Making it Official: Government Agencies Sign Agreements with YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, and Blip
U.S. government agencies can now officially use YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, and blip.tv, using special service agreements that comply with federal terms and conditions. Today, the General Services Administration (GSA) announced that, after nine months of negotiations, the government has signed agreements with these companies that will allow federal agencies to officially post content to these sites. The GSA is also negotiating special terms and conditions with MySpace and Facebook, and it has already determined that Twitter's service agreement is in line with federal requirements.
Legal Concerns
According to stories on Nextgov and Federal Computer Week, the GSA had a number of other legal concerns about the standard terms and conditions of these services, including problems with indemnification clauses, liability limits, and endorsements, which led it to enter negotiations with these services. Also, a lot of the standard agreements call for dispute resolutions by state courts, while for government agencies, federal law has to apply.
It is important to note that these new agreements only cover the free services offered by these companies. The GSA is also looking into expanding these agreements to a wider range of social media services.
A number of federal agencies, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Library of Congress already use services like Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. To do so, however, these agencies either needed special waivers, or they negotiated terms directly with these services. Some of these initiatives have been very successful. Pictures from the Library of Congress, for example, have been viewed over 15 million times.
Library of Congress on iTunes
In addition, the Library of Congress today announced that it will begin to share more of its content on YouTube and, as podcasts, through Apple's iTunes. This initiative will launch in the next few weeks.
Engaging the Public
We are glad to see that the GSA has now removed some of the major stumbling blocks that stopped a large number of government agencies from using social media sites. Now we just hope that these agencies will also use these services to actually engage with citizens.
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Great. Apple iTunes. What about those of us who have a zune or some other product. I don't want an apple and shouldn't be forced to download their software, or buy their device to access government compiled data.
This is a step in the right direction for sure. Now comes the hard part, using the technology in a way that is relevant and helpful to the constituencies governments need to reach. The last thing we need is for agencies to get busy creating content that isn't relevant and a public that doesn't care. There will definitely be some vultures waiting to see govt. social media initiatives fail. Agencies would be smart not to feed those vultures with failed projects. Further, and perhaps more importantly, agencies that create bad or, worse yet, annoying content will lose the faith of the public.
My message to the govt. agencies is "Please, get it right. Talk to constituents of all types to see what the people want/expect from their government then deliver on those things (better yet, exceed our expectations). Help make our lives easier, not more cluttered. Let us feel the power of our citizenship and engage us on our terms."
If they're concerned, they should host their own content. It doesn't seem right to me, spending taxpayer money to pump up the latest fad websites.
It's inevitable that government would become involved in social networking and blogging as time passes, to simply be a part of the pulse of society.
My main concern overall is the state of digital security within these networks to handle sensetive information.
This site: http://www.justaskgemalto.com is really informative about this subject.
It's a good first step to see the clearance for usage of social media technologies, but I'd be hard-pressed to believe that this will result in a change in the way agencies engage with constituents.
The great promise of web 2.0 is not faster or instant-access communications, but better engagement and collaboration amongst a relevant community to make better and faster decisions. It truly is the promise of productivity gains for today's knowledge workers (including nearly every Federal employee) akin to the productivity gains automation brought to the factory floor.
Most examples of social media or enterprise 2.0 applications in government or commercial enterprises (or any organization with an agenda other than social networking) simply treat the technology as a new communication for the same style of communication. Albeit faster, it's still pushing the same old message.
A number of examples exist: the Ohio Atty General on Twitter, blogs to replace listservs, the CDC's use of a widget to create virual (no pun intended) updates on the peanut scare. And most of private enterprise is acting in the same vein. As channel management tools, there are examples of interesting ideas (e.g., the aforementioned CDC example, Dell's use of Twitter to offer promotions to early adopters); yet these are really just different technologies to push the same message.
Some industry pioneers, such as Starbuck's use of IdeaExchange from salesforce.com, are looking to create community-based collaboration to engage the more diverse community than traditional and provide the tools for that community to create or influence critical management decisions (http://www.bis-insight.com/Site/Home.html). But until organizations recognize that their outmoded operating models cannot drive these kinds of fundamental change, we'll see Enterprise 2.0 take a fast track to the same old destination.
I'm a bit surprised at the generally negative tone of comments here. I was the webmaster at a government agency in the 90s, and the general feeling in the air was that this "web thing" was a good tool, but that everyone in government should be wary of it.
GSA green-lighting use of at least some social networking tools is a very positive step. Yes, there are still obstacles, primarily in the form of old school bureaucrats who are better at safeguarding their jobs than in serving the public. But there are also plenty of motivated, savvy folks in government who have been pushing to have more latitude in how they communicate with the public.
Thomas Whitney, concerns about sensitive information are out of place in this context. GSA is giving agencies the ability to post information that is already public. The FBI isn't going to suddenly start posting videos of its investigation methods.
Ferodynamics, I don't really understand your post. The government can save taxpayer dollars by using social media networks. If you've ever worked in government contracting, you know that the government frequently pays far more than it should for commodity technologies. With these agreements in place, government agencies will be able to do more while leveraging existing networks. This is not "pumping up" "fad websites." Do you really think YouTube is a "fad website"?
Lee Drake, if the Library of Congress puts podcasts up on iTunes, that doesn't mean you have to have an iPod to listen to them. iTunes is just the distribution mechanism. It is a trivial matter to listen to them in another app: http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2006/02/export_your_pod.html
Looking at this as a civil servant from another country (Canada), it's a really positive step. If you're in the trenches trying to move your organization towards at least some level of 2.0 adoption, then you can point to this to reassure nervous nellies in management that it's OK.
But dealing with legal liability is only one of many barriers to convincing the org to move forward. Here we've got many other policy requirements on the books that impede participation or engagement in the social web - privacy, accessibility, various web standards, information managament, official bilingualism, the list goes on. I'm sure it's a similar situation in the US. And then you've got the whole issue of coherence and consistency -- various govt orgs take different approaches to all of these issues.
As an aside, I noticed in the NextGov story that the GSA concluded it didn't need a special agreement with Twitter, since their terms of service didn't raise any flags for the US govt. Short'n'simple ToS, FTW!