By Nick Heath, 4 April 2008 12:08
NEWS
The government ban on the movement of encrypted data triggered a performance slump at the UK's driving safety agency and forced it to temporarily revert from electronic to paper-based processes.
The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (Vosa) saw its "enforcement performance" fall away by 20 per cent after the ban was introduced in January.
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The ban on removal of laptops and portable devices with unencrypted personal data was introduced across all government departments in the wake of a string of high profile data losses, including the loss of 600,000 personnel details by the Ministry of Defence and the loss of the details of 25 million people by Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs.
Vosa is the government agency that provides a range of licensing, testing and enforcement services to improve roadworthiness standards and compliance with road traffic laws.
Transport minister Jim Fitzpatrick told Parliament in a written answer: "The agency minimised the impact on its enforcement activities through increased use of encrypted mobile compliance devices, laptops with printing function disabled, and temporary paper-based enforcement processes."
Fitzpatrick said Vosa had completed the deployment of encrypted operations laptops on 11 March.
Figures recently emerged which revealed government departments have lost more than 1,000 laptops.
Comments
There are 2 comments. Join the discussion
1. Chris Goodman
Government Departments do NOT lose laptops - this is a fallacy. The laptops are lost by public employees who have been entrusted with taxpayer funded laptops.
There would be a dramatic drop in lost laptops if the entrusted individual was required as a condition of employment to fund the replacement.
2. anonymous
In response to the comment above 'Government Departments do not lose laptops', the losses HAVE happened, and have been widely and reliably documented.
The status of the individual employee or contractor who had the laptop at the time is irrelevant. The data contained is the responsibility of the Govt Dept concerned and they should take steps to protect it.
In any case I seriously doubt that of the 1000 Govt laptops lost since 2001 (see previous article),none of these were lost by directly employed Government employees.