Periodic Awareness Tip #12 - Attune to Your Public

EMPATHY WITH YOUR PUBLIC

Good communication takes into account the public it is addressed to. That way you avoid communication mistakes like

• bothering them with information they already know
• starting your communication from a point they have not reached ("anchoring")
• addressing them at the wrong tone
• disregarding relevant cultural background 
• etc.

The Norwegian Data Protection Authority gives us a nice example thereof with its website dubestemmer.no ("you decide"), which has English pages and materials as well. It is directly addressed at education professionals that want to bring up the theme of privacy to kids (9-13) or youngsters (13-17), and even younger children. The materials include facts, examples, discussion topics, videos, etc.

You see that the materials are adapted to address the different types of public.

The Belgian Data Protection Authority made a similar effort with an "I DECIDE" campaign website www.ikbeslis.be (Dutch) / www.jedecide.be (French). This website has sub-sites for kids, youngsters, parents and education professionals. Unfortunately this does not give you an English version to work with.

INTRO (repeating for the series)

Raising awareness amongst your company's staff is key as the human factor is quite often cited as the weakest link in data protection and security "in the field". Raising awareness also is not a one-off thing. You have to keep hitting the same nail. Preferably though, you try out different angles every time again, as information overload and boredom settle in quite rapidly. So let me periodically and in no particular order share some awareness raising materials. Let's aim for once per week and we'll see where we can get.

CALL TO ACTION

Please do comment on these posts: is this useful? what have you used in your organisation to engage the colleagues? how do you measure success? etc.  

Do you know of any other organisations that have made toolkits for specific audiences? Please, share.