§ Mr. LivseyTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security after what period data about payments made by absent parents is routinely erased from CSA records. [103116]
§ Angela EagleThe administration of the Child Support Agency is a matter for the Chief Executive, Mrs. Faith Boardman. She will write to the hon. Member.
Letter from Mrs. Faith Boardman to Mr. Richard Livsey, dated 23 December 1999:
I am replying to your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Social Security about the Child Support Agency.The account history information on the CSA computer system is subject to an archiving process. This process examines account transactions that have reached a completed status ie. for a given charge there is a receipt and an associated payment out. Once these completed transactions are 365 days old they are marked as eligible for archiving and removed from the online system to the archive database.Data that is held in the archive database is available for retrieval as a hard copy report. There is currently no processing which deletes this data from the system archive database.The CSA business requirement in respect of deletion of financial data states that the information must be retained for the current financial year and the succeeding six. As CSA initial action only commenced in June 1993 the Agency does not have any financial data that has surpassed this age.The Agency intends to examine the need to delete archived data next year however, any data removed will be subject to the appropriate business rules as noted above.I hope this is helpful.