Data breach affects 25 million Britons: UK chancellor Alistair Darling is under intense pressure following the loss of personal data pertaining to 25 million Britons. On Tuesday, Darling told the House of Commons that two computer discs containing the personal details of all UK families who are claiming child benefit went missing from HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs) in October. The discs, which were not encrypted but only password protected, contained information including names, addresses, dates of birth, national insurance numbers and bank and building society account details. The discs were lost in transit as they were couriered from the HMRC to the National Audit Office under the instructions of a junior official. Darling said HMRC had not followed procedures for data transit and described the matter as an "extremely serious failure". HMRC chairman Paul Gray has resigned over the matter, and Opposition parties are questioning Darling's competence as chancellor of the Exchequer. The police are now searching for the discs; so far there has been no evidence of fraudulent or criminal activity.
Irish civil servants call for promotion of e-gov: More than 90 percent of senior public servants in Ireland believe that IT initiatives have made it easier for the public to get in touch with the Government in the last two years, and nearly 82 percent said that the introduction of new technology had made them more efficient at work. That's according to a survey of 42 senior public servants commissioned by the Irish eGovernment Awards and carried out by web strategy firm Elucidate. The civil servants cited the greatest benefits from investment in e-government as improved customer services (85.4 percent), faster access to information (61 percent) and increased productivity (41.5 percent). Meanwhile, over 63 percent said that not enough was being done to promote the use of e-government services, and 100 percent agreed that incentives should be provided to encourage the public to use online services, for example, extra time to fill in a tax return if completed online. "A big drive towards e-government could deliver a double whammy of being self-financing while giving the taxpayer an improved service," said Maeve Kneafsey, MD of Elucidate. "One final figure that is telling is that over two-thirds of the respondents said that driving people to use online services was their number one priority but almost the same number said they needed more resources to publicise the services."
Online tax filing proves popular among Irish: More than a quarter of a million Irish people filed their tax returns electronically this year through the Revenue Online Service (ROS). By midnight on 15 November, the tax deadline for electronic filers, a total of 279,020 income tax returns were filed, up 14 percent on last year. A record number of returns were successfully filed on the last day when 37,000 people logged on to send in their returns online. The number of customers choosing to pay their tax online was also up 14 percent to 99,000 payments. This compares to 86,000 payments made a year ago. The total payment of tax via the web for this year is estimated to be over EUR2.28 billion, up from EUR2.2 billion last year and EUR1.4 billion in 2005. For more on this story see ENN.
NI launches shared services project: Northern Ireland has embarked on an STG800 million programme to consolidate IT systems across its government departments, reports Computerweekly.com. A wide range of integration projects is involved in the initiative, including the merger of at least 10 data centres and the creation of a single network for all 11 government departments. The Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) has signed a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement for desktop software worth STG1.5 million a year over three years, and it is in talks with Oracle for back-office functions. Departmental data centres will be replaced by two BT data centres in Belfast, and a single finance system will centralise accounting transactions across all departments. There will also be a central IT helpdesk and a human resources shared services centre, which will be outsourced to Fujitsu. The NICS expects to make major cost savings from the project, which may pave the way for other areas of the UK public sector to follow suit.
Obama unveils e-gov plans: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has outlined his e-government strategy, saying that he would use technology to increase government transparency, reports GovernmentExecutive.com. "We will put government data online in universally accessible formats, [allowing citizens to] track federal grants, contracts, earmarks and lobbying contracts; participate in government forums; ask questions in real time; offer suggestions that will be reviewed before decisions are made; and comment on legislation before it is signed," said Obama in a speech made at Google headquarters last week. Rule-making agencies would be required to debate issues live online and invite public response, while non-emergency legislation would be posted on the White House website, where people could comment on it for five days before it was signed into law. New technologies such as blogs, wikis and social networking tools would also be used to improve internal, cross-agency, and public communications and information sharing, according to Obama's plan. For its part, the Bush administration said such plans would merely build on initiatives that are already under way.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Sylvia Leatham
Quelle/Source: ElectricNews, 22.11.2007
