Government's data management practices are badly broken

I've written in the last little while about how we need to put the government under the same level of scrutiny that has been given to the private sector, especially in light of the nature of the relationship citizens have with the government. It's nice to see others share that view.

Tyler Morgenstern has a guest blog over at OpenMedia.ca that's well worth reading: What the media is missing: Government privacy breaches | OpenMedia.ca:

... Over the past several months, we’ve seen time and again that this government’s data management practices are badly broken. Yet it continues to pursue a policy agenda that erodes legislated privacy protections at every turn, opening up new deficiencies and vulnerabilities.

This mismatch between privacy-invasive policies and privacy-deficient practices puts all Canadians at risk of fraud, identity theft, and other privacy-related crimes. As Jesse Brown recently pointed out in a series of blog posts for Maclean’s, what the Canadian government needs isn’t necessarily more information; it’s better, more secure, and more accountable ways of managing the information they already have.[11]

We’re long overdue for a serious discussion about what kind of solutions should be in play across government. And even more importantly, we need to think long and hard about what kind of policies, regulations, best practices, and accountability mechanisms are needed to ensure that those solutions put the privacy of Canadians first.