Cabinet Office plans electoral data matching

The Cabinet Office has announced a pilot data matching scheme aimed at increasing electoral registration and tackling electoral fraud. Local authorities have been selected by the government to take part in 22 separate pilots to enable Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to match names and addresses on their electoral register with names and addresses on existing public authority databases. The scheme will run from June until November, subject to parliamentary approval. EROs will have access to existing databases held by public authorities and will be able to compare names, dates of birth and addresses. The Cabinet Office said the pilots are part of the government's plan to bring in individual registration from 2014, replacing the current system of household registration under which one person at each address is responsible for providing the names of voters who live there. It said that the move to individual electoral registration will make the register less vulnerable to fraud. Mark Harper, minister for political and constitutional reform, said: "We want to make sure the electoral register is more accurate and complete, both by making sure everyone who is eligible to register has the full opportunity to do so, but also by tackling fraud and making sure names that shouldn't be there are removed. "Registration rates in this country already compare favourably with other democracies, but there is room for improvement. We want to address the issue of under-representation and make sure that everyone eligible to vote is given the opportunity to do so." The councils which plan to take part are Blackpool; Camden; Cardiff; Colchester; Edinburgh; East Lothian; East Renfrewshire; Forest Heath; Forest of Dean; Glasgow; Greenwich; Inverclyde; Manchester; Midlothian; Newham; Renfrewshire; Rushmoor; Shropshire; Southwark; Stratford-on-Avon; Sunderland; Teignbridge; Tower Hamlets; West Lothian; Wigan; Wiltshire; and Wolverhampton. This article is published by Guardian Professional. For updates on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.