UK's Department for Work and Pensions continues to move off Oracle Enterprise Data Warehouse in pursuit of a single version of the truth

The UK's Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed it no longer runs a single data warehouse after moving analytics products off its Oracle system to a range of services for AWS, Oracle Cloud, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. This follows the £176.3bn-revenue department's award of a £3m contract to Methods Business and …

[alain williams]

So a recuction of privacy then ?

Moving from in-house servers where they can control who sees what to servers where others control who sees what.

I do not want my pension data available for slurping by Google & the government of the USA!

[Gordon 10]

Re: So a recuction of privacy then ?

Thats a rather naive and blanket statement.

On prem is fractionally safer if done well in your own wholly owned DC or Cupboard (are you checking the minimum wage cleaners access?) - but how many companies actually do that? Let alone a Public requirement contracted out to the lowest bidder or an MP's bestie.

However by default a lot more effort has gone into making the the Cloud DC's and their services secure by design, and they are unlikely to be addressable to a random Googler.

With a State actor all bets are off anyway - I would go out on a limb and say they are equally at risk as the compromise is probably at the network/infratstructure/factory level.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So a recuction of privacy then ?

Having been deeply involved in a range of DWP projects across the years - including a few mentioned herein - trust me when I say you should sleep much, much more soundly at night knowing your personal details are being protected by Amazon and Microsoft and not the woefully underpaid, underskilled and understaffed civil service teams of the DWP.

[Julz]

Re: So a recuction of privacy then ?

OK, I'll bite.

Why should pension data be a secret? As a citizen of Blighty, why should I not be able to see the pension contributions other citizens have made? How many eligible years NI payments you've made doesn't seem particularly dangerous data to be made public. Or even the total NI payments as it's capped.

I would also like income tax returns to be publicly available as well but I guess people might be more embarrassed by that data.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: Why should pension data be a secret

Because it has to do with personal revenue and that is generally considered private data ?

Are you ready to publicly post your yearly revenue ?

If not, that means that you wouldn't mind checking on other people's revenue, but you would mind people checking on yours.

In my book, that's called hypocrisy. Also, meddling in other people's business. There's a category of people who love doing that.

I don't need to know how much your earn, nor how much you pay in taxes. I do not consider that to be my business, there's an entire government branch that takes care of that.

As for my taxes, I pay them and that's all you need to know.

[Julz]

Re: Why should pension data be a secret

More than happy to tell the world what I earned and how much tax I paid on it. The issue seems to be that many are not. One has to wonder why. Probably some form of embarrassment or a desire to stay out of jail. I think that as part of being a member of a society, sharing with others your fiscal contribution to that society, seems like a good thing to do. This would be especially the case for those whom choose to enter public service. What is publicly available information and what isn't is something our legislature decides and therefor kind of reflects the will of the people. Some decide in odd ways. Have a look at the Swiss.

[CRConrad]

Re: Why should pension data be a secret

Because it has to do with personal revenue and that is generally considered private data ?

You're begging the question. That's the precisely the issue: Why is it considered private data, and should it be?