I saw a couple of interesting things come across my social media stream this week that really caught my eyes.
One issue came from the UK and the other from Australia. One was about policy and the other about punishment, or at least it will be in the future.
Policy:
The title of the policy article is what got me to open the story. “Social media rules for public servants ‘laughable‘.” How could I not jump into this one?
Essentially, the Australian Public Service released new rules for how members participate online.
The “laughable” quote was credited to Greg Jericho, (coincidently the person who the changes are being named for – there’s a great story there).
The new rules address everything that could possibly be considered. Working, not working, representing your agency, not representing your agency, personal opinion, professional opinion. They have covered everything! I thing some parts of the rules are fantastic, well-balanced and necessary. Other parts…I think I described it best as ‘handcuffs and gag orders.’
Why is policy so difficult to get right?
Maybe it’s because you can have so many opinions and views on what social media should be. What it should say? Who should say it? Does it represent the public or does it represent the agency / organization? It could simply be because no one has clearly defined the goals or strategy for your social media presence. No policy, no strategy, no goals…how can you expect anyone to be able to do it right when right has been set out?
Maybe that’s what happened that led to the next part of this post.
Punishment
A police officer in the UK is facing discipline for some of the comments he put into his Twitter stream. I’d link the officers Twitter account for you, but it seems to have disappeared. Either way, here’s the story.
The officer in question made comments that ranged from expressions of political assertions, complaints of the details he was assigned and tweets that could directly cause a negative impact to community safety, confidence in the police if that wasn’t enough he potentially put other police officers safety at risk. Not really what we expect from police officers.
Some of you are probably thinking no big deal. In fact, you might be applauding the officer for speaking his mind. Letting the public know his dissatisfaction with the service they were receiving from their police at the hands of the government. Even calling out problems within the police department itself. Don’t we want our police to be honest, open and transparent? YES WE DO!!
But, should we undermine the confidence the public has in its police? No. Should we have to tell an officer that they shouldn’t be providing operational details to the public? No. Can we expect a seasoned, veteran officer should know that you don’t put your fellow officers at risk or create an opportunity for criminals to exploit weaknesses? No
Should we need policies like those introduced to the Public Service Employees in Australia? No
I just wrote a lot of no’s but there are officers doing things like those of the officer in the UK and we have policies being created like those in Australia.
Why? Because there are people who complete the circle of necessity. You know what that is:
- BOB – Do we need a rule for that?
- SUE – No, because no one would ever do that.
- BOB – OK.
- BOB – Someone did that.
- SUE – Someone did that?
- BOB – Yes.
- SUE – Why did they do that?
- BOB – They said because there wasn’t a rule to say they couldn’t.
- SUE – OK, we need a rule because someone did that.
As long as there are people like the officer in the UK we will have policies like those that came out in Australia.
I don’t mean to centre these two instances out because there are so many others that I could pick form…they just happened to occur this week. Next week it will be another country, another officer.
I would love to hear your opinion on this one. Let me know what you think.
