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US House Adopts New Third-Party Web Site Rules
GovIT Geek writes to tell us that third-party websites will no longer be off limits for members of the US House, provided that they use it for "official purposes" and not personal, commercial, or campaign purposes. "The rules are seen by House Administration Chairman Robert Brady as a compromise between several proposals under consideration in recent months and are closely aligned with those circulated by the Senate Rules Committee last week. [...] 'These new guidelines are a step in the right direction for a Congress that has been behind the technological curve for too long,' Boehner said. 'By encouraging the use of emerging and established new media tools, Congress is sending the message that we want to speak to citizens, and receive feedback, in the most open and accessible manner possible.'"
The US House would rather relax the rules than spend the money for a server and feed that can take getting blasted by the angry constituents of, what, 437 Congresspersons?
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Even for personal purposes? What constitutes "personal"?
If someone has, for example, a linkedIn account, do they have to close it if they get elected?
They took them away from staffers, not Congresscritters. Had you read the link you provided you'd know that. Lots of junior staffers love to leak because it makes them feel important, and Her Majesty Pelosi didn't want any premature details of the negotiations coming out before they had a deal to screw us out of yet more money.
Congress is sending the message that we want to speak to citizens, and receive feedback, in the most open and accessible manner possible.
I think I just ruined another keyboard spitting out my coffee when I read that!
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Oh well, Bad Karma and all . . .
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Watch what you call her. Under the new rules, she can flame you and link to her post.
No, that's not the point. They cannot do personal things in the guise of their office. For instance, President Bush, as a person, can be racist (an example I believe untrue, but sprang to mind quickly). As President, however, he has to have a non-racist approach to running the executive.
The Rep. can maintained the linked in account, but without the offical presence of his office.
This rule doesn't affect whether Rep. X can put up YouTube videos of "My crazy weekend". He always could. But now he can put up videos saying "The US House of Representatives did X" with him speaking as part of his job.
But he must not use his those official communiques for personal, commerical or campaigning reasons.
Similar to how my work might allow youtube to host our official videos (currently, our site does it), but I still couldn't connect me to my company for political or personal reasons (or other commercial ventures.)
Your ad here. Ask me how!
I haven't been able to find a copy of the actual rules, just a bunch of blogger rhetoric, but from what I understand this is more about the boundary between tax-payer funded media and privately funded media.
The senate and house both have official websites with pages that each of the congresscritters can use for official business. Naturally, we don't want them using taxpayer money on their campaign since it gives an advantage to the incumbents, so campaigning is forbidden on this website. The argument was about whether linking to content from personal or campaigning sites from their official site should be allowed.
There was also some concern about embedding third party content (like youtube videos) and whether it caused any technical/political/security concerns. The initial reaction was to ban embedding of third-party content (mostly because it because it wasn't understood). They are now lifting that ban with the clarification that anything on the official site must be official business even if it is hosted elsewhere.
AFAIK they never prohibited congresscritters from having their own sites, or using any third-party sites - they just had to be separate from the official site, and not funded with tax money.
No. No it isn't.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Allowing representatives to use third-party services for official purposes, rather than government-run official IT infrastructure, enables them to hide their operations in plain sight. This is much like gov.palin@hotmail.com and Bush using RNC services while in office.
With these new rules in place, official goverment records that should be open to scrutiny will be spread across thousands of privately-controlled servers. Oversight will be impossible.