The Wardman Wire

Over at Tom Watson’s blog, there’s an article and a good conversation going on in the comments - concerning what guidance should be developed for Civil Servant bloggers.

Tom suggests something short and sharp in 12 points:

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

Various commenters add things (which I’m numbering mainly sequentially, and of which I’m only quoting a portion):

Shane

13. Be accurate - don’t tell porkies.
14. Treat comments as part of your blog. Make sure they adhere to the guidelines s much as possible.

Fiona:

15. Consider your audience i.e., don’t make it too cliquey & explain all mysterious civil service acronyms and activities.
16. If the audience is your partner & your Mum 3 months down the line find a better use of your time.
17. Inform your line manager you are blogging. This covers you and your line manager and means we can do less monitoring.

Greg:

0. Your blog is not a place for whistle blowing - we have a proper route for that

Stuart Bruce adds:

This is a pretty good list for starters, but probably needs explanatory notes to accompany each item. I’m working on a public sector client project at the moment where we are starting lots of social media activities, one of the most important of which is creating an environment where employees will write their own set of guidelines. We haven’t decided yet if this will be as a wiki or as a ‘blog-like’ site. The rationale is that if people have been involved in creating the rules then they are more likely to enforce them, and it will become self-policing as employees encourage each other to stick to the rules, because they are fair and if one person doesn’t then everyone will suffer.

Tom Steinberg (of Mysociety) says:

Some thoughts:

First, I really like the idea of it being a really short list of really short guidelines. So much more likely to be useful!

Second, can you explain what 2 a bit more please?

Next, I don’t think you can really expect people to do 6 effectively when it is a pre-Internet-era document - it actually doesn’t help people feel confident, instead it seeds uncertainty that your guidelines here need to clear up. We addressed this in this recommendation in Power of Information:

http://www.commentonthis.com/powerofinformation/#marker10585

9 is brilliant and exactly the point - civil servants do know more about their chosen area than nearly anyone else, and it’s of obvious public value to have them be able to explain stuff in plain english for Google to find.

Lastly, 8 needs re-wording to make it clear you’re not against free speech. “If your boss(es) makes it clear that what you’re writing is needlessly damaging, say sorry, take it down and move on. If you need to whistle blow about something really serious like criminal activity, use the official channels.”

Lobster Blogster is more to my taste, but see below.

1. Write what you like, it’s a free country
2. Don’t get caught

My Take

Tom Steinberg: “Not against free speech”

I don’t think that I am with Tom Steinberg on “them” being wholly in favour of free speech, but I’ll not develop the point - as this is a good neutral discussion.

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 12 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.

Tags: civil service code, civil serf, code for bloggers, civil service blog guidelines
[tags]civil service code, civil serf, code for bloggers, civil service blog guidelines[/tags]