Civil servants were told to print out official records and use a black marker before scanning them again amid fears of sensitive material being released.
In the aftermath of a major data breach in 2023 where the PSNI accidentally released the details of around 9,500 police and staff, public sector workers in the Republic looked for advice on how to avoid a repeat.
A cross-government group was told the risk around redaction now “comes up regularly” and that it was not uncommon for people to try and “un-redact” material that was sent to them under FOI and other laws.
A presentation said this had already resulted in the inadvertent release of “sensitive personal information” of third parties.
The documents explained how the Information Commissioner – which decides on FOI cases in Ireland – had asked public bodies to look closely at how they blacked out portions of records.
One slide from the presentation in November 2023 said: “[It’s] important that redaction tools, particularly electronic ones, are permanent and irreversible.”
It said there was no standard way of doing this and it depended on what tools were available in each public body.
The presentation advised: “[It] can sometimes be necessary to print and use a black marker.
“When this is not possible and if other tools weren’t available, material could be overwritten or deleted then rendered to [a new computer file].”
It said public bodies needed to be particularly careful of redaction that only hid material and did not erase it.
Asked about the discussions, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Expenditure said the massive PSNI data breach had illustrated the need for “robust safeguarding of sensitive exempt information.”
She said: “To preserve the integrity of the system and ensure access to information to the greatest extent possible, it is important that public bodies can effectively, efficiently and reliably protect sensitive information identified as exempt under the legislation. “[This includes] private information of third parties, which in turn facilitates the release of other parts of the same records.”