Click here to read a guest column I wrote on behalf of the Washington Coalition for Open Government. It begins with …

You would think that in a democracy, all you have to do to participate in public policy is find out when people meet and then attend. You would think that all you have to do to see the records that government produces is simply ask to see the records.

You would, of course, be wrong. Some meetings are not announced. Some records prove difficult, or impossible, to get access to.

And of course that’s why I am so proud to be on the board of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, which advocates on behalf of access to government for all people.

A video by consultant Kristi Fifelski offers up great tips for elected officials (or candidates, for that matter) using social media. Most of the rules she offers up are pretty conventional, but one rule at the end was clever and worth extra notice. For one thing, the tip is a shoutout to a great line in the movie Ghostbusters: “Don’t cross the streams.”

What this means in practical terms to someone in government is, don’t let your personal social media stream touch your government social media stream. Government officials are likely to have both personal and private social media accounts. It is much easier than you’d think to accidentally share a personal message on your social media account, or a government message on your personal account. As Fifelski notes in the video, a tool like Tweetdeck, where you manage multiple accounts side by side,  makes it very easy for you to send a message from the wrong account. That can be very bad if your personal message doesn’t belong on a government account.

On my phone, where I use Hootsuite, small icons indicate whether a Tweet is going to come from my work accounts or personal account. Whenever I share anything from that phone, I look three times to make sure I have the right icon. You would be amazed how often a Tweet coming from my work account suddenly magically jumps to a work account, and vice versa. It is very important to get into the habit of checking at least twice to make sure you’re sharing from the right account. The definition of an accident is that it’s something you didn’t plan. And accidents happen.

Besides the risk of embarrassment that Fifelski explains, there is another reason to avoid crossing the streams. That reason has to do with public records laws. Let’s talk Facebook. A lot of politicians still use their personal Facebook accounts to share government information and talk to people about public policy. In many states, that means the personal Facebook account has now become a public document, and people can request access to it. For many politicians, this could be a disaster. For others, it could be an embarrassment. For others, it might just be the cost of doing business as a politician in 2012. Wherever you come down on the topic, this is something to be aware of.

In Washington state, the public has every right to be confused about how politicians cross streams or don’t cross streams. That’s because different rules apply to different politicians. If you are a city council member, your social media account becomes a public document if you use it for government purposes. But if you are a state legislator, exempt from the public records act, the rules does not apply. So I often had to explain to people why I as a city councilman worked vigorously to have a separate government social media account, and keep public business off my personal account, while my state lawmaker friends posted all sorts of government news from their personal accounts.

Here’s the full video:

Serving on a City Council is a lot like improv theater, one suspects. The big difference is that in improv, supposedly your colleagues want you to succeed so everyone gets a good reaction from the audience.

On a council, you may want your colleagues to fail miserably. One gets a kick out of this account of a meeting of the McKeesport, Penn., City Council.

Citing Segina’s decision to draft the committee legislation himself, McCall accused Segina of failing to communicate with other members of council. 

“That’s not true, Mr. McCall,” Segina said. “I just don’t like you.” 


When I first got elected, our council had a lot of verbal fireworks. The wiseguy in me really enjoyed them. But at the end of the day, verbal fireworks are ineffective and poisonous. The problem is that from the public’s perspective, any one performer is rarely 100 percent right or wrong. Darryl Segina may think he’s God’s gift to politics, and maybe he is, but that does not matter. The public assumes he shares a responsibility for what is going wrong on that council. 


I rarely refer people to the trolls who leave anonymous comments, but in this case, they are worth reading in that post. People blame both council members for the problem. It may well be one is more dedicated to the public good – I’ve no idea. In a way, it does not matter. When you engage in public fireworks, everyone shooting off fireworks gets burned.

If you’ve been part of any of the Webinars or talks I’ve been part of about social media and government, you’ve known about and been awaiting a Washington Supreme Court decision about social media and government. It’s out, and it’s pretty awful. Well, the decision itself seems fair, because access to public records is a cornerstone of democracy. But the implications are scary, oddly enough, for open government and public participation in that democracy.

This is a classic case of how bad practices make for scary court cases. The story began with a former Shoreline council member who did something that most of us would never even think to do: eliminate part of an email that was being provided for a public records act request. She’s off the Shoreline council now, and thank God for the people of Shoreline.

The case is complex, but here’s there the court landed: the public is entitled to see the underlying coding involved in producing electronic messages. That *could* mean that the public is entitled to see the coding involved in posting one of my update on my Facebook page. I might change my Facebook posting in reaction to public comment; the court is saying I need to not just have a printout of the before and after, but the original electronic coding.

Here are some selected comments from the court’s ruling, which you can of course also read in its entirety: Here’s how metadata is defined in the court decision (citations for the various definitions are in the decision:

Metadata is quite simply data about data,or hidden statistical information about a document that is generated by a software program.

Metadata’ is ‘informationdescribing the history, tracking, or management of an electronic document.

Examples of e-mail metadata “include, among about 1,200 or more properties, such information as the dates that mail was sent, received, replied to or forwarded, blind carbon copy . . . information, and sender address book information.”

Metadata from electronic files can include “‘information about a particular data set which describes how, when and by whom it was collected, created, accessed, or modified and how it is formatted (including data demographics such as size, location, storage requirements and media information)

Holy Sugar. I don’t have access to the coding that produces Facebook. I also don’t have access to the underlying coding of Blogger, which I’ve been using five years for my city council blog. Neither does any elected official or government entity.

I’m eager to hear what lawyers think. This would not be so urgent but it’s *mandatory* to pay a monetary penalty if a court says you violated the public records act. A court can’t rule ‘Well Walter Neary wasn’t trying to hide anything when he used Facebook. In fact, he was trying to be more open on Facebook, alerting people to what’s going on so they can know and participate if they want. So we will tell him to stop using Facebook, but not charge him a penalty.” They have to charge a penalty, if I understand the law correctly, and a court decides I need to have the underlying code of Facebook on file.

Yikes.

The Washington court says …”Metadata may contain information that relates to the conduct of government and is important for the public to know. It could conceivably include information about whether a document was altered, what time a document was created, or who sent a document to whom. Our broad PRA exists to ensure that the public maintains control over their government, and we will not deny our citizenry access to a whole class of possibly important government information. We agree with the Supreme Court of Arizona that an electronic version of a record, including its embedded metadata, is a public record subject to disclosure.”

What an odd twist. Of course the public is entitled to records. I use Twitter, Facebook and my blog to tell people information that they like to know about government. That’s to encourage participation and education. I recently asked people if I should continue the blog. I got back comments like …

I appreciate the information I get from your blog which shows up on Facebook from time to time. Don’t stop communicating with us in some way, whether by blog, Suburban Times, Facebook or something else!

While I do not read it 100% of the time, it certainly is of use. I
travel to your blog on the internet when there is something you are
talking about that is of particular interest to me. Additionally, it
helps connect you to the people you serve. There are other members
of the City Council who while are excellent and hard working, slip
from the public’s mind. The blog also makes you seem more
approachable for issues related to the city.

I definitely follow your blog. It helps me to see a bit behind the curtain of City Hall without having to attend council meetings. Plus, it’s another local voice to listen to online.

But if I can’t control the metadata …. do I have to stop using these vehicles?

So now I await the word of lawyers and others as this case gets interpreted. If elected officials and government entitles get quiet in social media, this case would be why. This decision is not a surprise; the next step may be to ask the Legislature for some clarification. The public is entitled to see the records of its government: I’ve been fighting for that in one form or another since I became a newspaper reporter in 1983. Social media is a great way to communicate, but no one’s going to use it if it means paying big penalties out of tax dollars.

PS – You’ll note that the case also involved access to a personal computer, which was the subject of a dissent by some of the judges. They didn’t argue about the metadata matter, just about the access to the home computer, which to me is a separate issue. I’m not even getting into that topic: My main concern is, can government and elected officials in Washington use social media when we don’t have access to all the metadata involved but would still be expected by a court to produce it?

People usually don’t much care how you, the elected official, make a decision. They just want to know whether they agree or disagree with you.

That insight was a surprise to me. I didn’t begin this blog thinking that. I began my city council blog years ago sort of naively approaching my content as a former newspaper reporter. “People would appreciate a window into the decision-making process,” I thought. “People would participate in the decision-making process,” I thought, and appreciate the chance to do so.

There’s no question people do want to participate in their democracy through town halls, committees, even blog forums on news sites. But they don’t necessarily want their elected officials involved. They just want to know whether they disagree or agree with the elected official.

What I found over time was that after I described how I was making up my mind, and asked for feedback, people said I was being wishy-washy or indecisive. Sure – if you asked people in the abstract, they’d say they want their politicians to be open and thoughtful. What people have been trained to expect is for politicians to manipulate and deceive them. So it’s a pretty long road to take if you try to involve the public in your decision-making process.

This comes to mind after reading a fascinating exchange on the blog of a fairly new city council member from Massachusetts, Ari Herzog. He’s clearly a bit frustrated, and titles his blog “This Blog is for You, Not for Me.” I’m not familiar with the specific issue referenced in the post, but it sounds like Ari had to vote on something where he had not heard from citizens. Apparently some citizens did not approve of his vote, and contacted him. He writes:

If you don’t share your thoughts with me before votes occur, it’s harder for me to appreciate a complaint after the fact … if you don’t tell me what you think I need to know until after a vote occurs, how should I respond?”

His point in the blog post is, If you want an elected official to know something, tell them. The idea of a blog is to have one more way of exchanging information.

If you read down the page a bit, you see one of the comments to the blog perfectly summarizes what I’ve heard from a lot of citizens here on the other side of the United State:

In the end, we voted Councilors into office to make decisions even in the absence of our input. We don’t expect you to vote for each item based on a poll. We want you to make a conscious decision based on fact and then if/when appropriate explain your reasons. We reserve the right to disagree and obviously we’ll let you know! If we agree more than we disagree by the end of your term, maybe you can stay

Isn’t that how this works?

The citizen is right. That’s how this works. Citizens have been trained to think that a politician asking for feedback is taking a poll – not honestly asking for help or collaboration.

That’s how this works. Those of us who blog often wish there was another way.

Preparing for the recent talk to other city council members in Washington, I hit up one of the best council bloggers in our state for a testimonial. Councilman Jon Snyder invests a lot of time into his blog for Spokane. Here’s his well-spoken words about why he does this stuff:

The reason I blog is to be proactive in communication with citizen.

As a councilman, I am very close to the issues and engrossed in the nuances of policy, but if I forget to take the time explain those nuances to my constituents I leave the door open for other interpretations that may be based in ignorance.

My blog, my monthly email, and my Twitter and Facebook feeds have been invaluable in focussing attention to this issues I think are important and getting my message out. It also shows my constituents what I’m doing with the immense amount of time I put into public service.

Ultimately how you spend your time is one of the most important decisions you make as an elected official. My electronic communication helps create a story of that effort that people can understand and respond to.

Some of the biggest reaction I’ve ever had to blog entry would be a very detailed response I wrote about a very expensive and controversial downtown real estate purchase. You can see it here:

http://councilmanjonsnyder.com/?p=223#more-223

Most of my entries aren’t this involved, but there are times when the blog is the best way to get complex treatment of an issue out to the public. I’ve found citizens respond positively to being talked up to instead of being talked down to. My weekly recap of our City Council meetings is my most popular regular blog feature. A lot of folks have thanked me for writing about Council meeting content that isn’t being covered anywhere else. I usually announce new blog entries on Facebook and Twitter.

The biggest piece of advice I would give about blogs is settle on a minimum posting frequency and stick to it.

Jon writes something worth repeating for someone considering elected office or someone in office: “Ultimately how you spend your time is one of the most important decisions you make as an elected official.”

That’s a point worth contemplating often. It was astonishing to me, once I got elected, how many times people expected me to come to events in a ceremonial role. These things, and many other aspects of elected office, public service, and public policy, all take time. I’ve found when I spend time too much time communicating, it takes away time I would otherwise spend on research. However, besides all the advantages Jon notes above, communicating about something forces you to frame and focus on the topic in a focused way that can help you make, or reinforce, a decision. Communicating is vital.

Frankly, it tells me something about Jon that he’s willing to take time to write, and fact check and self-edit, a post about elevator inspection fees. It tells me something good about him. When I look at my own workload, I find it pretty intimidating to write up topics in Lakewood to that level of detail. His desire to be definitive is impressive. I don’t think all of us choose to be that definitive because of other demands on our time, but it’s impressive to see in action.

How do other elected officials find time to communicate when there are so many other demands on their time?

It hit me with a dull thud, strolling from an air-conditioned conference center in Vancouver to a hot downtown street, that I’ve been going about this all wrong. Well, somewhat wrong.

By presenting twice now to my fellow city council members at the Association of Washington Cities …. by being in a “how to” webinar last January … by helping in my own modest way with OpenGovWest … I thought we’d help current elected representatives find new ways of using social media and other aspects of the so-called “Gov2.0″ movement.

The brutal truth the other day in Vancouver at the 2010 Association of Washington Cities meeting was that co-presenter Everett Asst. City Attorney Ramsey Ramerman and I had probably a fourth of the people we had at the 2009 meeting of the Association of Washington Cities. Honestly, I’m not surprised. If you talk to a lot of city council members, they don’t get it. They were elected without social media. They were elected without Gov. 2.0 Why bother? People are clamoring for more services and lower taxes. Isn’t that enough of a challenge?

There are a few exceptions – the moderator of our panel, for example, City Councilwoman Jennifer Gregerson of Mukilteo. But in general, the currently elected folks are pretty ambivalent about diving into these waters. After the workshop, I spoke with two city council members thinking of blogging. Both are motivated by a lack of competent news coverage. So there’s interest but …

What I’m left to wonder is whether it’s better to focus on the people who got elected last year who practice new forms of communication, and those of us few ‘old fogeys’ taking a swing at a better world of communication and democracy. Maybe we can share examples of how this stuff helps. So I’m going to take more of a focus on sharing best practices than trying to convert anyone. Maybe if those of us using the tools use them better, and share how that strengthens democracy, it will matter.

I sort of went down this path with the collection of city council bloggers I began on Friendfeed. But we need to share more aggressively. And of course there’s a lot lot lot more to digital democracy than blogging, which is really a communication vehicle of last result for more politicians.

Still, blogging is what I know best. As part of prepping for the AWC meeting, I got a great note from Spokane Councilman Jon Snyder that explains why he blogs. I’ll post that next week after the holiday, and try to do a better job of highlighting how a new generation – regardless of their chronological age – is using digital tech to strengthen public policy and democracy.

As a city councilman, I found myself reflexively nodding my head up in down in agreement while reading the entire post. Citizens will often suggest solutions as well as concerns. But the ideas often end up floating in a big soup of words. When social media can make organizing possible, it’s a win for the community. Just off the top of my head, I can think of one neighborhood situation described on my blog in which some great people found each other but it was very unstructured – just chatting on a blog. The tools described in this post are intriguing, and any elected official should want to know more.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost