Corporate America is desperate to convince the public that it can be trusted with private consumer information. Thus, the appointment of CPOs is just one small move companies are taking to convince legislators they can self-regulate. Australian privacy legislation, which the government is aiming to have in place by mid-2001, will cover some ground in regulating privacy policies of eBusinesses. However, the bill itself is a source of controversy at the moment, with Labor criticising it for being too soft on the private sector. Nonetheless, some regulation is better than none when it comes to online privacy.
Australian companies are loathe to add yet another executive member to their teams.
Typically, a new area of expertise such as knowledge management, security or privacy is delegated to one or more existing employees. In this way, Australian companies produce more generalists compared to their US counterparts by necessity. This is also dictated by size of the industry and companies within it compared to the US market. But this doesn't mean privacy issues can be ignored either. Australian eBusinesses need to ensure their executive teams display leadership on this crucial matter, as the industry moves beyond the dial-in Internet world to universal, uninterrupted availability of information and connectivity, both wired and wireless.