Comments on: Google’s Insight into Canada’s Economic Action Plan

By: Stuart

Stuart — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:22:19 +0000

I used to be the Regional Website Coordinator for Human Resources Development Canada. We wouldn’t have used a 3rd party tool for monitoring website statistics, and definitely not one hosted in another country.

At the University I work at now we don’t run Google Analytics for the same reasons we didn’t when I was with the Government.

Hearing about this, and the comment from @Puhleeze / Privy Council Office is very surprising. Why aren’t they running their own analytics in-house?

By: admin

admin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:40:25 +0000

@Puhleeze Thanks for dropping by! It’s not every day that I receive comments originating from the Privy Council Office (IP: 198.103.111.110). As you can see, Google Analytics is a very powerful tool. To suggest that Google Analytics “collects less personal information than is offered in the phone book” is nothing short of an absurdity.

Information about the internet activity of Canadian citizens on a Canadian government website is being transmitted to a foreign corporation without proper disclosure. In my humble opinion, this is cause for concern and deserving of a meaningful explanation from the appropriate authorities; not from somebody in the PM’s office hiding behind “anonymous” blog comments.

By: Puhleeze

Puhleeze — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:44:41 +0000

Puhleeze. Google analytics collects less personal information than is offered in the phone book. If you want to make sure Google doesn’t know anything about .gc.ca visitors, then the gov should delist it’s websites from the Google crawl. Anybody think that’s a good idea?

It’s reports like these that slow the progress of the government on the web.

Anybody who wants to avoid leaving any info behing need only surf anonymously–it’s about as easy as crafting a tinfoil hat. If you don’t know how, ask the german chancellor.