Our tightened economy has everyone pinching pennies. Families and businesses alike are watching their wallets closely in tough times. Even local governments have taken drastic measures to collect money.. Dallas County has launched a 'most wanted' database for those hardened criminals who have unpaid traffic tickets. Their hope is to expose those who have unpaid fines by publishing their face and personal information on the internet, leading to the collection of the $195 million in outstanding fines.

While you have to respect the creativeness of the government sector for finding ways to collect owed money, eventually you have to ask to question: what’s next? Is Dallas County going to dust off the stocks from the colonial days citizens were punished by being chained up in the town square?

Maybe embarrassment and public humiliation are effective ways to create action (we’ll certainly follow up on the success of the project), but why go to this extreme? What about the person who mistakenly had a $30 parking fine that he had forgotten to pay? Now he has his face and name in negative press all over the internet. It’s a pretty indirect way to force the fine-ower to take action. I mean, if your name was on the database, would you even know it? Or would it take someone with nothing better to do than to scan the site for people they know and mock them?

Then, of course, what about incorrect entry errors or mistaken identities? Additionally, the government should have standards where things like the amount of the fine should be considered before posting the information. No, it seems more like somebody at the County just figured that since it’d be easy to do, it was worth doing. Maybe they’d collect a little bit of cash, maybe not. But the cost to the county would be pretty low either way. But is that the measure of whether or not this program should go forward? Because it might work and wouldn’t cost too much?

This program might not be a big deal in its own right. But it is an indicator of how low level government functionaries might use technology to make their lives easier without fully considering the downstream implications.