UK.gov lays down rules for cross-Whitehall data slurps

The UK government has offered more detail on how public authorities can pass around the data they hold on citizens – a mere five months after the Digital Economy Act passed into law.

The final versions of the codes of practice, which are used to add some meat to the bones of the legislation, are now open for a six-week consultation.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/22/ukgov_digital_economy_act_codes_of_practice/

Examples of existing objectives are to assist people living in fuel poverty and to identify "vulnerable people who might need help from the authorities in re-tuning televisions in 2018 to 2019 after the 700Mhz band is to be used for mobile broadband rather than to transmit digital TV".

Elsewhere in the codes are rules for how the government can share data to claw back money owed to it – which it estimated as £24.5bn as of March 2016 – and for tackling fraud, which it says costs the government between £29bn and £40bn.