Government, Social Networks and Freedom of Information

I came across an article yesterday, titled Twitter and Government Transparency. In it Andy Opsahl outlines the potential challenges social networks are creating for government entities.  The question being raised is whether or not activity on sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn need to be archived and available for records requests.

As Melinda Catapano points out in the article “if this is connected to official agency work, you better be able to produce that record.” But aren’t these consumer sites, just used for personal use? The answer is it depends. While the lines are blurring between personal and professional use on these sites one thing is clear. If you are using them to communicate agency work you can be assured that it is going to be governed by the same set of principles that govern other communications

In fact, Wisconsin Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen recently issued an opinion in which he states that electronic communications made by elected officials are public records, even when they are posted on social networking sites. Van Hollen states that the Wisconsin Public Records laws applies whenever the content is connected to the official’s purpose or function.

One option many agencies have employed is to simply block access to these sites. That course of action flies in the face of The President’s Open Government Directive.  These sites are the perfect platform to create transparency, participation and collaboration. The Bright Side of Government recently did a blog post that discusses this exact topic. Of course with increased levels of participation comes the need to comply with the federal guidelines such as the Freedom of Information Act and the Public Information Act.

Catapano admits that “she, like numerous other CIOs, didn’t have a clue as to how to archive external social networking posts”. She goes further by saying “it would probably be a good master’s thesis because everybody needs those answers and everybody seems to be avoiding the problem.”

Well there is good news Melinda. One you are not alone in that other industries are struggling with this same challenge. Here is a quick snapshot of the issues that financial services organizations face around embracing social networks.  Second, there actually is an automated solution to archiving social network activity and content. Socialware’s Risk Manager solution was built from the ground up to solve this problem and many others that can arise from business related usage of social networks.

Today we are currently working with a number of government agencies and look forward to sharing their success stories over the coming weeks and months. In the mean time if you are interested in signing up you can request a free invitation here.