CENDI Projects — IT Security and PRIVACY

Major issues for agencies and their customers are security and privacy in an electronic environment. In December 2002, CENDI joined with Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC) to focus on disaster preparedness, recovery, and service continuity in digital environments. The workshop, Business Continuation and Disaster Recovery, looked at continuing the business of government in the face of disaster and lessons learned from the 9/11 tragedy, both with regard to physical disasters and electronic disruptions.

In 2001, CENDI sponsored a symposium on PKI and Digital Signatures: From E-Commerce to E-Information Management. The symposium was hosted by the National Library of Medicine. Presentations discussed concepts and technologies, federal policy issues, the status of federal efforts in this area, and methods for implementing digital signatures in document management.

With regard to privacy, information can be collected more easily and distributed and aggregated in ways that were never possible in a print environment. As the agencies respond to E-government initiatives, staff members are increasingly required to deal with customers through electronic communication.

While there are legislative, Executive Branch and agency directives regarding privacy, CENDI determined the need to raise the awareness of these issues at the operational level. In August 2000, a CENDI working group developed guidelines for e-mails, Web-based transactions and applications, and address lists such as newsgroups and listservs.