November 21, 200717 yr It says on the BBC that the 'Junior Official' who sent off the stuff is 23 years old and is an AO (Admin Officer). At that grade he'd be on a salary of about £13,000-£15,000 a year. And he resigned today. I actually feel sorry for the poor sod. :(
November 21, 200717 yr The more I think about this the more something doesn't seem right. :blink: I can't believe that a- An Admin Officer would have the required access to download the entire Child Benefit database and put it on CDs b- That the National Audit Office would be liaising with an Admin Officer Was this Admin Officer really responsible or is he being made the scapegoat? <_< Edited November 21, 200717 yr by Jupiter9
November 22, 200717 yr scapegoat. the NAO would have liased with sum1 at the top who would have delgated the task to the poor sod.
November 22, 200717 yr So typical of this Govt really.. "Oh, we'll just find some poor, overworked, underpaid sod in a junior admin position, make them the scapegoat and just bugger the fact that it's OUR policy of merging Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise that has led to the problem in the first place..." <_< Staff within HMRC have talked about post going missing "all the time", "antiquated IT systems" and "poor staff morale"... Brown was Chancellor for 10 years, he was the architect of this merger policy, so why the hell is Darling the one taking all the heat....? Still, at least now I can cite a far better example of total incompetence within the management of large Govt databases in my now TOTAL opposition to any thought of a national DNA database or ID card scheme.... -_- And frankly because of this, I am now totally opposed to any large, centralised databases..... The mere thought of hundreds of thousands of faceless bureaucrats having virtually unlimited access to our medical, financial and DNA details quite frankly scares the living c**p out of me.... Who vets these people...? The Govt???? :lol: :lol: Yeah, we can really trust them cant we...? They dont even know if the geezer in the House of Commons pub serving them their Pimms and Lemonade is an illegal immigrant or not..... :lol: :lol:
November 22, 200717 yr So typical of this Govt really.. "Oh, we'll just find some poor, overworked, underpaid sod in a junior admin position, make them the scapegoat and just bugger the fact that it's OUR policy of merging Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise that has led to the problem in the first place..." erm... a 23 year old 'junior' went against the policy off his own bat.... if hes being made a 'scapegoat' then its because it looks like it was him that made the error... his fault not managements, IF its true that he acted upon his own. management arnt there to hold juniors hands.
November 22, 200717 yr I'm really sorry for the people this affects. If this happened here, I would be absolutely spitting chips. Edited November 22, 200717 yr by Naomi Watts
November 22, 200717 yr erm... a 23 year old 'junior' went against the policy off his own bat.... if hes being made a 'scapegoat' then its because it looks like it was him that made the error... his fault not managements, IF its true that he acted upon his own. management arnt there to hold juniors hands. How would he "act on his own" though...? What, he just got up one day and decided to make a copy of 25 million people's bank records and send them off to another office ON HIS OWN INITIATIVE...... Come on mate, that is utter balls, he must've been given some instructions or orders to do it from somewhere... And you're totally missing the point... The fact that junior members of staff even have the bloody clearance to do this is something of this magnitude I find totally unbelievable tbh.... The system itself is clearly at fault if it allows these sorts of protocols to be in the hands of junior admin staff..... No, I'm sorry, this stinks of cover-up... They want to quickly put the blame onto some specky little junior spod in the admin dept rather than admit that there are serious systemic failures within the whole system itself, because - oh my god - that might actually require a few high ranking civil servants and senior politicians actually doing the decent thing and admit the truth and resign..... :o :o :o Never gonna happen is it....? <_< Lies, cover-ups and damned lies, about the only three things that the Govt of this country has been good at for the past thirty sodding years..... <_< <_<
November 22, 200717 yr How would he "act on his own" though...? What, he just got up one day and decided to make a copy of 25 million people's bank records and send them off to another office ON HIS OWN INITIATIVE...... Come on mate, that is utter balls, he must've been given some instructions or orders to do it from somewhere... And you're totally missing the point... The fact that junior members of staff even have the bloody clearance to do this is something of this magnitude I find totally unbelievable tbh.... The system itself is clearly at fault if it allows these sorts of protocols to be in the hands of junior admin staff..... i dont know the facts, and news 24 have recently said that they dont either.. however i think its plausable that some junior did some admin work ... ie dispatch some info... wrongly. he might not have known what was on the package and simply was incompetant, sending it in a manor that was not the normal way. maybe he just 'couldnt be arsed'... as things stand we dont know what the facts are... so neither of us can apportion blame accurately. i notice that you never miss an opportunity to knock management though ...lol.. maybe, just maybe, this time it was the work of some incompetant junior working bloke :P
November 22, 200717 yr i dont know the facts, and news 24 have recently said that they dont either.. however i think its plausable that some junior did some admin work ... ie dispatch some info... wrongly. he might not have known what was on the package and simply was incompetant, sending it in a manor that was not the normal way. maybe he just 'couldnt be arsed'... as things stand we dont know what the facts are... so neither of us can apportion blame accurately. i notice that you never miss an opportunity to knock management though ...lol.. maybe, just maybe, this time it was the work of some incompetant junior working bloke :P So, going by your hypothesis, if this hypothetical 'Office Junior' only dispatched the package in the incorrect manner, then who is responsible for the fact that the disks were UNENCRYPTED??? And, Rob surely the ONLY way to dispatch information as sensitive as this where it could conceivably lead to fraud on a MASSIVE, UNPRECEDENTED SCALE would be to send the bloody thing in a secure armoured van... With guards armed with automatic assault weapons in the truck, one of the guards having the disks in metal attache case handcuffed to his wrist and the case having a small explosive charge inside so if anyone tries to open it without the correct combination it would blow up in their stupid faces............ Is that a tad extreme.....? :lol:
November 22, 200717 yr i dont know the facts, and news 24 have recently said that they dont either.. Frankly, this is the whole problem. Information, which the public has the right to know as far as I'm concerned, is clearly being held back... The facts are, the Bank of England actually knew about this on FRIDAY last week, and we, the British public find out about it only the following Tuesday..... <_< Great, a nice, LONG weekend for all the Identity thieves out there to cause merry hell with people's bank and credit card accounts..... This is just outrageous, the way we, the British public are treated by our politicians.... Like bloody children.... <_<
November 22, 200717 yr like i said... we dont know the facts so until we do i see little use in these hypothetical debates..
November 22, 200717 yr like i said... we dont know the facts so until we do i see little use in these hypothetical debates.. Well, the facts that I DO know are - The disks were unencrypted, the method of post used was just normal post (not even registered post ffs...), and the Govt chose not to tell anyone about it for four fukkin' days..... <_< NOT hypotheses.... FACTS....... And those facts are pretty bloody outrageous enough on their own IMO......
November 22, 200717 yr how the hell can somebody not notice two highly important disks are missing for a bloody month!!!!!! thats what i don't get. GRIMLY FIENDISH is totally right. there is no way the buck should stop at this junior. There is no way on gods earth someone that low should have access to that data. So the fact that the CD's weren't even properly protected is a complete joke! What they need is a complete overhaul of the IT system and the way data is transferred. If they can f*** up this, god forbid what they would do with a DNA database
November 22, 200717 yr The buck stops at the top Suedehead If a football team does badly who is responsible ? the players of course, the manager doesn't personally put on a shirt and kick the ball in a match but who gets blamed and sacked by the chairman if the players slip up ? the manager of course Darling is the manager, he might not have lost the package personally but the buck stops with him So let's take a fictional example. Someone working for Tesco's ignores all the guidelines and instructions. As a result, the wrong use by date gets put on perishable foods. Several people get food poisoning as a consequence. Should the Chief Executive of Tesco's resign? exactly. if the proper procedures aren't put in place to prevent c**k ups like this then the blame must be pointed at the highest possible point. my Information Systems tutorial 2moz is on this lol :lol: we've 2 discuss what can be done/should have been done. my lecturer changed the lecture and tutorial after this made the headlines It's impossible to be certain no member of staff ever ignores guidelines. Well, I suppose you could make it highly unlikely by threatening execution for breaches of the rules. There are lots of things I am not allowed to do in my job but that doesn't guarantee that I won't do any of them.
November 23, 200717 yr So let's take a fictional example. Someone working for Tesco's ignores all the guidelines and instructions. As a result, the wrong use by date gets put on perishable foods. Several people get food poisoning as a consequence. Should the Chief Executive of Tesco's resign? Your fictional example really isn't that good a one to pick tbh mate, it's very easy for anyone to print out an incorrect label.... A junior admin assistant should not be in a position where they even have the clearance to burn copies of such sensitive information, that should really only be in the domains of the senior members of staff or heads of department.. On IT systems you can easily set up password protocols and security levels to keep junior members of staff from being able to access certain systems.. Junior members of staff should all have usernames and passwords which will only give them access to the level of security they need in order to be able to do their jobs, it should not be in the remit of a junior staff member to have such advanced protocols... And even if this guy sent it off by the incorrect posting method, I question the very idea that information such as this should be put through the mail system, it should be couriered in an armoured car.... And the question of who allowed the information to be put onto disks unencrypted is yet to be answered.... In this respect, the system and senior managers and heads of dept are at fault here, NOT some random junior admin bloke....
November 23, 200717 yr So let's take a fictional example. Someone working for Tesco's ignores all the guidelines and instructions. As a result, the wrong use by date gets put on perishable foods. Several people get food poisoning as a consequence. Should the Chief Executive of Tesco's resign? EXACTLY!...... management cant and shouldnt be expected to hold the hands of juniors...
November 23, 200717 yr Your fictional example really isn't that good a one to pick tbh mate, it's very easy for anyone to print out an incorrect label.... A junior admin assistant should not be in a position where they even have the clearance to burn copies of such sensitive information, that should really only be in the domains of the senior members of staff or heads of department.. On IT systems you can easily set up password protocols and security levels to keep junior members of staff from being able to access certain systems.. Junior members of staff should all have usernames and passwords which will only give them access to the level of security they need in order to be able to do their jobs, it should not be in the remit of a junior staff member to have such advanced protocols... And even if this guy sent it off by the incorrect posting method, I question the very idea that information such as this should be put through the mail system, it should be couriered in an armoured car.... And the question of who allowed the information to be put onto disks unencrypted is yet to be answered.... In this respect, the system and senior managers and heads of dept are at fault here, NOT some random junior admin bloke.... nonsense.... why shouldnt a person in a 'junior' position be in a position to handle safely a bloody computer disc?... what should he be doing? making the tea? my daughters one year younger then him and has alot of sensetive information at her fingertips... and she works for the government... why not? shes fully trained and competant to do her job as in guessing this 'junior' was too. but yet again, its guessing.. wether the discs were or were not encrypted doesnt alter the fact that this junior appears to have been responsable for breaking protocol, acting independantly, and thus losing the discs.
November 23, 200717 yr .... but when the disc didn't arrive another copy was made and popped in the post! Sounds to me like common practice rather than an error.
November 24, 200717 yr 6 CD's now missing, it just gets better and better :manson: hmmmm and they contain information about complaints regarding child tax credit?
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