A petition calling for the prime minister to create a government department dedicated to oversee business continuity within Whitehall has been launched.

Richard Fitzhugh, who launched the petition, told computer weekly that present business continuity responsibilities are shared across government departments meaning that creating a uniform process for the matter is difficult.

He added the fact that attempts to draw up a simple guide to matters relating to business continuity had led to the creation of a document in excess of 200 pages.

The text of the petition reads: "We the undersigned petition the prime minister to create a designated lead department within central government to coordinate, initiate and oversee business continuity management within all other government departments."

At the start of the month Computer Weekly reported that civil servants were concerned that there could be more high-profile data losses similar to the one that saw HM Revenue and Customs mislay the details of 15 million individuals.

New research from Connect found that, on average, it takes businesses that use backup tapes take 11.6 hours to retrieve and restore files. Connect is now recommending that SMEs switch to www.totalrecall.co.uk