Government Executive Magazine - 9/8/00 OMB raps critique of Web privacy policies

In a Thursday letter to the General Accounting Office, Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Sally Katzen criticized a soon-to-be-released GAO study that compares federal government Web sites to the privacy principles recently put forward by the Federal Trade Commission.

Saying that because federal Web sites are governed by the Privacy Act while commercial sites aren't, Katzen said, "the summary statistics in this report are comparable to a complaint that an apple lacks a thick, orange rind."

Details of the study: "Internet Privacy: Comparison of Federal Agency Practices with FTC's Fair Information Principles," were not available as of Thursday afternoon.

Katzen was more favorably disposed to a separate GAO report on Internet Privacy also released this week. That study, called "Internet Privacy: Agencies' Efforts to Implement OMB's Privacy Policies" (GGD-00-191), found that 69 out of 70 federal agencies had privacy policies posted.