This week has seen public sector sourcing back in the spotlight. Prime Minister Gordon Brown's speech to the CBI on Monday put global thinking about the world economy at the centre of a new financial order that will emerge as the financial crisis dissipates.

Nationalism and protectionism were things of the past, he said, and global sourcing would be part of a more rigourously managed system.

You know something has changed when that most isolationist US president, George W Bush, has also spoken out against protectionism as he prepares to leave the world stage.

But the problems of home-grown government outsourcing have again been in the spotlight at home as the Information Commissioner wins stronger powers that will force organisations – such as government departments and their outsourcing partners – to tighten up data protection policies.

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas has won the support of justice secretary Jack Straw for tougher powers to investigate breaches of the Data Protection Act, fine organisations for data losses – and inspect government departments without prior consent.

Assistant Information Commissioner Jonathan Bamford hit the nail on the head when he told the Financial Times this week that recent public sector data losses were the concomitant of treating data security as an afterthought rather than as a central pillar of system design. “It was obviously a bit of an accident waiting to happen,” he said.

However, Mr Bamford then shot himself in the foot when he added that organisations should invest more in “privacy enhancing technologies”. No: technology evangelism is the root of the problem, not the solution.

Of course, systems must be secure and protected, but it is their management that is lacking, along with a duty of care to educate every tier of the organisation in data protection issues.

No amount of technology will prevent someone losing a storage device the size of a pack of chewing gum, or having a laptop stolen by an opportunistic thief. The blind faith in technology's ability to secure government while also opening it up to the populace is misplaced.

Put people first, with all their human flaws and inconsistencies, then design management policies around that. Finally add technology.

The outsourcing industry should be well placed to educate government clients, but as we leaned last week at the NOA summit, all too often contracts are run by people who are passing through their departments and lack the expertise to run major projects.