Capgemini (Euronext: CAP) is a major French company, one of the world’s largest information technology, consulting, outsourcing and professional services companies with a staff of 75,000 operating in 30 countries. It is headquartered in Paris (Rue de Tilsitt) and was founded in 1967 by Serge Kampf, the current chairman. CEO Paul Hermelin has led the company since his appointment in December 2001.

Capgemini’s regional operations include North America, Northern Europe & Asia Pacific and Central & Southern Europe. Services are delivered through four disciplines for Consulting, Technology, Outsourcing and Local Professional Services. The latter is delivered through Sogeti, a wholly owned subsidiary.

Wikipedia

So that is who got the contract to build ContactPoint.

The children of Britain sold to a French company that operates n 30 countries.

The database set to contain information and carers’ contact details for every child in England will cost £41 million (US$84 million) a year to run on top of its £224 million implementation costs, the government has admitted.

Capgemini was awarded the £40 million, seven-year contract to set up and manage the ContactPoint database and online directory earlier this week.

But children’s minister Kevin Brennan has revealed that the ongoing costs of the database — accessible to more than 330,000 education, health, social care and youth justice professionals — will dwarf the contract price.

ContactPoint will contain basic identifying information about all children in England from birth until age 18, along with contact details for their parents or carers and for professionals providing support services to them.

Brennan confirmed that the total costs of implementing the system are estimated at £224 million, with £28.4 million already spent on the project in 2006-07 and a further £11.2 million in the first three months of 2007-08.

The implementation costs include the price of adapting the government IT systems that will supply the data and the adapting of systems used by professionals working with children so they can access ContactPoint, Brennan said in a parliamentary written answer. It also includes the cost of ensuring security and data accuracy, along with staff training.

“Running costs thereafter are estimated to be £41 million per year. Most of this will go directly to local authorities to fund staff to ensure the ongoing security, accuracy and audit of ContactPoint,” Brennan said in response to questions from shadow children’s minister Tim Loughton.

By the end of next year, ContactPoint is expected to be available to all English local authorities, child protection agencies and a group of children’s charities.

An initial deployment will roll out the database to 17 early adopter authorities and Barnardo’s in April. “Progress towards readiness to receive access to ContactPoint is on track” among local authorities, Brennan said.

[…]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,134926-c,kidsteens/article.html

So, ContactPoint will cost:

224,000,000 / 11,900,000 = £18.82 per child

and then

41,000,000 / 11,900,000 = £3.46 per child per year

What a bargain!

Of course, this is not what these numbers really mean. What they really say is this is the price that HMG puts on the heads of every child in this country when they come to sell them to the highest (or lowest) bidder to be fleeced en masse.

That this database will violate children is beyond dispute. What is astonishing is that ContactPoint will contain data that is worth far more than £18.82 per head.

Data brokers would pay ten times that amount for the database, because they would be able to sell it again and again and again; and lets remember, this is going to be the closest thing to a complete database of all children and their parents, it will be without precedent, unparalleled.

At least, not for long.

You can find out about how data brokers work by trying to get hold of or buy a list of all the schools in the UK. The dfes has a list, but they are not allowed to sell it to you or give you access to it because doing so would compete with the data brokers that rent these lists commercially. They sell the lists at £100 per thousand entries, and then you do not get to keep the data, you only get to use it for a single purpose.

Imagine how much money ContactPoint will be worth in this case. Once the data escapes ContactPoint, companies will rent it over and over in small parcels, with sets of data sorted by postcode, age single parent or not, you name it. It will be a license to print money, and the junk mail that families will begin to receive will be indistinguishable to the mail-outs that they already get; they wont even realize that they have been ‘ContactPoisoned’.

The only people who will be immune to all of this are the celebrity families and VIP families who will not be in the ContactPoint system “for their own protection”.

Now read this:

A £224m national database of all 11 million children in England, which is being set up in response to the murder of eight-year-old Victoria Climbié, is to be designed by Capgemini.

The national Information Sharing Index is due to be ready by the end of 2008. The database, which will cost £41m per year to operate, will include addresses and telephone numbers for children and their parents – and will enable social services and doctors to share vital information about a child’s health and education across local authorities.

The child database was recommended in a report by Lord Laming after Climbié was killed by her great-aunt despite having been examined by social workers, doctors and police.

The Department for Education and Skills awarded the contract to Capgemini under a long-term agreement between the two organisations which began in 2002 and which is annually benchmarked for value.

A fully-costed design of the technical architecture is due to be completed by the end of this year.

Silicon dot com

My emphasis.

No database will prevent crime. Full stop. The sad story above shows that even when the social services are in full contact the bad stuff still happens. It happens very very rarely, and ContactPoint is no proper response to this.

And finally, a good comment on this story:

Name: Anonymous

Location: Midlands

Occupation: IT Developer

Comment: Lets see now…

Server 2,000
Oracle Lic 1,000
DBA for day 1,000
CapGemini profit 223,996,000
========
Total 224,000,000

That’s how it works, is it?

Right on the money!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 at 11:56 pm and is filed under Home Schooling, Insanity, NIR, Post Tipping Point, The Facts.