An investigation by an accelerated learning provider has revealed that civil servants who have lost massive amounts of data are still failing to meet the government’s minimum standards of data protection training.

The Data Handling Report was published by the government last year that made it mandatory for public sector departments to offer staff at least the basic level of security training. However, many have failed to implement even these minimum requirements. Rob Chapman (pictured), chief executive at Firebrand Training, said that it was “disappointing” that the government was “still failing to demonstrate a commitment to data protection”.

Firebrand Training applied for a freedom of information request from each of the16 government departments. The Home Office didn’t respond at all and the Department of Work and Pensions did not reply within the 20 day period, so was not included in the report but was found to adhere to the mandate.

Findings revealed that five government departments did not comply with the report mandate to offer the minimum training standards. These included the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reforms, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Children, Schools and Families and the Department for Communities and Local Government. 

Also, while the government report states that public sector staff that handle data must have renewed training at least once a year, five departments did not offer refresher training and are not planning put it in place this year. These included The Department for Children, Schools and Families, the Department for International Development, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department of Health and the Ministry of Justice.

Chapman said: “It is disappointing, but not surprising, to learn that the government is still failing to demonstrate a commitment to data protection.

“The education of employees is essential to any organisation’s security; we rely far too heavily on IT departments. It is clear that inadequate training and inconsistency between departments has produced a naivety among government employees.”

Recently there has been a spate of embarrassing data loss incidents involving government employees. In August last year the Home Office lost the details of 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales. The memory stick contained details of their expected release dates, as well as 30,000 people who had six or more convictions along with their names, dates of birth and addresses.
 
Also, this year 5,000 names, addresses, dates of birth, ethnicity and phone numbers of children were lost by a Leeds City Council worker. There were also details about the children’s protection and whether or not their parents’ received state benefits. None of the confidential information had been encrypted or protected by passwords.

Chapman added: “While the implementation of standardised training is encouraging, e-learning is a slower and less effective means of educating employees. Internet misuse is a common course of attack, so the news that it may or may not be included is worrying.

“The government must ensure that it regularly assesses the effectiveness of this training, or risk another 12 months of red-faces and slapped wrists.”

Nick Wells, spokesman, Firebrand Training said: “It is not surprising that these data losses keep occurring for two reasons. We have seen a lot of inefficiencies within government in areas such as project management and IT service delivery.

“Also, this has been approached as if is exclusive to IT departments within government departments, but any employee is capable of leaving a laptop on a train. It doesn’t add up as IT departments only account for a small proportion of staff.

“Classroom learning could be another option instead of e-learning that would be more suitable for this type of training. E-learning only tackles learning by reading the information but does not test that that information has been learnt.

“The reasons for using e-learning are related to cost savings. But, people have to ask themselves if this way of learning is actually losing them [organisations] money by their staff not taking in the knowledge and therefore not applying it.”

Subscribe to TJ news bulletins:

| Subscribe to our L & D RSS Feed

Related News

• Calls for government to clarify skills funding
• Power of adult learning to be extended across care homes
• IT sector to benefit from government skills drive

Related Discussion Topics

• Legislation relevant to recruitment
• Protecting my work
• Legislation relevant to recruitment

Latest News

• Training company scoops apprenticeship award
• Public services suffering due to people management crisis
• Government highlights value of older workers’ skills
• Call for nominations for distance learning awards
• UK organisations waste almost £10bn a year on poor training