The CRUDy state
Data and the rule of law
I am starting the New Year by publishing a series of working papers looking at aspects of the Digital State.
Today’s working paper is Data and the rule of law. The state used to use paper ledgers - an immutable mechanism for recording actions and decisions. When computerisation came along memory and storage space were at a premium and mutable data storage techniques (CRUD) were common place. These were an optimisation (for very good reasons) that impacted the rule of law. Now that memory and storage costs have collapsed we need to go back to ledgers, digital ledgers.
To give some idea of how dramatic the collapse in costs are - the mainframes that were used to computerise the National Insurance system in the 1980s are about as powerful as my hearing aids.
January is the month I take my recommendations out on tour - with a series of in-person Chatham House events in Scotland on Thursday 18th and a pop-up at UKGovCamp on Saturday 20th.
Anyway give the working paper a read and let me know what you think.