They Work For You not to blame for Civil Servant Sacking

My Society service "They work For You" seem to have got some bad press today from not least the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail over a Civil servant sacked after criticising Blears for avoiding £13,000 tax in expenses scandal, Lisa Greenwood, an office administrator at the Department of Children, Schools and Families, posted an anonymous message on the internet at the height of the furore over abuse of the second home allowances.Read more on the link.

The articles say "The anonymous posting appeared on They Work For You, a political website, but was traced to Miss Greenwood's work email account.

The administrator, who had worked for the DCFS for seven months, was brought before a disciplinary panel and fired on May 22."

Well it seem "They Work For You" have nothing to do with it which is good as we know the privacy of anonymous posting will be respected.

http://www.mysociety.org/2009/07/06/theyworkforyou-nothing-to-do-with-this-sacked-civil-servant-story/

Note: Post likely to update as we get further information

You may have seen coverage on various websites saying that a civil servant was sacked after posting a comment on TheyWorkForYou.

We’ve no idea what this story is about, but we’re pretty certain it has nothing whatsoever to do with TheyWorkForYou.

* There is no comment on TheyWorkForYou containing the text quoted in that article, nor anything like it, nor has there ever been. Nor in fact (as we’ve checked), on HearFromYourMP, WriteToThem, or WhatDoTheyKnow.
* Only one comment has been left on any contribution by Hazel Blears in 2009, and it’s definitely not related to this.
* 27 comments were left on 13th May, the date the comment was apparently posted; we’ve read them all and they’re all nothing to do with this.

So frankly, we’ve no idea what’s going on.

No journalist bothered to contact us before running the story, and what we do know is that the implication that mySociety would merrily hand over sensitive personal data that ends up in getting someone sacked, without fighting tooth and nail for their privacy every inch of the way, is a complete misinterpretation of the way we work and the things we hold most dear.

We think what might have happened is a simple mis-remembering of the website that contained the problematic comment. We’re hoping to get in touch with Lisa Greenwood so we can get full details before asking the various media companies that have run with this for a correction.

Reg link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/06/mysociety_not_sacking_civil_servants/