Berkeley city employees are responding with mixed feelings after the city apologized for inadvertently sharing Social Security numbers in response to a public records request in March.
The city sent the information to Bay Area News Group on March 11 for a database of municipal salaries published yearly and realized the error at the beginning of April. The city sent employees a letter, dated April 15, apologizing for the error and notifying them that the information had been destroyed.
“Unfortunately, a staff member made a mistake,” said Donna LaSala, director of the city’s department of information technology. “There was another column deeper (in the email) that was not labeled Social Security number, and they didn’t catch it and didn’t delete it.”
Bay Area News Group requested a specific format that the city did not follow because the format required a lot of staff time, according to LaSala.
“Instead, they sent us this voluminous file of data, and shortly after, someone realized that data included Social Security numbers,” said Bert Robinson, managing editor for content at Bay Area News Group.
The news group immediately responded to the city’s request to destroy the information, Robinson said.
Some city employees, however, have criticized the amount of time it took the city to inform them of the error and are concerned about identity protection.
“I just feel like as an employee, it is really disheartening not only that this happened but that it took so long for us to find out,” said Jennifer, a city employee whose last name is held out of concern for her career. “An apology just isn’t enough to make up for that mistake.”
LaSala said, however, that it took a while to send out the letters because there were so many to distribute. She said that 11,000 city employees’ Social Security numbers were shared and that only 2,000 were those of active employees.
The city informed employees that they are currently entitled to free credit reports to ensure their identities are protected, she said.
Others city employees, however, are glad that the city responded to the error in an appropriate manner.
City Councilmember Kriss Worthington, whose Social Security number was also shared, said he would have disputed the error further if the city manager had not handled the situation as carefully. The city manager put a staff member to work putting information into the format originally requested for the news group and sending the letter to employees, he said.
The city came up with an automated report system for public records requests to avoid this problem in the future and save staff time, LaSala said.
“The people involved feel horrible,” she said. “It is a big mistake, and everyone feels very sorry. We automated the report so a person will no longer do it individually.”
Alyssa Neumann covers city government. Contact her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @AlyNeumann.