Government Investigating Alleged Data Breach in FOI System

The Manx Government has confirmed it is investigating issues with its Freedom of Information (FOI) system after concerns were raised about an alleged data breach exposing the identity of people submitting requests.

In a statement to Gef, Director of the Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance (OCSIA), Mike Haywood, said: ‘We are currently working with stakeholders and the ICO to investigate issues that have recently been highlighted to us, and we will provide an update in due course.

‘Once the root cause has been identified we will look at possible solutions, and work towards testing and deploying a fix, in the meantime the page in question has been taken down.’

The investigation comes after Manx Radio reported that the FOI platform’s search tool could be used to identify individuals – including private citizens, journalists, and organisations – who had submitted requests.

The tax-payer funded broadcaster said the ‘keywords’ function of the site allowed users to search by postcode or name to see all requests linked to a specific address or entity.

If true, the issue would represent a serious breach of data protection principles and raise big questions about how securely the Island is handling FOI requests – a system meant to promote transparency, not compromise privacy.

As of Thursday morning, the government has taken its FOI response archive offline while it looks into the problem.