However, John Spotila, head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs during the Clinton administration, said he was never aware of any instances of cookies being used for that sort of surveillance. Cookies can help improve Web pages by providing information about what pages visitors like and don t like on Web sites, Spotila said. Government Web sites that were designed by contractors may include cookies simply because they are common on commercial sites, he said. In other cases, agency Web managers may be unaware that cookies essentially have been banned, he said. Cookies aren t the only violations the inspectors general reported.
Numerous sites fail to post privacy policies as required.
Eleven of the Treasury Department s 30 main Web sites had no privacy statements. Nineteen of the Treasury s sites weren t listed on the agency s Web site inventory. The General Services Administration had 15 Web sites that used forbidden cookies. One of them operated under an arrangement in which a contractor owned all of the data collected. The Transportation Department had 23 Web sites using cookies.