Challenges of Blogging
You need to consider issues of proprietary or confidential information, and how to handle potential defamatory language. These should be policies that your agency already has in place for other forms of communication.
In government, we must adhere to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Some government blogs such as USA.gov’s Gov Gab state that it is unable to post comments from children under the age of 13, and invites children to email them rather than post public comments.
The emergence of blogging has brought a range of legal liabilities. Employers have fired their employees who maintain personal blogs that discuss their employers.
As informal as blogs are meant to be, if they’re appearing on a government domain, they’re official government communications. They’re on the record and fair game for being picked up in the mainstream media. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a blog you just need to think carefully about how to use it as an effective communications tool that can benefit both your agency and the public.
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