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Ohio Official Docked Vacation Time For Stolen Tape
Lucas123 writes "The missing tape, stolen from an intern's car, contained data on all 64,467 state employees, 19,388 former employees and 47,245 Ohio taxpayers. The state believes the incident will cost them $3 million. So after four months of deliberation, the Ohio Department of Administrative Services
announced today that they decided to take a week's vacation away from Jerry Miller, their payroll team leader and the guy in charge of the missing data."
Imagine what would have happened to him if he'd been busted sharing a couple of dozen copyrighted songs online. Probably would've had his sick-leave cancelled too.
Take away 1 week of vacation time?
If I screw up that bad at my work, I'd be facing a discharge...
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would feel a bit differently if they are one of those who will get victimized (ID theft for one) as a consequence of this slip up. It may yet happen.
Tired and stressed people make more mistakes. Without vacation he will make more mistakes.
But of course, it's all about the revenge. Water droplets? Arm/leg twister? Acid (.. music)? Tazers! It sure will help with the lost records!
From personal experience, trying to do more work and cut off your vacation is the most sure-fire way to bring your work quality and productivity down.
Are they trying to set him up to lose another tape?
I wonder how much those four months of deliberation cost them. All that work just for some petty punishment. (of course you yanks only get like six days of paid vacation a year, so maybe it's harsher from your perspective, lol.)
Also, it's evident it wasn't 100% on him. The data was stolen from an intern's car. He bears the indirect culpability of not encrypting it, not backing it, trusting the intern, whatever. It's natural to feel that "heads should roll" but why should the onus of all this fall necessarily on him? (Well, maybe it all should--I'm just going off the blurb in the summary.)
On the other side of it, a week's vacation time is ridiculous, whether or not he's at fault. If he is, well, there should be a real punishment. If he's not, it's fairly idiotic to slap him around just for the show of doing so.
And how much did the four-month long investigation cost? If it was more than a week of this guy's vacation time... yeah, well, that was another win for the taxpayers, wasn't it?
The way it should have worked is that there should have been a clearly defined set of rules, a clearly defined set of responsibilities, and a clearly defined set of repercussions. When employee X neglected responsibility Y, he should have already been aware that Z would be the punishment, and Z should have been what happened immediately afterward. You might need a four month investigation to find the harddrive thief, but you shouldn't need more than a week to handle violations of internal policies.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
From my experience people who do grossly inappropriate things get usually kicked out of the company. If these two get just this minor punishment it might be because the organization did not have clear enough policies and procedures for storing and handling the data. If there are no rules or employees do not know them, people can not be held accountable for any wrongdoing. If this is the case, even this vacation time punishment is too severe.
On the other hand, maybe the organization subscribes to the principle of giving people a second chance.
The guy made a mistake. We don't know him or the situation. He may be otherwise great at his job.
What's all this crap about his punishment should match the cost of the mistake rubbish?
If a doctor makes a mistake and a patient dies, do we kill the doctor?
Yes, very true, indeed. Americans pay more tax - as measured in days of labor - than almost any other nation on the planet. A significant portion of this tax goes to 'Keeping the world safe from '.
Remember that the next time some Western European slags off the Yanks within earshot. They paid for the reconstruction of most of the Western European economies after WWII, and footed the bill for keeping the Soviets out during the Cold War.
This same thing happened in Japan, don't forget.
So, when they do get their f*&#ing measly 10 days of annual vacation, they certainly don't want to spend at least two of them traveling to/from a foreign country, only to be insulted for their selflessness. I agree it's sad that Americans simply don't travel as much as many other nations do, and yes, this certainly is a significant cause of American ignorance of the rest of the world. Unfortunately, it is simply not the fault of the 'average' American that this is the case.
I recieved one of those lovely "We lost your data" letters ... 2 months after the incident. So, as one of the individuals who was personally impacted by this, I'd like to say a few things:
1) Their IT staff is incompetent. In my department, we ship over 50TB a week to our DR facility in England. We have had instances where tapes were lost in transit (thanks FedEx!) but the data was encrypted. No harm, no foul. That being said, their idea of sending tapes offsite was to put it in the back of an intern's car. GENIUS!
2) This petty hand-slaping is absurd. Yes, I want the idiot fired and replaced by someone who gives a damn about data management, security, and data classification.
3) 2 months to contact people who were on the tapes?! FFS!
4) Their incident handling in the media was that the criminals would need "specialized knowledge and tools" to extract the information. It says what kind of tape it is right on the case! That, and a little Google go a long way. Stop feeding the public a line of BS and own up to the fact that it's really not that hard to get the data off the tape.
There are others, but those are the ones that are pissing me off at the moment.
On some levels, but it depends entirely on a) the degree of the negligence and b) whether the negligence crosses over into criminal law. For instance, a bus driver runs over a pedestrian - he's still responsible for culpable driving - the worst the company is responsible for is him not being trained properly. (Actually, that would be his license issuer, and only if you could proved he was improperly trained - rather than just incompetent).
In a case like this, if he followed correct handling procedure - the employer is liable. It's likely though that under "transportation of data" there isn't a paragraph covering "leaving your data in an intern's car", meaning he made a judgement call of his own - a bad one - meaning the employer has nothing to do with it. We have to make decisions like this every day in jobs and in the corporate world there can be large consequences for such decisions. The key to success in such areas is, don't be an idiot. Yes - there is a reason why corporations require candidates to have degrees for even the most menial positions.
Of course, this'll be -trolled.. Nobody likes having to face up to that regular people, not only companies/politicians/lawyers, make mistakes..
It is rare that a person accepts responsibility in the private sector, it is even more rare that they accept it in the civil service. It goes to show that this man has a decent moral character.
But if the source of the error was the CEO, the firing the
peons does nothing good for the company. The problem still
exists. And the health of the company took a dip, potentially,
as the workers fired might have been competent, the incompetent
is still there, and the remaining workers will see this, and
they usually are not fooled, and will be demoralized, lowering
their productivity temporarily, and the best of the people there
will be more likely to move to another company.
Has nothing to do with hating managers "on principal". Has nothing
to do with fair.
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It's no surprise: this is how Ohio and it's entrenched culture of corruption operates. If they started firing people for losing confidential data and costing the state millions of dollars... why, someone might start thinking there is something wrong with all the hundreds of millions other "Good Republicans" are liberating from the state.
Look at the "coin scammer" dude. He will get a slap on the wrist too, even though he was blatantly embezzling from the state worker's pension fund.
Then we can also jump to the Federal level, where the DOJ is permanently sitting on hundreds of cases involving war profiteering in Iraq. This is the face of conservative government. The only answer is to vote them all out, and make sure none of the bastards ever get elected again... if they ever get out of prison.
If you're a hard-working go-getter in the public sector, more power to you. There definitely are some folks in government who are hard working. My wife, when she worked for the city, was one of them. But it's not the banker's hours or some nefarious "agenda" of pundits that drives public opinion.
The real issue is that the perception the public has isn't drawn from the class of "all government workers.". The public's perception is based on things like the California DMV offices, where dozens of citizens stand in long lines while about 50% of the "workers" behind the counters engage in banter, sit idly staring off into space, and generally appear to be doing nothing much; or the city clerk's office, where the belligerent receptionist can barely contain her indignation that you've interrupted her game of Solitaire to tell her you've arrived for an appointment; or county road workers, who are frequently seen in groups of seven or eight, where one guy is digging and the rest are all leaning on shovels/brooms, and chatting on cell phones; or the folks who are so hidebound that they can't imagine a solution to a problem that hasn't been carefully documented in the official handbook; and on, and on, and on.
Until all the citizen-visible positions in government are filled by hardworking, customer-service oriented folks who take their breaks out of site of the waiting area (an outcome so unlikely as to be impossible) the perception isn't going to change.
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Well, I can do a lot of that, but a lot of it doesn't interest me. I can visit the Rockies, go see the columbia ice fields, relax in hotsprings, go to the top of a mountain, all within a days drive of me too, but I'd rather go on a vacation where I can see really old buildings (over 300 years old), visit new cultures, experience new foods, see the world from a different viewpoint. I've seen the natural wonders my fine country (Canada) has to offer, and loved them, but I also want to see other places, and learn other cultures. there's only so much sightseeing you can do.
Where did I ridicule anyone? please let me know. or is it that i dared to disagree with you, if so why does stating my differing opinion injure you so much? there was nothing I said that was worthy of being attacked for. and our "strange and exotic foods" are all pretty much from other places, we don't really have a national cuisine. And the ones that generally cause the "midnight dash" are typically US corporate food chain restaurants. (McFood)
And where did Spring Break and wet t-shirt contests come in? I never said Canada was a bastion of ancient architecture and culture, I said I like to go to places where I can discover new cultures... I'm already here, I know Canada's culture. But I want to experience the culture of Japan, Thailand, Germany, Italy, France, England, Sweden, Egypt, etc. So some people (read you) don't want to, I'm merely stating that there's other reasons people take vacations than siteseeing, at least for some people. Don't get in my face because I disagree with you. Ignoring other cultures doesn't make you better, it doesn't make you worse. It makes you different, and that's all i'm saying. you're different than me. Not better, Not worse. Different. this isn't a flame, this is merely statements. nothing even remotely inflamitory i don't think, I tried really hard. especially since my talking about what I like to do for vacations is considered ridiculing others, quote me if you want, but I didn't say anything to ridicule you or anyone else on their choice of vacation. just letting you know that there are more than one reason for trips.