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Charities, non-profit groups and privacy advocates have joined forces to
issue a critical report on the $180 million Integrated Case Management (ICM)
project the BC government announced in February’s Throne Speech.

The planned ICM system will collect comprehensive personal data from
hundreds of independent community service organizations which are
contracted to provide government services, in order to create a database
of unprecedented scope and detail about citizen’s lives, including their
participation in health care, education, family services and other
government services. The information will be shared across government.

The report, entitled "Culture of Care…or Culture of Surveillance?" Click Here
took two years to complete and includes written and onsite surveys of
service organizations. It highlights serious concerns about the ICM system
related to privacy rights and the potential effect of the program on social
services and the independent community service organizations themselves.
It makes a number of recommendations to the government, community
organizations and their clients.

"If this project goes forward as planned, it will turn service groups
into surveillance organs for the government," said FIPA Executive Director
Darrell Evans. "This system is designed to share personal information
across government, not to protect personal privacy. It has the potential
to make these organizations into agents of the state."

"We are concerned not only about what the ICM project will do to our clients,
but also what it will do to community organizations," said Tim Beachy,
Chief Executive Officer of the United Community Service Co-op.
"Not only will privacy rights take a hit; Client relationships will also
suffer and the caring culture of our groups will be negatively affected."

The report raises serious questions about the workability of the
ICM project, given the different types of information being collected,
the wide variety of information management systems in community service
organizations, the lack of resources to comply, and even the legality
of such a massive data collection by government in the absence of client consent.

"We think it’s important for all British Columbians to get these questions
answered before we spend hundreds of millions of dollars," said Tim Agg,
Executive Director of PLEA Community Services. "Our clients are best
served by a system that protects their right to privacy."

The Website for the "Culture of Care…or Culture of Surveillance?" research
project is http://www.privacyresearch.ca.

CONTACTS:

Tim Agg, Chief Executive Officer,
PLEA Community Services Society of BC: 604-871-0450
Tim Beachy, Executive Director,
United Community Services Co-op: 604-718-8292
Darrell Evans, Executive Director, FIPA: 604-739-9788