A substantial amount of official data of the Pakistan Prime Minister's Secretariat, including some classified documents, has been stolen by persons employed on short-term contracts who accessed a secure computer system.

The kind of classified information that was stolen was not immediately clear though the Dawn newspaper quoted a source as saying that the head of a multi-million rupee project to computerise and safeguard government data had "run away with classified data".

A complaint about the stolen data has been lodged with the executive director of the Electronic Government Directorate by the manager of the information system at the Prime Minister?s Secretariat, the source said.

In the complaint, information system manager Farhan Karim Jaskani said: "Mr TR transferred the classified data from PM's secretariat database without prior permission of the joint secretary (admin)?which was later proved in the office of the joint secretary?while the said official (TR) admitted this."

A senior security official described the incident as a serious breach of security.

"The data was stolen from the database server of the PM?s secretariat, clearly exposing the weak information security protocols in place," he told the newspaper.

The official said that a strict security protocol for protecting information and the system from unauthorised access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification or destruction was not followed in this case.

Data such as approvals by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and his staff and other classified information are stored on the server.

The Prime Minister's Secretariat's officials use the database and email servers extensively but the email server failed to detect the alleged cyber thief, an official said.

The staff at the Prime Minister?s Secretariat learnt about the theft when they caught an official of the Electronic Government Directorate copying data on his personal laptop and in violation of the security clearance policy.

"The laptop was handed over to the individual by senior officials without following prescribed information security measures," an official said.

"You need a centralised database network for strict observation of the data stored on different database servers.

But despite having a huge information and communication technology network, the federal government is without a proper centralised database centre," an information security expert said.

The expert said the matter should have been immediately reported to the National Telecommunication and Information Security Board that works under the cabinet division.