Northern Ireland’s education minister has apologised “unreservedly” after the personal details of more than 400 people who had offered to contribute to a review into special needs education were leaked.
The embarrassing data breach came to light on Thursday after the education department said it had mistakenly sent 174 people a spreadsheet attachment containing the names, email addresses and titles of 407 people who had expressed interest in attending the end-to-end review of special education needs (SEN) events in Northern Ireland.
The spreadsheet included comments made by several people.
The department said the 174 people who received personal data in error were asked to delete the information and confirm that they had done so.
Several of those affected by the data breach are understood to have contacted the department to express their concerns about what happened.
Northern Ireland Education Minister Paul Givan said: “The department takes its data protection responsibilities very seriously and we apologise unreservedly to all those affected as this should not have happened.
“The individuals involved have been contacted to inform them of the data breach.”
Givan said he had instructed his permanent secretary to launch a full investigation into the data breach, led by Internal Audit.
“In parallel, the department will work to implement measures to help ensure this does not happen again,” he said.
“An initial notification has been sent to the Information Commissioner’s Office about the data breach and the department will continue to liaise with them as they conduct their investigation. As our investigation continues, all those affected, as well as the Information Commissioner’s Office, will be kept informed.”
This is not the first time that a data breach has occurred by an official body in Northern Ireland.
Nearly 5,000 officers and civilian staff from the Police Service of Northern Ireland are taking legal action after details of around 9,500 PSNI employees were published in error last August in response to a freedom of information request.
The list included each employee’s last name and initials, as well as their rank or grade, where they were based and the unit in which they worked.
The PSNI later said the information had fallen into the hands of dissident republicans.