WRITTEN ON October 13th, 2008 BY Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom GCMG KCVO AND STORED IN Uncategorized

Sir Bonar writes

I’ve been asked to say a few more words about various recent data losses.

These losses are reported to me in various ways: one day a memo from the IT manager, the next a report in the news media, or as happened last week by EDS over dinner at Le Gavroche. In most cases the data is not especially sensitive, being limited to next of kin details, passport and National Insurance numbers, drivers’ licence and bank details, National Health Service numbers, medical records and child protection details. In many cases it does not pertain to serving public servants, for example the data about people applying to join the MoD is most unlikely to be about people actually serving in our armed forces (who are without doubt some of the best in the world). And even when we have leaked public-sector pension details for example, they turn out only to have been about police or local government officials.

Generally we do not encrypt such data, in accordance with our “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” policy.

In each case we have followed established procedure and established enquiries. Each one is an isolated incident. Taken together the picture is that almost all of these leaked details had been leaked already, several times in some cases. Therefore no single leak can be regarded as particularly significant. We have established various call centres for people who wish to take part in consultation and feedback processes.

Meanwhile our procedures for reporting such losses are working smoothly, indeed we are setting something of a lead in Europe and futher afield for this type of thing.