icegov2012 proceedings

sector, private sector, and civil society. Emirates eGovernment
and Dubai School of Government lead the work, which was
kicked off by a discussion forum and policy roundtable [4]. The
result of the roundtable discussion was a draft document with a
list of the policy issues that participants agreed should be covered
by the final guidelines document. The work continued with
intensive research until the document was finalized and officially
launched. During this research period, the task force continued its
discussion via online platforms, as well as offline meetings when
needed.
2.2 Key Policy Elements of the Usage
Guidelines Document
The social media usage guidelines aimed to provide government
entities with policy guidelines on how to use social media tools in
“responsible, safe and effective manners to communicate with
their clients and public and engage them in designing/delivering
government programs and services” [4]. To achieve this goal, and
as a result of the policy design process described above, the
guidelines covered the following eight policy issues, which are
aligned to a great extent with the eight issues recommended by
[6]:
o Access to social media sites: guidelines to help government
agency leaders decide whether to allow their employees to
access social media sites during working hours. The general
recommendation was in favor of granting this access, as it’s
essential for enabling transformation towards social agency.
o Account management: detailed the overall process from
account creation until deletion/deactivation; differentiated
between personal, professional, and official accounts.
o Content management: compared the key characteristics of
publishing/managing content on social and traditional media.
Listed skills and qualifications required for editors and
managers of social media content, and offered a set of
strategies for government agencies to consider when
moderating discussion on social media and managing usergenerated
content.
o Employee conduct and acceptable use: the guidelines
aligned the government employees’ social media code of
conduct with existing human resources rules and regulations.
o Citizen code of conduct: a list of issues to be covered by any
policy statement to be published on their social media
accounts as a participation policy for the public.
o Privacy: in the absence of a law dedicated to online privacy in
the UAE, a set of policy guidelines offered to help government
agencies minimize potential privacy breaches.
o Security: the guidelines elaborated a set of security threats
related to social media, such as social engineering, and
suggested actions to take in addition to the standard
Information Technology most organizations use to reduce
their vulnerability to these threats.
o Other legal issues: copyright and intellectual property
ownership; concerns about these issues are mainly caused by
the ease of copying and sharing others’ content on social
media sites.
2.3 Recommendations
Building on the experience we gained during the process of
designing this social media usage guidelines document and the
lessons we learned, we recommend that other government
509
agencies planning to develop a similar policy document consider
these points:
o Clearly identify your goals for designing the policy.
o Study and analyze your context.
o Collaborate with other stakeholders inside and outside the
government sector.
o Balance the organizational and personal aspects of social
media.
o Focus on the policy aspects of social media as compared to the
technological aspects.
3. CONCLUSION
In this poster, we presented the UAE government’s experience of
developing government-wide social media usage guidelines. We
described the process of the policy design, the key policy issues
covered, and concluded by providing a set of recommendations
for other government organizations planning to go through a
similar process.
4. REFERENCES
[1] Bertot, J. C., Jaeger, P. T., Munson, S., and Glaisyer, T.
Engaging the public in open government: The policy and
government application of social media technology for
government transparency. IEEE Computer, 43, 11 (Nov.
2010), 53-59.
[2] Bertot, J., Hansen, D., and Jaeger, P. Government policies on
the use of social media: legislating for change. In
Proceedings of the 12th annual international conference on
digital government research (Dg.o '11) (College Park, MD,
USA, June 12-15, 2011). ACM Press, New York, NY, 2011,
131-140.
[3] Elbadawi, Ibrahim. Cloud computing for e-government in
UAE: opportunities, challenges and service models. In
Proceedings of the 5 th international conference on theory and
practice of electronic governance (ICEGOV '10) (Tallinn,
Estonia, September 26-28, 2011). ACM Press, New York,
NY, 2011, 387-388.
[4] Emirates eGovernment. 2010. Retrieved June 17, 2012 from
http://www.emiratesegov.ae/web/guest/articleDetails?articleI
d=329912.
[5] Gharawi, M., Helbig, N., Hradinova J., and Werthmuller, D.
An exploratory study of social media adoption in
government. In Proceedings of the 4 th international
conference on theory and practice of electronic governance
(ICEGOV '10) (Beijing, China, October 25-28, 2010). ACM
Press, New York, NY, 2010, 359-360.
[6] Hrdinova, J., Helbig, N., and Peters, C. Designing Social
Media Policy for Government: Eight Essential Elements.
Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany-
SUNY, NY, 2010.
[7] Mourtada, R. and Salem, F. Social Media in the Arab World:
Influencing Societal and Cultural Change? Technical Report.
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[8] Noveck, B. Wiki Government: How Technology can Make
Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More
Powerful. Brookings Institution Press, Washington D.C.,
2009.