Tas govt accidentally sent out ex-staff data in mass email bungle

The personal details of three former Tasmanian government employees were accidentally sent out in a TRIM bungle that saw 10,000 emails mistakenly delivered to state workers and members of the general public.

The misfire on Tuesday 2nd and Wednesday 3rd March was related to an upgrade performed to the Tasmanian Department of Justice's HP TRIM system over the weekend of February 25th.

The TRIM system stores and manage electronic and physical documents and records.

It is unclear how many of the 10,000 emails mistakenly sent out contained sensitive data.

According to a memo from Tasmania's whole-of-government service provider TMD, sighted by iTnews, two types of emails were delivered to the agency's global address list in the glitch: one titled "request digest" and another with the subject line "HPE content manager notification".                

The Justice department would only confirm that "emails containing names and dates of birth of three former employees were inadvertently sent to unintended recipients". It said reports that the emails contained personnel files for the three workers were incorrect.

"We have reached out to the involved parties and are working to resolve the issue," a spokesperson said.

The department would not comment on whether it had reported the incident to the national privacy commissioner, nor whether the emails had been opened by the unintended recipients.

State governments are exempt from Australia's newly-passed data breach notification laws.

The Department of Justice suspended the TRIM messaging service while it investigated the issue to prevent a recurrence of the bungle, according to the TMD memo.

TMD also said it had been asked to remove the relevant emails from affected mailboxes.