The following post is a direct copy from the Birmingham Post. Click the link if you want to see the original, but it’s the same.
I am looking for your thoughts on this (mainly from police, law enforcement, community managers, social media managers), but also welcome the comments from everyone because the perspective would be great as well.
Please don’t comment on the money itself though…everything has a cost.
West Midlands Police has handed over £45,000 to a firm to help it control the Twitter and Facebook accounts of its officers.
The cash has been handed to Birmingham-based CrowdControlHQ to provide security and oversight of all of the forces official Twitter and Facebook accounts.
The payments, revealed in a Freedom of Information request, have topped £45,900 since September 5, 2011.
It said all of the forces Facebook and Twitter accounts are plugged into CrowdControlHQ to ensure that social media assets are kept safe and secure. The accounts are then monitored by the press office to ensure that nothing posted “conflicts with the corporate message or style” of the force.
West Midlands Police faced a massive backlash earlier this year after it banned an award-winning officer from Tweeting – after he highlighted resource problems via the social media site.
Inspector Michael Brown had his account, @MentalHealthCop suspended in February.
But his Twitter feed, which has more than 20,000 followers, was reinstated within a week.
Police chiefs insisted that the account was only reactivated because the inspector accepted “informal advice” following an internal investigation.
It emerged during the controversy that officers have to sign an 11-page social media agreement and also have to provide login details.
CrowdControlHQ explains the work it has done with the force on its own website in helping to protect the force from spamming and malicious postings.
It says: “Each authorised officer can post or tweet by logging in to the system, but the central communications team retains the passwords for all social media accounts.
“By plugging all social media networks into the CrowdControlHQ dashboard, the central communications team now has visibility over the entire posting and engagement activity and is able to drill down on chosen accounts or content.
“By setting up keyword dictionaries, accounts are monitored constantly by the system and offen- sive or abusive content is either removed automatically or sent for review by key members of the team.
Speaking about the official Twitter accounts the force said: “These are used for officers to communicate directly with the people we serve, providing them with proactive news and information.
“Officers have always provided official account passwords in case any inappropriate material needs removing or if any technical issues.
“We do not and have never requested user names or passwords for personal social media accounts from our officers or staff.”
Very interesting post, Tim. I see pros and cons on each side and while I would land more on the side of thinking this was a good idea, I have different reasons for thinking so. From a resource perspective, it would be easier to have a central monitoring system for many accounts. More from the perspective of being able to see who is using their account, how effectively they’re using their account, etc. I think any organization needs to train their members accordingly and have guidelines and strategies in place for going forward with social media use. If members post something inappropriate, chances are you will find out about it and there are mechanisms in place for dealing with that. Whether a central monitoring system or another member of the Service brings it to my attention is not the point. What are your thoughts?
Thanks for the comment Meaghan.
It is certainly an issue that can be debated for both sides and from many differing viewpoints. Risk management, group promotion, coordinated messaging effective use, etc.
You hit the nail on the head with the mention of guidelines and strategies. Give your members some direction with a certain degree of autonomy and they will quickly show who will grasp the technology and use. Then the monitoring can come in to help identify who is a benefit for policing, personal or a mixture of both and adjustment can be made.
THe quickest identification will always be through consistent keyword monitoring which will always require human analysis after identification. When someone brings it to your attention, the human analysis has already been done. Then the real questions begin to determine what, if any offence has been committed, moral, ethical, personal? What will make the biggest difference no matter what in the protection of the agency and risk mitigation will be the timeframe that takes place.
For a program the size of yours a person tasked with the monitoring:
1.) Better be given some great tools for the job.
2.) Divested of all other responsibilities.
3.) Trusted to make the right decisions.