WASHINGTON, March 5 (UPI) -- A draft report on federal privacy policies makes several promising recommendations, including a government-wide privacy board, an analyst said Tuesday.
The report comes after several months of fact-finding by the Computer System Security and Privacy Advisory Board, working under the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The board expects to finalize the report by early June following a public comment period, board member John Sabo said Tuesday.
Ari Schwartz, an analyst with the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, said most of the report's recommendations are long overdue.
"The Privacy Act went into effect in 1975 and since then has been updated several times, but the guidance law has never been updated," Schwartz told United Press International. "Creating standard definitions is a perfect example of this."
In addition to untangling privacy's varying descriptions, the report said several federal privacy management practices need attention, including: -- Establishing a cross-agency privacy committee to coordinate policy-setting and develop best practices; -- Identifying all privacy officers and their offices to create a full picture of the available infrastructure; -- Formalizing the ties between privacy officers and chief information officers in each agency, and; -- Creating a map of how local, state and federal databases are linked to the private sector.
"A government-wide privacy board is desperately needed, you'll find universal agreement for that idea," Schwartz said. "It's also nice to see (the board) would like to take up the traditional NIST role of evaluating new standards and technologies."
The board is issuing the report with a full awareness of rapid changes in government information gathering following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"The fundamental issues identified by (the board) as a result of its inquiries ... are now of greater importance and deserve accelerated attention," the report said. "Changes in technology, impacts on privacy as a result of expanded e-business and e-government drivers, the increasingly relentless interaction of information technology and networked systems by government, corporations and individual citizens all mandate serious attention."
The fixes outlined in the report easily lie within the capabilities of federal agencies, the report said, given the "significant thought leadership and expertise" of the governments privacy officials and policy makers.
The officials appear willing to tackle the issues, it added, and need only a proper charter and top-level support to get started.
