Great Video on Social Media Policy for Governments

Governments and organizations are all scrambling to develop the right guidelines for their employee’s use of social media. One of the biggest challenges is the blurring of personal and private lives that happens in the digital world.

For example, Facebook requires each user account to be assigned to a real individual – so what does that mean for a government staff person who wants to post on someone’s wall about a project in their portfolio?

Here’s two pertinent rules from Facebook:

• Maintaining multiple accounts, regardless of the purpose, is a violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. source
• When a Page admin comments on a follower’s photo, the comment may appear as if it was posted from the admin’s personal Facebook account. Similarly, when a Page admin likes a post on their Page, the post may appear as if the action was taken from the Page admin’s personal account. source

For now, what all this means is that government representatives need some guidelines for how to manage their online interactions with the public at work, and in their personal lives.

Australia’s Victorian Justice Department Developed an engaging video to communicate their top 10 policies about managing social media use by government staff. Check it out here or see their page for the full policy: