Updated: How to bypass a background check 29 November 2007

Spotted a story about how 27 hospital workers in New Jersey were suspended for allegedly peeking at George Clooney’s confidential medical records after he crashed his bike.

Funny thing, that.

I have been meaning to post this story for quite a while, and my friends will roll their eyes and forgive me, as they read a version of this post elsewhere three years ago. The personal scarring from the issue - as well as the wider political implications - have not gone away.

In January 2004 one of the recruitment agencies I’d registered with to get temp work while looking for a full-time role contacted me to set up an interview for a back-office admin position at the local mental health authority. At the interview, they told me that if I got the job I would have to get a Disclosure Scotland clearance. This is the mandatory background check for anyone working in places which deal with children, the elderly, the mentally ill, etc, even if the job does not involve any frontline work or direct contact with them. They told me the typical waiting time to get the clearance is 8-10 weeks. When they said that, I stopped taking the interview seriously. I was looking for interim temp work, and to me, temp means “now”. Temp does not mean “wait 10 weeks”. I reminded them that because at that time I’d only lived in Scotland for five months, I had no records in Scotland to be checked, which would present its own host of problems. Gee, they hadn’t thought of that.

After the interview I rang the recruitment agency and said the same, thinking the recruiter got the hint. Not so. Four days later, I got a call from the recruiter asking me if I was ready to proceed with the Disclosure Scotland paperwork. Because all my records at the time were in the US, she wanted me to

1. Contact the US Embassy in London to get the US government’s background check paperwork. I would have to send them a £30 cheque for this. They would
2. Send me the paperwork, and
3. I would fill it out, and then
4. Send it back to the Embassy, who would then
5. Send it to the FBI in Washington who would then run a police and background check and
6. Send it back to the US embassy and then
7. To me who would then
8. Send it to the agency.

Total estimated time for this? 12-15 weeks, during which time I would not be allowed to work at that job, all for the sake of finding out that I got a traffic ticket in 1995. My goal was to be working at a real job in 12-15 weeks, not sitting at home waiting to be given permission to do temp work. So I let it drop.

And yet one month later, with no interview, Hudson Recruitment put me into a temp job at an NHS psychiatry facility in Glasgow.  This was not “psychiatry” as in everyday mental health. This was an outpatient psychiatric review clinic. The people being treated at this facility had serious and disabling mental problems, none of them were capable of working, all of them lived completely on the state, and nearly all of them had been institutionalised at one time or another. For many of them the facility was the port of call between institutionalisations.

But whereas the other agency wanted me to get FBI clearance to sit in a back office without patient contact, Hudson put me into a job with direct patient contact despite no Disclosure Scotland, no experience, no training, and no support.

The job was standard medical secretary work, even though I had no prior experience as a medical secretary. Using a foot pedal machine from another century, I transcribed and typed the letters that the psychiatrists dictated into their little tape recorders after sessions with patients, sent off one copy to the patient’s GP, and filed another copy in the patients’ records. Despite exasperated claims of a typing backlog, it was mindlessly boring and repetitive work. I cleared the backlog within a week and after that I was usually done and reading a book by 10:30 AM.

Without clearance or vetting I should not have been allowed to set foot in that office, but I had full access to all the harrowing, disgusting, private details of every patient’s life. I’d type maybe 20 letters a day, so that was 20 huge (2-3 inch) file folders of medical history to sift through each day. The paper records were a jumble, so I would have to take out most of them and re-file them chronologically. Some patients’ files had papers dating back to the 1950s. Oh the stories I could tell about their lives.

And despite a complete lack of training, I was also put on to the computerised database of every person registered with the NHS in the Greater Glasgow health board. Which is, oh, a million or so people. Again, per Disclosure Scotland, I should not have had any access to that at all. And a little training and instruction would have been nice. But the job required me to be on the database, and so I could look up anyone’s home address, NI number, health history, and private medical details with no supervision. Just as an experiment to prove the point, I looked up the families of the members of a certain Glasgow band. Siblings, parents, their prescriptions, their complications. I could have cut and pasted that all onto the forums at the band’s web site. I wouldn’t, but what if I was one of the band’s numerous obsessed fans? What if I was a journalist working undercover? And what if I was a mental patient myself?

Questions like this don’t bother the NHS or Hudson Recruitment. All they cared about was that I could type fast and make Hudson some commission cash.

But it got worse. I was put into direct contact with patients. I have no medical training at all - I don’t even remember how to do CPR - and here they had me on the phone with the sickest of the sick. I had a guy ring me saying he was in a phone booth because his son was manic and smashing up the house with a golf club. I walked past a man high on meth who grabbed me and cried when I tried to pass him to an actual psychiatric professional. I dealt with a hypomanic lawyer who would ring all the numbers and call the medical secretaries effing c’s, then threaten to sue us all for not bending to her whims. I tried to deal with them all as best I could, knowing that one slip of the tongue or unprofessional response could make me personally responsible for a psychiatric meltdown. Does that sound like a normal work day for someone hired to type and file?

Once I nipped to the ladies and came back to find my purse unzipped, my wallet open, and my credit card gone.

I even got a stalker. She was well known within the facility for forming obsessive attachments to any female authority figure, and as someone at the other end of the phone in an NHS building, that made me fair game.  Did anyone care? No; in fact she’d stalked every female member of the staff in the facility before, so by the time she got to me it was like the office joke. “Oh, ha ha, you’ve got (her)” this week.” She’d phone my direct line every day, always in hysterics and tears. One day she phoned up and ranted about how some American man (probably imaginary) had hurt her so deeply, and as she was getting more and more hysterical because I happen to have that American accent, I could only sit there thinking “I’m an agency temp…I’m an effing typist…” On another day I had to eat lunch at my desk because she’d showed up at the facility and was in the reception area pleading for me to come downstairs and see her. Whenever I see a news report now about someone being followed, injured, or worse by an unbalanced stalker, I think of that woman camping out in the lobby muttering my name.

The facility was short-staffed, so they would sometimes put me on the reception desk. That is literally the front line (and for that matter, it is a second job and should have been paid accordingly). So much for Disclosure Scotland. I’d fake a Scottish accent while greeting patients so they wouldn’t know it was me from the phone. I’d have to watch homeless people come in, lick their hands, and then touch the doorknobs, and as a result I developed my own germ obsessiveness thing (and you would have too.) One day, a slim five minute window meant that I missed witnessing a deeply traumatised asylum seeker from Iraq beating her son in the lobby. Five minutes earlier and I would have had to deal with her on my own.

The job was so far away from my home that getting there took an hour’s commute and two trains.  Naturally, as a temp, I was receiving no basic benefits for my trouble and my labour - no holidays, no sick time, no right to ask questions, and I did not even receive my statutory holiday pay until almost a year later, when Hudson got around to doing their annual accounting.  But by the time I landed a real permanent job and walked out of the facility for good, I was under medical care myself. I had been diagnosed with high blood pressure caused by the stress of the job. I was 26 years old.

And this is what the NHS leaves to unexperienced, unvetted temp typists.

So to our health secretary, our so-called “recruitment industry”, and to the powers that be, I’d like to ask:

• Who authorised a system wherein background checks can be completely bypassed, and why;
• Who authorised a system wherein people with no experience can be put into critical medical roles, and why;
• Who authorised a system wherein vital procedures can be run by temp admin staff with no training, supervision, or quality control, and why;
• How many temp admin staff are currently working in the NHS;
• What is the evaluation process which recruiters use to determine suitability for NHS positions;
• How much in commission fees is paid out to recruiters each year for admin staff placed in the NHS;
• Why, when I was on the job market again a year later, did Hudson phone me to offer me another typing role in another psychiatric facility (no need for an interview, said the recruiter; just show up); and
• How will they themselves feel when - not if, but when - a loved one is in desperate need of medical help, and the person they get on the phone is stammering and bluffing their way through the situation having no training, medical knowledge, or experience in the job.

Edit 29 November: you can read Audit Scotland’s official take on the issue of foreign workers in the NHS, which provides the stock answers to some of the questions I put forth above, here (128 kb pdf). My concerns are not so much about foreign workers, but temp workers, regardless of national origin.

Audit Scotland has missed the point entirely by not including agency staff in their evaluation, because as they say, it’s the agency’s job to do the vetting. And we know that agencies neither vet nor put appropriate people into temp roles. Expect nothing more in a system where recruitment is a function of sales quotas and not management.

So despite this wordy investigation, nothing has changed and nothing will. Any one of you can still waltz into a recruitment agency and find yourself cut loose on the NHS database within 24 hours without a care in the world. Give it a try.

Speaking of being up your own backside… 25 November 2007

The other day I left a comment on the web site of the Evening Times, Glasgow’s bastion of hack reportage so blatantly inaccurate that it insults the reader’s intelligence. The story I commented on was about the new M&S planned for the revamp of the Buchanan Galleries, the big draw of which is apparently a fourth floor, and which IMHO is a continuation of Glasgow’s mass delusion that more and bigger retail space is the solution to everything. My comment, which you can still see on the web site, was:

You have to be really far up your own backside to think people will travel somewhere just to see the legendary fourth floor (ooo! aaah!) of an identical chain store.

My other half picked up the print edition of the weekend Evening Times and my comment was there in print, attributed to me, only it said -

The city planners must be living in cloud cuckoo-land if they think people will travel somewhere just to see the legendary fourth floor (ooo! aaah!) of an identical chain store.

Cloud cuckoo-land?

Does “cloud cuckoo-land” sound like something I’d say?

And did I mention anything about the city planners? No? So why did they?

The “reporters” at the Evening Times would have done well in Mao’s China.  For their ability to regurgitate propaganda while twisting the merest challenge of their reporting to their own favour, they are unmatched.

If you get this, you’re a web designer 21 November 2007

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil 16 November 2007

You can read my thoughts on the frankly juvenile coverage of the Peter Tobin/Vicky Hamilton/Angelika Kluk case in the comments section at the True Crime Weblog. My comments pertain to what the coverage suggests about a law trying to impose 1907 secrecy in a 2007 web 2.0 world.

What are the future implications when a failure to update the law means the media tells one story, the state tells another, and the web tells a third? Will governments lose authority to bookmarks and social networks? Will national news outlets have to move overseas to report on what is happening at home? How can we, as citizens and information consumers, protest against inaccuracies which the state and media are not allowed to acknowledge exist at all? Will web designers (and bloggers) be censored for discussing what the media itself cannot?

Edit 21 November: Not to say I told you so.  But something is seriously wrong in a system where existing, searchable newspaper articles are considered classified, but my bank account, NI number, and baby’s vital statistics are not.

Don’t reinvent the wheel! 16 November 2007

Jennifer Laycock wrote a brilliant piece in today’s Search Engine Guide which is guaranteed to get you brainstorming.

As businesses get more and more obsessed with building community and leveraging Web 2.0 techniques, a lot of small businesses are finding themselves wondering if they can afford to get into the game. What these small businesses often miss is the fact that they don’t need to invest a ton of time and money into fancy new technologies. Sometimes, it’s about finding what already exists and leveraging it for your brand.

Read the full piece at Search Engine Guide.

I dealt with an individual who wanted his organisation’s web site to allow job seekers to upload CVs and apply for jobs online. It also had to allow employers to list jobs and to find potential candidates. He spent five figures scouting out high-end web firms before I came in and asked him why he was trying to duplicate Monster or S1jobs.com and whether he had approached either of them to propose a branded partnership which would have been great publicity for them both. Naturally, he took this as a personal criticism and accused me of trying to undermine him in front of his staff.  Fud.

Monopoly Money 14 November 2007

Winter is the time of year when I turn into a miserable Scrooge about every light, gadget, and appliance left on in our home. This is not ecology, but economy. Although our home is a simple two bedroom flat, our electricity bills are atrocious. And there’s nothing we can do about it. We are one of nearly half a million households in Scotland which are stuck with a special ScottishPower electricity meter which cannot be transferred to another electric utility. Believe me, we’ve tried. Each time we have, both the new supplier and ScottishPower knock us back and forbid the switch. If we want to switch electricity supplier, we would have to pay to have the meter ripped out and replaced with a “non-ScottishPower” meter. And at an estimated cost of four figures, that defeats the purpose of switching providers to save a few quid.

(This is doubly affecting for us, as our crap ScottishPower meter lets electricity in at a level above the safe voltage.  An electrician recently confirmed that the voltage runs through our home at 255v, way above the maximum recommended 240v.  That would explain why our light bulbs don’t blow out - they blow up.)

Last week while reviewing the family finances I realised that our telecoms charges were outrageous. We inherited NTL, which is now Virgin Media, from the previous residents. After three years with them, we were paying £45 ($92) a month just for broadband and basic telephone. By contrast, Tiscali offers that same package for £14.99 a month. And on Virgin Media itself, new customers paying £45 a month get broadband, telephone, mobile, and cable. So I phoned a few providers to inquire about switching for a better deal and - guess what! - we don’t have a switchable BT line. We have an NTL line, which, like the electricity meter, was put in for the previous residents years ago. If we want to switch, we have to pay £120 out of pocket to have a BT line reinstalled.

Every day, we are bombarded with messages about consumer choice, price comparisons, and easy switching, but guess what - it ain’t true. We are stuck with providers we never chose and are not happy with. The previous residents were lovely, kind, elderly people; which is to say, it was easy for the utilities to pull a fast one on them. It’s us who are paying for it.

Schroedinger’s PC 14 November 2007

In a quantum, computer data is not processed by electrons passing through transistors, as is the case in today’s computers, but by caged atoms known as quantum bits or Qubits. A bit is a simple unit of information that is represented by a “1″ or a “0″ in a conventional electronic computer. A qubit can also represent a “1″ or a “0″ but crucially can be both at the same time - known as a superposition. This allows a quantum computer to work through many problems and arrive at their solutions simultaneously.

Read more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7085019.stm

All sites are equal… 12 November 2007

but some sites are more equal than others.

Over the past week I have seen four signs of a disturbing trend. Slowly but surely, Big Internet is clawing back power and authority. Judgements are being made about what sites and information “count”, and those that don’t make the cut are being treated with contempt. Sites driven by individuals and groups are being delegitimised in favour of the big boys. Basic access is being eliminated, monetised, and repackaged as “enhanced product offerings”. And the web itself is being treated as a hostile enemy to be feared. It’s a trend which I have not seen since the days of dialup.

The story about the Mackintosh Sketchbook web site, which I posted about earlier this week, is the first example. I learned about it from a story in the Glasgow Herald which announced the web site’s creation and included every bit of background information you could want - except the web site’s address. I had to find it myself by going to the Glasgow School of Art’s web site, then clicking on the CRM link, and then clicking on something else.

The mind boggles to understand what was the point - and more importantly, what the Herald was playing at - in reporting the creation of a major, influential, and sustainable web site but declining to divulge the site’s address. Why the pretense, and what strange power/control dynamic is at work there?

In another example, Thomson Directories (like the yellow pages, only blue) wrote to inform me that they would no longer include web site addresses in their directory listings. From now on, if you want your web site’s address included, you will pay, and you will pay dearly. Thomson’s main competitor, Yell.com, already charges businesses more per year to include a web site address in their listing than I normally charge to create a web site.

Web sites are as integral to businesses as telephone numbers. Not only are these directories showing their jealousy and desperation, but they are openly discriminating against web-savvy companies. Could it be because having an existing web site takes business away from these directories’ “easy site builder” offerings?

A third example is Google’s abrupt decision to penalise web sites which use “paid links” and advertisement links. The problem is, sites which use neither are now losing page rank, and sites which rely on advertisements are being punished. The true sources of “paid link” trouble will continue to fly under these rules and rank higher than legitimate sites. Now, how much do you want to bet that Google is not rushing to penalise sites whose paid and advertising links were purchased through Google AdWords?

The last example is the argument that my fellow Tears for Fears webmaster Donyo dragged me into after his site’s link was deleted from dozens of TFF articles on Wikipedia, most of which he himself created. The admins there take a zero-tolerance stance against what they call “so-called fan sites”, and that includes his. Donyo’s work is meticulous, authoritative, and professional, and has the personal approval of the band.  It is not a “fan site” in appearance, content, or intention.  But because Donyo’s site does not have one word - “official” - the Wiki admins classify it as no better than any goofy girl’s page full of sparkles, hearts, and 20 year old band photos. In their view, the content itself is irrelevant, and their message is clear: as a “so-called fan site, ” his site is so contemptible that they will not permit a simple link to access it. These admins also forbid linking to a band member’s blog solely because the blog is hosted on Myspace, therefore, it’s both unwanted and false. Honestly, if I wanted to waste my days trying to get a bunch of blind and zealous bigots to see common sense, I’d have stayed in the US.

Two incidents would have been odd. Three would have been troubling. Four, in one week, point to a greater trend which we would be foolish to ignore. The message from Big Internet is clear: if you want access, promotion, or even basic information, you will do it through us, our way, preferably with payment for our “enhanced product offerings”, or you will not do it at all. And if you have had the cheek to do it on your own, we won’t give you the time of day.

I fear these seemingly trivial incidents hint at an attempt to force the return of the “walled garden” days of the mid-nineties, when you got everything you thought you needed on AOL and “The Internet” was a button you had to push, and you did so with trepidation. I believe 2008 will see this battle against user content and access being played out, and not all of us will survive.

What are we, as web site designers, internet professionals, and involved web users, going to do? Have we come this far only to be labeled as professionally and personally contemptible? Will we look back on Web 2.0 with nostalgia from the confines of our walled gardens?

All sites…equal…some sites…more equal…four legs good…two legs baa-aaa-aaad.

Bravissimo! 7 November 2007

The sketchbook of Glasgow’s own Charles Rennie Mackintosh, drawn on a youthful study trip to Italy, has been posted online in full on its own dedicated web site.

http://www.polemicweb.co.uk/sketchbook/index.php

The site is a simple gallery.  Each page of the sketchbook has been posted in small and large versions with contemporary photographs, explanatory notes, and even a location map for reference.

The back end is straightforward and database driven. There is no Flash or bells and whistles. That is because the site’s designers possess the rare gift of humility. Their web site showcases Mackintosh’s work; it does not compete with it, nor seek to be “art” itself.

Imagine all of the sketchbooks, notebooks, and journals kept behind glass in academic libraries which will receive this sort of treatment in the future. The world will be a much richer place for it.

In web design it is so easy to go overboard with big plans! for big pages! that do THIS and THIS and THIS! but web sites like the Northern Italian Sketchbook keep us grounded, humbled, and freshly inspired.

Sharing the Love 5 November 2007

My favourite TV show is “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares”, the best business show on the box. Last week’s episode focused on a fish restaurant in Brighton which turned itself around in showstopping style.

Take a look at the fantastic web site for that restaurant:

http://www.lovesrestaurant.co.uk/

This site is the online embodiment of Ramsay’s mantra of doing what you do best in a simple manner. The menu is right in front, the online booking form is a deceptively simple mail script, the positive spin on the restaurant’s story is not hidden away, the flexible Google map is all taken care of, and most importantly, you’ve got The Lovey.

This site sells the food, the owner, and the buzz of the restaurant itself in one bloody simple page. Bravo!