Personal details accidentally published by council
Admin staff accidentally published the personal details of top-ranking council officials.
A list of 30 officers, which contained their payroll number, wage, home address and age, was available on Cheltenham Borough Council’s intranet system overnight before workers spotted the mistake.
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Cheltenham Borough Council offices
Details of the slip up were revealed following an Echo Freedom of Information request.
Amanda Attfield, assistant director for human resources, said the incident was not as serious as it might appear.
“The information was accidentally released internally only,” she said.
“It happened at the very end of the working day and was taken offline at the start of the following working day, so while it was there overnight, very few employees had access to it.
“It is worth bearing in mind that many of our jobs are not office based, so we have fewer PC users than employees in total.
“When you look at all this together, this accidental release of information was far less serious than it might have been.”
The blunder, which happened in April last year, involved two lists dealing with council staff’s job evaluation scores.
The figures help to determine salary levels for the council’s employees.
When the list was published on the intranet, a second spreadsheet containing the private details of the officers, council directors, assistant directors and the chief executive was mistakenly attached to it.
It is the first accidental release of confidential information recorded by the council in the last six years.
In March 2009, a similar FOI inquiry by the Echo found no other councils in Gloucestershire had accidentally released data since 2004.
Ms Attfield said the blunder had prompted a review and there was no chance of it being repeated.
She said: “We take our responsibilities for data security very seriously, and have policies in place to help us do that.
“We aim to learn lessons from anything that does occur.
“We investigated this incident thoroughly, as an internal matter, and have set in place steps to help ensure it won’t happen again.”
6 Comments
by Clare, Cheltenham
Saturday, January 16 2010, 3:26PM
“I don't think Celtenham is as transparent as you think - what is clear is that any outside contact and good ideas are considered to be mere public interference that CBC spends more time batting out of the way so they can carry on with their own blinkered plans.
We alreay know the new chief Exec is earning over £100,000 pa but we've still got mess and rubbish over the place and he can't even get gardening and highways to talk to eachother so they when grass gets cut the exposed rubbish gets collected at the same time.
So what do we really get for our money??
First and foremost we want a nice clean and safe town - no more no less. Get some of the basics right first time and then cbc would have universal support for really caring about the local 'realm'
ALL CBC staff should be the eyes and ears of the town - I can't belive that hundreds of cbc staff travel into town every day and are so satisfied with the environment and their journeys that they are not actively out their , reporting and making everything better to keep the place safe and clean.
Until that happens - then you will just continue to get a bunch of administrators doing the wrong jobs and sitting in offices making mistakes.
funny how hr think its no big deal - I bet they wouldnt say that if it was someone elses dept.
If CBC staff are waiting for mistakes to happen before they secure their sytems, then they are acting far too late - again.
As you can gather - im not a fan of cbc and until they can prove they can get the basics right they shouldn't be allowed out to play.
Its 2010 - time for change, less waste and no more consultancy fees to change names and door signs.”
by George, Chelt
Saturday, January 16 2010, 2:30PM
“Are you sure this was done accidentally?”
by John, Cheltenham
Saturday, January 16 2010, 12:35PM
“Interesting debate.
Councils are accountable through the ballot box, unlike many government quangos, yet only a minority of the electorate bother to vote - complacency, or are most people actually satisfied with the services received?
The Council does produce stacks of information (is that really what we want?), but most people don't respond to consultation about proposed spending and a minority moan but don't actually engage in the difficult decisions which need to be made.
For example, tt makes you laugh when people complain about the lack of preparations for cold weather, but then expect the government or local authorities to do more without any increase in taxes - for a once in 30 year event.
It's called cake and eat it.
We really need more community responsibility and less public spending, but will there be a vote for it?
If you want to know how your Council is doing, they're also independently audited by the Audit Commission (Cheltenham is judged to be good) - but this costs us yet more money - do we really need that if our elected representatives are doing their job?”
by Wayne, Gloucester
Saturday, January 16 2010, 11:04AM
“Mike Redman,
What taxpayers want to know is what value they get for their money and perhaps councils should be a lot more open and publish the information then no FOI requests would need to be made and therefore no wasted time and money. I do like the spin at the end though, as I am sure your colleagues would love to know how much some of the executives are really being paid.
The public sector needs to be a lot more accountable for the huge sums they get in these hard times and it needs to be a lot more transparent.”
by Mike Redman, Cheltenham
Saturday, January 16 2010, 9:57AM
“As one of the Council's Assistant Directors, I have no concerns about all staff knowing what senior managers are paid and I'm sure any that are interested would have no trouble getting that information if it isn't already published - which no doubt it is somewhere.
The Council is actually an extraordinarily transparent organisation, which is subject to accountability to politicians and regular enquiries for information which invariably get a detailed response, whether or not the freedom of information act is mentioned.
What council taxpayers need to understand is that there is a cost to answering freedom of information requests and it takes staff away from doing more useful things.
The council workers I know are far more interested in delivering quality services than worrying about what their colleagues are being paid.”
by Michael, Gloucester
Saturday, January 16 2010, 8:32AM
“Shouldn't staff know how much their managers are paid?
OK, home addresses and stuff like that shouldn't be public, or available to all staff, but isn't it a good idea for staff to know what their colleagues and managers are paid?
Isn't this what is referred to as transparency?”