The Electoral Commission has no central point of data control

In response to a Freedom Of Information (FOI) request, The Electoral Commission has admitted that it has no central point of control of electoral data.

The Commission explained that rather than collating the registers into a single database, the information is managed by local authorities themselves. The commission is sent secure updates on a monthly basis by each local authority.

A considerable 25 staff have access to the electoral registers in the party and election finance team, along with eight members of IT who control access permissions.

The FOI request was submitted by Guy Churchward, CEO at security specialist Loglogic, who says that the lack of a central point of control is potentially a problem because there are more points of access.

He also argues that although staff access to electoral registers is limited, with a number of procedures and policies in place, no one checks that these are being followed.

“Privileged users are not being electronically monitored regarding their activities on the registers. [The Electoral Commission] does not have automated systems in place to monitor the activities of users; they therefore don’t have any way of generating real-time security alerts.”

He added: “The need to monitor the digital footprint of employees to preserve the confidentiality and integrity of data and monitor privileged user activity is extremely important – especially with regards to public sector information.

“It’s very disappointing. I’m hoping that each local authority is a little sharper and that they are electronically managing and monitoring access to their databases – it’s certainly something we should be asking our councils about,” he added.