HMRC admits to losing two discs, 25 million accounts

The Editor, 5 months ago

The furore surrounding last week's announcement that Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has lost child benefit records looks likely to drag on for weeks to come - and have a profound effect on the way that organisations in both the public and private sectors consider the thorny issue of data protection. In a speech to the House of Commons, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling announced that a police investigation is underway into how two discs, containing records for 25 million people and relating to child benefit payments for 7.25 million families got lost in the HMRC's own postal system....

Are we all guilty of buying technology Turkey Twizzlers?

Christopher Gabriel, 5 months ago

We are a strange bunch us humans.  Once a week we visit the supermarket, make straight for the frozen food section and destroy a highly efficient supply chain. The product is there because of a super efficient supply chain; grown, shipped to a factory, processed, packaged, flash frozen, stored, distributed in refrigerated lorries, warehoused in stock rooms, and finally retailed in shop floor chest freezers.We, the consumer then buy them, drive them home in our cars and store them in our own freezers, just on the off chance that in the next 3 months we will decide that this brownish...

It’s budget time....

The Editor, 5 months ago

Working out the IT budget for the coming year is a task that few IT directors and CIOs look forward to with relish. How much cash should be allocated to simply keeping existing systems up and running, and how much should be ploughed into new strategic initiatives like virtualisation and service-oriented architecture (SOA) projects? At a time of continued economic uncertainty, that task is harder than ever - which is why analysts at IT market research companies are advising IT departments to create two budgets for 2008. The first, they say, should reflect the guidance already provided by senior decision-makers,...