Saturday, December 24, 2011

Sharing information and sharing information

This put a smile on my face.

Some WINZ staff have been sacked for selling client information to debt collectors.

The official response from WINZ goes:

''Work and Income has zero tolerance for staff who breach the privacy of clients. Our Integrity Unit regularly conducts random checks of our systems, to detect such breaches.''

Properly righteous and indignant.

But WINZ is also seeking to share as much client information with other government departments as possible under the Privacy (Information Sharing) Bill. As long as the sharing is kept amongst state agencies it is OK.

No, it is not acceptable for staff to sell information to private agencies. But shouldn't there be provision for those agencies to access information on people who have run up debts or committed fraud? Afterall it's alright for the IRD to do it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know of MSD staff ( WINZ and CYF, Winz Fraud Unit ) case managers that generte false information on clients, which is even worse.

Anonymous said...

Cyf's have been filing false affidavits with the NZ courts for years

www.investigatemagazine.com/pdf's/jun38to77.pdf