Written question asked by Jenny Willott (Liberal Democrat) on Tuesday, 7 July 2009, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 9 July 2009. It was answered by Lord Knight of Weymouth (Labour) on Tuesday, 21 July 2009 on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Departmental Databases

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) which of the planned databases that will be managed by her Department or one of its agencies and which will hold personal information on members of the public are expected to become operational in each of the next five years; and if she will make a statement;

Answer: The Department intends that one new database (known as CAMLite) will become operational during this period. CAMLite will enable improvements in the delivery of services so that customer requirements can be handled more effectively and efficiently, and it will record every contact with a customer. When fully operational, CAMLite is expected to hold details of around seven million customers.The categories of personal information that the database is expected to contain will comply with the Department's formal registration under the Data Protection Act.Following the publication of the cross Government data handling review in June 2008, privacy impact assessments are conducted where new IT systems hold significant amounts of personal data.

Secondary information