You are a public sector manager. Anne, a member of your staff, has a public blog where she posts mostly personal news about her rock climbing hobby. You don’t read the blog but occasionally she sends round email links to her climbing photos on the blog to her colleagues in the office. One afternoon you receive an angry phone call from Tricia, a senior public servant in another department. Apparently Anne has posted a blog entry critical of activities of that department that involve the rock climbing community. The post is not defamatory but some of the readers' comments attached to the blog post are abusive. Tricia believes that Anne has broken her terms of employment and wants to institute disciplinary proceedings against her.
What do you do?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
14 comments:
"Pop quiz, hot shot."
Can you clarify this bit?
Apparently Anne has posted a blog entry critical of activities of that department that involve the rock climbing community.
Read Anne's employment contract to form my own opinion on whether she has broken any terms.
Hi Alex - Anne has posted criticisms of the government's behaviour towards her hobby. What more do you need to know? Matt
Andrew - the contract references the APS code of conduct: http://www.apsc.gov.au/conduct/
Now what do you do?
Does her blog have any riders / disclaimers (i.e. all views expressed here are personal and not representative of rock climbing community etc etc etc). Has Anne actively identified herself as a member of this government department. Are the comments anonymous? And what sort of criticism is it?
It would be great to make a decision on this, but there is not enough information. As far as constraint of people's personal activity, despite Anne signing the code of conduct, there is plenty of case law to state what people do on their own time is their own business. So I think she would have a good case against the department, in any event, if disciplinary action was harsh and permanent.
I was involved in something similar some years ago. Ironically, I worked for lawyers, but when they investigated the complaint, they found that they had very little to go on, because I had not misrepresented my position. This is why we need to know more about Anne's blog and how she has portrayed herself.
Paul,
Here is some more information:
- Her blog does not have an official disclaimer but she ends her criticism with the statement - "these comments are mine alone".
- Anne has not identified herself as a government employee (N.B. She is not criticisng her own department).
- There are both anonymous and named comments.
- She is criticising the actions of Tricia's department - e.g. their banning of a certain piece of climbing equipment. She is not slandering them or accusing them of criminal activity.
I would post Anne's blog entry in full but the server seems to be down at the moment.
Now what do you do?
Matt
I'd talk to Tricia to seek clarification on exactly what part of the code of conduct Anne is supposed to have breached. And talk this through with her. My reading would be that no breach has occurred because Anne is acting as a private citizen.
Sack her - she's a rock climber
Sorry Matt, just didn't quite understand the sentence at first.
However, as Andrew says, you would have to double check her contract as a first point of call. What does it say about public discourse?
Secondly, Tricia has taken it personally, Anne did not make it personal on the blog, but perhaps knew that it would cause ripples internally, so there may well be deeper politics in play. These need to be brought out into the open. If it's causing department strife then that is an issue that needs to be discussed.
Third, Anne is not directly responsible for the comments of other people, but could moderate them if they're abusive and specific to certain people. That goes for any blog really. This moderation could be a request of Anne's manager following the discussion.
I doubt firing her for this would be upheld in any court, it's too menial and the criticisms tenuous, but there's probably no harm in talking through the problem with both parties, and then looking to instigate some form of guidelines for this type of thing.
In fact, if the manager knew his/her employees were blogging publicly and hadn't insitgated any specific guidelines, then quite frankly they're the one that's at fault for not doing something before there was a problem.
These days, your personal reputation management and how you conduct yourself online should be made a part of any specific induction process, you only need to look at how badly Max Mosley is now viewed to see how out of hand it can get!
@kelly - LOL
What country do we all hypothetically work in? I suspect the legal options are pretty dependent on that. If we're in the US, the constitutional protection for free speech should help. If we're in China ...
Also depends a bit on whether Anne's role as a public servant has anything to do with rock climbing as to whether she is acting in a purely personal capacity. Getting her to make a comment on her blog in response to the comments clarifying her position would be useful.
If she was in the Victorian Public Service, there are specific employment work clauses that restrict publishing employment related activities.
Ask her to check her carabiners and belay devices to make sure that they will hold fast!
Interesting conference presentation -good luck with it. This is one of my major bugbears in helping clients access web tools. Public service agencies (in Australia) seem loathe to allow access - maybe because of the scenarios you've described. Raises the question of the rights of a public sector employee to have private views and to be able to express those views. I think this is the bigger picture question raised by your scenario. Viv
This one is difficult. If you raise the issue with Anne then she may not post further on her blog but I reckon others in her network would hear the story about 'the call' and claim clandestine activity within the govt.
Personally I would let her know what happened, let her know that she has done nothing wrong but just be careful not to overstep the mark.
(I might then suggest that other members in her network could hear the story about 'the call' and claim clandestine activity within the govt.)
Cory
Post a Comment