Fears as Gloucester City Council accounts monitoring outsourced to India
Sensitive council data is being sent to India sparking fears of a global security breach.
Councillors have called for assurances that Gloucester City Council accounting data being sent to auditors in India will not lead to a disastrous leak of information.
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Auditor KPMG outsourcing some jobs to India
Tardy accounts with a string of errors were filed to auditors KPMG months late.
The firm is charging the council £139,000 to monitor the next set of accounts – costing taxpayers £55,000 more than they needed to pay out.
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But they admitted that they use workers in India as a cost-cutting exercise.
Councillor Fred Wood (C, Quedgeley Fieldcourt) said: "People are going to come and ask 'what about our data'. I don't have an issue with it but we need to have a defence against this."
KPMG bosses allayed fears at the city council's audit committee on Monday night.
Darren Gilbert, director at KPMG, said: "We use a team in India to do some basic checks. It is one of those things that make audit process as cost effective as possible.
"It is more secure than our UK teams. It is absolute lock down when it comes to the information. They use secure UK based servers."
The extra costs footed because of the city council's late filing of its accounts has also been criticised.
Robert Oxley, of the TaxPayers' Alliance said: "It's appalling that the council have squandered so much taxpayers' money by failing to keep its records in order.
"This costly delay is not only entirely avoidable, it is also deeply damaging."
5 Comments
by GlosAnarchy
Tuesday, March 19 2013, 11:20PM
“Hang on here, where or where not the accounts put forward by the auditors as being correct and then the same "BANKERS" said they where not correct? Should the company that carried out the original audit pay any costs that the public are now expected to pay!”
by maurice1941
Tuesday, March 19 2013, 6:58PM
“They have the check to tell us about cutbacks i bet they make sure they get expenses where is Paul James he is soon in the citizen when a shop opens in town you just could not make it up ,its ok just sweep it under the carpet”
by RoadWombat
Tuesday, March 19 2013, 6:40PM
“Fred Wood says "We need to have a defence against this..."
What the council has done is indefensible, namely being so careless with money that is not theirs, that they incur £55,000 in costs more than they needed to.”
by SandraPee
Tuesday, March 19 2013, 5:16PM
“How can it be more secure than their uk teams ? It doesn't say much for KPMG's uk offices then to have to send it to their Offices in India .......assuming it is one of their own offices !”
by lordigaga
Tuesday, March 19 2013, 5:13PM
“you couldn't make it up!”