Posting clear written policies concerning the operations of your arts or cultural organization – hours of operation, using the archives, not touching the artwork – are de rigueur.
But are you forgetting your online presence? Having clear policies on your organization’s website is a good idea, because you may have just as many people viewing and using your website as visit your “brick and mortar” organization.
One aspect of your web presence that should be covered by a clear policy is privacy, and that goes for individual artists as well as organizations.
Any organization or individual with a website needs a clear outline of what kinds of information are collected on their website, what is done with the information and how it is protected. Check any newspaper or news site for recent stories of privacy gaffs and breaches of personal information at websites and you’ll see the need.
First, be aware of what you collect on your website. If you don’t know, check with your website adminstrator or with the volunteer who handles it. If you’re an indivdual artist,
Gathering names and email addresses is common, and that’s obviously information that needs to fall under a privacy policy posted on your website.
If you don’t collect email addresses, but use software to track website “hits” and traffic, be aware that that information should be covered in your privacy policy. Website statistics can contain information that can be used to identify users in some cases. How long do you keep those stats and how detailed are they?
And be aware of services that you may add to your site and how they may affect your privacy statement. For instance, if you start running ads on your website, those ads will place cookies and track users, and that could make your privacy policy moot, if you state in your policy that your site doesn’t use cookies or track visitors.
Those cookies might be first party cookies – from your own site – or third party cookies, from the advertiser’s websites. Those advertisers should inform you of their cookie polices and should provide the necessary privacy statement to put on your own website.
Does your website have outbound links? You might want a “leaving page” that states to your users that they are leaving your site and that the linked site will have different privacy policies.
Read some of the privacy policies at other arts organizations Web sites to get an idea of what you might need.
Privacy policies apply to governments, too. The State of Montana is one of 16 states that require state government Web sites to display a comprehensive privacy policy. You can read the at Montana statewide information systems policy and it might give you some ideas of what you need in your own policy.