ICO: Council Mix-up Breached Data Protection Act

The Information Commissioner’s Office has ruled that a recent mix-up at York Council caused a breach in the data protection act.

York Council has been under ICO investigation after accidentally sending personal information to a third party. The error is said to have occurred when an office employee gathered the information from a shared printer without checking if it was relevant to his or her case and sent it off to an outside party.

ITPortalPro reports that the York Council was this week reprimanded by ICO for not being more careful.

“This case highlights the need for employees to take responsibility and ownership of tasks that involve handling personal data. If the documents had not been left unattended by the printer and had been carefully checked before they were sent out then this situation could easily have been avoided,” Sally-Anne Poole, the acting head of enforcement at the ICO, is cited as saying in a statement.

York Council has said going forward it will refrain from printing personal information unless it’s absolutely necessary. Additionally, employees will have to be more vigilant about quality control checks prior to the distribution of information.