IT WAS JUST A YEAR AGO that FTC Commissioner Sheila Anthony said privacy notices aren’t working. Her comments were echoed in news stories from coast to coast, and many in industry agreed with the commissioner. While the triggering event was the flood of financial services notices required by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act, in no way was this just or primarily a financial services issue.
GLB required an annual mailing of very long and detailed financial privacy notices to every household in the United States. Other industries have struggled with notices, and new laws and regulations are about to trigger similar requirements in healthcare. The immediate questions facing the industry last summer were why the quagmire and what’s the solution.
It was crystal clear that we were asking too much from privacy notices. We were first saying that they be complete, dealing in great detail with the collection, use, sharing, storage and protection of information. At the same time, we required that the notices be clear and easy to understand. Anyone who has done a data map in a complex organization knows that either task is difficult. Requiring one document to accomplish both is impossible. Current notice research by business professors Mary Culnan and George Milne make that point. GLB mandates that institutions cover nine elements in notices, while the healthcare notices require 19. Academic research reveals that individuals can process no more than seven elements (many would say five is the max). Trying to do both tasks in the same document just doesn’t work.
Based on the premise that we could reinvent notices, nine leadership companies got together at the Center for Information Policy Leadership meeting at Hunton & Williams’ offices in New York. The nine companies came from different industries and had very different needs. The all shared a common desire to make notices better for consumers, which in turn makes them better for business. Since that initial meeting the group has achieved a great deal:
