GPS Legalities Series — Part 3

Here’s a couple examples of how a city and a county I have worked with made GPS happen for them, kept it legal and kept their employees happy … well, perhaps not too unhappy.

Important Disclaimer:

I am not an attorney, I don’t even play one on TV, and I can not provide legal advice. This information is offered in good faith but with absolutely no assurance as to accuracy or applicability to your particular situation. If you need legal advice, you need an attorney. Use one.

Sweeping up the Savings:

The client was a medium-size (250,000+) city in the Rocky Mountain region.  They first investigated GPS Tracking because of a special need to monitor their street sweepers … driven by some EPA regulations that I guess I ought to blog about someday soon.  The city employees were unionized and concern for worker unrest and dissatisfaction came early to city leaders minds.

Unlike a great many of my former clients who were obsessed with the idea of “secret” monitoring of employees, these folks took the forthright and more intelligent path.  They sat down with union leadership in the very early days of planning, laid out the problems they were facing, made the case for GPS tracking and asked for union input. 

Union leaders were, of course, worried that this tool would give the city some unfair advantage in monitoring employees work habits. After some discussion a compromise was struck.  The union and the city agreed that in return for union support of the project the city would explicitly refrain from using information gathered by the GPS street sweeper tracking for any disciplinary actions.

In six months the success story had really unfolded:

• Substantial increases in miles of sweeping per unit
• Average time sweepers returning to the city garage to “quit for the day” was more than 1 hour later.
• A significant claim of damage to a private vehicle by a street sweeper “disappeared” when the plaintiff’s attorney was shown GPS records that proved the city sweeper (and city employee driver) was no where near the damaged vehicle .. saving a lawsuit and perhaps an employee’s job.

What had to be done at the end of six months to finalize the acceptance of the system?  The vendor was asked to provide a separate list of employee productivity that could be posted outside the dispatcher’s office daily … the drivers had been “bugging” the dispatcher every day for a report on their individual “numbers” and the new report would cut down on interruptions in the dispatch office.  Kewl.

Sometimes a Sign is As Good As a Satellite:

Another client was a county in the Midwest with about 300 vehicles.  The fleet manager felt that his major problems included speeding, loafing and trips to a nearby casino.  He had verified some of these infractions by his own observation and wanted GPS to be a 24-7 impartial observer.

As I always advise, the county consulted their attorney before proceeding and he, as is usually the case, reported that there as no legal restriction involved in monitoring employees on the payroll in county-owned vehicles.  To avoid and appearance of  clandestine spying, though, the attorney suggested all vehicles being monitored be marked so that employees knew that they may be monitored.

My client bought about 20 tracking units for his pilot program,  he also order several hundred stickers from a local printer that said “Warning, this vehicle subject to GPS monitoring at any time”.  These stickers were place don the dash of all country vehicles as they came into the county garage for service.  In the first six months the client noted:

• 80% drop in personally observed county vehicle speeding incidents.
• Zero sightings of county vehicles in commonly known “loafing” spots
• 100% reduction in sightings of county vehicles at the troublesome casino.

Said my client to me: “I don’t know if I need to buy any more of these tracking units, it seems like the dashboard stickers work nearly as well.”  Poor me

As always, I welcome comments, disagreement is encouraged, and you can also email me direct at: davestarr (at) gmail (dot) com or call me on 1-719-423-8872. If you liked this article, please subscribe to my RSS feed so you get all my news and views.

GPS Legalities Primer

A lot of searchers recently have been digging around for information on the legalities of GPS tracking, especially for public employees.  It’s a bit amazing to me how little is currently on line on these sorts of issues.  A good place to start looking is an article on findlaw by Daniel R. Sovocool of Thelen Reid, here:

be advised, though, the article is a bit dated … although most of the legal issues remain as up to date as ever from what I can see in my layman’s view.

The biggest issue I see regarding public entities implementing GPS tracking system sis that they agencies do not keep the employee’s informed.  In the majority of cases it seems clear the agencies have the right to monitor employees … I mean it does sound a bit foolish to talk about a public employee’s right to privacy while on the job and getting paid from the public coffers, but there are ways to do things you have aright to do, and then there are ways to do the same things less abrasively.  Attorney Sovocool makes a good point here:

We urge any company or agency interested in adopting location technology to stay in front of these issues. Many times countervailing considerations, such as improved safety and security, ultimately outweigh perceived privacy issues and, with advance planning, can be used to arrive at a resolution of this issue. This process can range from timely education of the workforce to negotiation of these issues in collective bargaining…

He is so right.  I’ve been involved in a number of implementations, both public and private, and the difference in stress levels, employee acceptance, and in immediate Return On Investment (ROI) between the implementations which enlisted employee help at the beginning versus the ones where the system was “forced down employee’s throats” are simply stunning.

Even within the same organization failure to bring employees into the loop at an early stage can produce long-term negative consequences.  I once implemented a large system across hundreds of US government vehicles.  The users of the vehicles, all either government civil service personnel or active duty military folks.  Their tasks ranged from securing critical military war assets to delivering food to the folks doing the physical securing.  A huge percentage of the workforce was pre-briefed and “sold” on the safety aspects of the system and were in general pretty anxious to get it installed and learn to use it.

One of the senior leaders, though, made a careless remark about the actual armed security forces personnel .. in front of others .. about the fact the security forces had the most accidents and thus needed to be watched more closely.  Talk about the wrong thing to say … the security guys drove about five to ten times as many miles as any of the other drivers in the fleet, and unlike any of the other groups in the fleet, the security guys always operated 7 x 24, regardless of weather.  It was inconceivable that with 10 or more times the potential for accidents they would have more wrecks.

Needless to say, the cops hated the idea of the GPS system, mainly because it proved to them that their “big boss” considered them stupid, untrustworthy and unskilled.  I helped run the system for more than two years …. and from day one until I left the GPS’s on the security vehicles always had way more unexplained outages, disconnected cables, blown fuses, etc.  Not saying anyone actually sabotaged the physical systems, but it sure would have been  a lot better if the employees had been told that the GPS was to enhance their safety and performance, not being heaped on as punishment for poor performance.

GPS Isn’t A Solution To Stupidity — Yet Again

You know how Jay Leno has those “headlines” where he asks Kevin, “What do I like, Kev”, and Kevin always replies “Stupid criminals, Jay”?

Well I read a lot of what is published daily about the world of GPS and I love these stupid criminal type write-ups also.

GLENS FALLS — Jeannie Morgan Smith said she was just trying to get a ride home Monday night when she wound up injured and unable to find her way out of a wooded area in West Glens Falls.
She left The Daily Double bar with a man and woman she didn’t know, seeking a ride from the South Street bar to her South Street home, she said, during a telephone interview with The Post-Star Thursday.
Smith, 39, of Glens Falls, was the woman police located thanks to a GPS receiver in her cellphone, which Warren County dispatchers used to track her to a wooded area off Carey Road.
Smith said she “blacked out” from drinking and remembers being shoved and hitting her head in the woods before being left there. She said she has a cut on the back of her head and scrapes to her buttocks…. full story of this bar room queen of the May here:

This woman is obviously not the sharpest knife in the drawer. If she was, she wouldn’t have gotten so drunk she didn’t know where she was and who she was with. She wouldn’t have gone off with strangers. She likely didn’t even know she had GPS in her cell phone and would have cared less.

But she may owe her life to the fact that the phone carrier, under police supervision, was able to pinpoint her location.

I get a lot of readers here who are pretty much rabid anti-GPS privacy nuts. That’s their right and privilege. But when incidents like this come along you really have to think about both sides of the privacy issue … or so Dave opines.