With regard to Government IT systems, the systems only come into existence/change in support of legislation eg Finance Act and therefore the data held within the system is restricted directly to fulfilling those legislative requirements hence systems were built in legislative silos of data with only the requisite data being validated to fulfil the legislation, so you might collect home address, DOB but not validate it. which leads to lots of duplicated data that could be different in the different databases.
When I was within the Civil Service over 20 years ago looking at potential IT impact of the proposed introduction of the Euro etc, one of the arguments I put forward was to have a Data Administration Act, which would allow verified data to be shared across Government Departments, which would have a significant impact on the size of the computer estate, most of which was outsourced so therefore 3rd party revenues. Needless to say it was kicked into touch in part because it would have created inter departmental rivalries' over the data collection . validation and control. It does seem that they are sharing more data than in my day.
With regard to HS2 route, there must have been consideration given to the route to ensure that commercial traffic could avail of the increase in capacity and therefore running a network close to potential hubs, would hopefully have figured in the debate. Based on traffic volumes and density of movements places like Atherstone Warwickshire area became an ideal location for UK hubs for commercial traffic clearance and distribution. I would have expected the HS2 to follow the commercial traffic hub location corridor to encourage building connecting sidings to get commercial goods distribution back to the railways as in the days of BRS. One would assume that if the capacity was created, then as long as the HS2 followed national distribution network densities, new hubs would be built along the railway corridor........Sheffield and Nottingham route may not achieve that as its off the density of commercial traffic distribution routes
Last edited by JohnHarris; 25/10/23 08:39 AM.
