Theft in VA (Veterans Affairs)
VA happens to be the federal agency that I've worked at for the last 19 years. I work in the Office of Information for Veterans Health. The theft of all of those veterans' information is just devastating. One of the greatest things about working for VA is that more than most agencies (except DoD) almost every employee has a true sense of mission, which is to serve our veterans. To lose the public trust in our ability to protect the data of so many veterans is horrible. While I'm sure there are individuals very high up in the agency who know who the employee was that took the information home, none of us peons know who it is. I don't believe that it was anyone within my organization, but we may never know.
It just kills me that as an agency, there really is such a tremendous amount of great work that we accomplish, including wonderful breakthroughs in health care. But somehow, those stories never make it to the front page of the Washington Post. Only when something goes wrong - and this time it went very, very wrong - do we get any public attention. And oversight - boy, will we get more oversight by the Hill, GAO, and the Inspector General.
I just pray that the stolen data isn't used by some selfish bastard for his/her own gain.
It just kills me that as an agency, there really is such a tremendous amount of great work that we accomplish, including wonderful breakthroughs in health care. But somehow, those stories never make it to the front page of the Washington Post. Only when something goes wrong - and this time it went very, very wrong - do we get any public attention. And oversight - boy, will we get more oversight by the Hill, GAO, and the Inspector General.
I just pray that the stolen data isn't used by some selfish bastard for his/her own gain.