It's all on file!

You may remember me posting about ContactPoint (see 28/1/09) an official database of all children in this country under 18.  Well, like so many government databases, it eventually failed and was withdrawn.  But now we learn that Capita - a huge private organisation who provide outsourcing services to central and local government amongst others - is running a database called the One System which contains details of nearly all schoolchildren including their academic, attendance and behavioural records and even photographs, and all this without the knowledge, much less the permission of their parents.  Once again we have this problem of whether a database which simply gathers together information which is already out there in different places should concern us.  Much may depend on who has access to it, and for what purposes, and that we don't know.  I think Capita should come clean.