Meetings

Witness:

Dr Tom Crick, Senior Lecturer in Computing Science, Cardiff Metropolitan University

5.1 Dr Tom Crick responded to questions from members of the Committee.

Information was provided on the number of Members using the system; the costs of the system to date; resource, cost and data protection implications of Commission staff involvement in requesting and obtaining electoral register data; and the risks of the data being used for party political advantage.

Concerns were raised on the costs of the project to date, and requested that more detailed work was done on similar future projects to establish user requirements, estimate take up, and ensure that cost estimates were robust.

The Commission agreed to make a request for the Commission to become a named body within the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001.

Action: Keith Bush to request a change to the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001 to include the Assembly Commission as a named body.

Peter Black AM introduced paper six, noting that the case management system, which had experienced a number of difficulties in development and implementation, was now up and running.  He noted that the database on which the software was intended to run was the unedited electoral register.  Under current legislation, Assembly Members are able to request copies of the register from Returning Officers which are then passed to Commission staff to upload the data into the case management system on Members’ behalf, but Commission staff are not themselves able to obtain the data direct from electoral registration officers.

The Commission discussed the use of the case management system, and the issues of data protection and security which could arise from use of unrestricted versions of the electoral register, including the involvement of Commission staff in handling it, and the need which would arise for a request to be made to the UK Government for secondary legislation to include the Commission on the list of named bodies if the proposal were to be pursued.  Concerns were expressed about the ownership of data, data protection, the potential use of the register for party political purposes, and further investment in software that had already cost more than had been expected.  The Commission noted that Members were currently able to request the data, the upload of which onto the system would be facilitated by ICT staff, although the uploading of registers which covered all of Wales was dependent on the requesting of data by relevant Members.

The Commission requested that further information about the number of Members using the case management system, the resource and cost implications of Commission staff involvement in requesting and obtaining the data direct, and the costs of the case management system to date, be provided to a future meeting.