Monday 21 July 2014

Privacy concerns close civil registration indexes site

Just three weeks on from the launch of the General Register Office's civil registration indexes on IrishGenealogy.ie, the entire collection has been taken offline. Seems no one thought to mention to the Data Protection bods that the collection included personal information of living individuals right up to last year. See today's Irish Times article and follow up feature

To say this is a gigantic cock up is an understatement. We waited more than nine months for these bmd records to reach an online and free status, and no one checked out the implications...? Are they kidding us? What the hell were they doing those months? How on earth could this not have been dealt with in that amount of time in a thorough and professional manner.

Embarrassing? It's downright pathetic.

My reaction to this news is unprintable.

I will see if I can find out any more, but I don't imagine the official channels are going to be too chatty for a while.