HMRC

So the Inland Revenue lost 25m customer records, putting that number of people at risk of fraud and thereby exposing the utter incompetence of the department.

I worked there for about a year, the most miserable year of my life. I led a team for about 6 months which did absolutely nothing, despite my best attempts to work out a meaningful goal. We probably cost the taxpayer at least £500k during that time, and all the while we were meant to tell people how much we were saving from our activities.

We weren't saving anything.

So immoral was it, that I effectively sabotaged my own career to highlight it.

HMRC must go back to basics. It should kick all the consultants out tomorrow (something I was openly saying by the end...didn't go down well). It should then decide what it does and what it needs to do in future. It should then work out a single, coherent plan as to how it can best do that. Then it should follow the plan.

But it can't. There are so many consultants and so much confusion about data that the place is reliant on outside help. People are measured by the projects they have going on, not by the value they contribute. There are so many projects that some do the same, or even the opposite, of other projects.

It is a mess. Losing 25m records is the least of its problems.