Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Annual Report 2019
Table 5: Breakdown of communications data errors by error type and
responsibility, 2019
Applicant
Single Point
of Contact
Telecoms
Operator
312 (26 IP)
69 (10 IP)
52
Time Date
40 (11 IP)
170 (62 IP)
93
Data Type
9
134
56
Incorrect Identifier
Excess/No Data
Designated
Senior
Officer
18
System Error
4
No Authority
4
21
Other
Total
Workflow
14
6
4
3
2
367 (37 IP)
377 (72 IP)
230
23
14
Reportable errors – Applicant
18.33
286 errors were made by applicants when transcribing a telephone number. Officers tend
to hand type the number into an application as the number itself is seldom capable of
being electronically copied over. In 46 of these reports, the error emanated from victims,
witnesses or family members providing officers with the wrong number.
Reportable errors – Single point of contact (SPoC)
18.34
The 377 (37%) errors made by a SPoC remains a reflection of their central role in the
acquisition of all CD. Applications made within an authority’s own workflow system will
often require data to be transferred. The identifier, date and time and data type must be
entered by the SPoC into a variety of different online TO disclosure systems. This is where
all but four SPoC errors occurred.
18.35
We welcome any opportunity to use technology to eliminate the manual transfer of
data. Developed by the Home Office, automatic acquisition (AA) was introduced in
2019. This process allows an authority’s workflow system to send an authorised request
electronically to a TO without the need for SPoCs manually to type the requested data into
another system.
18.36
We expect that the move to AA will continue to bring a decline in transposition errors.
However, of the 100 relevant authorities who acquire the most CD, just 31 use AA. At
the 31 authorities who can, nearly 80% of all acquisitions are through AA. We expect the
remaining authorities to implement this capability over the coming year.
Reportable errors – Telecommunications Operators (TOs)
18.37
We work closely with TOs whenever an error is identified to determine the cause and
impact of the issue. The number of errors made by TOs has increased by 80% over 2018
to 230. Whilst this is a significant increase it is not large (0.03%) in the context of the
approximately 750,000 items of targeted data acquired. Of the 230 TO reported errors,
we classified just six as serious; four of these were the result of technical issues and two
the result of human error. Nonetheless, we continue to encourage TOs to develop and
implement processes to minimise errors as far as possible.
135