Senior civil servants have defended thegovernment's record on personal dataat a conference in Westminster this week (1 February),
saying they could not guarantee that losses will not happen in the
future.
John Suffolk, government chief information officer, said "checks
and balances" need to be built into their information systems to
ensure those with legitimate access to data do not misuse it. He
said if something does go wrong, the government would have to rely
on audit trails to lead them to the problem.
"If people are given the right training when they are employed
here, there is an element of trust. If people do have legitimate
access and do bad things, it is very hard to stop that. It comes
down to checks and balances.
"We do need
audit trails so we can see who has accessed the information.
And we need to wait for the outcome of the various reports being
carried out at the moment and get in any recommendations as quickly
as we can. But you are not going to stop people doing the wrong
things."
Debbie Ellis, head of shared services at the Department for
Transport, said, "We need to clearly specify the roles of staff who
handle data.
"In every government office there are papers lying around all
over the place. They have similar types of data on them - the IT
environment is far more secure than what we have had before. But we
must take responsibility at a very operational level and manage
security."
She said that people need to be realistic. "Guaranteeing there
will not ever be losses is not going to happen."