Live at 17:30 - Good Evening Wales: Welsh Blogging and Facebook

Unfortunately, I'm unavailable for comment, however, my old blogging friend Matt Wardman will be taking part in the radio programme, Good Evening Wales a little later today (just after 5:30) talking about Welsh Political Blogging by Civil Servants from the point of view of an “outsider”, as a result of the coverage he has been giving to the Christopher Glamorganshire case in Wales, and also the Civil Serf case before that.

Matt writes:

I expect to be talking about the difference in attitudes to political blogging by Civil Servants in England and Wales. I am told that Peter Black AM will be joining us.

I think this is the first time in my life that I will have been on the Radio with a real politician. Is that good or bad?

I wonder if I can get a statement from Tom Watson by 5:00pm that the Principles for Online Participation apply in Wales as well as England?

Farcebook
Good Evening Wales are doing this piece because a Welsh Political Blogger - Miss Wagstaff - has been thrown off Facebook because allegations had been made that she was running a “Fake Account”.

You can read the account here. The serious point was that they just swallowed the allegations hook, line and sinker and took action with even checking. That looks far too reminiscent of what many webhosts do in respond to letters alleging defamation for me to be comfortable with it.

As Miss W says, "Why not raise the question with me of the possibility of ‘real and fake names’ in the first instance - before deactivation."

Research Question
Anyway - do you know anyone else that this has happened to, since Facebook seem to be making more than a little of an arse of themselves on this one. The problem seems to be one of action taken on the basis of allegations with no fact checking. I’ve been digging for a few minutes and I have found:

Last December Facebook told Steve Webb MP that he was an imposter and deleted his account. That may be true of the new Lib Dem satellite tracking policy pretending not to be Big Brother, but I think I believe that Steve Webb MP is himself.

Valleys Mam has also had problems.

Does anybody know of any others that are interesting or amusing?

I note that Genghis Kahn has an account. Presumably he is impersonating Alistair Campbell.

Any more for any more?

Christopher Glamorganshire: Questions to be Answered

Assisting Matt Wardman in his quest (posted 15 July 2008):

This post is a repost of the questions that I am interested in finding anwers to in the case of Welsh blogger Christopher Glamorganshire, who was sacked from his job because of his blogging activity in autumn 2007.

I have reposted them for reference separate from the previous post where I did a full analysis.

The most intriguing and important point is how the “Welsh Civil Service Code” has lead to Christopher Glamorganshire being “dismissed for activities related to the Glamorganshire Blog that contravened the Civil Service Code”, while the English Civil Service Code is now complemented by the set of principles mentioned above, which were developed after an English Civil Servant blogger (Civil Serf) caused a debate online among bloggers lead by a Government Minister.

The two Civil Service codes are identical except for changes to reflect that Wales has a devolved assembly. These are my questions about the harsh managerial approach that appears to have been used by the Welsh Assembly Government:

1 - The approach is slightly out of kilter in a country where only this week Hazel Blears was talking about giving more leeway for Council Officers to participate in the political process.

2 - It won’t work in the long run anyway, other than to provide maximum embarrassment when “control not collaboration” fails.

3 - The devolved Labour-led administration in Wales is pursuing a policy at variance with that of the UK Labour Government in a matter where they are using a version of the “Civil Service Code” that can only be distinguished from the UK Government one with a magnifying glass and a lot of patience.

4 - One of the great problems of the age is political engagement. Why strangle relatively neutral political comment in your own backyard?

5 - There’s a great divide in culture symbolised by Offa’s Dyke here, and a difference in practice. Yet Human Rights legislation does not acknowledge that difference under Freedom of Expression.

6 - I think that this case highlights the point made by Dave Cole before, during and after the Principles for Online Participation were published - protecting the Employee’s Right to Blog is as important as protecting the Employer’s right to have employees blog responsibly.

Civil Servant blogging days may be numbered

A cheeky female civil servant blogger, who has been ridiculing Cabinet members including Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, and taking the mickey out of civil service mandarins, right up to Cabinet secretary Gus O'Donnell, appears to have gone to ground after the Sunday Times reported that the hunt for her was on in Whitehall. Her blog, The Civil Serf, has been swiftly taken down.


The Serf, who has been blogging with impunity for four months, claimed to be a 33-year-old who was "just senior enough" in her department to allow her to know what's going on though "not senior enough to attract suspicion".

In a recent blog, she claimed that Alistair Darling was desperate to use his first Budget, coming up on Wednesday, to garner "a cheap headline" even if it meant announcing unaffordable new measures. "High up on the list will be both child poverty and incapability benefit," she wrote.

She nicknames Gordon Brown 'Velcro' because of the many negative stories that have stuck to him. But she reserves her sharpest barbs for Whitehall culture and personnel. "I've received a meeting request that probably deserves a mention in the Guinness Book of Records," she writes. "It is for something called the 'People Action Team' (don't ask) and it is scheduled to last a staggering seven hours... Truly there is no God."

She has also complained about drunken advances from the opposite sex. "Trapped" at a conference in Brighton, she wrote, "I was being chased about by some bloke from the Foreign Office who wouldn't listen to me saying I'm engaged - yuk!"

She also tells how her colleagues are frequently "under-utilised", saying: "I know two people within eight desks of me whose jobs could be deleted overnight with no discernible impact on our performance."

Because of various mentions of Peter Hain before he stood down as Work and Pensions Secretary, it is thought the culprit may work in that department. A source told the Sunday Times that while no one has yet been disciplined, there were suspicions about the blogger's identity.

Update 10 March 2008, 16:39

1. Civil servants to get blog and social networking advice (BBC link)
2. There's a curious comment on this post that suggests, "The first civil servant blogger to be sacked was in Wales, however, no one knows his/her name."