Lest We Forget

Lest We Forget is a register of incidents highlighting the need for good recordkeeping. Now in its 10th year Lest we Forget is a treasure trove of reasons why good recordkeeping is essential - for good business operation and for upholding the rights and entitlements of individuals.

Lest we Forget is produced by The Synercon Group, developers and distributors of a.k.a.® Information Governance Software.

Thousands of Classified Records Said To Be Missing From National Archives (US)

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Synercon

Dozens of boxes of classified government documents cannot be accounted for by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in its records center outside of Washington, D.C. It’s the third instance since 1998 that secret records have been discovered to be missing from the agency.

Eighty-one boxes containing Top Secret information or Restricted Data — such as nuclear weapons information — from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and several U.S. Navy offices are absent from the Washington National Records Center of NARA, according to a three-year investigation conducted by NARA’s Office of the Inspector General between 2007 and December 2010.

Posted in Incomplete records | Tagged NARA | Leave a comment

‘Uninvited’ Haiti earthquake teams neglected medical record keeping

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Synercon

Some foreign medical teams need to improve the way they respond to future disasters, according to an analysis of the devastating January 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Better medical record keeping and protocols that link surgical services with rehabilitation services are needed, according to researchers from The University of Manchester’s Humanitarian Conflict Response Institute (HCRI).

Posted in Incomplete records, Non-compliance | Tagged Haiti, Health & Safety, International Aid | Leave a comment

PM’s mail room may have shredded historical documents (CAN)

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Synercon

OTTAWA – The prime minister’s mail room has lost some historical documents on sports, music and politics — and the material appears to have been accidentally shredded.

The package of six documents arrived in the busy mail facility last May 5. The envelope was date-stamped as being received but it was not tracked as required, and the material soon disappeared.

Emory Healthcare says 315,000 patient records missing, data compromised

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Synercon

ATLANTA—Emory Healthcare announced this week that backup disks containing approximately 315,000 patient records had gone missing from a storage location at Emory University Hospital.

In a statement released Thursday, the Atlanta-based health care system said there had not been any attempt to breach Emory’s digital files.

Posted in Data Protection & Privacy Breaches, Inadequate Systems | Tagged Health & Safety | Leave a comment

PG&E fined nearly $20 million for safety lapses in Contra Costa County

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Synercon

State regulators Thursday upheld a $16.8 million fine against PG&E for failing to inspect East Bay pipelines for gas leaks.

The fine, which PG&E had appealed to the Public Utilities Commission, represents the first time that the commission’s Consumer Protection and Safety Division levied penalties against the utility under new authorities awarded last December. The division was given more teeth in response to federal criticism of the commission’s safety policies in the wake of the deadly San Bruno pipeline blast. Previously, the safety division had to seek approval from the full commission to impose penalties.

PG&E agreed to pay a separate $3 million fine for problems with its record-keeping, but the utility fought the $16.8 million penalty that was imposed after it disclosed that it had failed for more than a decade to check for leaks on pipelines in seven Contra Costa cities.

Police cop a blast for illegally destroying surveillance tape (AUS)

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Synercon

NSW POLICE broke the law when they destroyed CCTV footage crucial to a workplace safety investigation into an officer’s exposure to an unknown substance in a drug safe.

NSW State Records received complaints in October and November 2010 about the disposal of CCTV footage from a police station’s drug safe and surrounding areas, as well as record keeping for drug audit risk assessments.

Posted in Inappropriate Disposal or Destruction | Tagged Justice & Law | Leave a comment

Helping a fellow veteran get his due (US)

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Synercon

World War II veteran Donald Madsen intends to leave his service medals to his grandson. Madsen said he was awarded the Combat Infantrymen Badge and the Prisoner of War medal. …

Christopherson, 87, graduated from basic training in Hawaii on Dec. 6, 1941, and was placed on guard duty. The next morning, the Japanese raided Pearl Harbor. Although he was injured during the attack, he continued to serve with the Army’s 19th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division until 1944.

He said he tried to go through the process of getting his medals in 1984, but learned many of his records had burned during a fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis in 1973.

Christopherson didn’t try again until last year, but he succeeded after the military pieced together some of the lost records. After nearly 70 years, last September he was awarded several of the medals, including the Bronze Star and Pearl Harbor Commemorative.

Posted in Holes in history, Incomplete records | Tagged Veterans Affairs | Leave a comment

B of A Sends Woman To Collections After She Already Paid Off Her Credit Card (US)

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Synercon

Bank of America’s foreclosure processes have been a wreck during the mortgage crisis — the bank has foreclosed on homes that no longer exist, used fraudulent procedures to speed through documents, and pushed borrowers into foreclosure because of small clerical errors. Now, the bank is apparently using its shoddy foreclosure practices on its credit card accounts too.

Kathy Stevens paid off nearly $2,000 in delinquent credit card debt to Bank of America in 2006. Since then, she’s been fighting collection agencies who want her to pay it off again. Bank of America allegedly sold Stevens’ account to outside collection agencies, but did not include documentation to show it had been “considered settled,” according to a lawsuit filed against the outside collectors.

Did PCSO improperly destroy public records?

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Synercon

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office is accused of deleting thousands of emails and other electronic information, prompting an outside review of possible destruction of public records, according to documents obtained by the ABC15 Investigators.

Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall’s office has launched an inquiry into Sheriff Paul Babeu‘s office. Specifically, LaWall has been tasked to determine if thousands of e-mails were illegally deleted.

Lost data may have exposed 800,000 people in Calif (US)

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Synercon

LOS ANGELES — A disaster preparedness exercise to ensure California’s child support system could be run remotely went smoothly, except for one casualty: the names, Social Security numbers and other private records of about 800,000 adults and children.

Four computer storage devices for the California Department of Child Support Services went missing somewhere between Boulder, Colo., and Sacramento earlier this month while they were in the possession of IBM and Iron Mountain, Inc, the department announced Thursday.

The backup storage cartridges also contained addresses, driver’s license numbers, names of health insurance providers and employers for custodial and non-custodial parents, and their children.

Posted in Data Protection & Privacy Breaches | Tagged Child Protection | Leave a comment

MoD tells Gulf War veteran his army medical records have been lost (UK)

Posted on March 25, 2012 by Synercon

A GULF War veteran seeking a war pension after suffering from a catalogue of illnesses since serving in the first conflict in Iraq has told how his army medical records have mysteriously gone missing.

Posted in Inappropriate Disposal or Destruction, Incomplete records | Tagged Defence, Defense, Veterans Affairs | Leave a comment

Judge upset by RCMP records backlog

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Synercon

KITCHENER — The federal government is talking about law and order, but it needs to get its own house in order, says a Kitchener judge upset at the huge backlog in the RCMP’s criminal records database.

The consultants report on recordkeeping within PG&E (US)

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Synercon

The testimony of Paul Duller and Alison North wrt to the San Bruno Gas disaster is now available on the California Public Utilities Commission website.

Read the full report.

Records Management within the Gas Transmission Division of Pacific Gas and Electric Company prior to the Natural Gas Transmission Pipeline Rupture and Fire, San Bruno, California September 9, 2010

Posted in Catastrophes, Inadequate Systems, Incomplete records, Non-compliance, Operational Failures, Systemic failure | Tagged PG&E, Public Safety, Regulated industry, San Bruno | Leave a comment

Report blasts Victorian record-keeping quagmire

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Synercon

The inability of former wards of the state of Victoria to access their historical records has resulted in an official report to parliament from the state Ombudsman criticising the record-keeping practices at the Victorian Department of Human Services.

Posted in Inadequate Systems, Under resourced | Tagged Human rights | Leave a comment

Nearly 2 Million Deceased U.S. Citizens Still Registered to Vote (US)

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Synercon

As the 2012 election nears, a report published by the non-partisan Pew Center on the States asserted that nearly two million deceased Americans are still registered to vote, while one in every eight voter registrations contains significant errors. More than 2.7 million Americans have active registrations in more than one state, and approximately 12 million contain address inaccuracies, likely preventing them from receiving voting-related mail; further, more than 50 million eligible U.S. citizens are unregistered.

Posted in Inadequate Systems, Incomplete records, Lack of transparency, Systemic failure | Tagged Elections | Leave a comment

Voter Rolls Are Rife With Inaccuracies, Report Finds

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Synercon

WASHINGTON — The nation’s voter registration rolls are in disarray, according to a report released Tuesday by the Pew Center on the States. The problems have the potential to affect the outcomes of local, state and federal elections.

PMO has ‘no Emergency records’ (India)

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Synercon

NEW DELHI, 9 FEB: The records of correspondence between Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed relating to the Emergency proclamation in 1975 are not traceable in PMO files prompting a direction by the Central Information Commission (CIC) to locate and preserve them.

The transparency panel also directed the competent authorities in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to enquire into how the records of “an important post-Independence event” are not traceable in the PMO files.

Posted in Holes in history, Lack of transparency | Tagged Public Safety | Leave a comment

New York sues 3 big banks over use of mortgage registry database

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Synercon

Opening a new front against the American banking industry, New York sued three of the nation’s biggest mortgage servicers over their use of an electronic database that, according to the Empire State, has resulted in widespread deception and fraudulent foreclosure practices.

The suit alleges that employees of the three institutions — Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. — filed false and misleading actions in New York and federal courts using the controversial Mortgage Electronic Registry System, undermining the state’s foreclosure process and public records system.

NSW Auditor slams agency contract extensions (AUS)

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Synercon

A recent audit by the NSW Audit Office criticised two state agencies for lack of transparency in contracting. NSW Police and NSW Health failed to produce records justifying a range of contract extensions worth $15million.

Technologies that we’ve lost – and the quest to find them again