Statement on a Census Contractor

Statement on a Census Contractor

Registrar General Duncan Macniven responds to media interest in the census contract with CACI (UK).

Mr Macniven said:

"As Registrar General, I am responsible for running the census along with my staff in the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS). The census is a big job and we employ contractors to help with specialised parts of it, such as Royal Mail Parcelforce to deliver the blank questionnaires to the enumerators. We have been criticised for awarding the main "back office" contract to a company called CACI (UK), the subsidiary of a US company which, it is alleged, was associated with human rights abuses in Iraq in 2004.

"The contract, which covers the upcoming rehearsal as well as the census itself, involves printing census questionnaires and other materials, providing a questionnaire for people to complete on the internet, capturing the data from the paper and internet questionnaires and processing the results ready for the statistical outputs to be calculated. We awarded the contract under EU competitive tendering law which applies to all public bodies. Of the proposals we received, CACI (UK)’s gave best value for the taxpayer. EU rules do not allow bidders to be excluded because they are foreign companies, or have some involvement with the defence industry. CACI (UK) is neither of these.

"As an organisation fundamentally committed to ethical conduct, we would never have any dealings with a company convicted of human rights abuse. EU procurement rules allow bidders to be excluded if they have been convicted of certain criminal or other offences. But none of these exclusions applies to CACI (UK) - or indeed to its US parent, which has not been convicted of human rights abuses. The US parent company strongly denies the allegations made against it and makes clear its abhorrence of human rights violations. So I could not legally have refused to contract with CACI (UK).

"The contract with CACI (UK) will meet extremely strict security standards and the personal information collected in the rehearsal is covered by UK data protection and census confidentiality legislation. It is a criminal offence to disclose it. CACI (UK) staff will be strictly controlled by me and my staff.

"Although no official statistics are produced from the rehearsal, participation is important in order to test our arrangements for the actual census. People can rest assured that data security is a top priority for everyone working on the rehearsal and that their information will be handled confidentially, as it always is at every census. So I hope that people will take part in the rehearsal to ensure that we are fully prepared to run an excellent census in 2011."