The UK's Latest Data Disaster

Is there no end to the U.K. government's storage snafus? Still smarting from the loss of two disks containing information on some 25 million people, Prime Minister Gordon Brown now has yet another data crisis on his hands.

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the U.K.'s equivalent of the IRS, is again in hot water, following the loss of a data cartridge containing personal information on 6,500 customers of a pension company.

The cartridge was lost at an HMRC office in Cardiff, according to media reports, and is the latest in a string of embarrassing storage incidents for the U.K. government.

Other agencies hitting the headlines for the wrong reasons over the last few weeks include the Driving Standards Agency and the Driver & Vehicle Agency (DVA) in Northern Ireland, which recently lost disks containing personal information on 6,000 drivers.

Presumably "new government officials" ranks high on Prime Minister Brown's letter to Santa this year.Happy Christmas, Prime Minister! Here's to a snafu-free 2008.