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Personal information of nearly 9,000 Illinois families was sent by the state to the wrong mailing address in November and December last year. The state says they’re working to ensure the error doesn’t happen again.
The Illinois Department of Central Management Services said Friday that a change of address registry from the USPS was matched with an out-of-date client file by a state employee.
“The resulting file was loaded into IES, the State’s eligibility system, and incorrectly changed the address for 8,848 [Health and Family Services] and [Illinois Department of Human Services] households,” according to a news release. “As a result of the error, in late November and December 2020, notices were mailed to 8,848 households at incorrect addresses. Notices were sent to the right customer name at the wrong customer address.”
Those notices may have included names, case numbers, names of dependents, birth dates and even confidential medical information.
“Of the 8,848 notices that were mailed, one notice included a complete Social Security number, and five notices included a complete bank account number,” the agency said. “To date, the Departments are unaware of any actual or attempted misuse of personal information as a result of the incident.”
I checked with the state and was told “The data matching error occurred during a National Change of Address process executed by a DoIT employee.
posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 10:45 am
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That’s a tiny error rate, all things considered. Just saying.
Comment by Dan Johnson Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 10:50 am
Why is CMS speaking on behalf of DoIT? Doesn’t DoIT have its own communications staff? It’s been a separate agency for years now.
Comment by Lincoln Lad Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 10:51 am
Lincoln Lad - I think that points to one of the major issues with the agency and why many thought it was a waste of money when it was formed. CMS handles all agency functions, except relating to IT. DoIT is full of tech people from outside of state government who remain reliant on both CMS and IT stuff from inside respective agencies to understand how everything functions. It’ll take a long time for the agency to fully gain the institutional expertise to be able to stand on its own.
Comment by NIU Grad Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 10:57 am
Can’t manage stuff = CMS
Comment by Glengarry Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 10:58 am
==That’s a tiny error rate, ==
Not if you’re one of the households who did not get their mailings because their personal info and case numbers were sent to a wrong address in this “incident”. This is very troubling. It seems like nearly every week somebody from the state screws up and steps are then taken to “see that this never happens again”. Do any supervisors or competent oversight staffers work in these agencies anymore?
==“To date, the Departments are unaware of any actual or attempted misuse of personal information as a result of the incident.”==
Yeah, that’s what thry always say.
Comment by Responsa Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 10:59 am
Rich,
Headline reads “DoIT does it again.” Did they do something similar in the past? Honestly can’t remember an incident like this but you’ve been in this field longer than I have.
Thanks
Comment by Commisar Gritty Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 11:17 am
CMS - Creatively Managed Sandcastles …
Comment by Anyone Remember Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 11:19 am
CMS = Curly, Moe and Shemp.
Comment by Skeptic Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 11:29 am
===That’s a tiny error rate===
This is in addition to whatever their standard error rate is.
Comment by Candy Dogood Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 11:31 am
“DoIT is full of tech people from outside of state government who remain reliant on both CMS and IT stuff from inside respective agencies to understand how everything functions.”
With all due respect, this statement is unequivocally not true. I am a state employee who works in DoIT. DoIT is full of state employees including DoIT employees embedded at Agencies to provide service with institutional knowledge. When there are vendors providing services, they work with DoIT employees and the agencies involved. As a side note, I am neither involved in any way nor was I aware of this particular incident until I read it here on Capitol Fax.
Comment by Steve Polite Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 11:45 am
==That’s a tiny error rate, all things considered. Just saying. ==
Any error rate that deals with PII is an unacceptable error rate. Period.
Any data analyst who ever deals with PII treats that stuff as carefully as radioactive material. You triple check your code, your inputs and your outputs. Every. Single. Time. One of the cardinal rules of the industry.
Comment by ChrisB Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 11:47 am
CMS=Ceethe MesS
Comment by diditald00d Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 12:03 pm
“Any data analyst who ever deals with PII treats that stuff as carefully as radioactive material.”
“(815 ILCS 530/45)
Sec. 45. Data security.
(a) A data collector that owns or licenses, or maintains or stores but does not own or license, records that contain personal information concerning an Illinois resident shall implement and maintain reasonable security measures to protect those records from unauthorized access, acquisition, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure.”
DoIT Security rules require all stored PII data to be encrypted both at rest and in transit. But this is unrelated to the incident discussed in the post.
Comment by Steve Polite Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 12:06 pm
DoIT don’t do it right.
Comment by Essential State Employee Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 12:10 pm
CMS = Competent? Must Scram.
Comment by Essential State Employee Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 12:37 pm
DoIT provides state employees with desktop computers and laptops with 4gb of RAM. You can’t even find a 10 year old ipad on ebay with such little memory. 4gb of RAM doesn’t even sufficiently support MS Office. Then DoIT loads up the computer with dozens of programs, most of which do not provide any value to the user. Then you have to restart your computer everyday for it to work, sometimes multiple times a day. The real controversy is how much the State pays for these junk computers. The State pays like 200% markup for stuff that barely functions.
Comment by Merica Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 2:03 pm
CMS = Constant Meetings Sadomasochism
Comment by Merica Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 2:21 pm
“DoIT provides state employees with desktop computers and laptops with 4gb of RAM.” That’s more of a function of how much DoIT charges the agencies for the lease than DoIT supplying the boxes. If the agencies could afford better, better is available.
Comment by Skeptic Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 2:25 pm
CMS=Constantly Missing Stuff
And to Responsa’s “Do any supervisors or competent oversight staffers work in these agencies anymore? “….the percentage must be shocking low by now, between cutbacks and resignations. As a DHS manager once said during a phone hearing “We don’t have enough staff to train everyone on everything.” I’ll bet that’s true at a lot of State agencies anymore.
Comment by thisjustinagain Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 2:35 pm
Nice. Blaming a entire agency for 1 individual human mistake.
Comment by Mal Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 4:11 pm
–
Nice. Blaming a entire agency for 1 individual human mistake.
–
DoIT deserves blame. They’ve been mismanaged since Kirk took the helm several years ago. They’re a revolving door agency — managers (not staffers — who do the work) take the helm of a vertical, work for 6 months, and then — mysteriously — move on. Fired? Quit? Laid off?
Doesn’t matter. But they sure-as-heck put their DoIT gig on their resume.
Comment by Mr K Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 4:18 pm
Wow
1 persons mistake means an entire agency is mismanaged and to blame.
Comment by Mal Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 4:45 pm
And I have never witnessed any of your revolving door claims within DoIT. Not sure what you have seen but it wasn’t in the real world. Maybe reading too many blogs?
Comment by Mal Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 4:47 pm
Not hard to find at least one revolving door claim in the OEIG reports. Biggest gone I ever saw for an infraction.
Comment by Lincoln Lad Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 5:02 pm
== They’re a revolving door agency — managers (not staffers — who do the work) take the helm of a vertical, work for 6 months, and then — mysteriously — move on. ==
Used to call the political hacks resume stampers; there long enough that they look competent on paper to the next business hiring them.
Comment by RNUG Monday, Mar 1, 21 @ 10:44 pm
==Used to call the political hacks resume stampers; there long enough that they look competent on paper to the next business hiring them.==
CMS especially during Blago: Cronyism, Money, Stampers (of resumes).
Comment by Chatham Resident Tuesday, Mar 2, 21 @ 5:14 am