Vote of No Confidence: Utah Department of Health, Medicaid, and Department of Technical Services data breach

Recently, the personal identity information was compromised on more than 700,000 Utah residents. This will result in significant problems for decades to come for all compromised.

Low estimates on the negative financial impact for persons whose identity was compromised range from $5,000 to $10,000 over ten years. The negative impact on quality of living and risk to our children’s future is even greater.

This was an avoidable situation. The leadership in the Utah Department of Health, the Utah Department of Technical Services, and the Attorney General’s Office should have anticipated this risk and ensured this would never become an issue. Furthermore, once the problem became public full disclosure and transparency (the range of persons involved and the potential negative consequences involved) should have been the priority. Unfortunately, the response had been more in-line with protecting careers and organizational reputation than true crisis management. The response to assist those whose identify was compromised has been less than adequate. One year of very limited credit monitoring demonstrates the lack of insight to the comprehensive impact this will have. In fact, this seems to have exacerbated the problem as the contractor selected to monitor our credit is using this as an opportunity to market their complete package at considerable cost to the victims.

This petition asks that the senior leadership be held accountable for this gaffe. They should have anticipated the risk and avoided the catastrophe from the beginning. Once the problem was discovered full disclosure and mitigating victim impact should have been paramount.

This petition requests that Gov. Gary Herbert immediately request the resignation of the following people (leadership over the problem and the primary crisis response team):

Michael Hales (Director of Utah Medicaid)
Dr. David Patton (Executive Director Utah Department of Health)
Stephen Fletcher (Executive Director, Department of Technical Services)
Doug Springmeyer (Assistant Attorney General Utah Department of Health)

This petition also requests that the above leadership be replaced with professionals who are knowledgeable of the risks associated with working with personal identifying data and who will be better advocates for the taxpayers and residents of Utah.