Blocking Facebook at Federal Agencies
How many Federal Agencies allow employees to use Facebook at work?
Our CIO office would like to block it for bandwidth and security issues,
but I would like to argue that we keep it because some employees do use
it for professional networking. There are also employee morale issues
involved.
Has anyone else had to make the case for *not* blocking Facebook at work? What did you say?
Thanks!
Our CIO office would like to block it for bandwidth and security issues,
but I would like to argue that we keep it because some employees do use
it for professional networking. There are also employee morale issues
involved.
Has anyone else had to make the case for *not* blocking Facebook at work? What did you say?
Thanks!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Kristin Dziadul on -
At one of my previous jobs I was blocked from using any type of social networking. I felt that this was a bit of an intrusion of my personal life although I was at work. I do use Facebook to network and spread the word about my job, the industry and my company so by blocking it, I was prohibited from talking well about what I was doing. At my current job, I am involved with social media marketing for my company so I am actually required to be on social media all day. This is good though because I can spread company news and blog posts on my profile page as well as my company's fan page.
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Permalink Reply by Gadi Ben-Yehuda on -
Hello, Karen.
I would make a strong case not to block FaceBook for the FAA. Here are my reasons:
1. Leverage a free, robust, entrenched professional network. Until FedSpace is launched, Facebook is the best (and probably most widely used) social networking site for gov't workers. It has a robust feature set that will help to streamline operations, reduce costs, and spread knowledge throughout your network. The FAA has many office locations and rather than try to create or launch a top-down communications network, management could leverage Facebook--and employees' existing accounts/networks--to help disseminate information efficiently and effectively.
2. Bottom-up news aggregation. People use Facebook (and even more, twitter) to let other people know about important, breaking news. Rather than wait for a news alert, many people will notify their network of important, breaking news through the sharing features on Facebook.
3. Engage communities of interest. Here is the Facebok aviation page. Here's the FAA page. Here's the commercial aviation page. All of these pages are conversations that FAA employees should at least know about, perhaps follow, and some should even participate in them.
These are my top three reasons; I hope this is helpful to you.
Feel free to contact me directly if you'd like to talk at greater length!
Gadi. -
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Permalink Reply by Faye Newsham on -
GSA has a TOS with Facebook, many Secretary-level and Administrator-level Facebook pages are coming to fruition. There are formal and approved Facebook pages for agencies, so to disalow employees to view what the agency is putting online isn't a great practice. The normal code of conduct covers reasonable use, so why block?
~F -
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Permalink Reply by Tom Haser on -
Hi Karen. I work for a contractor (Lockheed Martin) and we initially blocked Facebook, but we now allow it. Part of the case for not blocking was that we have social media capabilities inside our firewall (Eureka Streams, which we recently launched as an open source project) to complement the use of Facebook on the Internet. As such, employees can conduct company business, including company-proprietary discussions, via Eureka Streams, and use Facebook for occasional person use and also for non-proprietary professional networking (e.g., this reply to your post on govloop). Having inside-outside capabilities lessons the temptation and security risk of having enterprise-proprietary discussions on Facebook or other social networking sites. Hope this helps.
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Permalink Reply by Gary Berg-Cross on -
The motivation should be to set up FedSpace ASAP.
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Permalink Reply by Gadi Ben-Yehuda on
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I agree that FedSpace needs to be up and running, but that solves only the issues related to internal networking. The agency also needs to be able to monitor relevant discussions beyond its own walls. At least SOME employees should have access to facebook and I'd argue that all employees should have access to twitter, so they can see what's going on beyond the building.
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Permalink Reply by Faye Newsham on
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FedSpace is great if you are communicating within the Federal sphere... the issue gets down to monitoring, interacting, and using these external and inherently public forms of communication for just those reasons. The effort to use Facebook is one to engage the public and have discourse of meaning. You go where the audience lives. You can't segregate them by having only a few with enough motivation to come to your party participate and still expect good solid results. Just like with polls and surveys, first you have to validate that you aren't introducing bias. Meeting the public in their venues is important.
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Permalink Reply by Ed Buclatin on -
Interesting topic. Social media was completely blocked on all DoD unclassified networked systems until a few months ago. Most DoD organizations now have access to most of the popular sites, to include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs. This is part our overall communication strategy to allow our personnel to share their military stories with their friends, families and networks worldwide.
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Permalink Reply by Bryan Conway JD, PMP on -
Currently, my agency, DoD-DFAS, does block FB.
While on its face this seems like a reasonable idea to allow social networking at work, I fear that a majority of people would probably use their access for non-work activities! My friends at other agencies post quite frequently throughout the day and very little of the subject matter pertains to their jobs. -
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Permalink Reply by Peter Sperry on -
As long as they are completing their assigned tasks on time and to standard; does it really make any difference if they "post quite frequently throughout the day and very little of the subject matter pertains to their jobs"? If they are not completeing their assigned tasks on time or to standard; is their web surfing the cause of the problem or just another symptom of lack of motivation?
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Permalink Reply by Dan Morgan on -
I think one of the serious things that needs to be considered is this fact: the single largest source of traffic on DOT networks is Facebook. That means that people aren't using government computing resources for "incidental personal use" at all.
I think blocking access is an arbitrary reactionary move, but managers and employees do need to reach an understanding about how/why social media is helping them accomplish their mission.
The Standards of Ethical Conduct are and have been quite clear on this. Any personal use that causes congestion, delay, or disruption of Agency computing resources is either or both of misuse or inappropriate personal use. -
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Permalink Reply by Jenyfer Johnson on -
I work at Shaw AFB, SC, which is part of Air Combat Command and we are allowed to access Facebook and Twitter. This is just recently...since about April or March I believe. But we can't access GovLoop because the site is blocked due to it being "social media"; which makes no sense to me.
I'm working on trying to get GovLoop unblocked if I can but I have to forward a request and justification to our COMM HQ. They're helping me here so I think I have a good chance. -
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