A missing hard drive containing an estimated 3.4 million education records that can be linked to specific individuals from up to 30 years ago has sparked outrage.
The backup for student records between 1986 and 2009 reportedly disappeared from a locked warehouse, and hasn’t turned up despite searches all summer.
Student names, postal codes, grades, personal education numbers and special needs status are among the data contained on the hard drive.
Technology, Innovation, Citizen Services Minister Amrik Virk says he has ordered a review to make sure British Columbia privacy protection policies and procedures are as robust as possible, beginning with the Ministry of Education.
Cariboo Chilcotin Teachers’ Association president Murray Helmer says the problem runs deeper than involving one older database going missing.
More recent data has been collected on things like brushes with the law – something he believes students should eventually be able to put behind them, he adds.
“There is the right to have things forgotten as you get out of your youth and into adulthood.”
Media reports state the missing database also includes psychological assessments, in-care status, family problems and substance abuse.
Helmer says it is not just having data lost that is concerning, but also how it was, and still is being collected.
“To not have that information encrypted to start with is very problematic. We have always been very protective of records for students and communication with parents and it has always been done very securely.
“But there has also been this ongoing movement toward more and more data being collected.”
Cariboo-Chilcotin MLA Donna Barnett says she is aware of, and understands, the concerns.
“Hopefully at the end of the day, there is no damage done to anyone’s privacy, and the Privacy Commissioner will be investigating and trying to get to the bottom of how it happened, why it happened and what happened to the security.”
Helmer says the new data collection system the government purchased recently, called My Education BC, has the local teacher’s union concerned about too many people having access to data they don’t need.
The CCTF has been asking the SD27 trustees for some time to determine how it is going to control levels of access for the new software to ensure parents, other school districts, and anyone else allowed to log in to the database won’t gain information they don’t need and should not see, he explains.
If there was negligence involved with the missing data, it was with those designing the “private” data system, not the people following procedures to enter or store the information, he notes.
“Those protections are still not in place, and I think this breach from the ministry is a wake-up call for everybody to get those things done. I mean, we are moving into the collecting of data before we have any system in place to protect it.”
The Service BC information line will field questions from those who may be affected by the missing data, toll-free at 1-800-663-7867, 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m.
