Information Answers

The Trust Index – An Introduction

“Personal information is one of the most valuable commodities in society today. Government and public service providers gather a wealth of information from taxpayers, car owners, benefit recipients, patients, clients, customers and voters. Businesses too, are intent on developing ever more sophisticated ways of capturing and using data about individuals.Consumers have much to gain from these developments.But whenever personal data is collected and stored it may also be abused. Wrong information may be passed on to third parties, privacy invaded, or individuals besieged by marketers. Trust is hard won and necessarily fragile. If the information age is to develop on secure foundations, it is vital that those who collect and use personal data maintain the confidence of those who are asked to provide it.”

Source:    National Consumer Council, 2004

That’s the theory anyway; however the reality is that individuals have an ever-growing body of evidence that suggests they should be very wary of what they provide and who they provide it to when they are asked to provide personal information. In recent years individuals have been increasingly exposed to:

• An ever-growing mountain of irrelevant junk mail on their door-mats
• Cold-call tele-marketers blatantly using hard sell tactics to sell products and services that are not in the individuals’ best interests
• Their personal data being sold, bought, rented and swapped for money of which they get no share
• The increased potential for identity theft from organisations taking less care of personal data than they should

And without strong incentives, that’s not going to change – no slap on the wrist from an Information Commissioner or front page article in the press is going to outweight the financial incentives that make most organisations less protective of the personal information in their control than they should be. There is likely to be only one incentive that organisations will respond to – money; whether that be making money in the private sector, or saving money in the public sector. Organisations need to realise that those who most respect and protect the personal information of their customers will perform better financially than those that don’t. And if that means naming and shaming those who don’t as part of the exercise – then so be it.

This assessment offers individuals a view on the extent to which they should trust a specific organisation with their personal information. For organisations it shows areas where improvements must be made if individuals are to be expected to trust their personal information to the organisation. The principles underpinning the assessment are rooted in privacy and data protection legislation, combined with good customer management practice and an awareness of the upsides and downsides to the use of technology in relation to personal information.

The Trust Index assessment process is described here.

The Trust Index assessment outputs are described here.