Civil servants told to destroy reports on risky IT projects

Tony Collins
Computer Weekly

Treasury officials are ordering the immediate destruction of "Gateway" internal reports into risky government IT schemes to prevent information on the projects being leaked.

Their action, a response to the Freedom of Information Act, comes even though the Treasury's Office of Government Commerce (OGC) has lost two appeals to keep Gateway reports secret. Managed by the OGC, Gateway reviews are independent assessments of high and medium-risk IT-based and other projects at various stages in their lifecycle: projects such as the £5.3bn ID cards scheme and the NHS’s £12.4bn National Programme for IT.
...
The OGC paper on the Gateway review, seen by Computer Weekly, tells its teams, “You must securely dispose of the [final Gateway] report and all supporting documents immediately after delivery of the final report - which should be no later than seven days after the review."

Read the full story