A record of recordkeeping failures
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
– George Santayana
Created and maintained by the Synercon Group, Lest We Forget is dedicated to memorialising significant recordkeeping and information governance failures.
For more than 20 years, this archive has captured the dire consequences of inadequate systems and poor practices. Across the thousands of recorded incidences, many individuals and organisations were exposed to significant personal or business risk. In several cases, the failures resulted in human rights breaches and loss of life.
Ireland fines Meta for bad record-keeping
In 2018, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) was alarmed when Facebook notified the commission, between June and December, of 12 separate data breaches that affected up to 30 million...
Judge to oversee the financial recovery of ‘failed’ Makana Municipality
The Eastern Cape government of Premier Oscar Mabuyane will have to report to a judge every three months on progress in implementing a financial recovery plan for the Makana Municipality. This is...
McKesson to pay $1m to resolve recordkeeping violations
McKesson Corporation (MCK) has agreed to pay a $1 million civil penalty to resolve alleged recordkeeping violations, the Department of Justice announced on Monday. The agreement between DoJ...
JP Morgan admits to widespread recordkeeping failures
The Securities and Exchange Commission (today) announced charges against J.P. Morgan Securities LLC (JPMS), a broker-dealer subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase & Co., for widespread and longstanding...
Eskom bosses in hot water over poor recordkeeping
Cape Town - Eskom's leaders found themselves in hot water yesterday when it emerged that they had failed to provide adequate documents in the auditing of their finances for the 2020-21 financial...
Federal agencies lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children
Federal officials lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children last year after a government agency placed the minors in the homes of adult sponsors in communities across the country, according to...
Missing: Curtin’s wartime correspondence with Churchill
He grew up in a tiny South Australian town famous for its rodeo, but historian Robin Prior has made his career roping in the myths proliferating around Australia’s war efforts. His huge new...
She struggled to reclaim her Indigenous name
For as long as she can remember, Danita Bilozaze knew that the name on her birth certificate, "Danita Loth," didn't reflect her Indigenous identity. From the stories her mother recounted to her, she...
Future public inquiries at risk by ‘poor’ information management practices
Future public inquiries such as the recent Alex Salmond affair at Holyrood could be jeopardised by poor information management practices, a government internal review has found. The way that the...
AFP cops a blast for poor records managment
"A report into the use of statutory powers by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) has given these a pass mark but uncovered serious deficiencies in the AFP’s record-keeping practices and processes....
Canada pressured to find all unmarked Indigenous graves
The remains of 215 children were found last month buried in unmarked graves at a former residential school, one of more than 150 institutions in a defunct system that for well over a century...
Mining death inquest finds deficient recordkeeping led to suffocation
A coronial inquest into the death of a central Queensland miner who suffocated on lethal gas has found operator Anglo American's record keeping was "grossly deficient" and his death could have been...
Historians fear Australian stories could be lost forever
Historians fear untold Australian stories could be lost without a substantial funding increase for the National Archives to prevent the disintegration of records dating back to the mid-19th century....
Brewarrina Mission connects past and present to Indigenous culture and heritage
The organisers of an inaugural open day at one of Australia's largest former Aboriginal missions hope the event will become a national movement towards Indigenous reconciliation. ... The separation...
Cuomo denies alleged cover-up in crisis surrounding nursing home deaths
After insisting his administration had done nothing wrong last week, Governor Andrew Cuomo, on Monday, did not directly apologize for a lack of transparency surrounding the record-keeping of COVID...
California grapples with uneven COVID-19 vaccination rollout
(CN) — California’s foray into mass vaccination against Covid-19 has been marred by poor data management that has given an inaccurate snapshot on how many people have received their inoculation...
Data Protection Commission seeks answers on destruction of mother and baby homes recordings
The Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) has written to the Mother and Baby Homes Commission over the destruction of recordings of witness testimony. A total of 550 people provided personal accounts...
NSW Premier’s Office broke state recordkeeping laws in ‘reckless’ destruction of documents
The NSW premier’s office broke state record-keeping laws by shredding documents related to a pork-barrelling scheme, a watchdog has found. ... An adviser to the premier in October told a...
Gaps in records of Trump’s presidency
There’s growing concern among historians and political analysts that missing documents will leave a hole in the record of President Donald Trump’s term, one of America’s most tumultuous...
Freedom of Information coverup clerk stung for £2k after deleting council audio recording
ICO notches up first successful FoI prosecution A town clerk in the English county of Shropshire has been the subject of the first ever successful Freedom of Information prosecution after lying to a...
Homeowners near Wellington complain council lost their paperwork
Homeowners near Wellington are reporting their local council losing the paperwork for their houses. Sue Mortimer can't sell her sunny home on a bush-clad hillside with a glimpse of Plimmerton Beach...
PG&E falsified gas pipeline safety records, regulators say
Utility giant Pacific Gas and Electric is being accused of falsifying gas pipeline safety records by California regulators in the aftermath of a pipeline explosion that killed eight people in 2010....
Former chief of staff gets four months in jail for wiping hard drives
David Livingston was convicted of unauthorised use of a computer system for arranging a password that enabled a private contractor to clear hard drives in the Premier’s office before Kathleen Wynne...
Poor recordkeeping stymies probe into Interior actions
The Department of the Interior’s internal watchdog office has concluded that it cannot determine whether an unusual and controversial reassignment of dozens of senior employees ran afoul of federal...
‘Council failings are putting children at risk of harm’
A shocking report has revealed that vulnerable children are being put at risk due to failings in Wakefield Council’s services.... Recording of social work was deemed to be “poor” in some cases....
NT Stolen Generations ‘feel like the last people in Australia’ to get Commonwealth compensation
Eileen Cummings was raised by missionaries on remote Croker Island, off the Top End's north coast, for decades unaware that her family was living just across the water. "Years later we found that if...
Child protection: Tusla’s unacceptable lapses
An examination of a selection of complaints received by the Ombudsman’s office, as well as those filed directly with Tusla, has highlighted “serious failings” in how the agency carries out its role....
Waiting for TRIM and training, concerns as child protection files get lost in transit
It’s often seen as one of governments’ thankless achievements, despite helping build civilisations. Records management, the tool helping drive so many services for the community, has taken...
More than 2,200 Australians reported abuse in orphanages or children’s homes
Furness said poor record keeping and information sharing about abuse was “systemic” across all institutions. The royal commission has identified that poor record keeping is a systemic issue which...
Man told to take citizenship test despite living entire life in UK
A man born in London to German parents has been told he cannot get a British passport unless he takes a UK citizenship test because he cannot prove his mother was legally in the country when she...
Anglican Church says email shows police officer knew about boys’ home archives
The Anglican Diocese of Newcastle says it has found an email which shows a police officer was told about boys' home archives, contrary to his claims. Earlier this month the detective told the ABC...
Archivist comes forward with details about boys’ home records thought to be missing
Records from a boys' home that is set to be the focus of a case study at a royal commission into child sexual abuse are being held at the University of Newcastle, it has emerged, after it was...
Pennsylvania fracking water contamination much higher than reported
The headline flew around the globe like wild fire. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published their long-awaited draft fracking drinking water study and concluded: fracking has had no...
Disclosure: TSA cannot verify employees’ criminal histories
Government oversight officials informed Congress on Wednesday that the Transportation Security Administration continues to operate in disarray, failing to record basic security details for thousands...
Recordkeeping woes revealed in CBA compo claims
The Commonwealth Bank does not currently have advice files for more than one in 10 of the cases registered for its compensation scheme for victims of dodgy financial advice. A CBA update on Tuesday...
PG&E can’t find original records for South Bay gas lines
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. says it has lost 12 years of gas-line repair records for part of the Bay Area — the largest such gap to emerge since the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion was blamed on...
Records risk for NZ public sector
New Zealand government agencies have been given a rap on the knuckles for poor record-keeping practices in the 2014-205 annual report from Archives New Zealand, which found that that important...
Sheriff’s Office gets training, writing policies, hiring to improve public records retention
raining of roughly 200 supervisors at the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office in the handling of public records as well as other steps to improve a broken and possibly illegal system of not keeping emails...
PG&E management allegedly ordered papers destroyed after blast (US)
A former Pacific Gas and Electric Co. official hired after the San Bruno gas-pipeline explosion to clean up the company’s records said management ordered her to destroy documents and that she found...
City council plans hearing into why hundreds of children still get lead poisoning (US)
he Baltimore City Council announced plans Monday to hold an investigative hearing into why hundreds of children are still getting lead poisoning — a preventable condition officials vowed to...
Trade Union Royal Commission: CFMEU attempted to cover up document destruction, inquiry hears (AUS)
The head of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) in Queensland ordered the covering up of the destruction of tonnes of documents demanded by the royal commission into trade...
Investigators: Phila. VA needs change, accountability
After a nine-month probe, the VA's Office of Inspector General made 35 recommendations to address shoddy record-keeping, bungled claims, inadequate security, and poor working conditions at the...
Audit Office criticises Health Department’s handling of $15b pharmacy deal
The federal health department has been criticised by the Australian National Audit Office for its administration of a $15 billion agreement with pharmacists. The audit office identified several...
What’s driving chaotic dismantling of Canada’s science libraries?
Scientists say the closure of some of the world's finest fishery, ocean and environmental libraries by the Harper government has been so chaotic that irreplaceable collections of intellectual...
Did poor recordkeeping allow a murderer to walk free?
Poor recordkeeping by the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) relating to the On the Runs (OTRs) scheme for fugitive IRA members may have allowed a murderer to walk free. The NIO ran a scheme formulated...
Met police still failing on child protection policies, report finds
The police are failing to record more than 800,000 offences, including a quarter of all sexual crimes, reported to them by the public each year, according to a damning official inquiry. Her...
Thousands lose pensions in firms’ ‘Fawlty Towers’ bungles (UK)
Firms have lost "whole box loads of paperwork" recording pension contributions and entitlements, meaning thousands could be deprived of their retirement income. Hundreds of thousands of people may...
More than 10,500 water meters purchased by the city are “unaccounted for
Atlanta’s auditor released a damning investigation of the Department of Watershed Management on Tuesday, reporting that security problems are so bad that it’s impossible to know how much equipment...
Walsh calls Boston Redevelopment Authority a mess (US)
Shoddy record-keeping and weak management inside the Boston Redevelopment Authority have cost Boston’s powerful development agency millions of dollars in unpaid fees and lease payments, an outside...
Report into death identifies unacceptable gap in recordkeeping
A report into the death of a vulnerable young person details an inadequate response to evidence of child abuse and neglect when he was young , a failure to ever fully assess his needs, weak...
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