Policy background Digital Government Public Service Delivery
For a public authority to access information held in another part of the public sector it requires appropriate legal powers, which are often provided by express legal gateways to disclose information. The government believed that the previous set of data-sharing powers for public service delivery was complex and inconsistent across public services and organisations. This lack of a clear framework of rules risked hindering the ability of public authorities to offer citizens timely and appropriate interventions and to respond quickly to a changing social and policy environment.
	The Act provides a gateway to enable specified persons, listed in Schedules, to share information for tightly constrained objectives. Those objectives must be set out in regulations, must be for the improvement or targeting of the provision of a public service or the provision of a benefit to individuals or households, and must also have as their purpose the improvement of the well-being of individuals or households. Objectives must support the delivery of a specified public authority’s functions, which includes the administration, monitoring or enforcement of the delivery of the function. To use the gateway, the proposed sharing of information must be for the purpose of one of the specified objectives, and those undertaking the share must be specified persons in relation to that objective.
	The public service delivery chapter also contains powers to share information for the purpose of assisting people living in fuel poverty and water poverty.