When looking back on the year (and I appreciate its still July) I think we will remember 2008 as the time the country sat up and really started to take seriously how we treat our information. It has been a year when too many organisations both public and private, have let us down in their responsibilities in safeguarding it.
Perhaps most sinister of all were Government plans (announced earlier in the year) to create a database holding details of every email, phone call, text message and internet record the population makes.
It was therefore heartening to hear the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas say such a database would "be a step too far". Transparent debate and careful consideration on the idea is what's needed he said.
Thomas is of course right, the implications for running such a database (if it ever were to exist) are significant for society and so would be the role of the information workers tasked with handling such a behemoth.
In the latest issue of IWR Tim Buckley Owen writes about the opportunities info pros have to blow the whistle on state wrong-doings. Based on Tim's Justin Arundale memorial lecture to the Association of UK Media Librarians he suggested information professionals with access to such information should reveal all if ever encountering something that it is very much in the public interest to know. I would think they also have the responsibility to prevent leakages.
As Tim points out information professionals are uniquely placed to know how and what kind of information to look for, that can put them in a privileged and particularly responsible position, one with more power than they could ever have realised.
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