HAVING recently stood down from a number of committee obligations this spring it was with a great sense of satisfaction that I at last found the time to discard much of the paperwork that my involvement has generated over the years.

Much of the accumulation was entirely down to my own habit of gathering as much information as I can about anything I am involved in, and my insistence on "hard copies" of everything, simply because it is so much easier, and far quicker, to plough my way through documents in paper form rather than scrolling down the screen on my laptop.

In carrying out my cull it occurred to me is that the vast majority of what had passed through my hands on the way to the packed filing cabinets that take up my spare bedroom was data.

This got me thinking about the sheer volume of data that is being gathered every day of our lives, in everything we do.

The gathering of data has reached unprecedented levels in an age where it seems that we are required to provide a wealth of information to prove, or disprove, every decision that is taken, particularly when it involves funding, or changes in the law.

I would argue that statistical data, like the multitude of surveys and consultation documents that form the backbone of much of it, can be manipulated to provide the results required by those with a vested interest in the outcome.

An example of this is that for some years now, more often than not in dealing with officialdom, we have been "requested" to provide details about our gender, ethnic group, nationality, age and any disability.

In the main this is all just a box-ticking exercise so that someone, somewhere, can prove what a wonderful diverse community we all reside in, and where applicable, obtain funding on the back of it to prop up the latest initiative.

I offer no apology for my cynical tone here. For some time I was the person whose job it was, day after day, to file the forms that no one had ever looked at but that had to be completed to comply with a project’s stated aims, and which at some later date invariably made their way into the waste bin.

This approach is especially prevalent within public services –, where both the NHS and education spring most readily to mind – and where targets are set, not by those charged with achieving them, but by highly paid administrators sitting in their ivory towers and trying to hang onto their jobs by the skin of their teeth by having at their fingertips data to prove their case.

The argument is often made that data is a necessary tool to enable us to shape the future of our service provision.

While this may well be the case, as I listen to colleagues bemoaning the amount of time spent on gathering and recording data for the obligatory monthly report, and as I sit through yet another meeting to discuss yet another report containing more facts and figures, I am left thinking that if we all spent less of our precious time and energy on gathering data, and more time on actually delivering the goods and services that our customers are paying for, then we would all get a lot more done.

Linda Piggott-Vijeh, Service Matters, Vicarage Hill, Combe St Nicholas