You may have heard that a number of governments have banned or restricted access to Facebook for their employees. I wrote about this in the last issue of our magazine – Public Sector Management. You can read the article on-line by going here http://www.ipac.ca/PSMEditorial_Dec2007 . I won’t repeat all my arguments here.
Governments have done this in the mistaken belief that employees will waste time going on Facebook. It is not as if employees who want to waste time don’t have any other options, right? How about surfing the net, or talking on the phone, or reading a newspaper or a book, or talking with colleagues? If you have a productivity issue with certain employees, deal with it! Don’t ban what could be a tremendous collaborative tool. There is the potential for Facebook like collaborative tools to be used to really connect with citizens and to leverage the intellectual capacity of society to solve issues. We should be embracing this technology.
Given that in the traditional understanding of public service, public servants are supposed to be faceless, I have come up with the idea of creating a new networking tool for public servants across Canada. They will thus be able to network with their peers and with ordinary citizens. This tool can help in the development of policy and in finding solutions to societal issues. I call this “Faceless Book”. So what do you think? Would you join Faceless Book?
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