Heavy stuff to reflect on especially when most of us have just enjoyed four days off work. Now, I don’t claim to be an expert on the freedom of information act but since the bill was passed in November 2000 and came into force in January 2005, I do know that companies have been more conscious of how they store information and individuals have become more conscious of who holds information on them and the kind of information that they have. The FOI act works in conjunction with the Data Protection Act which states that if you handle personal information about individuals, you have a number of legal obligations to protect that information.
Storing information in an unstructured manner is fraught with problems when it comes to the FOI and data protection legislation. Who can remember the case, in Nov 2007 when 25m child benefit records were lost in the post? The records contained the names, addresses, dates of birth and National Insurance numbers of the entire HMRC child benefit database, which also included the bank account details of more than seven million parents, guardians and carers. And of course there have been other instances; top secret files being left on trains, laptops being stolen from the back seat of government minister’s cars. It beggars belief with the technology we have today that companies, including central government, have not thought of a more effective way of handling the sensitive data that they are entrusted with
Whilst there are still elements of risk with an online document management system, the risks are considerably less than sharing information on CD as discussed earlier. Tracking who accessed what and when, identifying what changes or updates were made to a specific document and who made those changes makes people and in turn companies more responsible for the personal information that they hold and helps them to comply with the outlined principles of the FOI and data protection acts.
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