Thursday, September 13. 2007
This article from the CBC shows real confusion on the part of the government. I've highlighted the parts I find most interesting.
Clearly the government doesn't know what end is up. They allow politicians to use Facebook because it's a business tool that lets them communicate with their constituents but don't allow government employees to use it because it somehow isn't a business tool. And don't forget that the employees might someday use it inappropriately even though there's no evidence of that happening so far.
I find Facebook to be extremely useful as a business tool. It lets me keep in touch with business contacts in a way that other business networking sites like LinkedIn just don't. Clearly the politicians have figured this out and are using Facebook for business. The policy makers within the government are behind the politicians on this one though. They haven't figured out that it might be a useful tool for government employees to keep in touch with other business people as well.
I was at a business networking event last night where the topic of Facebook came up. A number of us are seeing real business value from this site. One person who works for the government was talking about how she had just signed up but couldn't use it from work so she has to wait till she gets home before she can use it. Wouldn't it be better if she had access to the tools to do her job while she was at work rather than having to wait till she gets home?
The standard argument seems to be that we should ban websites if there's a possibility of doing personal rather than business things with them. Using that logic, shouldn't we remove phones from the office as well? I've seen lots of people make personal phone calls from work and yet we don't see this overreaction here.
I'd like to see a bit more common sense put into play here. We should let our people have access to any tools that let them do business more effectively and trust them to keep personal usage to a minimum. We already do that with phones - let's start trusting our people with websites like Facebook as well.
Following in the footsteps of Queen's Park and Parliament Hill, the City of Toronto has banned its employees from using the social networking site Facebook on work computers.
Starting Wednesday, the city's 23,000 employees could no longer log onto the popular website.
Politicians, however, are exempt from the ban because they use Facebook to communicate with their constituents, said city spokesman Brad Ross.
Ross said there's no sign that city employees have been wasting time on the site, "but to mitigate that possibility, we just simply denied access."
Starting Wednesday, the city's 23,000 employees could no longer log onto the popular website.
Politicians, however, are exempt from the ban because they use Facebook to communicate with their constituents, said city spokesman Brad Ross.
Ross said there's no sign that city employees have been wasting time on the site, "but to mitigate that possibility, we just simply denied access."
Clearly the government doesn't know what end is up. They allow politicians to use Facebook because it's a business tool that lets them communicate with their constituents but don't allow government employees to use it because it somehow isn't a business tool. And don't forget that the employees might someday use it inappropriately even though there's no evidence of that happening so far.
I find Facebook to be extremely useful as a business tool. It lets me keep in touch with business contacts in a way that other business networking sites like LinkedIn just don't. Clearly the politicians have figured this out and are using Facebook for business. The policy makers within the government are behind the politicians on this one though. They haven't figured out that it might be a useful tool for government employees to keep in touch with other business people as well.
I was at a business networking event last night where the topic of Facebook came up. A number of us are seeing real business value from this site. One person who works for the government was talking about how she had just signed up but couldn't use it from work so she has to wait till she gets home before she can use it. Wouldn't it be better if she had access to the tools to do her job while she was at work rather than having to wait till she gets home?
The standard argument seems to be that we should ban websites if there's a possibility of doing personal rather than business things with them. Using that logic, shouldn't we remove phones from the office as well? I've seen lots of people make personal phone calls from work and yet we don't see this overreaction here.
I'd like to see a bit more common sense put into play here. We should let our people have access to any tools that let them do business more effectively and trust them to keep personal usage to a minimum. We already do that with phones - let's start trusting our people with websites like Facebook as well.
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