They’ve been a long time coming, but the civil service guidelines for participation online have been published recently.
They’re either pretty light touch, or perhaps just deliberately loosely defined for whatever purpose, but they largely make sense.
They are;
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.
Point 1 you’d hope would be standard practice for all people in online participation. It’s not though, so good to see it spelt out like that. Point 2 is interesting, calling on civil servants to encourage constructive criticism online. Too often there’s a suspicion that government isn’t really looking for criticism from online activities, more just rubber stamping of a decision already taken. 3 is sensible, 4 is essential but, i think, now being more widely understood generally, and 5 is common sense too, although perhaps has the potential to get entangled in a debate about whistle blowing that’s not for here.
The only major point missing, and perhaps it’s not really a guideline, but something along the lines of ‘Remember participation online, done well, will take time. Lots of time. If you’re going to do it, make sure you can make the necessary investment’
Overall, the guidelines seem to set out well expectations for online participation. It would be good to see local authorities start to integrate them into their own policies. Perhaps then they could start to allow their staff to have access to social media websites from work and engage with residents in their own spaces. Or is that too much to hope?
