Until last year, Spotila was head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He said cookies can help improve Web pages by providing information about what site visitors like and don t like. In addition, government Web sites that were designed by commercial contractors may include cookies simply because they are common on commercial sites, Spotila said. In other cases, agency Web managers may be unaware that cookies have essentially been banned on government sites. Cookies aren t the only violations the inspectors general reported.
Many sites fail to post privacy policies as required.
Half the Education Department s Web sites that collect personal information lack posted privacy policies, and nine pages were linked to servers that collect e-mail addresses without the user s knowledge. The Trasportation Department said April 20 that it had removed all cookies from its 23 Web sites after its IG reported finding them in mid-February. The agency created a checklist for Web managers to follow to prevent cookies from being used on DOT Web sites in the future, a spokesman said. The cookies were added to Web sites during upgrades often automatically by software and unbeknownst to agency Web managers. The FCW.COM privacy policy , our link disclaimer and information about linking to us and online permissions .