L.A. Animal Services: Could Adopting a Pet Risk Your Identity?

L.A. Animal Services: Could Adopting a Pet Risk Your Identity? When someone adopts a homeless animal or redeems a lost pet from a Los Angeles City animal shelter, shouldn't they expect that General Manager Brenda Barnette is making every effort to assure the personal information required by this municipal agency--including a California driver's license-willl never be shared with private companies and/or sold to marketing lists? When you license your dog, relinquish an animal, bring in a stray, get a spay/neuter voucher. After discussion, reviewing a written objection and allowing one-minute per person of public input, the Animal Services Commission continued the matter until May 22. Commissioner Kathleen Riordan, daughter of former Mayor Richard Riordan, intensely questioned whether this issue was researched to determine and address any alleged deficits in the current Chameleon system--used nationally by public and private animal shelters because of its design capacity, security and interface capabilities. ". That could soon change if Animal Services GM Brenda Barnette gets her way. At that second meeting, a full-blown draft RFP was presented. At the April 24, 2012 meeting of the Animal Services Commission, the last item by GM Barnette (who claims to know little about computer systems) was approval of the release of a Request for Proposals (RFP) for: "…the selection of a contractor to provide a new animal-data management system; and…report back to the Board on the contractor selected based on the recommendations of the [in-house] evaluation panel. There are no details of what advantages or additional benefits the proposed new system would provide and no specifications to insure how confidential City records and individual-identity information will be encrypted, coded, stored or protected. L.A. Animal Services: Could Adopting a Pet Risk Your Identity? Trade News selected by Local Linkup on 07/06/2012