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The guidance makes it easier for agencies to use social media and requires steps to ensure better rule-making and spending transparency.

By J. Nicholas Hoover  InformationWeek

April 7, 2010 01:33 PM

Even as federal agencies release their plans for complying with the Obama administration’s open government requirements, the administration announced additional open government guidance Wednesday.

In a series of memos, the White House provided agencies with new rules and guidance on social media, regulatory information, spending data, and compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act, a regulation observers had seen as holding back government transparency.

The Paperwork Reduction Act requires agencies to seek public comment and request clearance from the Office of Management and Budget before requesting most types of information from the public — a process that many agencies and observers find burdensome in the era of instant feedback via social media.

In order to free agencies from these procedures, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs issued a memo from OIRA administrator Cass Sunstein that clarifies that the PRA does not apply to many uses of social media.

For example, OIRA notes that the PRA doesn’t apply to online suggestion boxes and some types of other generally non-specific feedback requests, crowdsourcing applications, e-mail lists, and RSS feeds; online ratings and rankings; and Web site elements that enable users to share content. It also doesn’t cover anything that could be considered an “interactive meeting tool,” including Webinars, blogs, discussion boards, chat sessions, social networks, and most uses of wikis.

Agencies are also free to create user profiles, so long as they only request an e-mail address, username, password, and/or a general location when having the user sign up.

Still, the PRA processes will continue to cover a number of online activities, such as Web polls and satisfaction surveys, contests requiring structured responses, and Web sites collecting demographic information about their visitors.

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This is an article from March last year (published while I was out of commission for a few months) but outlines an interesting precedent for governments internationally.

By Doug Beizer on FCW.com

Under the agreement, agencies can immediately begin using new-media tools that let people post, share, and comment on videos and photos on the Web. Individual agencies must decide which tools their employees may use and how they may use them.

GSA and a coalition of agencies have been working with the new-media providers for some time to develop terms of service for federal agencies. The new agreements resolve legal concerns associated with many standard terms and conditions that pose problems for agencies, such as liability limits, endorsements and freedom of information, GSA officials said.

“We need to get official information out to sites where people are already visiting and encourage them to interact with their government,” said GSA Acting Administrator Paul Prouty. “The new agreements make it easier for the government to provide official information to citizens via their method of choice.”

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By Gady Epstein , Beijing Dispatch at Forbes.com

The 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1 took on symbolic importance not only for the Communist Party, but also for connoisseurs of China’s Internet controls. The thinking by some was that with the last of a series of sensitive anniversaries this year now finally behind us, the guardians of China’s Great Firewall might again allow access to some blocked foreign sites, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Instead, there has been no indication that the censors will loosen up. Forbes asked well-known Beijing journalist and microblogger Zhao Jing, aka Michael Anti, about China’s tightening of Internet controls. Anti already has a personal acquaintance with online censorship: His blog was deleted at the end of 2005 by Microsoft, apparently at the behest of Chinese authorities…

Anti: Web 2.0 Web sites like Facebook and Twitter can offer the public firsthand information, even faster than a government news agency like Xinhua. In fact, the July 5 Urumqi riots news was spreading first on Twitter hours before the first Xinhua English news piece. The Chinese government believes that the situation in Urumqi and other cities would be out of control if they can’t control the information flow. That’s the basic logic behind their decision to block Twitter and other Web 2.0 Web sites.

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The article also introduced me to the concept of astroturfing which I had not been aware of previously..

The CCP has hired thousands of freelance Internet propagandists whose job is to infiltrate chat rooms, message boards and comment areas on the Internet posing as ordinary users to voice support for the agenda and interest of the CCP. They praise China’s one-party system and condemn anyone who criticizes China’s policy on Tibet. They comment aggressively on news reports about China’s food-safety problems, relations with Taiwan, suppression of bird-flu and AIDS information, Internet censorship, jailing of dissidents, support of Sudan’s military in Darfur and other sensitive topics. Comments applaud the Chinese government and slam its critics, all using scripts and lines approved by the party…

…The BBC calls these freelance propagandists China’s 50 Cent Party. The Guardian newspaper calls it the 50 Cent Army. (50 Cent isn’t a rapper in this case, but a reference to the pay: 50 Chinese “cents” per post, which is equivalent to about 7 US cents). Other names include “red vests” and the “red vanguard.”

Some estimates claim that the 50 Cent Army includes a whopping 300,000 people. If that’s accurate, China’s freelance propagandists exceed in number the total populations of 47 countries….

…Why This Isn’t “Astroturfing”

Of course, the Chinese didn’t invent the idea. In the US, for example, political campaigns, companies and other organizations have been known to use paid staff or volunteers to post messages en masse to create a false impression that the public supports or opposes something. A genuine bubble of opinion is called a “grass roots” movement. So faking that is called “astroturfing.”

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Here is an excerpt from the foreword by Robert Ainger, Corporate Director, Orange Business

One of the key findings within this research is the tension that distinctions between purely personal and professional life are becoming increasingly blurred and that this is particularly the case with younger employees. The report identifies the rise of the ‘network citizen’ who relies more on their network for career opportunities than on their employers. This new dimension adds an extra level of complexity for businesses trying to recruit and
retain the best employees while also managing their reputation and intellectual capital.In fact, this report identifies both the ups and the downs of
networking. It challenges the concept that networking will only engender creativity, innovation and freedom while reducing costs by highlighting a potential ‘dark-side’. Networks blur the boundaries between formal hierarchies and informal structures in a company, and between our personal and professional lives.
Networks can create a tension between employees and employers where traditional ideas of loyalty or ownership of ideas and contacts become difficult. Networking can be exclusive and the rise in online networking may exacerbate it. ‘It’s not what you know but who you know’ may be an age-old adage: should business success today be based on contacts made through networking or purely on merit? In the current economic climate, it might be easy to ignore networking as something to concentrate on when there’s more time for lighter, less business-critical activities. The report points out that the value of networking within an economic downturn is perhaps more important than ever and I believe it could, in fact, mean the difference between a business collapsing or capitalising on the tricky conditions.

http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/networkcitizens

Quebec’s open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company’s products rather than using free alternatives.

The lawsuit by Facil was lodged with the Quebec Superior Court on July 15 and made public on Wednesday. In it, the group says the provincial government has refused to entertain competing bids from all software providers, opting instead to supply public-sector departments with products bought from proprietary vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle Corp.

Government buyers are using an exception in provincial law that allows them to buy directly from a proprietary vendor when there are no options available, but Facil said that loophole is being abused and goes against other legal requirements to buy locally.

“It shouldn’t be the rule,” Facil president Mathieu Lutfy told CBC News. “It goes against the public markets policy of the government, which requires them to stimulate competition and look for local alternatives. It’s really an absurdity.”

Between February and June, the Quebec government spent $25 million on software from Microsoft, Facil said. The group estimates the government is spending more than $80 million a year on licences for Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system alone…

…Facil said the provincial government, as well as its federal counterpart, is woefully behind the rest of the world in terms of adopting open-source software in the public sector. Governments around the world are looking to lower their costs and reliance on specific software makers. France, for example, migrated more than 400,000 public-sector employees to open-source software in 2006, while the Netherlands recently banned the use of proprietary products in government.

“A strategic free software utilization in public administration could create thousands of jobs as well as a significant decrease in software licensing costs,” Facil said in a press release. “However, Quebec’s public administration refuses to even consider and evaluate these options.”

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Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin and the city of Memphis have filed a lawsuit to learn who operates a blog harshly critical of Godwin and his department.

The lawsuit asks AOL to produce all information related to the identity of an e-mail address linked to MPD Enforcer 2.0, a blog popular with police officers that has been extremely critical of police leadership at 201 Poplar.

“In what could be a landmark case of privacy and the 1st Amendment,” the anonymous bloggers write on the site, “Godwin has illegally used his position and the City of Memphis as a ram to ruin the Constitution of the United States.

Read the full article here.

The Commission must do its part. It must not rely on one vendor, it must not accept closed standards, and it must refuse to become locked into a particular technology – jeopardizing maintenance of full control over the information in its possession.

This view is born from a hard headed understanding of how markets work – it is not a call for revolution, but for an intelligent and achievable evolution.
But there is more to this than ensuring our commercial decisions are taken in full knowledge of their long term effects. There is a democratic issue as well.
When open alternatives are available, no citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to use a particular company’s technology to access government information.
No citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to choose a closed technology over an open one, through a government having made that choice first.

These democratic principles are important. And an argument is particularly compelling when it is supported both by democratic principles and by sound economics.

I know a smart business decision when I see one – choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed.

Read the full text of the commissioner’s speech..

Interesting Series of blog entries and comments debating as to whether Civil Servant Bloggers in the UK should be governed by a set of blogging guidelines or whether adherence to the UK civil service code should be sufficient. This was all prompted by the recent posts of an anonymous blogger ‘Civil Serf’ known only as a 33-year-old civil servant who attacked the civil service for its lack of innovation and also highlighted incompetences regarding some of the UKs ministers. More on this here..

Tom Watson posted these suggestions on his own blog last Tuesday (11 March 08).

1. Write as yourself
2. Own your own content
3. Be nice
4. Keep secrets
5. No anonymous comments
6. Remember the civil service code
7. Got a problem? Talk to your boss
8. Stop it if we say so
9. Be the authority in your specialist field – provide worthwhile information
10. Think about consequences
11. Media interest? Tell your boss
12. Correct your own mistakes

Matt Wardman then continues the debate on his own Blog.

The Civil Service Code

The CSC is based on values not specifics, and as a result is both rather good and rather flexible. It seems to me that any blogging code should be based on a similar expectation and assumption of trust and professionalism – and should therefore be phrased in similar terms, rather than at a level of “do not use anonymous comments” (which are fine anyway if properly policed and can be beneficial – for example in a discussion of forced marriage).

The meat of the Civil Service Code covers, among other things:

* Integrity
* Honesty
* Objectivity
* Impartiality
* Political Impartiality

and I prefer those concepts, rather than a great fluff of detailed prescriptions and explanatory notes – whether brief or not. Civil Servants are grown-ups; treat them as such.

So my 10 recommended guidelines are in the next section.
The Blogging Code

1. 99.9% of Civil Servants are sensible and professional people of integrity.
2. Civil Serf is an exception in not behaving professionally.
3. Exception control for the 0.1% in this case should be by disciplinary action of the 0.1% under the Civil Service Code, not by creating guidelines for the 99.9%.
4. Blogging guidelines are only an unnecessary result of a need to be seen to take dynamic action.
5. A multiplication of guidelines like rabbits will only serve to generate more boundary quarrels, and waste more time in argument about whether the letter of the guidelines has been breached or not.
6. And then there will have to be a review of the guidelines to identify the weak points.
7. And a policy commission to evaluate the results.
8. And then there will be even more guidelines.
9. And they will have to be put under version control, and distributed to all the Intranets etc etc etc … sod it … go to 5 and continue in circles.
10. In summary – Ockham’s Razor just shredded the guidelines. Or the need for them. Just follow the Civil Service Code.

Required Action

Mr Milliband (or whoever) needs to issue a two sentence policy reminder:

You may write about your work on your blog, but must do so in accordance with the Civil Service Code, the “personal use of office computers” policy, and local policy. Discuss any specifics or questions with your line manager in the usual way.

Job done. Back to work.

And finally (unfortunately?) it seems that Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, is to set out new guidance to civil servants to cover blogging and online social networks following the demise of the “Civil Serf” blogger, The UK Times has learnt…

Sir Gus will shortly issue guidelines to tell officials whether they can start up blogs or use social networking websites such as Facebook and YouTube, and even if they can change details on Wikipedia.

A Cabinet Office spokesman denied that the move was directly linked with the Civil Serf blogger, believed to work for the Department for Work and Pensions, who has embarrassed Westminster with her revelations about officials and ministers.

Read the coverage on Times online.