The Department for Health (DoH) is vaguely planning to probably introduce electronic medical records online for patients at some point in the future. A confusing message? Yes we thought so too.

Although a report in the Guardian on Tuesday said the government will implement a new system of online patient care records by the end of parliament, the DoH was unclear of its plans when V3 asked for more details of the strategy.

Electronic medical records was one recommendation made by the NHS Future Forum last June in a report that also advised the government on a number of other ways to modernise the NHS.

On Tuesday, the DoH said it would accept the advice from the Future Forum, but in a press release the department only outlined its plans to improve the education and training of health care workers, improve integrated care for patients and promote healthy living.

No reference to online electronic records was made.

V3 contacted the DoH to ask how it was planning to implement the online system and when patients could expect to see it in action.

"We support the recommendation," said the spokesman, before adding that he could not comment on whether the DoH has any online electronic record strategy in place, or whether the department was even discussing the issue.

"We can be certain about implementing it as much as we can be certain about anything," he added. Well that's crystal clear then.

News today that local authorities have managed to lose sensitive data on individuals over 1,000 times in the past three years is serious stuff, and underlines how much information we place in the hands of civil servants tasked with running the country.

The data, uncovered by privacy advocates Big Brother Watch, revealed that most of the incidents councils fessed up to involved the loss of devices such as laptops, mobile phones and USBs, which is not a huge surprise.

However, there were one or two bizarre incidents that caught Sneak's eye and show that for all the legislation and technical measures you can put in place to try and stop data going missing, you can't legislate for every eventuality.

These incidents include a staff member in Kent leaving a diary on top of his car before driving off, causing the diary to go missing, while the same error befell an employee in Gloucestershire who left conference case notes on the roof of his car.

An even better Gloucestershire incident, though, was the case of a van delivery door swinging open causing several bags of files to go missing, although all but one were recovered in the end. The council's action? "Van door fixed".

Sneak's favourite, however, was the report from an authority in Aberdeenshire that it lost sensitive data when a paper file was "blown away in the wind". This led to a verbal warning for the staff member involved and a "review of handling paper outside".

Basically, if it's windy, don't let go of paper, is the thing to remember. It certainly gives a new meaning to the term cloud computing anyway.