Mr. John McKeon:

On personal progression plans, I will repeat what I said. We hear the hard stories. The Senator must look at the overwhelming evidence in the customer satisfaction survey included in the data pack we forwarded to the committee. Just 4% of the people who had used the service had a problem with their personal progression plan. When clients were asked to score the effectiveness and value of their personal progression plan, it scored 4.57 on a scale of zero to five. Therefore, we have to be really careful about throwing the baby out with the bath water. In every OECD country that has employment counselling, personal assistance, Intreo, local employment service network and community employment schemes a personal progression plan or a variant of it is a key part of the client journey. During that process advisers will ask a person about his or her personal circumstances because it helps to identify what the barriers to employment are and to get an holistic view. It is a good, not a bad, thing to do. If people do not want to provide the information, they do not have to do so, but that does not mean that the question should not be asked. It will, however, help to inform a good personal progression plan.

A question was asked about data. JobPath providers are agents of the Minister, in the same way that our branch office and local employment service staff are her agents. The data they collect are the Department's data which they hold while clients are with them. At the end of the process they come to us and we own them. We have a data protection agreement with the two providers which has been drafted to ensure they will meet all data compliance requirements. It has been audited by two individual firms who have given it a clean bill of health. The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner has conducted two audits of each company and I understand given them a clean bill of health. It certainly has not raised any issue with me.