By Mike Antich One of the wisest observations ever made to me about predicting
the future direction of fleet management was by Jim Noonan, then-vice president
at PHH. In a wide-ranging phone conversation, Jim told me that if you wanted to
identify the next big trends in fleet management, you need to look outside our
industry. He said that fleet is not an innovator of trends; however, it is usually
an early adopter. Since that conversation (in the mid-1980s), I often reflect
on Jim’s words and have watched one industry trend after another support his
hypothesis. One example is outsourcing, which started in the IT industry, but
quickly swept the commercial fleet world in the late 1980s. Another example was
Web-enabled transactional and management systems, which were literally adopted
overnight by fleet in the late 1990s.
Since that conversation, I spend much time following
non-fleet-related trends to see how they may ultimately find applicability and
synergy in fleet management, in particular, technological trends. I believe technology,
such as telematics, will radically alter our industry – changing fleet
management from an art to a science. However, I recognize that employee resistance
to “Big Brother” technology continues to impede widespread adoption.
Collision Between Privacy & Technology
As OEMs and third-party providers install a broader range of telematic
devices in future model-year vehicles, fleets (and drivers) will be more
receptive to the efficacy of telematics in managing assets. Paralleling this is
the ubiquity of portable hand-held devices with the ability to pinpoint the
location of individuals and reveal it to others. These devices produce a “digital
bread crumb” where everyday activities and movements of individuals can be
traced and recorded. This makes some people nervous. As such, I believe “location
privacy” has a strong potential to become a hot-button societal issue in the
next decade. The points of controversy focus on privacy infringement and
potential abuse due to the pervasiveness of GPS-based products and services. The
long-term implications frighten many privacy advocates. Unfortunately, I
believe fleet management will be swept up into this controversy. I predict this
issue will first emerge in the EU, which has stronger privacy laws than the U.S., before it migrates across the Atlantic via multinational companies operating in the
NAFTA region.
Location information is a set of data describing an individual’s
location over a period of time. Location information is sensitive private data
for many reasons. Without the ability to control the collection of location
information, individuals may lose the privacy safeguards currently afforded by
other federal and state laws. For example, location information reveals
physical destinations, such as medical clinics or government services buildings,
which may imply additional information about an individual. For instance, the
information implied from location data may reveal other indirect information,
such as a person’s health condition, which is protected by laws limiting access
to such data.
Another interesting (albeit obvious) observation is the Web of
today will not be the Web of tomorrow. One scenario is that the Internet will
evolve into a virtual global sensor network, with the ability to pinpoint, on
demand, the location of any person or Web-enabled object. For instance, if Bluetooth
is turned on, a cell phone can see and be seen by other Bluetooth devices. In
some cases, location identification is passive. For example, the iPhone has an
accelerometer that determines whether you are sitting or walking. You don’t have
to use the phone; it’s just measured.
Just as we use data mining
today to extract useful information from a sea of data, we will be able to mine
geographic information system data. The term used to describe this technology
is “reality mining.” The MIT Technology
Review called reality mining one of the 10 technologies most likely to change
the way we live and work. In essence, reality mining is the large-scale mining
of “activity data” collected via GPS systems embedded in a multiplicity of portable
devices. (There are more than 2.8 billion active cell phones in use today.) The
pioneer of reality mining is Dr. Alex (Sandy)
Pentland, a computer scientist at MIT, who predicts it will be used in a wide
variety of applications. Besides employee productivity and route optimization programs,
this technology has far broader applications in healthcare, product marketing, retailing,
advertising, law enforcement/homeland security, etc. Despite data anonymity safeguards,
privacy advocates promise to be vocal (and litigious) opponents to these
technological advances.
Invalidating Conditions of Employment
At some companies, acquiescing to location tracking is a condition
of employment if you wish to be assigned a company-provided vehicle. However,
what happens when corporate mandates collide with personal liberties? When adjudicated,
court rulings always supersede any condition of employment.
