INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND
The National Training Policy (NTP) stipulates
that the Training would be imparted to
all rungs of the civil services starting fr
om the lowest and cutting-edge to the highest
in policy making. In its vision for Traini
ng for All NTP also acknowledges that the
incidence of training is signifi
cantly low at the front-line le
vels of the civil service. It
further adds that concerted efforts have to
be made to equip these functionaries to
be more responsive to citizens.
In the above context, efforts were made by the Department of Personnel and
Training DoPT (Training Division) to sens
itize the cutting edge level officials through
Intensive district level training programme
s during X Plan Period through externally
aided projects. Based on the success of t
hese projects, a Plan Scheme of Intensive
Training Programme-Training for All was launched during the XI Plan Period.
RATIONALE
The quality of service rendered to the ci
tizens especially to the weaker and
marginalized sections of the society is
primarily dependent on
the knowledge, skill
and attitude of the frontli
ne personnel and the perform
ance of an organization is
generally determined by the citizens by the quality of the personnel
at these delivery
points. These personnel are the citizen-inte
rface of the Governm
ent and the citizens
interact with these personnel as
customer either regularly or
at the time of need. As
such, the orientation and motiva
tion of these personnel is of critical importance for
percolation of gains of economic growth.
While incentives do he
lp in keeping the
motivation levels high, the attitudinal or
ientation and knowledge levels required for
effective service delivery, can be m
anaged only through appropriately designed
training interventions.
OBJECTIVE
The basic objective of the Intensive Tr
aining Programme (ITP) is to undertake
saturation training of frontline personnel manning
the public service delivery chain, in
identified sectors, in s
pecific geographical area. Th
e success of the Programme
depends on the change that can be brought about
in the competency and orientation
of the personnel at the delivery point.
Markets, Self-Regulation, and Government Enforcment in the
Protection of Personal Information

Peter P. Swire
(1)




Let's begin with a sense of the problem. Imagine that one day your bank or telephone company
puts all of your transaction or phone records up on a Web site for the world to see. Imagine,
more realistically, that the company without your permission simply sells your records to another
company, for use in the latter's marketing efforts. A broad consensus would agree that posting to
the Web site is undesirable. Many people would also object to the sale of personal information
without the customer's permission.
Assuming that there can be significant problems in the protection of personal information, the
next question is to ask what institutions in society should be relied upon to address such
problems. This paper examines the chief institutions for protecting personal information. One
institutional solution is to rely on the market. The basic idea is that the reputation and sales of
companies will suffer if they offend customers' desires about protecting privacy. An opposite
institutional approach would rely on government enforcement. The basic idea is that enforcement
of mandatory legal rules would deter companies from abusing people's privacy.
A significant element of current thinking about privacy, however, stresses "self-regulation"
rather than market or government mechanisms for protecting personal information. Numerous
companies and industry groups have promulgated self-regulatory codes or guidelines for the use
of personal information. This article is part of a broader study by the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) about the uses and limitations of
self-regulation. The NTIA has also already given (somewhat qualified) support for a self-
regulatory approach for the control of personal information in telecommunications.
1

Today we face a special urgency in deciding how to use markets, self-regulation, and
government enforcement to protect personal information. There is a widespread and accurate
sense that a greater amount of personal information is being assembled in databases, and that
more and more people have the computer and telecommunications resources to access and
manipulate that personal information. The economics and technologies underlying use of
personal information are fundamentally changing. These changes, in turn, make it quite likely
that we will need to change the institutional arrangements governing use of personal information.
The protection of personal information arises in a wide and growing range of industries. A partial
listing might include: health records; credit history; banking transactions; local and long-distance
telephone calls; pay-per-view, VCR rental, cable, and other video records; records of an Internet
service provider; and purchases made through direct mail or telephone ordering. This paper
cannot hope to determine the best mix of markets, self-regulation, and government for protecting
privacy in all of these diverse industries. This paper instead provides an analytic framework for
understanding privacy issues in a wide range of industries. Armed with the analytic framework,
we will not only understand more clearly what is meant by "self-regulation," but we will identify
the empirical issues that are likely to be crucial in deciding when self-regulation should be
preferred over market or government approaches.
The structure of the paper is as follows. Throughout the paper, in order to make the analysis
easier to follow, examples will be drawn from a hypothetical "Internet Commerce Association"
(ICA), whose members sell products over the Internet. Part I lays out the pure market and pure
government enforcement models for protecting privacy, showing how either markets or
government could in theory assure the desirable level of protection for personal information. Part
II highlights the important market failures and government failures that make it unlikely that
either markets or government, acting alone, will do as good a job as we would like of achieving
both privacy and other social goals such as efficiency