Secrecy, distrust, and interception of communications

LSE PhD researcher Bernard Keenan breaks down the different elements of the concept of “secrecy” that were highlighted by the recently-released report on surveillance laws in the UK

Leveson, the ICO and Data Protection – The press regulation no one is talking about

Whilst media coverage of press regulation continues to focus on the on-going political debate over a new regulator, Lorna Woods, Professor and Associate Dean of Research at City Law School, City University London, explains that another form of press regulation has so far eluded the headlines; this time – in the data protection context

Lorna Woods: Reviewing the Communications Review

As part of the ongoing discussion surrounding the Communications Review, Lorna Woods, Professor and Associate Dean of Research at City Law School, City University London, explains which areas of communications regulation are being given the most attention, and which areas should be given more

What would be the impact of Brexit on UK media regulation?

Media regulation in the UK has been affected, at least in part, by the requirements of European Union (EU) law. So, which areas are likely to change once the UK formally leaves the EU? Lorna Woods, Professor of Media Law at the University of Essex, addresses some key regulatory areas

Safe Harbour: Key Aspects of the ECJ Ruling

Today, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) declared that the Safe Harbour agreement which allowed the movement of digital data between the EU and the US was invalid. The Court was ruling in a case brought by Max Schrems, an Austrian student and privacy campaigner who, in the wake of the Snowden revelations of mass surveillance, contested the fact that data about Europeans and others was being stored in the US by tech companies such as Facebook. Professor Lorna Woods of the University of Essex explains some key aspects of the judgment

Explaining the ruling that overturned the UK’s Data Retention & Investigatory Powers Act

The English High Court just invalidated the UK’s bill on retention and investigation of communications data that was enacted in 2014 in the wake of the overturning of the EU Data Retention Directive by the European court. Lorna Woods of the University of Essex explains the ruling and its implications

"New" and distributed leadership in quality and safety in healthcare, or "old" and hierarchical? : An interview study with strategic stakeholders

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The friends and family test : a qualitative study of concerns that influence the willingness of English National Health Service staff to recommend their organisation

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Beyond metrics? Utilizing 'soft intelligence' for healthcare quality and safety.

Formal metrics for monitoring the quality and safety of healthcare have a valuable role, but may not, by themselves, yield full insight into the range of fallibilities in organizations. 'Soft intelligence' is usefully understood as the processes and behaviours associated with seeking and interpreting soft data-of the kind that evade easy capture, straightforward classification and simple quantification-to produce forms of knowledge that can provide the basis for intervention. With the aim of examining current and potential practice in relation to soft intelligence, we conducted and analysed 107 in-depth qualitative interviews with senior leaders, including managers and clinicians, involved in healthcare quality and safety in the English National Health Service. We found that participants were in little doubt about the value of softer forms of data, especially for their role in revealing troubling issues that might be obscured by conventional metrics. Their struggles lay in how to access softer data and turn them into a useful form of knowing. Some of the dominant approaches they used risked replicating the limitations of hard, quantitative data. They relied on processes of aggregation and triangulation that prioritised reliability, or on instrumental use of soft data to animate the metrics. The unpredictable, untameable, spontaneous quality of soft data could be lost in efforts to systematize their collection and interpretation to render them more tractable. A more challenging but potentially rewarding approach involved processes and behaviours aimed at disrupting taken-for-granted assumptions about quality, safety, and organizational performance. This approach, which explicitly values the seeking out and the hearing of multiple voices, is consistent with conceptual frameworks of organizational sensemaking and dialogical understandings of knowledge. Using soft intelligence this way can be challenging and discomfiting, but may offer a critical defence against the complacency that can precede crisis