Is There Gold in California Data Mines?: Using Stakeholder Theory to Analyze the Tradeoff Berween Individual Privacy and the Public Good

In the public sector, tradeoffs between individual citizen concerns and the public good can be complex, since individual goals can conflict with the government’s goals for assuring equity and social welfare. This paper reports on a case study of the Integrated Non-Filer Compliance (INC) system used by the California Franchise Tax Board (CFTB). Data gathered from federal, state and municipal agencies and other organizations are analyzed by CFTB to identify citizens who fail to file taxes or under-report income. The paper uses stakeholder theory to analyze the privacy concerns raised by this inter-agency information-sharing initiative due to the potential for inaccurate judgments based on errors in data interpretation. Key stakeholders here include California citizens, the Franchise Tax Board, and other public sector actors, including politicians and various other state and federal agencies. The paper concludes that stakeholder theory can help identify and avoid privacy issues raised in e-government applications.