David Smith

From helping shape government guidance on WhatsApp information management to maintaining collections of sunken treasure maps, -David Smith, Deputy Director, Knowledge and Information Management, at Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and head of the Government KIM Profession, discusses the challenges facing KIM in the Civil Service.

Asked why he chose the Civil Service above other areas of librarianship, David says: “It is just so interesting… it puts you in the centre of constantly changing challenges while offering unparalleled opportunities to move between librarianship, records management, knowledge management, information governance throughout your career.”

He gives an example from his early days at the Department for the Environment: “I remember in April 1986, I was on the library enquiry desk. A call comes down from the secretary of state’s office: ‘Could you find out anything about some place called’ – and they were a bit unsure about the spelling – ‘a place called Chernobyl? Apparently, something has happened there’.”

Decades later his library role has shifted into managing across the full gamut of KIM-related disciplines, but he is still supporting the Government’s information needs in crises. Now it’s more likely to be in the form of leading KIM support for public inquiries like Grenfell and Covid, all the while contending with new technology and balancing simultaneous demands for corporate transparency and personal privacy.

Regulatory load

With burgeoning amounts of information and regulation, is the job getting harder?

“The job changes constantly – from the mid-80s when first introducing computer based interlibrary loans systems into the Civil Service, through the 1990s when I was establishing the Department of Health’s first internet site and its intranet, then into the 2000s when I was implementing the FOI regime in my current department, and currently supporting eDiscovery activities for Public Inquiries and preparing staff guidance on the use of AI. A common thread throughout all of this has been the application of my core librarianship skills in the exploitation of information.

“Yes, we have to stay up to date with changes in legislation,” David says, “In September a statutory instrument came out stating the Government considers the United States of America ensures an adequate level of protection of personal data for certain transfers (US/UK data bridge) – that’s the kind of thing you have to be all over. But regulatory load quite often comes with other problems, like deadlines. FOI is a good example, you get 20 days to do it, and anything from a public inquiry will come with a challenging deadline and little appreciation of how difficult it may be to find some material.”

But he says “collaboration is important when thinking about the regulatory load because there is so much sharing of information, and joint working between Government organisations. Gone are the days when you could say ‘this is how we do it in this department’. The question now is what do you do about the areas where there are several information owners jointly working? Do they have different tolerances to information management risk? Who has the regulatory responsibility? Who answers the FOI requests? Whose retention policies do you follow? I think that’s becoming increasingly important as KIM seeks to facilitate better information handling and sharing.”

Technology has revolutionised sharing, but it brings new challenges. “At the start of the Grenfell Tower inquiry in 2017 we shared some of our material with a third party linked to the Public Inquiry. It involved enabling a USB port on a PC – in most Government departments USB ports are disabled for security reasons – copying the information onto a pen drive which a member of staff took on a bus to a building on The Strand. Sharepoint came in 2018 and we could give named individuals in that third party company access to a particular area of our Sharepoint where we transferred the material due for the Public Inquiry. It is so much easier but it comes with new issues, such as ensuring access to our network from external players is tightly controlled.”

Real difference

These challenges between Government departments’ approaches to KIM cannot be easily overcome as they are based on real differences in their functions. David says that about half of the 55 government departments don’t have ministers, HMRC or OFGEN for example. “They operate similarly to normal government Departments in the functions they perform, though usually more specialised, and generally cover matters for which direct political oversight is judged unnecessary or inappropriate.”

In Ministerial departments, KIM staff are working with Ministers and their Special Advisors, and need to be aware of changes in Government policies and challenges that arise.

Non-Corporate Communications

The subsequent differences in approaches to KIM mean big differences in attitudes to technology. “We allow people – we don’t actively approve – but we allow people to use WhatsApp to transact government business because it is one of the principal ways private offices communicate with ministers. In some departments, the use of WhatsApp to transact departmental business is prohibited.”

Consequently one of David’s many roles has included work on the Government’s guidance for the use of Non Corporate Communications Channels (NCCC). This says that the use of NCCCs for transacting Government business should be kept to a minimum and that “departments should, as far as reasonably practicable, enable approaches in their core systems that reduce the need for NCCCs”. Then, accepting that it is used in some areas, it points out that individuals need to be careful: “Use NCCCs with care and be prepared to explain and defend your choices.”

This is because NCCCs like WhatsApp are often used for work and personal life and the responsibility for untangling these two areas will lie with individuals, as the guidance states: “This guidance does not cover the use of NCCCs for personal, political, constituency or parliamentary purposes. Where such conversations on NCCCs ‘drift’ into government business, individuals must consider the responsibilities outlined below.” (Published in March)

Porous perimeter

But he says that despite the problems posed by implementing new tools, new difficulties proliferate at a much more fundamental level for those trying to capture history and knowledge.

“The key thing for me in terms of the regulatory load is to forget about the container – and this is classic library stuff – it’s the content we’re supposed to be interested in.”

He highlights a few challenges posed by NCCCs, saying: “It’s indicative of the permeable nature of the information perimeter for organisations. It’s not just what’s on the organisation’s shelves or servers, now it’s what is on an individual’s personal devices. And because it’s a Whatsapp chat, there may just be one relevant item in a long chat. You could start ‘what are you doing at the weekend’ but then move onto something relevant to a public inquiry.

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“But it’s on your private phone, so who decides relevancy within this very foggy regulatory environment? It is something we are working through at present, aiming to strike a balance between organisational transparency and personal privacy.”

Ethics

Because of this mixing of transparency and privacy, David says: “The ethical aspect is very important and I actively use CILIP’s ethics code because, in terms of retrieving information and looking for information in increasing volumes, how do you indicate to staff the ethical standards you adhere to in carrying out your KIM work? Who do you trust? And the answer is the KIM team because ethical handling of information is central to our role: users trust us to ensure we scrupulously look for information and treat it with due care and in line with any applicable information governance.”

Stranger things

David’s work also supports the Marine Accident Investigation Branch and the biggest departmental record he ever had to manage: a seven foot square metal replica deck hatch of a container ship called the Derbyshire which sank in 1980. It is the biggest ever British ship to have been lost (over 91k tons) and it sank in a matter of minutes (research now shows it may have been hit by a ‘super rogue wave’). Taking three members of staff to manhandle it out of storage, this was a key bit of evidence in the second Public Inquiry into the Derbyshire sinking, and as a result of its findings a number of significant recommendations to improve ship safety were made which have saved thousands of lives over the years since then.

Treasure

Another exotic, but ‘live’ part of David’s records collection are the War Risk Indemnity records. These provide proof of ownership by the Government of merchant shipping and their cargoes sunk during the second world war. He said: “In an age before electronic banking, a number of the ships sank carrying cargoes of gold or silver bullion, and the files provide evidence of Government ownership and some details as to where the ships sank,” David said, adding that the collection of treasure maps is one of the most consulted parts of his collection. In one case, in 2012-2013 a salvage company was able to recover a large amount of the £34m of silver rupees that went down with the SS City of Cairo, torpedoed in 1942.

David’s “treasure map file” ensured that the salvaged money was split between the salvage company and the Government. At the time it was the deepest salvage operation that had ever taken place.

Risk

Looking to the future, David identifies a number of challenges KIM will face in the coming years: “The use of AI in helping KIM staff review the huge amount of electronic material held by Government, and to identify what needs to be kept and what needs to be destroyed will be a major advance in current practice.”

David also identifies risk and KIM’s ability to manage this as a key skill for the future, saying: “The profession has tended to be overly risk averse in its management of information and knowledge. Too often things are not done because we want ‘perfection’ rather than ‘good enough’.

“This builds up problems for the future, and leaves us vulnerable to other groups doing work KIM could do because they are better at assessing risk and can, consequently, deliver more quickly and in a more agile fashion.”

Future KIM

Is he optimistic about the future of the information profession in Government? “Definitely,” he says. “Increasingly KIM are the go-to people for eDiscovery services in support of departments responding to Public Inquiries and Judicial Reviews, with their knowledge of information retrieval and how knowledge is managed in their organisations. The profession is now a far bigger player in providing information governance within Government, not just enacting it; in my own department we recently provided guidance on the use of AI, and are heavily involved in the development of data sharing arrangements for DLUHC.

“Related to that, I think KIM has a role to play in the provision of information governance advice on the adoption of controls to secure data which are set out in the ‘Microsoft 365 Guidance for UK Government – Information Protection’.”

Within his own department for example, he has a small team working on the implementation of a Data Loss Prevention pilot. This is building on the work the KIM team is already doing on data sharing agreements, and it will provide a method of classifying and protecting files, controlling who can access them and allowing greater sharing of information between departments and trusted organisations.

Future…

As for the future of David, he will be retiring in 2024 after a career of over 50 years in the KIM profession, having worked in school, public and academic libraries and the European Parliament, as well as four decades in Government libraries and KIM units. In his latter role as Government Head of Profession for KIM, what has helped during that time?

“Undoubtedly, the people.” David says. “As a profession we are very supportive of each other, and as Head of Profession I have been supported by the many groups that operate in and around the GKIM space, including the Association of Departmental Records Officers (ADRO), the Committee of Departmental Librarians, the Network of Government Library and Information Specialists and, of course, CILIP’s Government Information Group.

“Another key grouping has also been the professional bodies – in particular CILIP, ARA and IRMS – who have provided invaluable support on professional accreditation matters. IRMS has enabled us to set up an accreditation process specifically for those KIM professionals working in government and the security services, so their often sensitive work can be professionally appraised within a secure environment.

“CILIP has also been helping with some initial work that is taking place on professional competence pay frameworks for Government. It remains an issue for me, that while career (and pay) progression tends to be only acknowledged by moving to new and more senior posts, there has been little consideration about how we reward those who have been in post for a long time and are now deep experts.”

“But most of all it has been the dedication of the GKIM profession who work in a very pressurised environment, often having to be very agile as new challenges materialise, often overnight. As a community they are very supportive: someone wanted advice on sharing information with Non Executive Directors, and immediately people provided advice on the matter. This was indicative of the collegiate nature of the profession and their willingness to share their expertise. Another example was the [profession putting] together an extensive programme about GKIM for Civil Service Live, which showcases Civil Service developments at a number of venues across the country. All this takes time on top of the day job, and it is a tribute to GKIM staff’s dedication that all this extra work gets done.”

And will retirement mean an end to David’s involvement with the profession? “Not quite. As part of a review of how the Civil Service manages and interacts with its 28 professions (David has ensured that Knowledge and Information Management is included in these), the professions were encouraged to establish alumni organisations. To this end, and working principally with NGLIS, the Government Information Alumni NeTwork (GIANT) has been established, and I will be acting as one of its trustees going forward.”

And career highlights?

“Meeting Prime Ministers, providing briefing for the late Queen would all feature, but one of the weirdest was when I set out why we keep records in Government (and ultimately destroy most of them) in line with National Archives in response to an FOI request. Three weeks later, my quote appeared in Private Eye (in a less than flattering way as you might expect). Getting records management principles into Private Eye? It’s got to be up there!”

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