Now the laptop thieves have hit D.C.’s municipal employees.

A laptop containing the Social Security numbers and other personal data of 13,000 District of Columbia employees and retirees has been stolen, officials said.

The computer was stolen Monday from the Washington home of an employee of ING U.S. Financial Services, said officials with the company, which administers the district’s retirement plan.

The company did not notify city employees of the theft until late Friday because it took officials several days to determine what information was stored on the laptop, ING spokeswoman Caroline Campbell said.

The laptop was not password-protected and the data was not encrypted, Campbell said.

Ok, it’s about time that the City of Houston and HMEPS (Houston Municipal Employee Pension System) got off their collective asses and addressed this problem. I have no way of knowing if my personal data is secure or not, and frankly, from a discovery I made this week while looking for some records, I would wager NOT. (Appropriate authorities were notified.)

The city of Houston, with 22,000 current employees and who knows how many retirees, needs to get on top of this problem ASAP, and assure it’s employees and retirees that it is actively protecting their personal data. Not only that, it needs to work harder to keep the personal data of all its citizens private. In our department, such records control is “under review” but the truth is, it’s a low priority–we’re “going to fix it,” but right now our attention is focused on our day-to-day processes and coping with the stress they’re under, plus the federally mandated disaster training and the SAP change-over.

Little things like ensuring that everyone’s private data remains private are for “when we get a minute.” And for some businesses working for cities and pension boards, it doesn’t even rate that high.

City officials said they were disturbed about how the data was stored and that the company waited to report the theft.

“We are concerned that this information was being managed without protection,” said Mary Ann Young, spokeswoman for [D.C.’s] chief financial office….Two other ING laptops containing information on 8,500 Florida hospital workers were stolen in December, but the employees were not notified until this week, said ING spokesman Chuck Eudy. Neither laptop was encrypted, he said.

I looked through the last yearly report from HMEPS, but I find no mention of ING. Of course, any of the agencies listed there could be local, branch, or affiliate offices; I have no way of knowing and it’s too many to try running internet searches; I still have to get the Agenda report done and some personal matters are significantly in the way (I may be a day late with it, unfortunately.)

It’s times like this I really have a problem with not being able to do primary research by asking important people inconvenient questions….