Priscilla M. Regan

Learning to Govern Online Federal Agency Internet Use

This research offers a limited empirical study of online service in federal government agencies. The authors are interested in the evolution of online governance and what factors influence the adoption and elaboration of online services. Information about online agency services was gathered primarily from online U.S. General Accounting Office reports and testimony offered between 1993 and 2000. The authors examine online activities that carry out three governmental functions: providing services, collecting information, and soliciting stakeholder comment. Four principal cases were selected: the Social Security Administration’s Online PEBES, the Department of Education’s National Student Loan Data System, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The analysis of these cases identifies a partial sequence of steps or stages in development of online services. It appears that this sequence is a result of both learning and the imposition of certain standards of performance based on best practices and legislative mandates.

Emergency response systems and the creeping legibility of people and places

Over the last 35 years, centralized universal-number (in the United States, 9-1-1) systems have come to be the preferred means of emergency-response dispatching. The creation of these systems has motivated the development of information systems that render the landscape, to those with the right access, increasingly legible. This has been to the benefit of those receiving emergency services, but also to the benefit of police and commercial interests, who have used the improved infrastructure as bases for the creation of geodemographic and other profiling systems. More recently, the creation of wireless telephony has motivated the creation of a further surveillance infrastructure built on and integrated into that landscape. One consequence has been the commercialization of the systems in ways that permit the incorporation of more intimate and detailed data into preexisting systems. Public concern with locational surveillance systems has focused on privacy. However, “privacy” may be an inadequate frame through which to understand these issues and to fashion appropriate responses.

Negotiating With Gender Stereotypes on Social Networking Sites

Research indicates that stereotypical representations of girls as sexualized objects seeking male attention are commonly found in social networking sites. This article presents the results of a qualitative study that examined how young women “read” these stereotypes. Our participants understood Social networking sites (SNS) as a commoditized environment in which stereotypical kinds of self-exposure by girls are markers of social success and popularity. As such, these images are “socially facilitative” for young women. However, the gendered risks of judgment according to familiar stereotypical norms are heightened by the intense surveillance enabled by SNS. While our participants indicated that a mediatized celebrity culture inculcates girls with messages that they must be attractive, have a boyfriend, and be part of the party scene, girls are much more likely than boys to be harshly judged for emphasizing these elements in their online profiles. Girls are also open to harsh criticism for their degree of publicness. The risk of being called a “slut” for having an open profile, too many friends, or posting too much information suggests that continuing discriminatory standards around public participation may effectively police girls’ capacity to fully participate online and complicate their ability to participate in defiant gender performances.

Crafting the message: Controlling content on agency Web sites

Abstract While much research has focused on the new opportunities that government Web sites offer for greater citizen involvement and improved agency efficiency, less attention has been given to agency decisions about what to post on these Web sites. Here we use interviews with content managers in seven federal agencies to investigate the political and institutional influences behind decisions about Web content. We analyze the approval processes for new content and the emerging governance structures for evidence of greater centralization and political control or greater decentralization and autonomy for Web posters. In the end, it appears that institutional factors persist to influence content governance.

Old issues, new context: Privacy, information collection, and homeland security

Abstract In response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there have been several statutory and regulatory changes that enhance the collection and use of personal information for intelligence and law enforcement purposes. This article first examines how particular sectors, including financial, educational, libraries, and transportation, have been affected by these changes, with particular attention to the requirements of the USA PATRIOT Act. Next, five common themes and trends, including the lowering of standards for individualized suspicion and the weakening of judicial safeguards, are identified and their effects on privacy and due process are explored. Finally, the article analyzes several political and social implications of the omnibus reduction in privacy protections in the face of terrorism, including the proposal for a national identification system.

Safe Harbors or Free Frontiers? Privacy and Transborder Data Flows

This article explores the issues surrounding the harmonization of privacy or data protection during the last 30 years. It begins with a history of the conflict over transborder data flows and then proceeds to analyze current national and regional policy debates about the feasibility of policy solutions to address problems that are integral to global communications and economic networks. Ongoing discussions between the European Union and the United States over Safe Harbor Principles provide data for exploring these issues. The article concludes with an analysis of whether harmonization of privacy and data protection policies is likely to evolve through existing processes and institutions.

Privacy and Commercial Use of Personal Data: Policy Developments in the United States

In the online and offline worlds, the value of personal information – especially information about commercial purchases and preferences – has long been recognised. Exchanges and uses of personal information have also long sparked concerns about privacy. Public opinion surveys consistently indicate that overwhelming majorities of the American public are concerned that they have lost all control over information about themselves and do not trust organisations to protect the privacy of their information. Somewhat smaller majorities favour federal legislation to protect privacy. Despite public support for stronger privacy protection, the prevailing policy stance for over thirty years has been one of reluctance to legislate and a preference for self-regulation by business to protect privacy. Although some privacy legislation has been adopted, policy debates about the commercial uses of personal information have been dominated largely by business concerns about intrusive government regulation, free speech and the flow of commercial information, costs, and effectiveness. Public concerns about privacy, reflected in public opinion surveys and voiced by a number of public interest groups, are often discredited because individuals seem to behave as though privacy is not important. Although people express concern about privacy, they routinely disclose personal information because of convenience, discounts and other incentives, or a lack of understanding of the consequences. This disconnect between public opinion and public behaviour has been interpreted to support a self-regulatory approach to privacy protections with emphasis on giving individuals notice and choice about information practices. In theory the self-regulatory approach also entails some enforcement mechanism to ensure that organisations are doing what they claim, and a redress mechanism by which individuals can seek compensation if they are wronged. This article analyses the course of policy formulation over the last twenty years with particular attention on how policymakers and stakeholders have used public opinion about the commercial use of personal information in formulating policy to protect privacy. The article considers policy activities in both Congress and the Federal Trade Commission that have resulted in an emphasis on “notice and consent.” The article concludes that both individual behaviour and organisational behaviour are skewed in a privacy invasive direction. People are less likely to make choices to protect their privacy unless these choices are relatively easy, obvious, and low cost. If a privacy protection choice entails additional steps, most rational people will not take those steps. This appears logically to be true and to be supported by behaviour in the physical world. Organisations are unlikely to act unilaterally to make their practices less privacy invasive because such actions will impose costs on them that are not imposed on their competitors. Overall then, the privacy level available is less than what the norms of society and the stated preferences of people require. A consent scheme that is most protective of privacy imposes the largest burden on the individual, as well as costs to the individual, while a consent scheme that is least protective of privacy imposes the least burden on the individual, as well as fewer costs to the individual. Recent experience with privacy notices that resulted from the financial privacy provisions in Gramm-Leach-Bliley supports this conclusion. Finally, the article will consider whether the terrorist attacks of 11 September have changed public opinion about privacy and what the policy implications of any changes in public opinion are likely to be.

Federal Agency Blogs: Agency Mission, Audience, and Blog Forms

ABSTRACT This article reports on a systematic investigation of every federal department and independent agency for evidence of a current or past blog with a focus on three questions: Which agencies are using blogs, how are they using them, and why are agencies blogging? The question of why becomes particularly important as more agencies establish this online presence. We examine the relationships among the mission of the agency, the audience of the blog, and the form of the blog to address these questions. We also explore the relationship between blogging and the technological sophistication of the agency generally, and portray patterns of duration and density of traffic on the blogs. A number of hypotheses related to agency constituency-building and communication are examined.

Developing Intranets for Agency Management

Intranets have become synonymous with information dissemination, but they also have the potential for achieving a qualitative change in organizational activities and for reconstituting the organization as a locus of collaboration and knowledge management. As Intranets become more commonplace in government agencies, questions about their ability to achieve the promise of interactive management and innovation need to be raised. In this article, case studies of six federal Intranets are discussed to determine what management functions have been undertaken and whether the potential of interactive management is being accomplished. The authors find several highly useful but static applications and some evidence of the emergence of interactive collaboration as well as some barriers to this collaboration that are not rooted in shortages of resources or limitations of design sophistication.

Generational views of information privacy

This article investigates whether there are different attitudes about information and communication technologies and information privacy among members of different generations. Specifically we consider: do different generations experience information and communication technology-mediated environments in the same way or not? Are there disjunctures or continuities in the experience of privacy across one generation? Do different generations have dissimilar attitudes about what constitutes a privacy invasion and different levels of concern about such invasions? Or is privacy a concern that develops as one ages through her life cycle and becomes more invested in the social and economic world? In other words, is information privacy, instead, something of a middle-age concern? To answer these questions, we first review the literature on generational differences, as well as the literature on privacy attitudes and introduce a number of hypotheses. We then analyze responses to two survey questions that have been asked periodically over the last 30 years to determine whether there are age cohort and/or generational differences. From the data examined, it is difficult to speak with any authority on the question of whether familiarity with technology means that younger generations or age cohorts are less concerned about technology or whether as all generations and age groups become familiar with technology privacy concerns decrease over time. However we do identify some interesting patterns.