NHS OKs offshoring patient data to cloud providers stateside The UK's National Health Service has said that Brits' patient data can be stored in the cloud – and has given US data centres party to Privacy Shield the thumbs-up. In a major policy shift, NHS Digital has given care providers the go-ahead to store patient information outside Blighty in a bid to hurry them into the cloud to …
The government should build its own data centre and use it across government, the cost savings would be enormous.
You've not being following the government's performance on ANY major project, I take it?
If government built their own enormous data centre, it would built somewhere stupid for political reasons, be commissioned ten years later, cost three times the original budget, the cost savings would be negative, and it would inevitably turn out that they'd forgotten something vital like mains power connection, the UPS and standby, or the necessary bandwidth of data pipes. And probably built it the wrong size by three orders of magnitude plus or minus.
"Considering the number of times i've seen a GP look something up on google"
I work on rocket guidance systems and look things up using a search engine all of the time. I'd feel better if my doctor took the time to double check something or find information on something they weren't familiar with. There is way too much to know about human physiology for any one person to have remembered. I want my doctor to be absolutely sure about my condition and not in a big hurry to prescribe a bottle of antibiotics and send me on my way.
What could possibly go wrong, hmmm, lets ask all the US medical companies and government departments that have massive leaks in the couple of years. More importantly,if it does go wrong, how will it be investigated, if it even gets reported and those effected get compensation, even the NHS can't fight US lawyers !
scuse the pun...
Just as the rest of the world starts to notice that cloud storage, particularly massive cloud storage with big security requirements, mostly isn't as cheap as you thought it was, especially when you scale it... the British public sector comes crashing through the door with both feet.
But hey ho, better than it going to Capita
One part of the reason we keep getting poor decisions by politicians is that they do not get enough knowledgeable feedback on this sort of issue. They, poor dears, are, for the most part, semi-literate (i.e. not STEM educated) and the implications of many technical issues go right over their heads.
A challenge: how many of those complaining here about this potential clusterf**k have actually disturbed the electrons and made their views known to their MP? Tell them what you think is wrong, why you think it is wrong and what you consider the actions, rules, regulations needed are.
I am having that conversation with my local MP and the poor dear did not understand that handing data to any US company exposes it to silent access by the US government who ignored "Safe Harbor" and will ignore "Privacy Shield".
It needs more of those who do understand the issues to educate MP's rather than just let off steam on a forum. The MP's need hard facts and evidence of what their constituents want to counter the bureaucrats.
</rant>
p.s. I do not hold out much hope though, as you can not educate lard.
your MP about it, you'll just be regarded as another wack job out to ruin a great plan.
Hint : during the 'ban air soft guns' thing a few years ago, the government cited how easy it was to convert air soft guns to real ones.
I pointed out to our MP that a major gun manufacturer is based in the city and only 1/2 a mile from her office and that she could walk there and get expert advice within 10 mins.
Hello special branch......
"Hint : during the 'ban air soft guns' thing a few years ago, the government cited how easy it was to convert air soft guns to real ones."
They really said that? How could you convert a gun that fires small plastic bb's using gas/electric/springs to fire bullets? If that can be done easily, I would love to see the genius who managed it! Im sure it would be faster to craft a gun from scratch in a metalworkshop..
It never ceases to amaze me how ignorant MP's are about what they vote on...
And it scares me that they think these bans actually can achieve anything except take pleasure away from the enthusiasts.
The proles may have voted for Brexit but that wont stop the powers that be needlessly globalising everything. That we the people aren't consulted about how our own data is stored demonstrates how our "democracy" works. If we are consulted, it will be after they've implemented it so that reversing the decision will be costly and disruptive.
Even if cloud hosting costs are cheaper elsewhere, the data transmissions costs must be taken into account. It's probably worth paying more if the extra money is fed back into the local economy.
If the Russians are capable of tapping transatlantic cables, data security is at risk. In the event that they cut our communication links (or if they are cut by mistake or natural causes), the NHS wont have reliable access to patient data.
On one hand, the UK and Europe have passed and implemented some of the most comprehensive data privacy and security laws on the planet and now a branch of the government wants to save a few quid by off-shoring its data storage? That's completely bonkers. I see that type of thinking with governments that are complaining that their birth rates are dropping and how bad that is while at the same time the news if full of how so many jobs are being lost to automation and that the prospects that there will be more jobs created in the future to replace those is low to zero.
It's so common as to be suspect to hear in the US news that "some employee" had a laptop/memory card/external hard drive stolen, usually from their car, packed with sensitive personal data that they were taking home to work on after hours. In at least some of those incidents, there is a good probability that the data was being "stolen" to cover its being sold or if it shows up later that the theft can be ascribed as its source. Plausible deniability, baby. What happens when a load of NHS data gets lost/stolen, sold on the dark net and winds up in a data aggregators database? Nothing except the people affected are stuffed.
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This post has been deleted by its author
As an NHS Data Security Professional, I shall not be transfering any data outside the EU, and am definatley not using the Pan Atlantic Profits Plaster as an excuse
However the chance to use EU cloud infrastucure, rather than the expensive UK only zones might allow some workloads to be effectivley cloud based (ofc the appropriate disclosures and legal justfication must be provided)
but considering the ancient propriatary software and data strucutres, cloudifying this lot will take donkeys
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