"In general government IT contracts and ongoing support is poor compared to the private sector".
It`s more de-centralised than that. Individual police forces commit millions of pound on separate IT systems. Some collaborate but the majority run their own systems - it`s a huge waste of money in consultation, procurement, maintenance and civilian staff. It`s created lots of individual IT empires and systems that don`t talk to each other and is profligacy in the extreme. There is an expanding over-arching system called the Police National Database (this is different from the Police National Computer - which is subject of the data loss) but it doesn`t stop the individual empires from flourishing.
"On the lost data, this is not human error but process error. the norm is for one backup to be taken daily as a minimum plus one weekly one monthly or a variation of this method"
This latest instance is a human error. The problem was in the weeding selection and would have involved people making direct transactions. Weeding is a process that occurs constantly. I won`t go into the PNC back-up details, save to say that, there are ample safeguards in place and these safeguards would be able to correct any accidental or malicious "attack". ,
"this is all absolute minimum support procedure so there are no excuses for it except total incompetence or extreme corner cutting"
PNC is managed in-house. The issue we`re discussing is more likely to be down to incompetence/poor training than anything else. I don`t know what the staffing levels are at PNC but would guess they are lower than required. But it is also the case that this particular data problem could have been caused by someone outwith the actual PNC central location (which is in the London area) as forces up and down the country can directly upload data. I am not aware of the precise nature of the error so, other than it appears to be a human era, I can`t explore any deeper.
But my main point, is the awful profligacy in the police service in England & Wales and I would re-iterate that until we go down the road traveled by the Police Service of Scotland, we are unnecessarily throwing away millions of pounds annually, not to mention failing to provide a better service in general.