Something very surprising happened when our Roving Reporter was observing the Climate Adaptation Workshop at the NPDC

Roving Reporter out and about......

Our Roving Reporter went to the Climate Adaptation Workshop at the NPDC on 20th May. Just to follow along with what next steps happen at the Council now the consultation has closed. We will give you an update later - but something very surprising happened while our Roving Reporter was observing the meeting.

Our Mayor visited a couple of online shopping sites during the workshop.

• 100% Home - checking out Rangehoods - and -
• Flow Mountain Bikes - checking out off road push bikes

It was ironic the Mayor visiting online shops in a meeting which was all about risks for the community. Risk of having to move out of harms way, and risk of no longer having insurance for your home – due to Climate Change.

One of the biggest risks for IT Systems in an organisation is online shopping and the viruses that can be attached to those sites, which can be brought back in house to the IT System.

We would have thought there would be very clear policy for all staff at the NPDC that they should not visit online shopping sites through the NPDC IT systems. This is absolutely standard policy in most businesses, and in some organisations considered to be a serious misconduct breach because of the virus risk.

It occurred to us if a virus was picked up while visiting online shopping sites, what private information about ratepayers could be hacked and what would be the cost to the ratepayer of getting the NPDC IT systems up and running again. What Malware may be able to be placed on the NPDC systems ?

We would hope the CEO Gareth Green has strong policies in place to prohibit using NPDC computers for online shopping. We would hope they generate regular reports to check staff are not visiting online shopping sites. We would hope these checks would be made of all staff, including the Mayor.