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Cities Don't Need to Shy Away From Social Media, They Just Need To Consider Legal Issues Upfront

I was disappointed to read that a city in California plans to abandon its Facebook page due to legal concerns. While it's true that a municipal attorney's job is to spot potential problems and help head them off before they strike, it's unfortunate when that advice hampers a very useful communication tool for citizens.

None of the legal issues raised in the above-linked story are insurmountable, they just take some careful planning and consideration to ensure they're handled in a way that limits liability while maximizing the value to residents and city staff. In many cases, the tradeoffs involved in, for instance, a municipal Facebook page, will tip the balance towards keeping the page active.

On questions of censorship and First Amendment rights, cities can:

• Limit users' ability to post comments.
• Post explicit, carefully-crafted policy on how the Facebook forum is to be used if comments are allowed.
• Address borderline comments openly and respectfully in the same forum.
• Lead by example in keeping the conversation clean and productive.

For records retention concerns:

• Third-party services can help governments cheaply and easily incorporate Facebook and other social media content into records retention activities
• Archived social media posts can help city officials follow important issues of citizen concern

Regarding open meetings violations:

• A quorum of officials commenting on any online platform can be a violation, so why not use the opportunity to educate officials and benefit from social media?

On concerns of employee use:

• Cities need to have policies on official and personal social media use by employees. Eliminating an official Facebook page is not going to keep employees off of Facebook, nor will it keep them from discussing their jobs while online. Careful policy creation, training, and enforcement can enable employees to use social media in ways beneficial to the city and to themselves.

It's sad to see cities turn away from social media. Their citizens, employees, contractors, and current and potential businesses are leveraging social media. Cities should be, too.

Federal Govt. Wary of Social Media's Records and Privacy Implications

The Government Accountability Office released a report on July 22 entitled Challenges in Federal Agencies' Use of Web 2.0 Technologies. The report highlights concerns with how data is submitted, stored, used, and shared via third-party social media sites, often outside agencies' control. Federal agencies, and their state counterparts in most states, are subject to broad mandates relating to how records are to be stored and retrieved, and how individuals' data is classified and protected. Services like Facebook, notorious for privacy leaks and difficult-to-understand privacy settings, make it hard for government entities to track and retain data as the law requires. However, the federal government has been renegotiating social media terms of use in anticipation of these challenges.

The report also highlights the potential for social media to "better include the public in the governing process" and enhance agencies' services and missions.

The lessons of this report apply to local governments as well, many of which are subject to similarly strict laws for records retention and public information.

Comcast Customer Service: Finally Seeing the Light?

Multichannel News reports that Comcast's recent efforts in improving customer service are paying off. Basically, Comcast is using customer service supervisors to train customer service representatives (CSRs), teaching improved time management, and giving CSRs authority to give customer credits and deal with issues more directly. These sound like very fundamental pieces of any common-sense customer satisfaction plan within a large organization. Bloomberg also reported that that Comcast's reputation is improving. Comcast is promoting its service efforts in the Customer Care section of its website.

Comcast has a long way to go after Consumerist readers voted it the Worst Company in America this spring. The New York Times Bucks blog recently highlighted another typical problem: Comcast CSRs who are unaware of a company policy that requires them to send written confirmation of service and billing phone call upon customer request.

What has your city seen? Is Comcast improving? Are its much-touted efforts in operational changes since 2007 helping consumers?

Detroit Challenges Statewide Cable Franchise Law

The City of Detroit is taking a stand against Michigan's statewide cable franchising law, according to a complaint filed against Comcast in US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on Monday.

Detroit's primary issue is that Federal Law (here, the Federal Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984, 47 U.S.C. Section 521 and after) and Michigan's constitution both give local governments the right to regulate cable services within their communities, and the State law takes that right away. The State law is questionable, in part, because Federal law explicitly preempts contrary state law. Detroit points to Federal consumer protection standards as being undermined by, and therefore contrary to, the State rules. In Detroit's complaint, Comcast is faulted with usurping the local franchise regulations, which included Federal consumer protection standards.

Over 20 states have adopted statewide cable franchising laws [pdf]. The intent of these laws is to lower barriers to entry in the multichannel video services marketplace, thereby improving competition and ultimately lowering prices while increasing consumer choice. Detroit's complaint comes in the wake of research that indicates statewide franchising tends not to lower prices [pdf, see p. 16], as the competition in statewide video markets is still oligopolistic. Others have reported state-level problems in complaint resolution against the cable operators [pdf, see p. 6]. Local access public, educational, and government (PEG) channels have also lost support in several states due to statewide franchising rules.

This case may establish valuable precedent or persuasive authority for other communities interested in regaining local franchising control. However, the challenge should not be read too broadly. First, Michigan's constitution is somewhat unusual in providing an exclusive right to local governments to grant franchises (though many state statutes include such provisions), if cable franchises are considered to be included in this edict; and the complaint, at least in part, hinges on a claim of unconstitutionality of the state law. Second, Detroit's franchise with Comcast had expired, and Comcast had rejected the city's offer of another local franchise. The date of expiration coincided with the effective date of the uniform statewide franchising law. For cities with incumbent agreements still in effect, and for cities that acquiesced to their statewide rules, the analysis may differ significantly.

Notably, Detroit filed suit against Comcast during the FCC's comment period for the Comcast / NBCU merger.

City Saves Money by Abandoning Servers, Focusing on Service

The City of Los Angeles is reportedly saving millions of dollars in information technology costs by handing over some of its network infrastructure to "the cloud." It takes a leap of faith to entrust city documents to a third-party host, but LA's CTO, Randi Levin, knows that a city should focus on what it does best: serving its residents, not serving data. Many cities, especially smaller ones, outsource their IT needs already, so moving the data off of local servers might be a logical next step. Would your community make the switch? If so, what would you need to know about a vendor before giving up your data?

Government Communications and Transparency

Two recent articles raise important issues about how government entities are using, or should be using, new technologies to deliver information to citizens. Joe Moye over at Government Technology explains that governments would do well to seek out private sector solutions to data sharing and effective communication with end users. This point is nothing new [pdf], but it seems many government entities are just now catching on with a willingness to partner with or emulate private enterprise with better access to electronic records, online account management for services, and, finally, interactive communication, exemplified by the Gov2.0 movement.

Ed Felton takes the idea of the government-copying-business one step further, suggesting a more effective way for governments' data to be accessible in usable ways is to let the private sector do the job for the government. That is, let the government work on making the data clean, consistent, and exposed for the taking, so companies with quite a bit more expertise, and maybe a little stakeholder liability incentivising their work, can turn it into something useful.

Once governments figure out how to keep private data private, and public data reachable, they will have to be sure that the information and communication flows in ways that won't open up new liabilities. Will derivatives of government data fall under existing records retention laws? Will government efforts to channel communication in response to greater transparency infringe citizens freedom of speech? Will terms of service agreements with third-party data users comport with government standards against indemnity and in favor of their own immunity? Some entities are making careful and purposeful progress in online communication and information-sharing with residents, while others forge ahead haphazardly to jump on the new technology bandwagon. Which way is your local government headed?