OMB's FISMA Reporting a Win for Privacy

Traditionally, privacy experts cringe at any sentence that uses "security and privacy" together as a pairing. It is usually a cover for protecting personal information from outside misuse while creating new questionable practices for internal use of personal data.

OMB's ever-increasing privacy reporting within FISMA seem to be a clear example of where tying the two together has benefited privacy accountability within agencies. The 2007 FISMA report released earlier this month offered more detailed accounting of privacy activity than at any time since Chief Privacy Counsel Peter Swire left as OMB at the end of the Clinton Administration and showed that some agencies are making improvements.

At a Government Reform Committee Hearing yesterday, E-Government Administrator Karen Evans made a persuasive case that privacy reporting was going to improve even more in 2008 now pointing to the January Memo requiring even greater measures to be tied into FISMA reports. Evans deserves credit for standing steadfast in this strategy that has failed before, but is clearly working today.