• Deputy Director, Office of Information Assurance, U.S. Department of State

Farewell to Facebook? A Federal Executive’s Dilemma

By · February 16, 2011 · 8:12 pm

I like to think of myself as one of the early adopters (at least in my generation) of what we now know as “social networking.”  As far back as 2004, I became curious about this phenomenon, ironically due to an issue relating to IT security in the home. At the time, I was exploring knowledge management for the Department of State and researching different forms of content management, including MySpace, which was foreign to the average IT professional at that time. My interest was piqued when MySpace (described as a “web site”) played a significant role in a tragedy at my son’s high school.  As the only PTA parent willing to take on the research, I volunteered to report on the “web sites,” which turned out to be MySpace. To make a long story short, I made the report and became immersed in the then-mysterious world of social networking.  My interest was heightened by the ability to peer into my son’s MySpace activity, a story for another time.

I trailed my son from MySpace and into Facebook, as it became a networking phenomenon in the latter half of the last decade.  Besides affording me a peek into college life, Facebook became useful as an adult social networking tool once it was opened up to non-students. I recall using it to support Government Outreach for the 2007 ACT-IAC Management of Change Conference.

Like most everyone I know, I have been swept up by the Facebook tidal wave, eavesdropping on “friends” lives and reconnecting with old friends (the real kind) and former classmates.  It was fun while it lasted, but I have decided that I no longer need to rediscover any more old classmates, adopt new “Facebook friends” or find missing friends. The mid-life crisis is over; it is time to return to adult business.

Why? Because I have concluded that Facebook knows too much about me and my life. For example, although I have never entered the year of my birth into the Facebook profile, Facebook’s advertisers are able to discern my age quite accurately.  Of course, we as IT professionals understand that Facebook looks at your “friends,” classmates, and interests to deduce information about you that is eerily on point. The database is as extensive as it is intelligent, with more than 43% of Americans utilizing some form of social networking.

On the commercial side, most businesses now have a Facebook presence with a “Like” button that we are all too willing to push. In our case, we need to keep in mind that the same “Like” button reads “Easy” to those who wish to capture or market information about us.  Consider the fact that in the social networking world, the line between our personal and professional lives is often blurred.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO and President, has expressed his concern about the privacy of its 500M+ users. Although I have no reason to doubt his sincerity, I am not ready to trust his ability to manage Facebook’s more than 1 billion objects, and 30 billion pieces of content.  If you have ever tried to make your Facebook identity “go away,” it is a daunting, if not impossible, task.

For me, as Facebook becomes an increasingly bigger business tool, its utility for social networking diminishes accordingly.  Most importantly, Facebook’s ability to generate revenue makes it a target for those whose predilection is to profit criminally.  As government officials, we must be vigilant in our understanding that those who would wish to do harm the United States Government, our agencies, and us as Federal officials, have access to a treasure trove of information.

When I read that Time Magazine named Mr. Zuckerberg its “Person of the Year,” I decided to let my Facebook account rest. Now that Facebook is valued at more than $50B and was the willing recipient of a $500M infusion from Goldman Sachs, I concluded that I am no longer a friend, but a customer, which is far from my original intent in signing up.  The upside is I no longer need to constantly check for “news” about other peoples’ lives.  Farewell, Facebook; it was a quite a ride, but my responsibilities as a Federal Government employee far outweigh my cyber-social networking needs.

DISCLAIMER

The views presented here are the express opinion of the author and do not represent any official position of the United States Government or the U.S. Department of State.

Related

Gary R. Galloway has been the Deputy Director of the Office of Information Assurance (IRM/IA) since May 2007. He also is serving as Acting Director of IRM/IA’s Enterprise Risk Division. Prior to arriving in IRM/IA, Mr. Galloway was Deputy Director and Director for Business Technology of the Office of eDiplomacy from April 2003 – May 2007, serving as Acting Office Director from July 2005 – January 2006. He has been an employee of the Department of State since 1986 and has been with the Bureau of Information Resource Management since 1996. Mr. Galloway brings extensive knowledge of the Department’s IT infrastructure and a full understanding of the application of technology to IRM/IA’s mission of protecting the Department’s information systems and networks. Mr. Galloway began his career with the Department of Interior and worked briefly at the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Labor prior to coming to State. He came to the State Department as a programmer analyst in the Bureau of Resource Management, rising to the position of Director of Systems Operations in 1993. His tenure in IRM began as a Senior Policy Advisor to the first Chief Information Officer in State, followed by tenure as a Senior Advisor to the Deputy CIO for Architecture, Planning and Regulation. Mr. Galloway is the recipient of numerous Department awards, including the Superior Honor Award in 2006 and the Meritorious Honor Award on multiple occasions. Mr. Galloway is an active member of the American Council for Technology (ACT) and a graduate of the prestigious Industry Advisory Council (IAC) IT Partners Program, winning the Outstanding Partner of the Year award for the Class of 2006. He is also a member of the Government Advisory Panel for IAC’s Information Security and Privacy Special Interest Group and the Symantec Government Symposium Advisory Board, in addition to serving as the Government Vice-Chair for the ACT-IAC 2009 Management of Change Conference. Mr. Galloway serves as a mentor for the ACT-IAC Voyager Program, and the Department of State Civil Service Mentoring Program. He is also a member of the Montgomery County Boys and Girls Club Board of Directors. Mr. Galloway is a member of the Association for Federal Information Resources Management, serving a co-chair of the eAFFIRM committee and has been a guest speaker for the American Electronics Association (AeA) and the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA). Mr. Galloway earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and was awarded a Master of Science degree in National Resource Strategy with an Information Strategies Concentration from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University. He is a native of Washington, D.C. and lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with his wife, Monroe, and son, Reginald who is a student at Princeton University.

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  • Denise Hill

    Gary, Bravo! I too find that I am using Facebook less and less. I check Facebook occasionally, as a tool to check-in with family and friends. Facebook has reduced the occurances of casually picking up the phone to say “Hi!”. With each change to their features, that which you so elequently stated, is made more and more obvious.
    Plus, the Junk Mail pile in my mailbox is getting larger as the marketers on Facebook get more proficient at making the connections.

  • http://www.joejava.com Nigel Ballard

    Nice piece Gary. I can’t argue with any of the points you make, yet the FB still pulls me in, whilst at the tame time selling all my demographic secrets to all and sundry. Such a dilemma! See you next week I hope.
    Cheers Nigel

  • Maria Filios

    I, like you, followed my eldest teen into FB and I have also wondered at the future reprecussions of doing so. Those concerns have also made me wonder why there has been such a push to use unrestrained social networking tools like FB and twitter for the work of government. I expect that there will eventually be constrained versions available for us to work with. Until then, I have purposely kept my FB account purely social, but of course there are professional colleagues who also fall into the category of true friends, so it isn’t a clean distinction. I applaud your ability to go cold turkey. Unfortunately our very large extended family is now so dependent on FB that I would miss significant family obligations (showers, weddings, baptisms, graduations, 90th birthdays, and even wakes and funerals) if I were to drop out. I find myself captive for now, longing for old-fashioned direct e-mails or even (gasp!) phone calls….

  • http://www.cdwg.com Dawn Hall

    Very valid piece Gary. But now I will never know where you are or what you are doing. I too often wonder about all the available data on FB and how easily it would be to figure out users answers to their bank security questions…..including the name of ones oldest niece!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JPNKBJ7EMMOSZJDEYL7NV4553A LindaC

    I don’t think a choice to not use social networking should be a statement about the relative priorities of one’s executive career. Networking in any fashion provides a senior executive a rich community to tap and a forum for brainstorming. Social networking can accomplish this in an electronic means. Just as one can not and should not overdo the square cheese and open bar curcuit, too much social networking can be counter productive. But, I believe that it should be a component of any 21st century technology executive’s bag of tricks.