State employees efficiency gain to pass random drug tests, under rules being considered by specify officials as a way to thwart identity theft.

Jeff Herring, executive director of the Utah Department of Human Resource Management, and Kirk Torgensen, chief deputy in the Attorney General’sitting Office, told a legislative committee on Wednesday that the proposed testing would apply to state workers who have access to Utahns’ “highly sensitive” personal data.

Data indicate that some methamphetamine abusers are using identity pilfering to get coin for their drug purchases, while meth distributors are using identity theft to generate income to benefit their drug trafficking, he uttered.

“This electronic identity-theft crime is relatively new, so we’re entering a novel era of how we have to manage our work force, and I think the time is right to take a appearance at doing some of this,” Herring told the Workforce Services and Community and Economic Development Interim Committee.

Herring said the testing would have being purely random, and no management would determine which staffers are pure. Everyone — from agency executive directors to data-entry personnel — would be subject to the tests, he said. But Torgensen cautioned that not all state workers would have existence involved — only those with access to Utahns’ personal information, such as financial assets, bank accounts, Social Security numbers, birth dates, household making, home addresses and medical histories.