... as he couldn't find his car keys and was unable to make it in to work.

Seriously, not to leap to the defence of my government, but I understand "missing" stuff. It's not like the laptop/cell phone/old girlfriend that you *personally* had and have now lost. When they say "missing" they mean "the IG doesn't know where it is". Which comes from conversations like this:

A: "Where's that gadget thing?"
B: "I dunno. I thought you had it last?"
A: "No, you had it last week."
A: "Well, bollocks."

And of course it always turns out that the projector / disk / computer / camera / whatever was in the supply closet or on C's desk the whole time. But if the IG had audited us, we would've been in trouble.

More troubling when it's personal info but I don't lose sleep about it. That just means the USB key with the socials on it is under the stack of two hundred papers some other department gave the datawallah to crunch. 

Joys of civil service! Lord, how I miss it.

Umm $30 million / 1000 laptops = $30,000 per laptop????? ok, yes it is suppose to be 99% of the missing gear but still! Gotta love the markup on those laptops. Or somebody lost a super computer somplace!

I'm sure they're sitting safe and sound in employee's houses, I wouldn't really worry about it. It seems that 10,000 people got a $3,000 bonus.

The whole damned government has lost track of reality. Where is Guy Fawkes when you need him?

That's ok. I am sure they will just up my taxes some more and buy more laptops which they will lose again next year. Nothing like gov't accountability... Just wish some form of gov't - city, state, fed - would make people financially responsible for the laptops assigned to them. I am sure then there wouldn't be so many "missing". Funny that I have had my laptop that I purchased for 2 years and I haven't lost it, yet.