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Washington, D.C.—The leader of the union representing nearly 5,000 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) employees today called on the agency to do much more to protect the financial interests of thousands of current and former employees in the wake of the agency’s failure to protect their personal and private information—including their Social Security number

In a letter to a senior official at the FDIC, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said the agency should immediately obtain credit monitoring services for all impacted employees for at least a year, or reimburse them for getting such services; and provide the employees and the credit bureaus with ongoing investigative reports so that fraud alerts can be maintained on their accounts for at least a year.

The agency recently notified some 5,900 of its current and former employees that their personal information, including their name, salary, Social Security number, date of birth and length of service, had been disclosed. The lost data covered all FDIC employees as of July 2002. At least 28 cases of identity theft are known to have occurred because of the data loss, including fraudulent loans that were taken out under the names of some of these employees at a government credit union.

FDIC, in the letter to employees, explained what had happened, recommended that employees obtain a credit report and identified how an employee can initiate a fraud alert. Without giving any details, the agency said that the information had been obtained “without authorization by a person or persons outside the FDIC.” It was not, the agency claimed, a failure of its information systems security programs.

Kelley said the agency’s response didn’t go nearly far enough. “NTEU strongly believes that the FDIC should be doing more on behalf of the employees,” she wrote to the associate director for human resources.

Identity theft not only puts people’s financial security at risk, Kelley said, but constitutes a major disruption in their lives. “We expect the FDIC to do everything it can to help the impacted employees, including hiring a credit monitoring service and identity theft resolution company,” she said, noting that the union will be meeting with the agency to discuss its response.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments.