Civil Service & Social Media
Thanks to both Emma and Jeremy for this: there’s not much I can add to what they’ve already said, but I’ll tell it in my own words…
Basically, what has happened is that the Civil Service have published a code for online participation for civil servants. These are:
- Be credible — Be accurate, fair, thorough and transparent
- Be consistent –Encourage constructive criticism and deliberation. Be cordial, honest and professional at all times
- Be responsive –cWhen you gain insight, share it where appropriate
- Be integrated — Wherever possible, align online participation with other offline communications.
- Be a civil servant –Remember that you are an ambassador for your organisation. Wherever possible, disclose your position as a representative of your department or agency.
As Emma says, these are brilliant in their simplicity. They don’t cover every circumstance, but are a good starting point for other public sector organisations to take up.
There’s always one key problem with working for any organisation. What happens when, in your non-work life, you encounter a problem with a product or service provided by your organisation. Say for example that you work for a local authority but are unhappy with some of the services provided. Anyone else would be able to whinge about it on their blog, but you couldn’t…
…now I think that’s fair enough, because you will be seen as an ambassador for that organisation (particularly if who you work for is known) — but that does mean that other residents seemingly have more right to complain than you…
But blogs are different anyway: from my understanding this is relating to the Civil Service use of social media ‘in the line of duty’ as it were. And as far as I can tell, the guidelines basically sum up how you would want people (civil service or not; online or not) to behave in the first place, so they seem perfectly reasonable to me.
Although there is one potential downside they don’t seem to have considered. Surely it’s only a matter of time before various civil service departments start setting up facebook applications and then you’ll have this sort of thing:
…and it’s all downhill from there!
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Agreed Jack about non civil service life, the guidelines aren’t clear in that respect. Personally I find it frustrating that I’ve wanted to blog about certain companies or products but can’t as I have to watch what I say.
After all it wouldn’t be professional to say have a demo from a company one day then slag them off the next on my personal blog. I guess I’ve answered my own question there, a civil servant can’t really slate a supplier or potential supplier, it’s not ethical or morally right. More’s the pity as I’d have some really interesting stories to tell!
It depends: I suspect it would be deemed unethical to talk about an actual or potential civil service supplier in any case, but my personal ‘feelings’ would vary:
If I had something to say that I had learned during the course of my duties: that would be unethical/inappropriate to talk about.
If I had something to say that I had learned in my private life, then I wouldn’t have an ethical problem talking about that…