Technically Inept Government

Three more horror stories of Government incompetence vis a vis the implementation of IT policies and procedures. The first two follow on nicely from the apparent determination of the Government's agencies and representatives to give away personal information, while the third just sums up the corporate stupidity of a Government clueless about IT.

First up, the good people of the DVLA (Driver Vehicle Licensing Authority for the non-UK based amongst you) have managed to lose the details of 6000 people from Northern Ireland by using the traditional method of posting them on unencrypted CDs. No financial information was included, fortunately.

Which is more than can be said of the information on several thousand employees sent by Sefton Primary Care Trust to several un-named companies. National Insurance (like Social Security if you're American) numbers and salary details were "mistakenly" sent to the companies who are bidding for work with the "Trust".

My personal favourite though has to be this story from The Register about the Government's recent announcement that the UK should push it's ICT sector to the world. There was the usual press launch, with the announcement the website would be up and running shortly. One small problem, the Government's ICT team hadn't actually registered the domain name prior to the press launch. So The Register have the domain name. Genius.