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Old 11-08-23, 12:14
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kiterunner kiterunner is offline
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Having read that, I think I understand at least some of what happened. When Findmypast (and their predecessors) ran the website for the National Records of Scotland, you had to use a surname in any name search, and you had to pay to view a list of search results.

In 2016, Scotland's People was relaunched with a new design by "international technology company CACI Limited" and you no longer had to pay to view the list of search results, only to view the actual records. Also either at that time, or more recently, they changed things so that you no longer had to include a surname in your search.

So before CACI took over, you would not be able to search using given name only, and thus you would have to know the child's birth surname and adoptive surname to be able to find both records. And any search results would only be seen by people who paid to view them, not people doing casual searches for no particular reason.

As so often seems to be the case nowadays, I get the impression that NRS didn't have staff who liased closely with CACI on all details of the changes to the system and who checked that everything met requirements. Surely there should have been a data protection officer who signed off on all the changes, for instance, and you would hope that that person actually thought about everything rather than just rubber-stamp whatever they were told was going to happen.
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