Joseph Pilling

July 8, 1945

Pilling served as the Director-General of the Prison Service from 1991 to 1993, and then Director of Resources and Services in the Department of Health, before being appointed as Permanent Secretary of the Northern Ireland Office in 1997, where he served until 2005 when he retired. But not for too long: in 2009 he accepted appointment by the Home Secretary as the United Kingdom"s first and only Identity Commissioner, a role having independent oversight of the National Identity Service government database (previously known as National Identity Scheme) and its controversial mission of recording, cataloguing and processing the personal details of everyone in the United Kingdom. He took office on 1 October 2009.