It is said: To err is human but to really fuck things up you need a computer.

Well Bodger and Badger certainly turned that maxim on its head this week. Turns out that to really fuck things up you just rearrange government departments and employ people to test the internal security processes to the limit.

Questions really have to be asked not only regarding the cumbersome and obviously not fit for purpose database installed at exorbitant cost to the taxpayer. Money which lines the pockets of the government's favourite IT providers (Electronic Disaster Systems, Crapita and a whole host of  incompetents that couldn't put an airfix kit together let alone a computer system).

The questions are quite simple really.

One. Why didn't the lazy bastard at the NAO get of his fat arse and go to fucking Newcastle and see for himself what records are held and how they are stored?

Two. Why did they need all 25m data records? Even I know that to check data effectively a sample (for which the formula square root of n plus one can be applied. So the NAO really only needed to check 5001 records)

Three. Why was it deemed to bloody difficult to extract the data sans sensitive information like banking details and NI number? A simple SQL Select statement could do that.

Four. Why was the data file not encrypted. Fuck's sake it's not hard. A simple Google search will yield  a myriad of freeware PGP apps that can be downloaded and used to create an encryption key. Then again  this is HMRC who probably have a bunch of paranoid little jobsworths ensuring that access to the  interweb is strictly for looking at other govt websites and woe betide the drone who even types the word Google into the address bar.

I certainly don't believe, as Bodger and Badger do that this decision was taken by a low level  employee. "Wyaye mon, doon't wurry. Ah'll chuck it on a disk and send in the poost lake". No fucking way! Some management drone told johnny fuckwit to do it. Pure and simple. A least the top man had the good grace to resign, unlike a whole host of fucker uppers before him and apparently johnny fuckwit has resigned also.

It kind of reminds me of my own "fall from grace" at the comedy store I used to work for. A marketing outfit run by two clowns similar in competence to Bodger and Badger. It wasn't lost data that caused the hoo hah, just complete lack of planning. A new dbase tool was installed on the Monday and by  Tuesday yours truly had to run a data comparison to extract 3 million email addresses from a large supermarket's marketing database to ensure that the unsubscribes didn't receive the Christmas missive. 
Needless to say I fucked it up completely through lack of competence on my part - I'll admit that but a few minutes training was hardly sufficient to competently complete the given task. The results provided  by said dbase tool looked to be credible and a large chunk of data was removed. However, through a criteria selection error (which was checked by one of the clowns) at leastseveral hundred thousand records  weren't. One bloke complained to the Data Commissioner who rapped the supermarket over the knuckles. I  did the honourable thing and resigned. Irony was that my dev team had resigned the previous week leaving comedy store well and truly fucked. The two clowns-in-chief were (and probably still are) cunts anyway so no skin off my nose. A week later I took up my current contract position and haven't looked back.

So, I do know first hand how these complete balls ups can be made. It's easily done and comes down to some tosser who knows jack about anything remotely computer related, and probably has trouble with light switches, putting pressure on the drones to get the job done. You can just see the grey suited wanker jumping up and down telling poor jonny fuckwit he'd better do it sharpish, or else. So that's what you do - the most expedient thing and then it package is given to dolly dimples to send to the NAO. And what does dolly do? The same thing she always does, sticks it in the internal mail. Instead of looking in government offices for the lost disks, the police would do better looking under the van driver's seat. Because pound to a penny I bet that's where it is.