Is Government Equipped to Protect Citizen Privacy?

As technology gets smarter and more advanced, it also introduces new vulnerabilities for government-held data. At the National Association of Chief Information Officers Midyear conference in May, we asked state IT leaders: Is government equipped to protect citizen privacy?

"I have these conversations all the time because I’m sort of operating as the chief privacy officer. Things like using an email address without permission to solicit somebody — some people would think, ‘Oh yeah, I’m going to do that because I need to further my business function,’ but you wouldn’t want that to happen to yourself. So explaining things in those contexts I think is a great way to start the privacy dialog and educate people over time to have a culture of privacy versus just a bunch of policies." — Denis Goulet, New Hampshire CIO

"We start with the principle that we’re following the [federal Fair Information Practice Principles], so we’re looking at accountability, use limitation …. It’s about following across the line and making sure that people’s data is handled fairly and in the way that they would expect it to be, and also in the way that we’re asking businesses to do. … When we look at what we’re asking private industry to do, we should at least be doing that at the state level. I think that that’s the expectation that people have and that we need to live up to that." — Cherie Givens, North Carolina Chief Privacy Officer

"We’re just starting to look at building a data office, so a lot of those conversations [around privacy] will emerge in connection with our chief data officer and some of the work around analytics. We’re really focused on performance now. But certainly we have a special obligation to be thinking about privacy and managing the privacy expectations of our constituents. So we have those conversations every day to make sure we’re applying the right frameworks and that we’re thinking about it in such a way that we don’t develop solutions that may ultimately not meet the expectations of the citizens from a privacy standpoint." — Matt Behrens, Iowa CIO

"One of the primary things we’ve done was create a chief privacy officer for Massachusetts. From there we’re working on defining a series of policy statements to both protect the data that we own and then also our relationships with vendors to ensure the data that we have with the vendors is protected from a privacy perspective. But it really does start with a chief privacy officer and the policies associated with that." — Jason Snyder, Massachusetts CIO

"Government is uniquely equipped to be able to help increase the level of privacy for our citizens. I think it’s important for us to understand both in and out of government that the data really belongs to the citizens. We’re just custodians in whatever function we use. So as we look to increase services and provide services, we’re really focusing on minimal amounts of data, only accessing the bare minimum, and allowing citizens to drive what is exposed and what is not exposed, what they provide, what they don’t provide." — Bill Smith, Alaska CIO

This story originally appeared in the June issue ofGovernment Technologymagazine. Click here to view the full digital edition online.