Flutterby™! : A few notes on government use of social media

Institute For Local Government: Legal Issues Associated with Social Media has two papers worth reading if you have to deal with such things. A few notes because I'll be using these later tonight. First, there are three classes of forum:

1. Traditional public forums, like streets, sidewalks and parks.
2. Designated public forums, which are intentionally opened non-public forums for public discourse. Comments at a city council meeting fall into this category. The threshold issue is is this communications vehicle opened to materials of the publics choosing?
3. Non-public forums.

Government agencies have to be careful to not let #2 become #1.

Choose names carefully, especially where abbreviations and acronyms are involved...

It's important to make a distinction between "prepared", "owned", "used" and "kept in custody", as the latter status invokes all sorts of potential disclosure (who "likes" or "friends" this page and what profile information is then made available to the agency?) and data retention legalities.

Make a distinction between "official requests" and "general public information", which is part of triggering that general disclosure issue, at least under California state law.

And, finally, beware of possible Section 508 issues. Gulp.