Pupil data: Off-register Back Office use by Home Office in Q4 2016

The request was successful.

Dear Department for Education,

with reference to any pupil data ever collected via the School Census and regardless of where it is stored or the name of the database:

a) Please provide a copy of each the original approved monthly data request application forms from the Home Office received by the DfE in September 2016, October 2016, November 2016, and December 2016.

b) Please confirm the number of indivduals for which requests were made from the Home Office, in each month September, October, November and December 2016 and the number of indivduals on which data was returned for each.

c) Please provide the field names used in the algorithm(s) used to run any September and December data requests (if eaiser please provide a copy).

d) Please provide a copy of any original MOUs between the DfE, HO and DfE Cabinet Office in effect on today's date as regards any interaction between requests for information and data or information returned from any pupil data collected from individuals in schools via the COLLECT system (these are data collected in the School Census and may be stored in the National Pupil Database or any other database or data format if not linked into the NPD).

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Yours sincerely,
Jen Persson

ACCOUNT, Unmonitored, Department for Education

Dear Ms Persson,

 

Thank you for your recent enquiry. A reply will be sent to you as soon as
possible. For information; the departmental standard for correspondence
received is that responses should be sent within 20 working days as you
are requesting information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Your
correspondence has been allocated reference number 2016-0058280.

 

Thank you                                                                 

 

Department for Education

Ministerial and Public Communications Division

Tel: 0370 000 2288

ACCOUNT, Unmonitored, Department for Education

1 Attachment

  • Attachment

    Home Office redacted.zip

    191K Download

Dear Ms Persson,

Thank you for your request for information, which was received on
19/12/2016. The request has been dealt with under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 (“the Act”).

You asked the following:

With reference to any pupil data ever collected via the School Census and
regardless of where it is stored or the name of the database:

 

a) Please provide a copy of each the original approved monthly data
request application forms from the Home Office received by the DfE in
September 2016, October 2016, November 2016, and December 2016.

 

Copies of the monthly data requests application forms are attached.

 

b) Please confirm the number of individuals for which requests were made
from the Home Office, in each month September, October, November and
December 2016 and the number of individuals on which data was returned for
each.

 

The numbers of individuals for which requests were made are as follows:

 

+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Month |Records received from HO by DfE|Matches returned to HO by|
| | | DfE |
|--------------+-------------------------------+-------------------------|
|December 2016 | 114 | 22 |
|--------------+-------------------------------+-------------------------|
|November 2016 | 158 | 42 |
|--------------+-------------------------------+-------------------------|
|October 2016 | 84 | 22 |
|--------------+-------------------------------+-------------------------|
|September 2016| 243 | 65 |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+

 

These numbers cover both monthly and ad-hoc requests.

 

c) Please provide the field names used in the algorithm(s) used to run any
September and December data requests (if easier please provide a copy).

 

For all Home Office requests, the following field names are used in the
algorithm:

 

Surname

PreferredSurname

FormerSurname

Forename

Middlenames

DOB

Postcode

 

The Department then returns the following field names to the Home Office:

 

AcademicYear

CensusTerm

CensusDate

PersonID (as supplied by Home Office)

Surname

Forename

Middlenames

FormerSurname

PreferredSurname

DOB

Address

Postcode

LAEstab

URN

schoolname

schoolpostcode

entrydate

leavingdate

 

 

d) Please provide a copy of any original MOUs between the DfE, HO and DfE
Cabinet Office in effect on today's date as regards any interaction
between requests for information and data or information returned from any
pupil data collected from individuals in schools via the COLLECT system
(these are data collected in the School Census and may be stored in the
National Pupil Database or any other database or data format if not linked
into the NPD).

 

A copy of the MoU between DfE and Home Office was supplied to you on 15
December. There are no other MOUs in place between DfE and Home Office or
DfE and Cabinet Office.

 

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by copyright.
You are free to use it for your own purposes, including for private study
and non-commercial research, and for any other purpose authorised by an
exception in current copyright law. Documents (except photographs) can be
also used in the UK without requiring permission for the purposes of news
reporting. Any other re-use, for example commercial publication, would
require the permission of the copyright holder.

Most documents produced by a government department or agency will be
protected by Crown Copyright. Most Crown copyright information can be
re-used under the Open Government Licence
([1]http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/o...). For
information about the OGL and about re-using Crown Copyright information
please see The National Archives website
-[2]http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/infor...
.

Copyright in other documents may rest with a third party. For information
about obtaining permission from a third party see the Intellectual
Property Office’s website at [3]www.ipo.gov.uk.

If you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you should
make a complaint to the Department by writing to me within two calendar
months of the date of this letter.  Your complaint will be considered by
an independent review panel, who were not involved in the original
consideration of your request.  

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint to the
Department, you may then contact the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Yours sincerely,

Martin Johnson

Department for Education

References

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http://www.ipo.gov.uk/

Dear Department for Education,
thank you for the reponse and information received on Jan 25, 2017.

May I ask for the missing original copy of the MOU to be provided here. While you are correct to say that I was emailed the current MOU, the request was intended to be the original, the first version, i.e. the predecessor to the MOU released on December 15.

Please provide the MOU version in effect on October 1, 2016 and the updated version, (for example effective today, January 26, 2017) in one response for effective transparency and comparsion in the public domain.

Thank you.
Sincerely,
Jen Persson

REQUESTS, NPD, Department for Education

3 Attachments

Jen

 

I am writing in response to your request for a copy of the Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) between the DfE and the Home Office which is the
predecessor to the MOU released to you on 15 December 2016.

 

Please find attached a redacted copy of the MOU which was agreed December
2015. I have also included the current version which was agreed in October
2016 and supplied to you on the 15 December for effective transparency and
comparison in the public domain as requested.

 

You will notice that the information attached contains a number of
redactions to which we are applying section 40(2) (personal data).
Personal data is that which relates to a living individual who can be
identified from that data, or from that data and other information which
is likely to be in, or to come into, the possession of the requestor.
Disclosure of this information would contravene a number of the data
protection principles in the Data Protection Act 1998, and would be
regarded as ‘unfair’. By that, we mean the likely expectations of the data
subject that his or her information would not be disclosed to others and
the effect which disclosure would have on the data subject. Section 40(2)
is an absolute exemption and is not subject to the public interest test.

 

There were a number of changes made to the MOU, all of which are reflected
in the revised version:

 

 

-          Section 15.2.1 stated ‘where a) there is an open breach on HO
systems….’. This was removed from the new agreement following discussions
between the DfE and the Home Office to tighten up the objectives which
would trigger the MOU;

-          Section 15.2.1 & 15.2.6 - the MoU did state that DfE would
receive nationality information from the Home Office and provide (once
collected) nationality information back to the Home Office where they had
been able to match a record. However, following further discussion between
DfE and the Home Office this was removed in the process of finalising the
new agreement last year to make absolutely clear that this data will not
be shared with the Home Office. The field names and algorithm used to
produce the data, as set out in FoI 2016-0058280, confirm this position;

-          Section 15.4.6 has also been updated to reflect the DfEs secure
file transfer system is now EGRESS and not Key to Success as outlined in
the previous MOU.

 

Many thanks

Amanda Robinson

 

National Pupil Database & Data Sharing team

 

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References

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