Does the UK government understand the world we live in?

Every UK family with a child under 16 is currently at risk. Where are the two data disks with the personal data of 25 million citizens? No one knows. MI5 and the police are no doubt on the case. Let us hope they get there first and the disks don't fall into the wrong hands. There is a real risk that the data will become the property of identity fraud gangs. Worse still our children on the lists could be targeted by gangs of a different kind.

Normally, I try to see the other point of view and be fair minded. On this matter I'm struggling. Whilst SME's have to make do with limited resources the government has huge resources. Whilst I see many SME's that are innovative and understand the IT world we are currently living in, I have huge doubts now about the government. This is jaw dropping incompetence.

We're told a junior official posted the data discs to internal audit. This is staggering in two respects:

1. The junior employee had such easy access to the data;
2. Internal audit requested it in this format.  Even with internal mail the existence of these two data disks outside a secure environment is a risk.

I can only come to the conclusion that when it comes to IT privacy the UK government does not understand or want to understand the world we live in.  No doubt they are rightly going to receive a very painful 21st century lesson.

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Comments

[Asia Business Advisor]

You would think that UK example was bad enough, however, Japan upped the ante...

Ministry of Health in Japan has misplaced (=lost) approx. ~20 million public pension records, that were mismanaged...Not very encouraging from a perceived high-tech leader of the world. Just shows what a shoddy paper-based record-keeping can be at worst.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20071212a1.html

[Asia Business Advisor]

EDIT NOTE:

The total number of lost records in Japan originally was about 50 million, but SIA is saying that about 20 million have been completely lost.

This has prompted Japanese government officials to respond at TV grillings: "Well, we only lost about 39% of the records which is not so bad" ...!!!???

[Philip Woodgate]

Thanks for the comment.

UK and Japanese debacles over lost data are a bit worrying to say the least. Let's hope that the issue isn't the same with data held for national security purposes.

[Ambercat]

Being an IT consultant, and having worked inside a Government department for over a year, I can fully understand why these situations do arise.

No one in these departments has any clue about IT.

No doubt things are much worse than we think.

[Philip Woodgate]

Yes, that backs up a friends experience. Project chaos.