If the census was an example of how the amount of data stored doesn’t equate to the value gained , then it is the best and worst one you could find.

The government without doubt knows more about us than it ever did.

The e-government portal knows more about me than my wife does; car tax renewal and even if my car has valid insurance, all my tax information, child benefits, child tax credits - you name it, it knows about me - my family, my car, my home, my children, my electronic passport, and more than I probably wish to know they know.

We know this is true because of the amount of money the government spent on IT projects in the last 10 years – billions of pounds of investment to collect trillions of bits of information.

And 10 years since they started they still ask me to fill out a form, or type it online, asking me about the all the stuff they already know. So they have used up thousands of hard disks, and then they fill up another few thousand with my census data, doubling the data providing no more real knowledge it seems to me.

Now, the argument goes ‘but census data is a moment in time – a one off, because of population changes, migrations, emigrations, changes in religion, changes in family structures, you name it, it has changed, therefore the old data isn’t accurate or real-time enough to make future decisions’.

Well, and don’t take this personally central government, a lame excuse for not using the data you have well enough.

If government was a ‘supply chain’ and instead of delivering services to citizens it was delivering products on shelves to consumers, you’d have to think that they couldn’t figure out how many tins of beans the country might want to eat in a year.

Perhaps the real problem is that the government’s eagerness to ‘collect’ data on us, to fine us for not paying our car tax or filling in our tax return late or forgetting our MOT by a week has destroyed its ability to use the data they have in a smarter more efficient way.

They have lots of data collection and it seems to me very little data analysis.

If Tesco can send me vouchers to tempt me into buying things they already know I might buy then surely the government can do the same. What retailers have done for years is leverage tools to analyse the data they have to sell more to their customers.

And one rule of retailing is – if it doesn’t sell another tin of beans then don’t spend any money it. So, retailers don’t have any more data than they need, what they do is analyse it analyse it and analyse it again.

Perhaps if the government treated us like consumers of government services instead of citizens then they might realise that the data they have is a pot of gold, and would start a programme of storing less and knowing more. Perhaps our new time of fiscal constraint will force a less profligate attitude to storing ever more data on us all, and perhaps 2011 will be the year I fill in my last census form. Somehow I doubt it – and I hope not - after all, it’s the only time I get to be a fully signed up Jedi Knight!