It's no secret: Privacy officers are on the increase - HR Update: News that Works - Brief Article

HR Magazine, Feb, 2002 by Terence F. Shea

Corporate privacy officers are here to stay, and their ranks will grow substantially in the next three years, according to the initial findings of an industry-commissioned survey.

In the survey's "first wave" results, released in December by Privacy & American Business (P&AB) and the Association of Corporate Privacy Officers, about 40 percent of the respondents said they think more than half of U.S. companies will have a designated privacy officer by 2004. "That would produce something like 20,000 privacy officers across industries such as financial services, health care, telecommunications, retailing and online firms," according to P&AB. An additional 30 percent said they expect privacy officers to be in place at nearly half of all companies within a few years.

Among other duties, privacy officers typically help their companies manage online privacy policies, assess privacy risks arising from the collection of employees' personal information, audit company operations that involve personal consumer information and operate consumer complaint and resolution programs.

Survey results so far show that four out of five privacy officers have backgrounds in law, public or governmental affairs, marketing, information technology or management. About 46 percent are paid between $100,000 and $200,000, and 11 percent earn more than $200,000 a year.

Privacy officers' experience and salary levels mark "the start of an institutionalization" of privacy activities at the upper levels of corporate governance, according to the survey's director, Alan F. Westin, a Columbia University professor and president of P&AB. He notes that 47 percent of the surveyed companies "now recognize privacy as a competitive-edge issue with consumers."

The survey was paid for by two companies that offer privacy services, and it was done by Opinion Research Corp. of Princeton, N.J. Opinion Research contacted a representative sample of publicly designated privacy officials at companies that collect and use consumers' personal information. The response rate was 33 percent, which "compares favorably" with response rates for such surveys, according to P&AB.