Fri, Jul 18, 2008 (2:05 a.m.)

Outsourcing public duties to private businesses has become a common practice for governments experimenting with ways to save money. There is rarely any real assurance that long-term savings will be realized, but there is almost always the risk of lowered service levels and security breaches.

The District Court system in Clark County learned this the hard way. An employee of a private company — A&B Printing — stands accused of helping herself to confidential and highly personal information about jurors.

Las Vegas Sun reporter Jeff German reported about the incident in a story published Wednesday.

The A&B employee accessed the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of 380 prospective jurors from the court system’s software, a company investigation concluded. She allegedly sent the information to her personal e-mail account.

Neither Metro Police, which is investigating, nor court officials can yet say whether this information was used or even for what use it was intended. But names, birth dates and Social Security numbers are the stock in trade of identity thieves.

A&B, a Las Vegas business, was hired in 2005 by the District Court to print and mail monthly jury summonses. It discovered the security breach after being asked by court officials why some prospective jurors had not received their summonses.

The company notified court officials who, as part of their response, advised the affected prospective jurors to place fraud alerts on their credit accounts.

Police are not commenting while their investigation is under way, but Jury Commissioner Judy Rowland told German, “I was mortified. You don’t expect anyone to use that kind of information.”

Unfortunately though, in today’s world, managers must not only expect attempted security breaches, but also plan for them. It wasn’t good planning when District Court administrators outsourced the printing of summonses, putting a private employee in a position to access confidential public data.

Before 2005 the job of printing and mailing jury summonses resided with the county’s own print shop, as it should have. Shopping out jobs that involve sensitive information is reckless and irresponsible.