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    Zones of Ambiguity Dealers

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    Laurian Vega
    Licensed childcare providers in the United States, including programs for infants, pre-schoolers and after-school care for elementary age children, provide a rich environment for trying to understand complex, sensitive information management issues as they pertain to privacy and security. Childcare providers do not exist for the sole purpose of managing knowledge. They exist to take care of children. Yet knowledge management is patently integral to both everyday operations and to long-term licensure. Most information is routine, but some is sensitive. We present findings from an ethnographically-informed study comprised of interviews and observations of collaborative practices and management of security knowledge and practice in from thirty-one participants in Southwestern Virginia. We describe the day-to-day negotiation of ad hoc security needs and the creation of new policies and enactment of existing policies. In particular, we locate zones of ambiguity, in which behaviors allow fundamentally contradictory concerns to exist in tacit compromise with one another. Making these concerns explicit, as one must do in the design of computational systems, risks failure to find similar tenable compromises. In the case of suspected child abuse, maintaining appropriate ambiguity is crucially important. The childcare situation embodies a class of concerns about privacy and security that should be considered in a wide-range of information management systems that handle potentially sensitive information.

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    Zones of Ambiguity Dealers

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    Laurian Vega
    42 views24 pages
    Licensed childcare providers in the United States, including programs for infants, pre-schoolers and after-school care for elementary age children, provide a rich environment for trying to understand complex, sensitive information management issues as they pertain to privacy and security. Childcare providers do not exist for the sole purpose of managing knowledge. They exist to take care of children. Yet knowledge management is patently integral to both everyday operations and to long-term licensure. Most information is routine, but some is sensitive. We present findings from an ethnographically-informed study comprised of interviews and observations of collaborative practices and management of security knowledge and practice in from thirty-one participants in Southwestern Virginia. We describe the day-to-day negotiation of ad hoc security needs and the creation of new policies and enactment of existing policies. In particular, we locate zones of ambiguity, in which behaviors allow fundamentally contradictory concerns to exist in tacit compromise with one another. Making these concerns explicit, as one must do in the design of computational systems, risks failure to find similar tenable compromises. In the case of suspected child abuse, maintaining appropriate ambiguity is crucially important. The childcare situation embodies a class of concerns about privacy and security that should be considered in a wide-range of information management systems that handle potentially sensitive information.

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    Licensed childcare providers in the United States, including programs for infants, pre-schoolers and after-school care for elementary age children, provide a rich environment for trying to understand complex, sensitive information management issues as they pertain to privacy and security. Childcare providers do not exist for the sole purpose of managing knowledge. They exist to take care of children. Yet knowledge management is patently integral to both everyday operations and to long-term licensure. Most information is routine, but some is sensitive. We present findings from an ethnographically-informed study comprised of interviews and observations of collaborative practices and management of security knowledge and practice in from thirty-one participants in Southwestern Virginia. We describe the day-to-day negotiation of ad hoc security needs and the creation of new policies and enactment of existing policies. In particular, we locate zones of ambiguity, in which behaviors allow fundamentally contradictory concerns to exist in tacit compromise with one another. Making these concerns explicit, as one must do in the design of computational systems, risks failure to find similar tenable compromises. In the case of suspected child abuse, maintaining appropriate ambiguity is crucially important. The childcare situation embodies a class of concerns about privacy and security that should be considered in a wide-range of information management systems that handle potentially sensitive information.

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    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    42 views24 pages

    Zones of Ambiguity Dealers

    Uploaded by

    Laurian Vega
    Licensed childcare providers in the United States, including programs for infants, pre-schoolers and after-school care for elementary age children, provide a rich environment for trying to understand complex, sensitive information management issues as they pertain to privacy and security. Childcare providers do not exist for the sole purpose of managing knowledge. They exist to take care of children. Yet knowledge management is patently integral to both everyday operations and to long-term licensure. Most information is routine, but some is sensitive. We present findings from an ethnographically-informed study comprised of interviews and observations of collaborative practices and management of security knowledge and practice in from thirty-one participants in Southwestern Virginia. We describe the day-to-day negotiation of ad hoc security needs and the creation of new policies and enactment of existing policies. In particular, we locate zones of ambiguity, in which behaviors allow fundamentally contradictory concerns to exist in tacit compromise with one another. Making these concerns explicit, as one must do in the design of computational systems, risks failure to find similar tenable compromises. In the case of suspected child abuse, maintaining appropriate ambiguity is crucially important. The childcare situation embodies a class of concerns about privacy and security that should be considered in a wide-range of information management systems that handle potentially sensitive information.

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    of 24

    Security Knowledge: Evaluating

    the Practice of Security in


    Childcares & Physician’s Offices
    Laurian Vega
    Steve Harrison & Deborah Tatar
    Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech

    June 9th, 2010, Dealers

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    + Usability

    Adams, A. and M.A. Sasse, Users Are


    Not the Enemy, in Communications of
    the ACM. 1999. p. 40-46.

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Childcare Centers
    Wednesday, July 7, 2010
    Physician’s Offices
    Wednesday, July 7, 2010
    Sensitive
    Information Rich
    Places
    ✤ Aspects:

    ✤ Managing other’s information

    ✤ Information in multiple
    places

    ✤ Numerous people accessing

    ✤ Information in different forms

    ✤ Managing security & privacy


    is secondary

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Studying
    Security Practice

    ✤ Trust: People share knowledge


    and sensitive information
    towards mutual goals

    ✤ Privacy: working and


    managing sensitive
    information

    ✤ Negotiation: when security


    breakdowns occur rules are not
    clear

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Method

    ✤ Southwest-Virginia
    ✤ Rurual

    ✤ IRB Approved
    ✤ 46 Interviewed Participants:
    Childcare & Medical Directors,
    Parents
    ✤ 14 Childcare Observations
    ✤ Observations 2-3 hours,

    Notes, collected artifacts,


    coded by 2 researchers
    ✤ Observation of physician’s
    offices currently underway

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Childcare
    Directors
    Competing identities of business and care

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Zones of
    Ambiguity
    those components of the
    practices that might have
    to be resolved with the
    addition or enforcement of
    more official protocol
    upon the introduction of
    computerized information
    handling mechanisms

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Child-centered
    knowledge
    communication
    ✤ Childcares function and
    coordinate based on the daily
    routines of parents

    ✤ It is within this communication


    that shared private information
    co-constructed and divulged

    ✤ Parents reflected a deep need


    for face-to-face communication

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Child-centered
    knowledge
    communication
    ✤ There exists the potential for
    communication breakdowns
    even within information rich
    environments

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Child-centered
    knowledge
    communication
    ✤ "we try to remind [the parents]
    verbally and give them
    something because most of our
    parents actually had - I actually
    had to take apart my parent
    handbook and take the
    agreement sheet off of the back
    because I found out that most
    of the time I was getting
    enrollment forms I wasn't
    getting that sheet back because
    no one reads the handbook."

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Parents Delegate
    Security & Privacy to
    Childcares

    ✤ Assumptions:

    ✤ That directors monitor who


    accesses files

    ✤ That information is centrally


    located

    ✤ That there are restrictive


    policies

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Parents Delegate
    Security & Privacy to
    Childcares

    ✤ Parental concerns unsurfaced:


    “This is foolish of me as a
    ✤ Obfuscating information parent, but I have never
    asked.”
    ✤ Parents, when able, not
    selected for no one to have
    access

    ✤ Through interviews parents


    reflected that they were
    going to find out

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Childcare Providers,
    Security, &
    Interruptions

    ✤ Childcares have valuable


    security practices

    ✤ Directors office being a


    separate place

    ✤ Placing files with extra


    sensitive information in the
    back of the file

    ✤ Physically mediating
    sensitive information

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Childcare Providers,
    Security, &
    Interruptions

    ✤ But... these places are


    intrinsically messy

    ✤ 41% of the time when someone


    is interrupted, they do not
    return to their task (O’Conaill
    & Frohlich 1995)

    ✤ Childcare directors have to


    create on-the-fly policies and
    practices to manage privacy in
    these messy spaces

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Summary

    ✤ Practice is as important as policy for


    security and privacy
    ✤ Social systems naturally create zones for
    ambiguity to manage the messiness of life
    ✤ To truly design usable security means
    understanding how to also design for these
    zones of ambiguity
    Wednesday, July 7, 2010
    Thank you
    Laurian Vega
    Steve Harrison & Deborah Tatar
    Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech

    A special thanks to Tom DeHart, Laura Agnich, Edgardo Vega,


    Zalia Shams, Monika Akbar, Stacy Branham, & Aubrey Baker
    who helped run, code, and analyze the data.

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Zones of
    Ambiguity
    • Policies are recognized
    valuable but as not really
    representing the practice

    • That quality communication


    is necessary for the co-
    construction of knowledge

    • Parents had little knowledge


    of how their information
    was managed, and used to
    be generally with ambiguity

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Child-centered
    knowledge
    communication
    ✤ The quality of this
    communication affects:

    ✤ Perceptions of a child’s safety


    “the teachers are well informed
    ✤ The negotiation of how how and they know even what my kid
    the care will be managed like and dislike and all that and I
    feel that I have her secure and in a
    ✤ The business of the childcare good place. In the old daycare, if I
    asked 'did my kid sleep today' they
    would respond 'I don't know, I just
    got here.’”

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    HIPAA
    ✤ Effective in 1996

    ✤ Outlines (somewhat
    ambiguously) US National
    regulations in regards to
    privacy and security of
    patients’ ‘information’

    “The HIPAA Privacy Rule provides federal protections for personal health information held by
    covered entities and gives patients an array of rights with respect to that information. At the
    same time, the Privacy Rule is balanced so that it permits the disclosure of personal health
    information needed for patient care and other important purposes. The Security Rule specifies a
    series of administrative, physical, and technical safeguards for covered entities to use to assure
    the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of electronic protected health information.” 

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Southwest
    Virginia
    ✤ Rural Appalachia

    ✤ Highly impacted by
    surrounding university

    ✤ Low technology adoption

    ✤ Population around 150,000 in


    surrounding municipalities

    ✤ 30 childcares, 60 medical
    practices within 10 miles of
    university

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010


    Wednesday, July 7, 2010
    Parents Delegate
    Security & Privacy to
    Childcares
    ✤ In general, parents are unaware
    and content with how their
    information is being managed

    ✤ Because the childcare is trusted


    with the child, they are trusted
    with the child’s information

    Wednesday, July 7, 2010

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