I’ve been doing some thinking about data collection and personal privacy lately, and it’s struck me that a lot of early adopters, online cognoscenti and bandwagoners are rushing headlong into a world framed by the overarching principles of transparency, honesty and personal interaction - without thinking of about how much of their personal information they are leaving exposed.

This isn’t a new development. Without understanding something of how customer relationship marketing, market segmentation and direct marketing works, the average person really doesn’t understand how their personal information swirls in currents and eddies of databases, mail lists, dodgy piles of index cards and thumb keys.

I’ll give you an example: at the right is a set of keys. Attached are the key tags for four loyalty programs: Albertson’s grocery, GNC vitamin shop, Ace Hardware and some Canadian chain. To the key’s owners, those tags are worth 5% off purchases.

To someone with access to one or all those databases, those tags represent a considerable amount of detail about the key owner’s shopping habits, product preferences, fondness for discounts or particular brand names, and even their travelling habits.

With that information, marketers and political strategists can micro-market to increasingly targeted segments of the population - and your neighbourhood. And your group of friends. And members of your family.

But we’re only discussing information consciously handed over to marketers and consumer companies in exchange for quantifiable benefits: I’ll let you track my shopping patterns in exchange for a discount on bulk purchases of panty liners; I’ll sign up for your program so I receive advance emails about Memorial Day sales.

What about the personal information you leave hanging, for all to see, in your online profiles?

• your birthday
• your home address
• your kid’s names
• your vacation schedule

Would you post a picture of your driver’s licence? Considered as individual data points, this information does not seem like much. In total, you are giving out far more information for free - and to everyone - than you would agree to let a marketer collect.

I’ve already posted about the dangers of mistaken or outright stolen identity online. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that social media is evil.

Instead, we all need to get into the habit of maintaining an inventory of our online identity. Nothing complicated, just a personal awareness of how much information you’ve revealed, and to who.

Even on social networks that are password protected and offer tools to restrict access to your profile information, you may end up “friending” people who you barely know. And that increases the risk.
After all, you need to be aware whether some hacker knows more about you than your best friend.

And you better not lose that keychain.

*crossposted from canuckflack.com

The Power of Information report is in. I’m slowly reading through it, but I’ll give you some highlights from the fifteen recommendations for action by the British Government:

• coordinate the development of experimental partnerships between major departments and user-generated sites in key policy areas, including parenting advice, services for young people, and healthcare.
• departments should be strongly advised to consult the operators and users of pre-existing user-generated sites before they build their own versions.
• research the scale and role of user-generated websites in their areas, with a view to either terminating government services that are no longer required, or modifying them to complement citizen-led endeavours.
• examine the introduction of non-commercial re-use licences.
• by autumn 2007 the Cabinet Office Propriety and Ethics and Government Communications teams should together clarify how civil servants should respond to citizens seeking government advice and guidance online.

The full document is available at the Cabinet Office site.

As more and more civil servants, government employees and politicians dip their toes in the rolling sea we like to call social media*, they are separating into three schools of behaviour:

• advocates for social media
• advocates for increased transparency in government
• advocates for advances in policy and programs

It’s that last group that can find themselves in real trouble. The first two are just blowing smoke and talking sweetness, in most citizen’s eyes.

Take the example of Owen Barder, currently the Director of the Global Development Effectiveness Department at the U.K. Department for International Development.

His personal blog is down after a right slagging in the Daily Mail. The Mail excerpted from his blog posts, concentrating in particular on an entry that apparently drew ties between Tony Blair, George Bush and Adolph Hitler. (commenters on LGNewMedia point out that his post was actually quoting from a piece published in the Guardian)

Now, Barder is not a neophyte to communications. He’s a senior official in the British government, and among previous positions was Director of Information, Communications and Knowledge at the same Department.

I haven’t been able to read his blog, so I won’t make any assumptions about its content or his judgment. Several commenters note that the Mail may have been motivated, in part, by Barder’s past work for Labour PM Tony Blair.

But civil servants have to be aware that their online musings may be exposed to much greater criticism than normally expected online. The freewheeling and bare chested mannerisms promoted by most pioneer bloggers are inconceivable for government bloggers: they will targeted for greater scrutiny and will be allowed less room for error.

Government blogs, podcasts, and other social media experiments will likely be researched to death for evidence of:

• political bias
• poor theoretical judgment
• poor political judgment
• selective use of information
• levity and lack of timbre befitting a civil servant
• lack of empathy for the common man

As Che Tibby points out, a “hot-heated morning with too much coffee can, and will, become a permanent record. If you’re a public servant who wants to blog, try to avoid typing anything at all around heated events in the political cycle.”

Most civil servants are used to tempering how they express their actual opinions when speaking in the pub, at conferences and around crazy Aunt Mae the libertarian. Maybe we need to remember that caution when working online.

At the very least, civil servants have to remember to provide context, clearly identify sources and ring fence their arguments. Oh - and remember the role civil servants always play in relation to their political leaders.

*(wow, really beat that metaphor to death, didn’t I?)

When faced with new technology and innovative communications strategies, senior government officials will naturally be cautious and risk-averse. I’ve discussed this before. The challenge for communications advisors is to slowly shift the mindset of these officials - to open their minds and adapt our strategies to account for risk … and for ridicule.

Most communicators are well prepared to deal with risk, and they know how to account for risk in their communications strategies, preparatory materials, and in their briefings for officials.

The greater challenge is ridicule and its companions, embarrassment, chagrin and schadenfreude. Officials can prepare for opposition, confrontation or happenstance, but they have a hard time dealing with open mockery or a casual disregard for their hard work.

This, naturally, makes officials more cautious to experiment in an environment they don’t understand, and with technologies and communities that have humbled large and small corporations before them.

Which makes the British Government’s E-Petition site an interesting pilot project in the application of concepts like transparency, community participation and stakeholder involvement. (More about the site at the bottom of this post)

It would be very easy for the British Government to weed through the petitions submitted online, removing the obviously sarcastic, the obviously unattainable, or the simply laughable.

Instead, E-Petition seems to be allowing petitions the time to build a following. Even those that are obviously written as a lark or with a jaundiced eye.

• Make Spandau Ballet’s Gold the National Anthem (Youtube)
• Enter ultimate frisbee as a sport in the 2012 Olympics. (an actual goal of the sport)
• Force the government to take these petitions seriously if they have enough support

Those three petitions have been accepted. Here are some that have been rejected:

• Make our MD buy an Aston Martin and make it available as a pool car
• Impose a maximum weight limit for women wearing stiletto heels as they pose a massive threat to other members of the public on dance floors and in crowded bars nationwide
• Declare that the Beatles are better than Metallica
• Officially recognise Pete’s mum an official public resource
• Insist that Mr. Mark Gary Banham of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, wash more frequently than once a year
• Rid Our Streets of Chavs Once and for All

There is a longstanding tradition of delivering petitions to the Prime Minster, so the E-Petitions effort is building on precedent. That most likely made the decision to launch the site slightly easier.

We also have to take into account that there doesn’t seem to be a firm commitment to take action on petitions delivered to the Prime Minister - whether in print or online - and this allows officials some flexibility when reacting to submissions.

———-

“There is a long-established tradition of members of the public presenting petitions at the door of No 10 Downing Street. The e-Petitions [http://petitions.pm.gov.uk] service has been designed to offer a modern parallel, which is more convenient for the petitioner. Unlike paper-based petitions, this new service also provides an opportunity for No 10 to respond to petitioners via email.

Since its launch in November the ePetitions site has proved to be a highly popular innovation in the way that people communicate with government and with the Prime Minister’s Office in particular.

The service allows anyone (who is a UK citizen) to create a petition and to collect signatures via the website. Petitioners are asked to meet basic criteria, set out in an acceptance policy, but we aim to accept most petitions. The principal reasons for rejecting petitions so far have been obscenity, potential to cause offence, libel or duplication.” (E-Petitions - Facts, Figures and Progress)

Technorati Tags: Egovernment, Online Petition, Civil Society

There’s that word again - risk. How much risk is a government organization willing to take on while experimenting with social media and other online applications? By risk, I mean a willingness to hear dissenting voices as well as supporting commentary. How high up in the organization are there leaders willing to engage in open discussion and debate with stakeholders, activists and community leaders?

Or maybe we’d just be satisfied with some indication that senior people are considering how to react to the two-way conversations that are developing as online vehicles and Web 2.0 apps grow in popularity?

There is logic in the cautious approach undertaken by most government bodies. Large hierarchical organizations and agencies may need to take an incremental approach to integrating social media in their communications activities.

Uncertainty about the quantity, volume and acidity of an unmoderated comment flow may keep decision makers from embracing new technologies unreservedly - unless they can be convinced of the practical benefits for their existing work.

Michael Sommermeyer touches upon one possible pilot project in a post largely about the need to enable comment and feedback mechanisms on the social media news release:

“However, government agencies might consider the template, especially as they seek input on ordinances, procedures and laws; they have more of a reason to generate a conversation.”

That is exactly the type of conversation that can be enabled and enhanced by social media and online apps: a regulatory proposal, a health or safety issue, or even a zoning proposal.

Normally, this sort of initiative wouldn’t float to the surface of an organization’s website. There are dedicated consultations portals for these sorts of exchanges: portals usually frequented by traditional stakeholder groups. Otherwise, these initiatives are featured on focused sub-sites, like the zoning office’s web page.

A social media news release may provide just the right format to direct people towards a more detailed policy or regulatory proposal - and encourage debate and discussion at the same time!