smalers
commented
1 year ago Here are some additional examples, from the Economist website. Obviously CDSS websites are not collecting data for consumer marketing, but it is interesting to see how websites categorize what is "essential" and "functional". At a minimum the State websites might have explanatory language such as for Google Analytics. More difficult would be allowing opt in/out because tools such as MkDocs do their own thing and are not integrated with a cloud database, etc.
I did find this MkDocs link, which may be relevant to handling GA4 handling with cookies, and there may be others: https://github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-material/issues/1914
I'm not going to do anything now but if the State is standardizing any cookie management messaging for their websites, then maybe something consistent could be enabled. Carolyn Kemp indicated that the State websites may be exempt because they don't collect personal information, have less than a threshold number of users, etc. I'm just recording information in case we need to follow up.
The OpenCDSS downloads page includes Google Analytics 4 (GA4) tag to track how often the page is accessed and links clicked for downloads. However, anyone that uses an ad blocker such as Ublock Origin will cause GA to be disabled, thereby limiting information about TSTool downloads. The documentation created with MkDocs seems to work around this issue and because MkDocs does not include ads, that make some sense.
There are general privacy concerns with Google Analytics and other tracking. See the following resources:
At the moment, GA4 is going to be partially effective in monitoring OpenCDSS software use. More can be done in the future to work around add blockers if it complies with GDPR and benefits of analytics are articulated.
To be clear, the main reason for tracking usage is to document the value of public investment in such tools, and to improve products and services, not to do marketing or sell personal data.