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I've been speaking with a few lawyers and solicitors lately regarding the risks of various social media initiatives and tools.
Today, over lunch, it struck me that lawyers rarely - if ever - speak about the legal benefits of social media, the ways in which the use of social media can provide better outcomes for organisation, in a legal sense, than 'traditional' approaches to listening, communication, consultation and engagement.
So I've made a stab below at identifying some of the legal benefits of social media - please feel free to add your own, or debate my views, in comments.
Identifying potential legal risks early
The first legal benefit is the capability to monitor social media to identify any emerging concerns or issues that could lead to future legal risks for an organisation.
People often speak openly online about their concerns and frustrations. A trend of similar issues can represent an emerging issue with a policy, system or service delivery function that could eventuate as a court case or even a class action.
Social media provides an avenue to identify these trending issues quickly and gives organisations an opportunity to address them before they 'blow up' into the media and legal action.
Audit trails
One of the major benefits of the online channel is the capability to capture and track user behaviour - particularly when a user is registered and signs into a service. This can provide legal benefits through a clear audit trail of an individual's online activities to either verify their story, or prove it untrue.
Where an individual claims to not have viewed particular material, or to not have agreed to certain terms and conditions, a digital trail can provide veracity - for example when signing up to a particular online service, changing contact details or revealing personal information.
I have seen cases in government where an individual has claimed that their online account had been fraudulently modified by another party however, through auditing the digital records, it became possible to prove that it was a relative authorised to use the account who had made the changes, preventing any type of legal action against the agency providing the service.
In a case unrelated to government, recently an iPhone log was used to prove that an individual was being falsely accused of rape and in other cases email records and the logs from websites have been used to prove or disprove an individual's involvement in particular matters.
Where government employs social media tools for activities such as stakeholder or community engagement or consultation and some form of log-in or other way to recognise users (such as through a Facebook or Twitter identity) is in use, it becomes much harder for individuals to falsely claim that they were unaware of certain information or otherwise prove statements that could lead to agency legal liability.
Accessibility
The internet can be a cost-effective way to provide documents and discussions during a consultation process in an accessible manner, avoiding the legal risk of breaching the Disabilities Act.
Rather than holding a consultation by mail, where mailed submissions are scanned in and either not provided online at all, or presented as images - totally inaccessible to screen readers - government can hold online consultations where every submission is typed directly into the consultation site.
These submissions can be reviewed and published online in a manner accessible to all internet users. They can also be printed (maybe in braille) or read out by a machine over a phone line for non-users.
This use of the internet for consultations is a very cost-effective way for organisations to meet their obligations under the Disabilities Act and avoid legal action for providing submissions in a non-accessible manner.
Inclusion (equalising access)
Using the internet in engagement activities, alongside other approaches, allows a much broader range of people to participate - minimising the legal risks of decisions where some audiences claim they were not consulted.
Often those who work nights, have day jobs, young children, are physically less mobile, geographically distant or otherwise have commitments are less able to participate in face-to-face discussion with a government agency or its representatives.
Where these people are affected by the outcomes of a face-to-face engagement process these people could feel excluded and unheard. In some situations, could lead to legal action against certain policies or decisions.
By using the internet alongside other approaches within an engagement process - via a forum, blog, facebook page, or similar means - a government agency can ensure that audiences unable to attend a physical event are heard and their views considered.
This increases their feeling of inclusion and lessens the risk of developing poor policy, reducing the risk of policy failures which could lead to legal action.
So there you are - four legal benefits from using social media that can reduce an organisation's legal risks (versus not using social media).
Can you think of any others?
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Legal benefits of social media use | Tweet |
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
ABS embraces internal blogs and wikis | Tweet |
As covered in The Australian's article, Australian Bureau of Statistics embraces world of blogs and wikis, the ABS has implemented an internal collaboration platform supporting blogs, wikis and collaborative documents.
The article reports that 30% of staff have begun using the wiki and blog functions. If reported correctly this reflects a huge demand for internal digital collaboration within the Bureau and bodes well for the implementation of similar platforms in other government agencies.
Given that the platform is said to simplify the management of collaboratively written and edited documents, removing the load from email and enabling better version control, there are significant long-term knowledge management and internal efficiencies that could be realised by the ABS.
I've often wondered why government agencies have been so slow to move away from desktop-based word processing towards wiki-style collaborative documents (with appropriate security and version control). Admittedly there are transition costs - both ICT and training - however the savings in not having incorrect versions sent around as large email attachments and the time saved by not having to compile edits from numerous people back into a single document are quite large.
UK redevelops legislative database to support and encourage reuse | Tweet |
Brought to my attention by Mia Garlick via Twitter, the UK has redeveloped its legislative database with a focus on reuse by external parties.
The recently released site legislation.gov.uk covers 800 years of legislation from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
According to an article from Cornell University Law School, Legislation.gov.uk, John Sheridan, Head of e-Services and Strategy at The National Archives says that the site was designed to meet two objectives,
to deliver a high quality public service for people who need to consult, cite, and use legislation on the Web; and to expose the UK’s Statute Book as data, for people to take, use, and re-use for whatever purpose or application they wish.The Crown Copyright for the site specifies that,
You are encouraged to use and re-use the information that is available on this site freely and flexibly, with only a few conditions.
This type of approach makes legislation vastly more accessible to the public and, through an API provided by the site, supports the development of applications and services that assist the public, organisations and lawyers to understand and apply the law.
More information on why and how the site was designed is available in the article referenced above.
Australia isn't yet at the same point. Our legislation, detailed at Comlaw, is not yet supported through APIs or other machine-readable data formats and is covered under a more restrictive licensing regime,
This work is copyright. You may download, display, print and reproduce this material in unaltered form only (retaining this notice) for your personal, non-commercial use or use within your organisation. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, all other rights are reserved.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
AGIMO invites participation and guest blogging on accessibility matters | Tweet |
AGIMO's latest blog post, Welcome to the WCAG 2.0 Community of Expertise (CoE), has invited those with an interest or involvement with accessibility matters to join a new Community of Expertise or provide guest posts to the AGIMO blog.
Related to the endorsement of WCAG 2.0 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0) by the Australian government earlier this year, AGIMO has established the Community of Expertise to encourage collaboration in developing advice, techniques and resources to implement WCAG 2.0.
Those from the public and private sectors are both invited to join the Community.
To learn more, and for an update on AGIMO's progress in developing support resources aiding agencies in WCAG 2.0 adoption, visit AGIMO's blog at Govspace.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Gov 2.0 is thriving during Australia's federal election | Tweet |
Commentators have said that major political parties have "failed to harness the full potential of social media in the 2010 Election" or broken the "cardinal rule of social media" due to only engaging in one way (outbound) communication.
This is despite recent global examples of the effectiveness of online engagement in shifting votes, such as in Colombia's Presidential election wheresocial media has been used to overcome a 12 point deficit in 50 days)
However, irregardless of how Australian politicians are presently using social media, Gov 2.0 has been thriving during the Australian election.
At least 20 Web 2.0 sites have been set up by individual Australians, not-for-profit and commercial organisations to monitor, engage, influence and support election-related community interaction online.
There's even been an iPhone application developed to support voting decisions.
I've listed all of these sites at the Government 2.0 Best practice Wiki on the page Australian election-related sites page.
I'm sure it's not an exhaustive list and will continue adding to it as I discover new sites.
If you're aware of other Web 2.0 election-specific sites that I've missed, please add them directly to the wiki.
