Walter asks: how do we lash this together, a wiki?
Yes, a wiki on social web guidelines for local elected officials in Washington State.
Category: Cluetrain (Page 3 of 10)
I’m one of those annoying people who will always tell elected officials I run into “man, you should blog.” Sometimes they shrug me off, but I’ve had at least two long back and forth conversations with local electeds that got down to specific reasons why they don’t blog. Basically, they got advice from their staff lawyer that they shouldn’t.
The logic goes that if you blog about what you do as a city councilmember, the computer you blog on and all of the data that touched that blog post is now public. Or, could be public.
Walter Neary, a city council member from Lakewood, who gives a lot of advice like I do (and blogs about it) came across lawyers who gave their chilling advice during a conference:
I spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at the Association of Washington Cities annual meeting about the use of Twitter, Facebook and blogging to reach our citizens. … The overall feedback I got afterward is that a lot of people were thankful …
What got very odd is that four people… warned that these methods could bankrupt a city because of a court ruling involving them. Needless to say, their comments had quite a chilling effect on the discussion. I had to acknowledge their concerns without being familiar with the case.
The case is O’Neil v. Shoreline (here and here), and it involved an email from a city councilmember from a private account that was part of a public records request. They (now) former council member changed parts of the email, and the court ended up ruling that the city was resposible to make sure the email was available in its original form, even if it orginated from a non-city server.
So, lawyers working for cities across Washington State are a conservative bunch, and they don’t want to end up costing their boss’s any more money than necessary. If a city councilmember is going to start blogging about city business on some outside account, they’re likely going to tell that city councilmember that its up to them to defend themselves in court when someone comes making metadata public records requests for their blogging.
I’m going to read the decision later this weekend, so hopefully I can figure out more. But, its ironic that a case that was meant to open the doors of local government is causing legal staff to offer the advice that its best to shut them right back up.
Don’t blog, we don’t want to get stuck with the legal bill and bancrupt the city when someone comes looking for your home laptop.
Great post from Joan, let’s hope she keeps it up beyond the campaign.
Not to take credit away from Joan and Karen Rogers (mentioned earlier here), but if anything Mathias said got them going in this direction, good for you man.
Just in case you were wondering if I was picking on Pat Beehler for being creepy just because I don’t like him, here’s what he should have done. There might be a few too many items in this particular post from Karen Rogers (for Olympia City Council), but this is exactly how this sort of campaigny updatey thing should be done.
I especially like her writing about doorbelling:
Some of the things that I heard this week:
* Like the new parks and want them built as soon as possible.
* Slow traffic down.
* Do something about the traffic congestion.
* Having trouble finding a job.
* We must bring in new industry and new jobs.
* Want someone in office who has the time and energy to do the job.
* We must revitalize downtown.
* Olympia needs a new, integrated plan for downtown.
* The Isthmus rezone is horrible.
* The Isthmus rezone is necessary.
I know Karen has been getting some pretty good advice on her web stuff, and its good to see that she’s not only paying attention but putting it to work.
Walter Neary, Lakewood’s blogging city councilman, conducted an experiment via twitter and facebook and got no comments from the locals:
The news was that the city of Lakewood’s collection of traffic fines is up 40 percent for the first three months of 2009 compared with the first three months of 2008, for total of about $200,000 more. I have to say, I didn’t get a lot of feedback, but what I got was very high quality.
…
I have to tell you … I was very impressed with the points of view.
BUT
and there’s a BUT
Not a single one of these folks lives in Lakewood.
So … great views. Great Internet exchanges. Zip interaction with Lakewood.
A simple solution could be to create a facebook account for “city councilman” Walter Neary and only accept relationships with your constituents. It could be made semi-public so anyone could see your information and what is going on on your wall, but only friends could comment. It would also be separate from a personal account, which would make it easy to divide from personal stuff.
Or, in the long term, I wonder if something like this would work:
I’ve been toying around with an idea in my mind, a sort of super public comment tool for state government on down. Each level of government in Washington at some point has a need for public comment. It would be interesting to create a system online where a citizen could create a user profile using their voter registration (or some stand in for folks who aren’t registered) and then see open public comment processes in the jurisdictions they reside in.
So, in my case, I’d see public comment for the city of Olympia, Thurston County, the local PUD and port and the state of Washington.
I’d be able to post comment to any of the open processes and either have it archived for whatever public official will review the comment or immediately accessible to other users so they could comment back on my comment.
Of course, normal rules like not being able to overuse the system (three comments a week, for example), not being rude and not using particular language, would apply.
For this system, the important thing would be to segregate people into public comment processes that they actually are involved in. So, keeping Kitsap residents from commeting on an interesting issue in Renton would be a priority.
The response to the fewest number of credentialed reporters covering the legislative session wasn’t that a blogger was eventually credentialed, but rather this.
Or, a lot of stuff like that.
This winter and spring the four caucuses (but the Dem ones the most and the Senate Dems the most most) have been rolling out social media tools that allow them to directly connect with the people that would typically read legislative coverage.
- Sen . Lisa Brown is writing a seriously blunt blog, taking issues on in a somewhat dense, but very direct way. House Dems also have a less fun blog, but its still there.
- Each caucus has embraced twitter (SD, HD, HR, SR), though I’m a bit unsure of how this is an advancement beyond or just the use of a tool. Here’s a funny thing about caucus twitter feeds. I though I was already following the senate Republicans because I followed WASenateGOP. Turns out that is their campaign committee and the actually caucus twitters at WashingtonSRC.
- Same thing with each caucuses use of video and audio casts. Its great to make all the stuff available, but its another thing to distill it in some form.
Does the lack of reporters covering the legislature drive the caucuses to adopt social media? Probably not, I’ve heard conversations around these topics for years, but everyone was getting hung up on rules (that you apparently couldn’t blog during session because it was campaigning? Weirdness).
Its more likely that the ramping up of caucus based social (or at least internet) media and the nose-dive of traditional state house reporting are happening on parralel, if not slightly overlapping, tracks.
1. #wafloods is a revolution in Washington media. The more we can create cross news room standards like this, the better.
2. Lewis County Buzz is back for the floods as well. Originally started in response to the 2007 floods, the Chronicle shuttered the forums after things got out of hand back in August. It might have been the nature of online forums, but I’m sure a little moderating (whether imposed by the Chronicle or by the community) would have done some good.
Lets hope that they either keep the forums open this time, or a user has the foresight to start a new forum in the expectations that the Chronicle will close the Buzz in a little while anyway.
3. The Olympian turned their site blog into a breaking news blog. Nice touch for the floods.
TVW has a blog (hat tip their twitter), but not with comments:
On the point of accessibility, one thing you won’t find here is comments. Why? If we do our job right, you’ll be a more informed citizen after reading The Capitol Record. That might make you want to share your opinion with someone. But the office of your elected official is the more appropriate place to do that. We’ll help facilitate that direct communication by providing links to the Legislature’s web site, where you can find the contact information for your elected official.
I have a problem with this because it assumes that engagement is best between a citizen and an elected official. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I think the more valuable engagement is between citizens, and TVW is giving up on that.
Yes, its much much easier not have to moderate comments from readers, but they’re shutting off communication between their readers.
Another interesting thing about the TVW blog is it makes TVW a defacto media organization, more along the lines of what a real, post newspaper, media organization would look like. Original musings here.
For christsakes, are you serious? No matter how good your cause is, right now you look pretty dumb. Especially since my email is pretty easy to see here, you simply could have sent me the information that way.
I have to give you credit for trying to reach out to local blogs, I’ve seen you over at Olyblog before, but posting random comments on random posts isn’t a good idea.
Instead, try doing your own blogging. Maybe not a blog specifically about Goodwill and the work it does, but the world that Goodwill exists in. Saying that in another way, don’t just blog about the good work you’re doing, write about the good work you see other people and organizations like your own. “Hunging good will in Washington” might be a good name for a blog.
Also, keep up the beat at places like Olyblog and the the Exit133 forums.
And, if you’re in 15 counties, why are you called Tacoma Goodwill?
And, email me next time.
Emmett O'Connell
@emmettoconnell@olympiatime.com
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