Guidance on agency dataset contact information

[adborden]

This question came up during today's Open Data meeting:

Are there any privacy concerns with publishing an individual agency employee's contact information?

[adborden]

Based on @hkdctol and @rebeccawilliams 's response, the guidance might include:

• Citation in the law to requiring contact information.
• Some explanation of why there should be no privacy concerns with publishing an individual agency employee's contact information.
• Customers (data users) like working with real people so an individual's contact information is preferred. We recommend you use an individual's contact information and keep that information up to date, since this role can change.
• A listserv or group email may be appropriate if multiple employees share the responsibility of dataset ownership.

[adborden]

Conversation from the monthly r.d.g meeting:

Schema refers to a vcard, which implies first/last name, so what should you do with group email addresses?

If you identify an individual instead of a group, it's clear who is responsible. If it's a group list, it's less clear who's responsibility it is to respond at the agency.

[hkdctol]

Not sure there is a current issue for resources.data.gov, but I would keep this and move to whatever we decide to use for tracking issues when we do a metadata schema update.