It’s funny, but lack of transparency is so common to us in K-12 education that I bet most educators don’t have a problem with Adobe, much less Central Office administration, choosing to keep them in the dark. Yet, lack of transparency does have negative consequences…even when Adobe seeks to blog about it. I had a laugh at John Nack’s response to the assertions that Adobe’s Creative Suite 3 is doing things behind the backs of its users. What is it allegedly doing? Spying.

I first wrote about this (May, 2007) when I was sharing about how critical it was for every computer (Mac and Windows) to have its own, user – installed firewall program. The example I used was Adobe Creative Suite 3. On Mac, you should be looking at Little Snitch. You SHOULD know what your computer is doing, how it’s connecting to the outside world, not just blithely trust it…as a device, it can be compromised by software. That may be less likely to happen on a Mac or GNU/Linux, but can still happen when you grant administrator access to an installation program.

Consider John Nack’s blog entry….

Adobe ate me baby!! Ding ding ding! We have a winner. Every year around this time, the online community latches onto some story (CS3 icons last year; “Microsoft to buy Macromedia” before that; etc.) and goes nuts with speculation. The specualtion is all the more thrilling given that the affected companies are only lightly staffed right now, making it hard to provide a meaningful response.

But while this makes for interesting reading, it’s these comments that attest to the power of transparency:

I dislike my behavior being tracked. The deceiving host name complements the tactic. If Adobe want’s to track user behavior, make it opt in. The opt out measure at Omniture only works for the browser used for that purpose, not the complete system. That sucks. This opt out is just a sleazy excuse that makes me bitter, it doesn’t work as the user intends it to. I know that would be difficult to do, but you got yourself in that situation by going opt out in the first place. Ethical behavior is crucial to success. If I can’t trust your moves, I can’t buy your stuff. For now I block .2o7.net.

or

Look, there is no confusion here. Do you really think we are all so stupid that we are going to believe Omniture isn’t intentionally obscuring their tracking by using 192.168…which everyone knows is an internal LAN address? That “2O7.net” with a capital “O” instead of a numeral was just convenience? Its obvious to anyone with half a braincell that they chose that for one reason, to deceive people into thinking the tracking was just a harmless internal network action, and nothing was being sent outside. If Adobe didn’t realize this, they are being lax in their due diligence of one of their partners. If they did, they are part of the problem. Do you really see any other conclusion we users should arrive at here?

or, my favorite,

What is needed is complete transparency about data collection — not easy for a for-profit company, but necessary — in order to rebuild user trust. Incidents like these quickly squander good will built over many years of positive interactions with customers.

Isn’t the beauty of K-12 education that we don’t have these conversations? I mean, can you imagine having this fierce conversation with your superintendent? I know, the reason it doesn’t happen is that:

1. Employees and students don’t own the equipment used; the school district does.
2. CIPA prohibits certain uses, but there is no guarantee of privacy on school machines. In fact, privacy is OUT.
3. If you connect a personal machine to the network, your data can be viewed by folks accessing the school network.

Yet, doesn’t it seem ironic that our schools continue to implement opaque approaches to technology management, communication on how things get done (e.g. policies, procedures, decision-making processes), etc.? I can’t imagine folks just embracing blogging and wikifying their work as the sole approaches to changing how work gets done, but these simple approaches would go a long ways to making things a bit more transparent.

The benefits for Adobe are obvious…if they can be transparent, they might be able to salvage the problems, not unlike the Facebook folks tried to (and failed?). This perspective on transparency for companies…what would it look like for K-12 schools? Ok, to play around…here are two versions, one the company version from The Satisfaction Blog. The other, I’m just making up based on the compan version. Feel free to write your own version and link back in the comments.

Company Version:
We’re not so naive that we think that a company like Facebook can or should reveal everything about its internal systems, nor discuss private issues regarding individual accounts out in the open. But by reinforcing the image of itself as an impenetrable fortress, where all communication is allowed only on its terms, Facebook sends the message that it’s afraid of its own users. Now granted, some of its users may in fact be dangerous (and we’ve met a few that fit that bill, certainly), but for the rest of us who are investing in Facebook with our time we should expect more. Facebook should be speaking to us in a human voice, tell us where they’re coming from, listen attentively when we want to share, and sometimes engage with us on our terms. Because businesses depend on the goodwill of their users to make things work, they need us to build their business.

and, then, there’s the School Version:

We’re not so naive to think that a school district can or should reveal everything about its internal systems, nor discuss private issues regarding individual policies out in the open. But by reinforcing the image of itself as an impenetrable fortress, where all communication is allowed only on its terms, school districts send the message that they’re afraid of their own communities.

Now granted, some community members may be dangerous, but for the rest of the community, we should expect more. School districts should be speaking to us in a human voice, telling us where they’re coming from, listening attentively when we want to share, and sometimes engage with us on our terms–and they shouldn’t do it through a one person (superintendent or public relations officer) megaphone. Because schools districts depend on the goodwill of their employees, the community members, the students to ensure that teaching and learning is successful.

Embrace transparency.

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