Actually, I was inclined to think that Jakdelad was alittle off his rocker until I read on another board that a CACI UK is a census contractor and a subsidary of an AMerican company, CACI International.
CACI provides intelligence and interrogation staff to the US Military and/or their civilian contractor is Iraq. Most notably they allegedly provided over half of the interrogators in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
Legal cases against CACI seem to be in process and it seems that the CSO can't disbar a contractor unless they have a conviction.
I wrote to the CSO office to confirm this and this is their response:
Quote:
Originally Posted by csofieldoffice
The census is a major undertaking for the CSO and contractors have been
employed to assist with specialized parts of the work. For 2011 the
contract for the design and print of the census forms, and the provision
and onsite support of the hardware and software required for the scanning,
capture and coding of the census forms was awarded to CACI UK, which is an
independent subsidiary of CACI International. CACI UK were first awarded
the contract for the processing of the 2002 and 2006 censuses and won the
2011 contract after an open competitive procurement process run under EU
competitive tendering law which applies to all public bodies. Of the
proposals received by the CSO, CACI (UK)’s gave best value for the
taxpayer. EU rules do not allow bidders to be excluded because they are
foreign companies. The census forms were printed by a Dublin printer.
In August 2003, CACI International Inc provided staff to the US Army to
conduct IT and intelligence work in Iraq including interrogation services.
Subsequently, in spring 2004 an allegation was made that a CACI employee
had been involved in the mistreatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison
in Iraq. This allegation was not substantiated by any evidence or proof at
the time it was made, and subsequent investigations by both CACI and the US
government could not confirm it. CACI have stated publicly that they take
this allegation extremely seriously, that they do not condone, tolerate or
endorse any illegal behavior by its employees in any circumstances or at
any time and they have, and always will, hold themselves to the highest
ethical standards.
The Central Statistics Office is fundamentally committed to ethical and
proper conduct in all matters and would never have any dealings with a
company convicted of human rights abuse. EU procurement rules do 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. The US parent company strongly denies the
allegations made against it and makes clear its abhorrence of human rights
violations.
Confidentiality is the cornerstone of all work conducted by the CSO. All
information collected in the census is treated as strictly confidential by
the CSO and will be used only for statistical purposes. This
confidentiality is guaranteed by law. Under the Statistics Act 1993 the
Central Statistics Office is prohibited by law from divulging any
individual information to any third party, be it a Government Department or
agency, or a private enterprise. The CSO is the only organisation that
will have access to identifiable census information relating to individuals
or households.
All staff working on the census (HQ, field or contract) have been signed up
as Officers of Statistics. The penalty for any breaches of confidentiality
by staff, permanent or contract, can be as high as €25,000. All are made
fully aware of their legal obligations in this respect.
The CSO is justifiably proud of its unblemished record in protecting the
confidentiality of data. It is one of the CSO's top priorities to maintain
this record.
Every household present in the State on Census night, April 10th, has a
legal obligation to complete a Census form under the Statistics Act 1993
and the Statistics (Census of Population) Order 2010.