not this amount to a deception of Parliament? I think it would.
The rejection of this amendment is a good sign, as otherwise the NFI could broaden the data it gets its hands on and also pretend even more appallingly than ever that fraud suspects are not fraud suspects.
A small ray of hope, perhaps.
NFI for maladministration and error
Given that the NFI actively spreads misunderstanding of council tax discount law, it is ironic that somebody thought fit to give it the power to use data matching to identify maladministration and error. It is already asserting that maladministration and error exists where there is no such thing: this is precisely how its figures for council tax discounts fraudulently or erroneously awarded are compiled, by including large numbers of cases where there was no maladministration or error and, therefore, no additional income.
A body which has since at least 2006 misinterpreted codes on council tax computer systems is not trustworthy to decide whether there has been maladministration.
Who decided that the Audit Commission had 'wider powers' to use data matching for this purpose? It appears to be the case that the Audit Commission believes that it already has these powers. But they cannot be an audit function unless the maladministration involves some breaching of financial regulations. So where do they come from? Those proposing this amendment to the Local Audit Bill must h
The government response was that this function would overlap with the functions of the Local Government Ombudsman and there would be no powers to act upon it. So it would cause duplication and be unnecessary. It was concerned about how the powers might be used. Well for once, good for the government.
It is controversial to say that data matching powers used in the capacity under audit powers would not be available to new bodies: they would be available to auditors who have the right to inspect documents and information relating to the accounts of audited bodies. This must come from the data matching businesses who fear losing a stream of income which they had via the Audit Commission.
Members seem utterly naive about the capacities of 'data matching'. These have been displayed in the Cabinet Office's own attempts to use data matching and data mining to get the electoral register up to date. The research report highlighted lack of understanding of the data by those using it as a major issue.
One billion pounds worth of fraud, error and maladministration. This is a lot of money they say. But they are thinking that this is money lost to the public purse. A great deal of this will not be money lost as it includes cases where a single person discount which does not exist is cancelled and replaced by a 'disregard discount allowance' which does not exist either.
A body which has since at least 2006 misinterpreted codes on council tax computer systems is not trustworthy to decide whether there has been maladministration.
Who decided that the Audit Commission had 'wider powers' to use data matching for this purpose? It appears to be the case that the Audit Commission believes that it already has these powers. But they cannot be an audit function unless the maladministration involves some breaching of financial regulations. So where do they come from? Those proposing this amendment to the Local Audit Bill must h
The government response was that this function would overlap with the functions of the Local Government Ombudsman and there would be no powers to act upon it. So it would cause duplication and be unnecessary. It was concerned about how the powers might be used. Well for once, good for the government.
It is controversial to say that data matching powers used in the capacity under audit powers would not be available to new bodies: they would be available to auditors who have the right to inspect documents and information relating to the accounts of audited bodies. This must come from the data matching businesses who fear losing a stream of income which they had via the Audit Commission.
Members seem utterly naive about the capacities of 'data matching'. These have been displayed in the Cabinet Office's own attempts to use data matching and data mining to get the electoral register up to date. The research report highlighted lack of understanding of the data by those using it as a major issue.
One billion pounds worth of fraud, error and maladministration. This is a lot of money they say. But they are thinking that this is money lost to the public purse. A great deal of this will not be money lost as it includes cases where a single person discount which does not exist is cancelled and replaced by a 'disregard discount allowance' which does not exist either.
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