The document discusses ethical and privacy concerns related to data collection for a tourism board's marketing efforts. It highlights the strategic advantages of using extensive visitor information but raises issues regarding potential backlash from sharing and selling personal data. The public relations team seeks guidance on best practices in data collection, risks of privacy violations, and the ethical implications of their data storage and usage strategies.

1. Competency
Develop examples of ethical and privacy concerns associated
with data supporting business intelligence efforts.
Instructions
You work for a tourism board at a top destination within the
United States that among other tasks, sends information out to
potential visitors, performs direct mailing campaigns, solicits
newsletter sign ups, and helps drive economic growth by
attracting visitors to the destination. The direct mailing team for
your organization accomplishes this through email blasts,
mailing flyers, and texting campaigns. The address list the
organization has in place is seen as a strategic advantage, as it
has extensive information about potential and repeat visitors,
and has been compiled from various sources over the years.
The organization has recently developed a mobile application
and hopes to leverage mobile devices and tablets to help make
obtaining information easier for the visitors, as well as
collecting more information on patterns of consumer behavior.
Since the mobile application will have access to a great deal of
personal information belonging to the users (email address, GPS
data, phone number, etc.), it has been suggested this
information be automatically uploaded to the direct mailing
database, and signing them up for various promotional efforts
and communications. It had also been suggested there may be an
opportunity for the marketing department to partner with the
local theme parks and attractions within the area, sharing the
databases from each to form one large database to reach more
users.

2. The idea has been presented to the organization's legal counsel
for review, as the IT team is fairly certain the end user
agreement for the mobile application states the collected
information can be reused and sold as needed. The public
relations team has taken a different position and feels there is
potential for backlash in social media as well as other public
outcries should the data be sold to or shared with other
organizations, and questions whether the data should even be
stored since there are additional pieces of data being collected
that have no purposeful use for the tourism board. They have
asked for your input on the matter.
The questions they are presenting you with include:
What are the general practices surrounding data collection?
How can privacy violations occur?
Are there any risks, issues, or problems associated with
collecting and storing data that isn’t needed now, in the event it
may be needed in the future? What information do other
organizations collect?
The end user agreement says we CAN collect, reuse, and sell
data as needed, but does that mean we should? Is there a level
of ethical data collection and storage that we should be
considering?
The task:
In addition to the presentation, prepare a memo to the head of
the public relations department outlining any possible risks
associated with collecting and using the data in the manner
described. Your report should include general practices around

3. data collection that are relevant to business operations (i.e.,
data that is needed vs. not), as well as specific examples how
possible privacy violations may be incurred.