The Wardman Wire

Tom Watson has picked up on my proposed Guidelines for Civil Servants:

Matt Wardman has a different take on the issue. He’s saying there’s no need for any guidelines. For Matt, the civil service code will suffice. I’d be interested to know if current blogging civil servants think that code provides the clarity you need to blog sensibly without fear that you’re doing something wrong.

I’m arguing for a strongly minimalist approach:

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.

And there is a further debate going on in the comments.

Involving blogging Civil Servants themselves is an excellent - nay essential - idea.

Serendipity - Blogging Principles from Lisa Williams in 2003

Listening to the Budget Twitter feed from Mick Fealty this morning, I have discovered that one of his “followers” is Lisa Williams (profile), who runs the Watertown Citizen Journalism site. I haven’t had dealings with her for a couple of years.

Lisa is cool, and produced (back in 2005) the minor classic video “4 minutes on podcasting” (the first video tutorial for how to make a podcast). She also has the distinction of being in a small number of bloggers who arrange their categories on the Dewey Decimal System - which is one solution to the need for a common taxonomy. That was in 2004; she’s still doing it.

She also published a set of “blogging principles” back in December 2003 (her 2179th post), which may be of interest to the current “Blog Code” debate. It is about personal principles, not corporate limitations. Interesting, nonetheless.

What should happen to Civil Serf

Whitehall Webby Jeremy Gould says:

Civil Serf is an individual who expressed her personal individual thoughts. She is not a corporate PR machine attempting to control the ‘message’ and shouldn’t be treated as such.

She made a mistake.

She realised her mistake and did the right thing - protected herself.

Nobody died.

Leave her alone.

I hope she’s okay and safe (and feeling safe).

Wrapping-Up

This is my last visit to this debate - unless things develop more.

[Edit: Ministry of Truth has commented. Well worth a read. Agrees with me-ish, but talks about specific circumstances on the ground more.]

Tags: tom watson, civil serf, lisa williams, civil service code[tags]tom watson, civil serf, lisa williams, civil service code[/tags]