Introduction
Human service workers handle a lot of data based on job descriptions. Employees attached to human service delivery focus on improving quality of life by offering solutions to reigning problems within communities. The service providers interact with sensitive data and information about clients who bestow their trust in the responsible agencies. Helping communities, secondary organizations, families, and individuals overcome life obstacles through interdisciplinary knowledge and skills exposes such employees to people’s private details. Human service staff are responsible for keeping people’s private data, but agencies are tempted to share personal information because they interact with millions of cases. Reviewing the working policies, federal and state laws, and ethical guidance at Wallace Stevens Community Center (WSCC) reveals the significant data privacy principles that assist human service workers in protecting clients’ details.
Federal Law
Federal laws influence the sharing and protection of private information between clients and human service agencies. The Privacy Act of 1974 is one such law that issues organizations with the civil liberty to conserve people’s inner information. The federal act champions data privacy by establishing a fair code of information practice (Richards & Hartzog, 2019). The amendment is provided in chapter five, Section 552a of the U.S. Constitution, which governs the collection, use, storage, maintenance, and sharing of information (Richards & Hartzog, 2019). Organizations implementing the Privacy Act of 1974 should protect their client’s personal information by issuing public notice of system records through a federal register.
The Publication on the registers prohibits the disclosure of a person’s records unless written consent of the individual is issued with a legal team. Similarly, WSCC’s legal policy dictates that its staff guide consumers’ private information using a solution-focused practice. The agency prioritizes clients’ privacy in achieving physical wellness in handling patients with chronic medical conditions. The Privacy Act of 1974 meets data privacy objectives because it works through the rights of the request of records, change, and protection against unwarranted invasion.
State Laws
State laws on data privacy work in the U.S. by influencing and controlling pertinent information and handling specific case records. Lejeune (2020) highlights the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) as the most recently signed state law charged with the responsibility of data and information protection. The CPRA imposes substantial entities on individuals collecting personal data from any residence within California. Lejeune (2020) holds that state law oversees the debates on data subjects, data collection processes, and restrictions of businesses to transfer personal information to the public or through other avenues. State laws regulate the data transfer process and code of ethics among employees subjected to data handling duties.
The California Privacy Rights Act amendment accords residents the right to data protection through the enactment of strict regulations on sharing of people’s secret details. For instance, human service consumers are guaranteed the right to restriction and rectification under the CPRA. The rectification right limits the disclosure of consumers’ confidential information, while the right to rectification allows clients to update their inaccurate details without exposure to the public domain (Lejeune, 2020). WSCC observes data privacy management programs when completing the education goals of its customers; the results are only shared with members without violating the right to privacy acts.
Ethical Guidelines
The handling of data and information of third parties is a sensitive topic in the contemporary and digitalized world. Living in a world where social services are accessed online puts everyone’s private information at risk. However, the existence of ethical guidelines and principles of data privacy protection convince users to issue human service agencies with crucial information that can otherwise be used to destroy a person’s image and personality upon prejudice. WSCC controls sharing its client’s data using restricted ethical guides that prioritize safety. The agency complies with national data protection and legal privacy requirements to assist its consumers. Furthermore, the Wallace Stevens Community Center conforms with the current security standards in protecting stored data from being distorted by unauthorized and illegitimate individuals. According to Greenleaf (2021), agencies implement abridgement, access, anonymity, confidentiality, and security principles of privacy in supporting the day-to-day handling of private data. The principles obey the accessibility, perceptibility, and comprehensibility of privacy policies in guarding clients’ vital information.
The Five Principles of Privacy
Human service agencies implement confidentiality to process data and information using appropriate security measures to guard the leakage or access of private facts by third parties. Agencies use effective ways and efforts to achieve confidentiality of data privacy. First, Romansky and Noninska (2020) argue that restricting data helps firms to boost the safety of data and information in servers. Organizations control who accesses system details to non-public information and customer files. Secondly, data encryption and implementation of confidentiality policy impact information safety in organizations. Human service organizations can encrypt data using a coded algorithm to turn data into unreadable versions for non-beneficiaries. Finally, agencies like WSCC can adopt a data retention policy to increase confidentiality. For instance, organizations at risk of hacking can delete outlived information from their original processing units.
Abridgement
Shortening information for storage purposes increases the privacy of personal information. Organizations can introduce storage limitation policies to allow employees to keep data for as long as necessary (Greenleaf, 2021). The strategy permits the identification of particular subjects and processes over specific business periods. Categorizing data into shortened forms prevents ideas mix-ups that result in the leakage of information in the wrong departments. In other words, the abridgement principle enacts the periodic data review to confirm the status and usefulness of particular details.
Access
Access to information from the organizational portal by unauthorized individuals is a primary factor promoting cybercrimes like hacking. WSCC takes pride in the technological advancements implemented to promote data privacy. Other human service agencies should incorporate the principle of access to enact purpose limitation and data minimization the way it happens in WSCC. Greenleaf (2021) stresses that personal data should only be taken for legitimate, specified, and explicit reasons. Data privacy breaches occur with a lack of clarification and specification at the start of the collection process. Therefore, agencies maximize information safety by determining the data’s course during the mining stage. The access principle values the adequacy and relevance of data processing in creating safeguarded information.
Anonymity
Responsible agencies communicate to their employees the essence of anonymity to increase data confidentiality. The principle discourages staff members from sharing private information learned during data collection, analysis, storage, or review (Winegar & Sunstein, 2019). Anonymity allows organizations t collect data and information about clients using unique codes or abbreviations instead of names, personal addresses, and locations. In addition, anonymity can be implemented through VPN, encrypted storage, encrypted browser, and applications of check app information. Romansky and Noninska (2020) explain that anonymity describes events and situations where consumers’ identity is unknown. The most effective approach to attaining anonymity in data privacy is converting the target audience’s information into non-identifiable ways. Data stored in human service companies should be untrackable for non-authorized members.
Security
The vulnerability of data is visible with the increased security breaches witnessed globally. Corporations strategize on the best measures to tackle the robust data insecurity issues to win consumers’ trust. The stiff competition in the digitalized world demands firms protect members’ financial, trade, identification, and health secrets to keep customer loyalty. Data privacy breaches propagate media propaganda, which abuses the portfolio of organizations. Companies can increase the security of their data, prioritizing the protection of the perimeters of the needed information (Winegar & Sunstein, 2019). In addition, managers can pay attention to insider threats to prevent information leaking. The over-dependence of external forces and threats to data privates complicates the limitation of insider data privacy risks.
Conclusion
Human service providers depend on strategic plans to execute campaigns against data breaches. The occurrence of illegitimate handling of information by unauthorized individuals puts people’s data in danger. However, organizations can limit such events by adopting effective policies and principles. Federal laws, ethical guidelines, and state laws include the most sensitive tools incorporated in regulating data collection, storage, and sharing correctly. The Privacy Act of 1974 works best for federal regulations, while CPRA operates with state laws. Confidentiality, abridgement, access, anonymity, and security principles formulate the primary ethical guidelines to protect people’s data. The five privacy principles are implemented using different approaches but for a similar goal. Tightening data privacy rules and regulations raise the public’s confidence in sharing personal information with human service providers. Such trust results in better service delivery and substantial connection between agencies and the community.
References
Romansky, R., P., & Noninska, I., S. (2020). Challenges of the digital age for privacy and personal data protection. Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, 17(5), 5288–5303. Web.
Greenleaf, G. (2021). Global tables of data privacy laws and bills (7th ed, January 2021). SSRN Electronic Journal, 3(1), 103–126. Web.
Lejeune, M. (2020). Der California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA). PinG Privacy in Germany, 3(1), 67–75. Web.
Richards, N. M., & Hartzog, W. (2019). Privacy’s constitutional moment. SSRN Electronic Journal, 4(1), 25–46. Web.
Winegar, A. G., & Sunstein, C. R. (2019). How much is data privacy worth? A preliminary investigation. Journal of Consumer Policy, 42(3), 425–440. Web.