Matt Wardman on Radio Wales Good Evening Wales about Civil Service Bloggers
A painless experience, and I’ll comment in more detail later.
The audio of me and Peter Black AM. is a little further down.
We were talking about the restrictions on blogging Civil Servants in Wales, in the light of Miss Wagstaff’s expulsion from Facebook.
I’m delighted that Peter Black was more controversial than I was. Welsh Assembly Government “stalinist” indeed - ouch !
The only missing point that perhaps needed to be made was a detailed one that the Christopher Glamorganshire sacking case happened before the “Principles for Participation Online” were officially adopted in England.
I also didn’t get the chance to suggest that the Welsh Assembly Government are perhaps having their internal culture inspired too much by the Torchwood programme episodes set in the 1940s. A problem of working too close to a film set, perhaps.
Peter Black’s final point about the need for consultation with employees is excellent, and it seems to me that - if the Welsh Assembly Government can adopt the Civil Service Code itself with virtually no changes - then it can’t be very difficult to adopt a 79-word set of principles (warning: pic of Government Minister at end of link !):
1. Be credible
- Be accurate, fair, thorough and transparent.
2. Be consistent
- Encourage constructive criticism and deliberation. Be cordial, honest and professional at all times.
3. Be responsive
- When you gain insight, share it where appropriate.
4. Be integrated
- Wherever possible, align online participation with other offline communications.
5. Be a civil servant
- Remember that you are an ambassador for your organisation. Wherever possible, disclose your position as a representative of your department or agency.
But I missed getting the obligatory blog plug in. Boo !
Incidentally, I also had a useful conversation about a Welsh Blog Radio Roundup. I’ll keep looking at it, but don’t expect too many results too soon.
[tags]good evening wales, Matt Wardman, miss wagstaffe, peter black am, radio wales[/tags]
Categories: All WW, Audio, Columns, Free Speech Campaign, Human Rights / Freedom, Internet / Technical, Media, News - Current Affairs, Wales
This extends not only to civil servants and the likes of Miss Wagstaff. I was bounced from Facebook months ago for the same reason and yet saw many that had obviously made up screen names. Most of us have these, as if we expressed what we say under our own names, we would be economically disadvantaged,
Those of us in the private sector, where we are suppliers of goods and services to government, local and WAG, and often wider would be commercially blacklisted by some in influential positions. This is often the case with the voluntary and community secctors, where organisations have lost funding if they “upset” a minister or an offical.
I find it almost incredible (as in not believable) that people aren’t cottoning on to the stink bloggers et al raise when blocks like this are put in place. One wonders if the political staff (as opposed to the WAG civil service) are also blocked from reading political blogs.
The mindset about blogging needs to change. While the openness I’d like to see probably isn’t going to be universally accepted in the near future, it’d be something if the powers-that-be realised that blogs, for the most part, aren’t a problem unless you make them a problem.
xD.
Dave Coles last blog post..I’m ba-ack!