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Departmental Disciplinary Proceedings

Volume 490: debated on Monday 23 March 2009

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many staff in his Department have been subject to disciplinary action for breaches of IT security policy in each of the last three years. (263836)

The Department takes data security very seriously and new mandated measures to improve and strengthen controls in the protection of personal data were introduced following the Government’s Review of Data Handling last year. Since the Ministry was established in May 2007, central records show that 19 staff in 2007 and 37 staff in 2008 were subject to disciplinary action for breaches of IT security policy. The types of incidents would have included, but not exclusively, mis-use of e-mail and internet browsing. None of the incidents compromised the integrity of the Department’s IT systems.