Terms of Service

Terms of Service

If you are an employee of the federal government of the United States and are using GovLoop in performance of your official duties, the below Network Terms of Service (TOS) are amended as follows:

■  Government entity: “You” within this TOS shall mean the Agency (“Agency”) for which you work itself and shall not apply to, or bind (a) the individual(s) who utilize the Services on the Agency’s behalf, or (b) any individual users who happen to be employed by, or otherwise associated with, the Agency. The Agency will be responsible for ensuring that its members using the Service comply with the TOS as though they were “You” and noncompliance by any such individual will be deemed noncompliance by the Agency.  GovLoop will look solely to the Agency to enforce any breach of the TOS by such individuals, subject to federal law.

■  Public purpose: Any requirement(s) set forth within the TOS that use of GovLoop be for private, personal and/or non-commercial purposes is hereby waived.

■  Agency content serving the public: GovLoop hereby approves Agency’s distribution or other publication of materials which may contain or constitute promotions, advertisements or solicitations for goods or services, so long as the material relates to the Agency’s mission.

■  Advertisements: GovLoop hereby agrees not to serve or display any third party commercial advertisements or solicitations on any Agency pages displaying content created by or under the control of the Agency. This exclusion shall not extend to house ads, which GovLoop may serve on such pages in a non-intrusive manner.

■  Indemnification: Any indemnification and damages provisions of the Terms of Service are hereby waived. Liability of Agency for any breach of the Terms of Service or this Agreement, or any claim arising from the Terms of Service or this Agreement, shall be determined under the Federal Tort Claims Act, or other governing authority.

■  Governing law: Federal use of GovLoop shall be governed, interpreted, and enforced in accordance with the federal laws of the United States. Liability of GovLoop for any breach of the Terms of Service or this Agreement, or any claim arising from the Terms of Service or this Agreement, shall be determined by applicable federal law. To the extent permitted by federal law, the laws of the state of California will apply in absence of federal law.

■  Notice of changes to TOS: GovLoop will give You at least three days advance notice of any material change to the TOS. GovLoop shall send this notice to the email address You designate at the time You agree to the TOS, and you shall notify GovLoop of any change in the notification email address.

■  Access and use: GovLoop acknowledges that the Agency’s use of GovLoop’s site and services may energize significant citizen engagement. GovLoop may unilaterally terminate service and/or terminate Agency’s account only for breach of Agency’s obligations under the TOS or its material failure to comply with the instructions and guidelines posted on the Site, or if GovLoop ceases to operate its site or services generally. GovLoop will provide Agency with a reasonable opportunity to cure any breach or failure on Agency’s part.

■  Provision on crawlers: The provisions in the TOS prohibiting  spider, crawler, and similar processes is amended to allow the Agency to apply such tools solely to its pages and solely to fulfill Agency’s obligations under the Federal Records Act or other applicable federal law or regulation.

■  Ownership of names: Any provision(s) in the TOS related to GovLoop’s ownership of and right to change your selected user name(s), user ID(s), domain name(s), channel name(s), and group name(s), are modified to reasonably accommodate Agency’s proprietary, practical, and/or operational interest in its own publicly-recognized name and the names of Agency programs.

■  Modifications of user content: GovLoop agrees that any modification or adaptation of Agency content is limited to technical actions necessary to index, format and display that content. The right to modify or adapt does not include the right to substantively edit or otherwise alter the meaning of the content. Notwithstanding the foregoing, nothing in this Amendment shall result in an expansion of Your rights as a United States Government entity under the Copyright Act of 1976 (17 U.S.C. §§101 et sec.), specifically including Section 105 of the Act.

■  Limitation of liability: The Parties agree that nothing in the TOS in any way grants GovLoop a waiver from, release of, or limitation of liability pertaining to, any past, current or future violation of federal law.

■  Uploading, deleting: The Parties understand and agree that You are not obligated to place any User Content on the GovLoop site, and You reserve the right to remove any and all content at your sole discretion.

■  No endorsement: GovLoop agrees that Agency seals, trademarks, logos, service marks, trade names, and the fact that You have a presence on the GovLoop site and use its services, shall not be used by GovLoop in such a manner as to state or imply that GovLoop’s products or services are endorsed, sponsored or recommended by You or by any other element of the Federal Government, or are considered by these entities to be superior to any other products or services. Except for pages whose design and content is under the control of the Agency, or for links to or promotion of such pages, GovLoop agrees not to display any Agency or government seals or logos on the GovLoop’s homepage or elsewhere on the GovLoop Site, unless permission to do has been granted by the Agency or by other relevant federal government authority. GovLoop may list the Agency’s name in a publicly available customer list so long as the name is not displayed in a more prominent fashion than that of any other third party name.

■  No business relationship created: The Parties are independent entities and nothing in this TOS creates an agency, partnership, joint venture, or employer/employee relationship.

■  No cost agreement: Nothing in this TOS obligates You to expend appropriations or incur financial obligations. The Parties acknowledge and agree that none of the obligations arising from this TOS are contingent upon the payment of fees by one party to the other.

■  Provision of data: In case of termination of service, within 30 days of such termination GovLoop will provide You with all user-generated content that is publicly visible through the Sites You created at GovLoop. Data will be provided in a commonly used file or database format as GovLoop deems appropriate. GovLoop will not provide data if doing so would violate its privacy policy, available for review at https://www.govloop.com/terms-of-service/.

■  Separate future action for fee based services: GovLoop provides services at a basic level free of charge to the public, but this may change in the future. You acknowledge that while GovLoop will provide You with some services and features for free, GovLoop reserves the right to begin charging for those services and features at some point in the future. GovLoop will provide you with at least 30 days advance notice of a change involving the charging of fees for the basic level of service. You also understand that GovLoop may currently offer other premium and enterprise services for a fee. The Parties understand that fee-based services are categorically different than free products, and are subject to federal procurement rules and processes. Before an Agency decides to enter into a premium or enterprise subscription, or any other fee-based service that this Company or alternative providers may offer now or in the future, You agree to determine your Agency has a need for those additional services for a fee, to consider the subscription’s value in comparison with comparable services available elsewhere, to determine that Agency funds are available for payment, to properly use the Government Purchase Card if that Card is used as the payment method, to review any then- applicable TOS for conformance to federal procurement law, and in all other respects to follow applicable federal acquisition laws, regulations, and agency guidelines when initiating that separate action.

■  Assignment: Neither party may assign its obligations under this Amendment or TOS to any third party without prior written consent of the other.

■  Termination: Agency may close Agency’s account and terminate this agreement at any time. GovLoop may close Agency’s account and terminate this agreement on 30 days written notice.

■  Security: GovLoop will, in good faith, exercise due diligence using generally commercial business practices for IT security, to ensure that systems are operated and maintained in a secure manner, and that management, operational and technical controls will be employed to ensure security of systems and data. Recognizing the changing nature of the Web, GovLoop will continuously work with users to ensure that its products and services meet users’ requirements for the security of systems and data. GovLoop agrees to discuss implementing additional security controls as deemed necessary by an interested Agency, in conformance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA).

■ Federal Records: Agency acknowledges that use of GovLoop’s site and services may require management of Federal records. Agency and user-generated content may meet the definition of Federal records as determined by the agency. If GovLoop holds Federal records, the Agency and GovLoop must manage Federal records in accordance with all applicable records management laws and regulations, including but not limited to the Federal Records Act (44 U.S.C. chs. 21, 29, 31, 33), and regulations of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at 36 CFR Chapter XII Subchapter B). Managing the records includes, but is not limited to, secure storage, retrievability, and proper disposition of all Federal records including transfer of permanently valuable records to NARA in a format and manner acceptable to NARA at the time of transfer. The Agency is responsible for ensuring that GovLoop is compliant with applicable records management laws and regulations through the life and termination of the TOS.

■ To provide notice of alleged copyright infringement on this Network, please see the DMCA Notification Guidelines.

The following Terms of Service apply to your use of this Network. You are solely responsible for your conduct and your content on the Network and compliance with these terms. By registering with us or using or browsing this Network, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these terms. This Network is not directed to anyone younger than 13 and is offered only to users 13 years of age or older. Any person who provides their personal information through this Network represents that they are 13 years of age or older.

You agree that you will not post, email or make available any content or use this Network:

  • In a manner that infringes, violates or misappropriates any third party’s intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights or contractual rights;
  • in a manner that contains software viruses or any other computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications equipment;
  • to engage in spamming, “chain letters,” “pyramid schemes”, advertisement of illegal or controlled products or services, or other advertising or marketing activities that violate these Terms of Service, any applicable laws, regulations or generally-accepted advertising industry guidelines;
  • in a manner that is misleading, deceptive or fraudulent or otherwise illegal or promotes illegal activities, including engaging in phishing or otherwise obtaining financial or other personal information in a misleading manner or for fraudulent or misleading purposes;
  • in a manner that is libelous or defamatory, or in a way that is otherwise threatening, abusive, violent, harassing, malicious or harmful to any person or entity, or invasive of another’s privacy;
  • in a manner that is harmful to minors in any way;
  • in a manner that is hateful or discriminatory based on race, color, sex, religion, nationality, ethnic or national origin, marital status, disability, sexual orientation or age or is otherwise objectionable;
  • to impersonate any other person, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity, or to obtain access to this Network without authorization;
  • to interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of this Network or prevent others from using this Network, or in a manner that disrupts the normal flow of dialogue with an excessive number of messages (flooding attack) to this Network, or that otherwise negatively affects other persons’ ability to use this Network;
  • to use any manual or automated means, including agents, robots, scripts, or spiders, to access or manage any user’s account or to monitor or copy this Network or the content contained therein;
  • to facilitate the unlawful distribution of copyrighted content;
  • in a manner that includes personal or identifying information about another person without that person’s explicit consent;
  • in a manner that employs misleading email or IP addresses, or forged headers or otherwise manipulated identifiers in order to disguise the origin of content transmitted through this Network or to users; and
  • in a manner that constitutes or contains any form of advertising or solicitation if emailed to users who have requested not to be contacted about other services, products or commercial interests.

Additionally, you agree not to:

  • “Stalk” or otherwise harass anyone;
  • Collect, use or disclose data, including personal information, about other users without their consent or for unlawful purposes or in violation of applicable law or regulations;
  • Request, solicit or otherwise obtain access to usernames, passwords or other authentication credentials from any member of this Network or to proxy authentication credentials for any member of this Network for the purposes of automating logins to this Network;
  • Post any content containing child pornography to this Network;
  • Post any content that depicts or contains rape, extreme violence, murder, bestiality, incest, or other similar content;
  • Post any content that constitutes pornography, contains nudity, or is adult in nature.
  • Use automated means, including spiders, robots, crawlers, data mining tools, or the like to download data from this Network – except for Internet search engines (e.g. Google) and non-commercial public archives (e.g. archive.org) that comply with our robots.txt file, or “well-behaved” web services/RSS/Atom clients. We reserve the right to define what we mean by “well-behaved”;
  • Post irrelevant content, repeatedly post the same or similar content or otherwise impose an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on the Network’s infrastructure;
  • Attempt to gain unauthorized access to our computer systems or engage in any activity that disrupts, diminishes the quality of, interferes with the performance of, or impairs the functionality of, this Network;
  • Use this Network as a generic file hosting service;
  • Take any action that may undermine the feedback or ratings systems (such as displaying, importing or exporting feedback information off of this Network or for using it for purposes unrelated to this Network); and
  • Develop, invoke, or utilize any code to disrupt, diminish the quality of, interfere with the performance of, or impair the functionality of this Network.

To provide notice of alleged copyright infringement on this Network, please see the DMCA Notification Guidelines.

You agree not to authorize or encourage any third party to use this Network to facilitate any of the foregoing prohibited conduct. You also agree that these Network Terms of Service inure to the benefit of our service providers (including our Network platform provider) and that they may take action (including the removal of your content and disabling of your account) in order to maintain compliance with these Network Terms of Service. Technology and hosting for aspects of this Network are provided by this Network’s online service provider. However, the Network Creator of this Network controls the content, membership and policy of this Network, including those pages served by such service provider on behalf of this Network. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary, by participating on this Network you agree to indemnify and hold harmless such service provider on all matters related to your interaction with others using this Network and participation with this Network.