White House seeks to lift cookie ban for federal websites

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), part of the Executive Office of the President, is inviting public comment on proposals to lift the restrictions and allow the use of technologies to track visitors over single and multiple sessions for web analytics purposes, and to remember users’ data, settings and preferences.

In a blog post, federal chief information officer Vivek Kundra and OMB associate administrator Michael Fitzpatrick said: “The goal of this review is to develop a new policy that allows the federal government to continue to protect the privacy of people who visit federal websites while, at the same time, making these websites more user-friendly, providing better customer service, and allowing for enhanced web analytics.”

Federal websites were prohibited in June 2000 from using certain web-tracking technologies, primarily persistent cookies, due to privacy concerns. However cookies have since become “a staple of most commercial websites with widespread public acceptance of their use”, say Kundra and Fitzpatrick.