The public have more sense than politicians.
And for all the newspaper furore about the possible loss of some basic pretty data on 25 million people by HM Revenue & Customs I note that Accountancy Age reports:
The phone lines at HM Revenue & Customs were only a little busier than normal today, a spokesman said, as the expected deluge of calls about HMRC's loss of 25 million people's personal data failed to materialise.
'Callers to the helpline may have to wait a little longer for a reply, but we still have surplus capacity to answer calls,' an HMRC spokesman said.
Quite. The data loss dimension of this story is about as big as "Man bit dog".
Now let's talk about HM Revenue & Customs staffing. That's the real deal here. Good public services require and demand sufficient well paid, high quality, appropriately trained staff to supply them. Those who are now complaining are precisely those who want to deny the public sector the resources it needs to deliver the absolutely fundamental services it supplies that make this country work.
So let me be quite emphatic about this: they can't have it both ways.
I sincerely hope someone in the government has the gumption to say so.
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“Well paid… highly trained staff”.
Absolutely. To coin a phrase, if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.
The customer service systems at the Revenue, and in plenty of other organisations, need sharpening up so that taxpayers know:
1) They can ask to speak to a certain individual, and
2) That individual will be able to help them.
Otherwise there’s a severe temptation to phone up and ask, “Can I speak to somebody intelligent, please?”
M
Surely the person (junior or senior?) who had access to this data and had the ability to download it onto the discs (or more lilkely dats sticks) is guiltty of gross incompetence and should be sacked forthwith.
It’s hard to imagine anything more justifying of the term ‘gross incompetence’. But I haven’t seen any suggestion that they will be sacked. And if such an incompetent person hasn’t been sacked what does that tell us about others within HMRC? How many other incompetents haven’t been sacked?
And if the delay or concern is down to employment law then what does this tell us about the strait jacket that this imposes on employers who should be able to sack staff for gross incompetence.
Hi Mark,
The individual who downloaded the data may well be guilty of gross incompetence.
But I’d also argue there’s a large hole in the Revenue’s authorisation and checking procedures if a junior member of staff could action the download of such sensitive data without an automatic security stop kicking in on their computer – and could then ship it without authorisation from a senior manager.
When I was an employee in practice sending letters to clients, they all had to be read and approved by a partner before they were allowed to go out – and I wasn’t a junior.
Will the question “why did you do that” be asked of the junior in the case?
And will the question “how was this allowed to happen” be asked of the management team?
M
Mark,
Without wishing to downplay the seriousness of any loss of data, but the key words in your post would seem to be “It’s hard to imagine…” and “But I haven’t seen any suggestion..”. Frankly, none of us should see, and without seeing, all we can do is imagine, details of HMRC’s relationships with its individual employees. Would any of us like members of the public, who we’ve never met calling us incompetant and demanding we be sacked?
And if employment law means people can’t be sacked on the spot without a chance to defend themselves, I think it’s a “strait jacket” we should accept. After all, murderers (and tax fraudsters) all get a fair hearing – shouldn’t employees as well?
There’s an interesting piece on Accounting Web today – http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=175186&d=1032&h=1022&f=1026 – how many companies and individuals can honestly say their data is secure?
I don’t see what this controversy has to do with staffing and resources. The official concerned didn’t follow the procedures for data handling. End of story. That fact doesn’t change regardless of whether HMRC has a staff of one or 1 million.
Thanks for serious comments here by all involved.
I do think Mark is wrong – that I know of the only reason for instant dismissal arise when people are at danger. I have done that. Otherwise you suspend and investigate. That is natural justice. And quite right too.
If the person was at fault I suspect they should pay with their job. But other evidence is emerging that they may have been authorised to do this. If that is the case, are they to blame for making the mistake?
Even if they are, let’s be clear, it probably was a mistake. And Gareth is quite right – almost all those complaining will probably work to lower standards. For example my portable computer is password controlled. That is all. Is that good enough? Maybe not. And the comment on AccountingWEB regarding control of physical files is illuminating – these do go astray in professional firms. I remember a whole audit being repeated once 20 odd years ago for that reason. That was not in my firm, but I knew the manager who had to redo it.
So let’s be realistic. This data loss was a mistake. A big one, but an error. The question is whether it was an individual error of incompetence or recklessness, or a systemic one because the wrong person was doing the wrong job with the wrong training. The latter is a complex issue, and Ralph’s approach is too glib to handle the complexity of systemic failure.
Those who ask whether the issue arises from staff cuts, reorganisation and resulting low morale are asking an appropriate systemic question. It cannot be pinned on an individual alone if such failure has happened, and the profession as a whole has seen evidence that it has.
I’m not defending the mistake. But lessons aren’t learned in most cases when simple or glib solutions are sought. The world is not like that.
Richard
The complexity of systematic failure becomes easier to understand when you realise that over the years internal HMRC ‘loose cannons’ have been allowed to proliferate alongside a few public sector miscreants. The purposeful sending out of personal information to the ‘wrong people’ is pure public sector malevolence. If these HMRC staff are caught, the routine is to hide these corruptors behind the Data Protection Act, thus saving the HMRC from further embarassement. Alan
I presume thet your comment is deliberately offensive Alan.
To suggest that there is a pattern of HMRC staff purposefully sending data to the wrong people is absurd.
Richard