Anyone who has had the misfortune to deal with any part of Britain’s state whether that be the National Health Service, local authorities, the education sector, welfare, driver and vehicle licensing or the police or the passport office or what have you will have come across incompetence, inefficiencies and sometimes downright malevolence. To say that these systems are broken beyond easy repair would be a complete understatement.

These broken systems would be something to laugh about were it not for the fact that these systems sometimes have horrendous outcomes for those who might be forced to use them.

There’s a thought provoking article on the Unherd website from an author who call themselves ‘an anonymous data scientist’ who worked in a London local authority’s housing department. It’s a seriously eye opening article about just how badly data is managed in this local council and it’s likely that other government agencies are also similarly badly managed.

The Anonymous Data Scientist said:

“Tenants in bedsits died while we debated whether their social housing priority should be low or medium. The deliberate policy of fragmenting our information across half a dozen broken systems made their personal experience a mystery.

Ultimately, there was something evil in this banality. The culture we worked in amplified our worst instincts and thwarted our best. It took momentary mistakes and turned them into permanent rot, and took a genuine desire for joined-up government and sublimated it into pointless meetings.”

The author also documented the horrendous waste created by inefficiencies and the time consumed by trying to take databases full of garbage into something usable.

Britain is suffering from many things but maybe British people would suffer less if the systems that administer the state worked as intended.

Link

Unherd post about the data disasters that are drowning Britain’s local authorities.

https://unherd.com/2026/08/local-councils-are-worse-than-you-think/?edition=us