Why does gov.uk, a site all about allowing the British public to interact with the British government, use google analytics?
You are shipping all the data about all my interactions with my government off to a third party in another country. Another country that we know has not got the same legal data protection requirements, and one which has now been exposed as having massive internal spying problems.
And no, telling me "google aren't allowed to use the data" and then opening an outsourced helpdesk ticket with another US based company does not cut it.
However, again IMHO, tracking casual web use is a different class of data to my interactions with my government, and I very much resent those being sent to foreign companies and (by inference) foreign powers, however benign and friendly our relationship is.
If you read the first point, it says "Start with needs". They need to be relevant and appear in Google. Google Analytics is simply a tool that helps them do that.
No, it's an American company, subject to the whims of the US government.
>> Google has servers and offices in the UK.
Sure does. I have no idea where they process the data though and I doubt the gov.uk folks have. If they did have a guarantee that the data wasn't ever going to leave the UK then maybe they could say so?
>> If you read the first point, it says "Start with needs". They need to be relevant and appear in Google. Google Analytics is simply a tool that helps them do that.
Err, no, google analytics records and transmits site interaction data.