Social Media Practices for Government and Politics

Social Media Practices for Government and Politics Liz Diether-MartinUWSMC course 3Spring 2011

If you represent a politician or a government agency or official, communication with constituents is extremely important and social media provides effective and inexpensive ways to interact with constituents and get feedback on policy.

Official work only • Politicians, elected officials and government employees must be doing work on behalf of the government when using government computers and other resources, including your own time while being paid by the government. • You must be very clear about what you are communicating, for what purpose and to whom.

Not for Official Meetings • A meeting is “a transaction of the official business of a public agency, including public testimony, discussions, reviews, evaluations, and actions or decisions. • Meetings must be open to all citizens. • Not all citizens have equal access to computers and the internet, so meetings cannot be exclusively electronic.

Transparency • Communications on behalf of the government must be kept available to citizens – unless the information is deemed classified. • At any time, a your government agency can be required to provide all communications on a certain issue, with a certain person or group, and during a certain time period.

Transparency, cont’d • This would be complicated just for email. Imagine the difficulty in being able to provide every Tweet, every Facebook message or post, plus blog content, email, and video content.

Retention of Communication • Most federal, state and local governments have some sort of guidelines on retention of records. In Washington state, the evolving guidelines are available online: http://citycouncilbloghandbook.wikispaces.com/Q%26A+on+record+retention.

Index all documents, posts, blogs, tweets Create a spreadsheet, including: • Publish date • Forum: Twitter, Facebook, a blog, etc. • Actual content • Include links to web sites

Don’t be an Anthony Weiner • If you delete something on Twitter, Facebook and a blog after you have posted it, you may still be obligated to provide it if someone requests a record. Just ask Anthony Weiner. It doesn’t work anyway.

For Citizens • WA State Legislature - Bill Finder When someone posts or Tweets an appeal to support a bill in WA state, you can read the status, summary and full text of the bill. Know what you're signing/supporting and whether or not the bill is still in the House or Senate.http://www.leg.wa.gov/pages/home.aspx

For Citizens, cont’d • Apps for Democracyhttp://www.appsfordemocracy.org/Mission: to engage the populace of Washington, DC to ask for their input into the problems and ideas they have that can be addressed with technology and then to build the best community platform for submitting 311 service requests to the city.

Politicians and Agencies Using SM Governor Gregoire: • http://twitter.com/#!/govgregoire • http://www.facebook.com/govgregoire?ref=ts&sk=wall Jim McDermott’s telemeeting: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8zpg_jGXSc

Agencies using SM • Government 2.0 Wikihttp://government20bestpractices.pbworks.com/w/page/10044445/United-States-GovernmentList of govt social media outlets, including Lessons Learned and Results How about the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Second Life sim?

Resources Used • Guidelines for Government Employeeshttp://citycouncilbloghandbook.wikispaces.com/Legal+Issues+and+Guidance • Seattle SM clearinghouse: http://www.seattle.gov/html/citizen/socialmedia.htm • Social Media Policy for Government and Non-Profits http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php?f=5 • Washington State best practices: Guidelines and Best Practices for Social Media Use in Washington state (Nov. 2010) • Social Web handbook for Washington State local electeds: http://citycouncilbloghandbook.wikispaces.com/

Social Media Practices for Government and Politics