Document Management News

The Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has been accused of a "cover up" after two back-up tapes went missing containing the banking details of around 100,000 farmers.

The tapes are said to have gone missing this spring, with Defra officials having been informed in July. The tapes were lost by contractor IBM, after sending them from a site in Reading to Newcastle. The information on the missing tapes related to cash top-up payments to farmers through the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), a Defra body.

The RPA itself was only informed about the loss in September. It is reported a meeting between Defra officials in early October concluded there was "little risk" to farmers as a result of the tapes going missing. It was therefore decided not to report the matter publicly.

Whistleblowers in Defra though then reported the matter to Farmers Weekly magazine, who splashed the data loss late last week. Defra says government ministers running the department were not informed of the data loss until just before the loss became public.

The Conservative opposition now says it smells a cover up. Shadow Defra spokesman Nick Herbert said the failure of officials to inform ministers or the public "looked increasingly like a cover up".

He also accused ministers of "deliberate stalling" this week in publishing a report into the matter and answering specific questions he had tabled.

Because of the delay in the data loss coming to light, the Information Commissioner may now consider starting an investigation into the loss, if he disagrees with Defra's risk analysis of the lost data.

Ian Kilpatrick, chairman of IT security specialist Wick Hill, said, "This sorry story clearly illustrates the problem of using tape as a medium for backing-up confidential data. Tape is very vulnerable to human error. It has to be taken off site and stored, which leads to potential loss and damage.

"Human error is the most common cause of difficulties with tape back-up, while failure of the tape itself is another frequent problem."

The government is still trying to re-assure the public over its data protection abilities after the lost HMRC data disk debacle in 2007, which saw details of 25m parents lost on two data disks. There has been a string of smaller government data loss incidents since then.