He adds the prime minister will take incident into account when evaluating the two ministers overseeing Acra and the Smart Nation initiative
IMPOSING financial penalties on a public agency “will not be meaningful”, Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean said in a ministerial statement on Thursday (Mar 6) on the disclosure of full NRIC numbers on Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority’s (Acra) Bizfile portal last December.
From Dec 9 to 13, full NRIC numbers were disclosed on Acra’s Bizfile portal, contravening guidelines in the government’s Instruction Manual for Infocomm Technology and Smart Systems Management.
The Personal Data Protection Act prescribes financial penalties for private sector entities that violate personal data protection measures. In contrast, the Public Sector (Governance) Act (PSGA) – which governs how public agencies protect personal data – does not impose similar penalties.
That is because “the cost of any financial penalties would ultimately have to be borne by the public purse, if you impose a financial penalty on a public agency”, said SM Teo.
Instead, “necessary actions” will be taken against the officers responsible, as the PSGA was “designed with that in mind”. These include the officers directly responsible for the shortcomings, as well as senior management overseeing them.
Actions could range from counselling and retraining to reductions in performance grades, which would affect performance-based payments.
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The ministers overseeing Acra and the Smart Nation initiative – Second Minister for Finance Indranee Rajah and Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo – had overall responsibility for the organisations under their charge, added SM Teo.
“The prime minister will take into account this incident in his evaluation of the ministers.”
He also stressed that the review panel, which released its findings on Mar 3, was not part of a disciplinary process.
“While the panel’s report serves as a reference, any disciplinary action – if warranted in relation to individual officers – will need to be conducted in accordance with applicable frameworks and processes in the respective public agencies involved,” he added.
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