My neighbour is a work coach at the job centre will she beable to look up all my details held

Craxyray

Hi I was wondering if someone could shed light on this my neighbour is a work coach at job centre plus I wouldn’t like her snooping in on my details for example  details of why I claim disability benefits etc what payments I get I have been told she wouldn’t get access to all this information anyway as she’s a work coach it’s different if she was high up is that right ?

Yamor

The DWP Standards of Behaviour Procedures states the following:

You must not under any circumstances access, or attempt to access, your own DWP records or the records of friends, family members or ex-partners on any departmental computer, paper file or benefit system, irrespective of your motivation.

You must not access the records of other customers including celebrities, even to find an address or birthday without authorisation and a legitimate reason.

Access without authorisation or legitimate reason is a disciplinary offence. Failure to comply is extremely serious. It will result in disciplinary action and can lead to dismissal. Staff can access their own record on the department’s Single Operating Platform (SOP) as part of the self-service function.

DWP guidance also states:

DWP staff who claim Universal Credit must never work on any aspect of their own case even if the case has been allocated to them under case management principles. This also applies if the case belongs to a relative, friend, current team member or a colleague/previous team member/colleague you have worked closely with in the last 12 months.

[...]

If a member of staff who is a Universal Credit claimant accidentally accesses their own record or the record of someone they know, they must inform their line manager immediately.

Grumpy_chap

Craxyray said:

Hi I was wondering if someone could shed light on this my neighbour is a work coach at job centre plus I wouldn’t like her snooping in on my details for example  details of why I claim disability benefits etc what payments I get I have been told she wouldn’t get access to all this information anyway as she’s a work coach it’s different if she was high up is that right ?

@Yamor has put how the neighbour accessing such information would be treated by DWP.

Why do you think your neighbour would want to lookup your details, or those of anyone else known to them?

Mark_d

Craxyray said:

Hi I was wondering if someone could shed light on this my neighbour is a work coach at job centre plus I wouldn’t like her snooping in on my details for example  details of why I claim disability benefits etc what payments I get I have been told she wouldn’t get access to all this information anyway as she’s a work coach it’s different if she was high up is that right ?

People at your bank, the NHS, the police.....could technically get hold of sensitive data about you.  But there are controls in place and codes of conduct to prevent data being accessed without proper justification.

sammyjammy

It doesn't specifically say that but I can tell you she would only do so if she wants to be sacked as that is what would happen.  Its not something you could get away with either as records are flagged and are verified.

justwhat

If she is smart she will just ask you current work coach, especially if in same building  lol 

Does it really matter lol 

Danien

There are strict controls on looking up a claim you don't have permission to access. Even when I worked as a decision maker, a long time ago, there was a matching process - all claims you had permission to access were matched with all claims you had accessed and a report was spat out every month. If you accidentally accessed a claim - say you inadvertently typed a NI number one digit wrong or with two digits transposed, you have to immediately fill in a form with the error you made and the claim you were trying to access, and it is checked out by a supervisor.

Contraventions of this rule are treated incredibly seriously with the person losing their job of it cannot be proved a genuine error. Accessing a neighbour's claim would not be considered a genuine error, but would lead to job loss. 

While I was working for the DWP, a guy accessed his ex wife's claim to try to find her address, he was sacked immediately for gross misconduct.

TELLIT01

It's a few years since I worked for DWP but then, if you accidentally access the wrong account by mistyping for example, you were supposed to note the NI number and inform your team leader. 

DullGreyGuy

Craxyray said:

Hi I was wondering if someone could shed light on this my neighbour is a work coach at job centre plus I wouldn’t like her snooping in on my details for example  details of why I claim disability benefits etc what payments I get I have been told she wouldn’t get access to all this information anyway as she’s a work coach it’s different if she was high up is that right ?

In principle there are a lot of people around you that will work work for organisations that hold sensitive information... one of the lads down the pub's mother works as a receptionist at our GPs, ones a cop, another a nurse. In principle each could abuse their position and decide to snoop.  Even people in technically less "sensitive" employers (eg Anne Summers) could decide to see what neighbours, friends or family were ordering.

In all cases it would be a breach of data protection rules and could easily cost them their jobs. Most will have access logging so it'd be simple for them to identify who's looked at who's records etc. Even in my day in call centre operations the system logged if an account was accessed by CTI (ie the system recognised the customer's telephone number and brought up the account) or by searching. In itself not a red flag but you can normally broadly ignore the CTI cases if you're looking for someone who's inappropriately accessing records.

Most people value their jobs more than knowing what illness the neighbour has got, many are too busy coping with their workload to have spare time to look up people, many people can probably think of more interesting cases to look at than a neighbour. In my first job, mail order company, there was rumours we had a wealthy Middle Eastern client who'd order large quantities of ladies underwear in a range of sizes and Doc Martin boots that were delivered to a private airport each time... I was always much more interested in potentially seeing that account than any neighbours or friends. 

huckster

@Craxyray

It is the van parked across the road with cameras in the back you should be more worried about!

As others have said there are rules in place regarding data protection, confidentiality and also about preventing bias.

Job Centre staff deal with thousands of different people every year and you may be just one of them. So very unlikely to have even thought about you and most likely don't want to know anything about you.