Monitoring people's activities with IT - The unsolved questions

Monitoring people's activities in an organization has become more available and easier with ever increasing and more versatile usage of IT. Network traffic rates, e-mail behavior and program usage are just a few examples of available types of monitoring. But when does the good intentions stop and violation of privacy start? What are the motivations and responsibilities of the employer (organization) for using these methods?

One of the recent news topics in this area is the preparation for the new Finnish legislation concerning telecommunications monitoring, also know as Lex Nokia. Some writers compare this new piece of legislation to the infamous Stasi, others just complain that Nokia does not support learning or the law violates the constitution. Summa summarum, people are not happy with this new "law of prying" (suom: "urkintalaki").

The diminishing of one's personal privacy is definitely a drawback when these kinds of monitoring or surveillance methods are employed. But how much personal privacy does a person have (or is entitled to) when working in some organization? People's activities are still being monitored with more "conventional" ways, e.g. with camera surveillance and electronic access control systems (suom. kulkukortti). Even operative scheduling could be interpreted as monitoring: deadlines are planned, work is scheduled and completed tasks listed. The organization definitely has some interests for it's employees and is willing to pay for the time "spent" within and for the organization.

There are some wonderful possibilities for getting important managerial information with automated IT monitoring. New company policies and training possibilities for enhancing work flow and routines can be developed, if the correct information is available. For example, some companies want to reduce the amount of e-mails withing it's firewall premises. This could be done by introducing blogs or internal RSS-feeds, but these kinds of improvements typically require some training and the development progress needs to be transparent. Monitoring the reduced internal e-mail traffic is one way of showing concrete improvement in this area. Other scenario might be that (a part of) company's organization is not using the intranet, portals or internal programs as designed. Discovering the correct section and targeting appropriate training and/or information requires the use of program usage monitoring.

One other thing relating to people's behavior is that people tend to try harder when they know they're being monitored. This leads to the managerial decision of whether to keep the monitoring constantly transparent and thus adding to the already heavy information load that people are experiencing. Or, should the monitoring be kept secret and allow people to remain ignorant about it and concentrate on their work. The latter option has some dangerous possibilities hidden inside it. When detected, this kind of secretive and "controlling" management is guaranteed to upset people.

The questions about people's personal rights and privileges concerning their personal privacy is still without a final answers. When discussing these, I would like to add my opinions to the mix as well. Every participant should try to think the reasons and implications in these matters and from other viewpoints also, not just one's own. The organization most definitely has some very legitimate reasons to do some monitoring. These reasons should be made transparent for everyone and people should remember that they are in fact a part of that organization and typically employed by it. You can send your personal e-mails from your home, I know I can.