[quote=IainBusby;96470]
Quote Originally Posted by walesrob View Post
....It gets better....this time its a memory stick in a pub car park containing passwords, usernames for users of the Government Gateway - that will be quite a few million...

"Subcontractor Atos Origin, which lost the stick, said there had been a "direct breach" of its procedures."

I don't think you can blame this government for most these breaches of data protection as nearly all of them relate to outside agencies or quangos. This farming out of work to outside agencies that really should have stayed strictly within government control, as most people will remember, was a process that was begun and championed by the Tory governments of Thatcher and Major and also became very widespread under those governments.

Now that were in this situation, all the government of the day can do is to try to get the best value for money on behalf of the taxpayer and make sure that an agency that fails to perform or breaches procedures laid down by the government, have their contracts terminated and are not allowed to tender for future government contracts.

I know that the internal government departments that went before these agencies were widely seen as extremely inefficient, but at least the average time serving, 9 to 5 civil servant wouldn't be caught dead taking work ( or data) home with him/her.
Iain.
Joke is many of the people working either for the goverment in the old days or for the new companies are probably the same people. As there are only so many people in each field.
Same with most companies and departments taken over. Most of the times its just the name, logo and a few managers which change.