Personal info of Victorians put at risk by Brumby gov’t incompetence

The incompetence, bungling and mismanagement of the Brumby Government is exposing Victorians to the misuse of their personal information, identity theft and fraud, a new report by the Auditor-General has revealed.

“The Auditor-General has found that the Brumby Government’s incompetence is leaving the personal information of Victorians dangerously exposed,” Shadow Attorney-General Robert Clark said today.

“Victorian families cannot trust the Brumby Government to protect their personal information from identity thieves and fraudsters,” Mr Clark said.

“In one alarming example identified by the Auditor-General, actual personal information was used by three departments when conducting systems development and testing.

The Portfolio Departments: Interim Results of the 2009-10 Audits report found that departments have poor IT system security controls over passwords and remote access and limited monitoring of the integrity of security systems, increasing the risk of unauthorised access.

The Auditor-General stated that the Brumby Government must protect the confidentiality and integrity of personal information in their IT systems and restrict access to information to those people who need it to perform their duties.

The Auditor-General has also found widespread failures in recording and managing conflicts of interest within government departments, with departments failing to take a systematic approach to recording and managing declarations of interest, failing to have consolidated conflicts of interest policies and/or failing to require actions to manage conflicts or provide consequences for non-compliance.

“This report further exposes the astonishing mismanagement and incompetence of the Brumby Government and shows it does not care about conflicts of interest,” Mr Clark, said.

“Years after the flaws and abuses of the police LEAP database were revealed, John Brumby and his incompetent government have failed to put in place the basic measures needed to protect the personal information of Victorians.

“Of course, it is little wonder that conflicts of interest are so prevalent throughout the public service when the Brumby Government leads the way with scandals such as the Windsor Hotel abuse of planning procedures for political purposes,” Mr Clark said.