Civil Serf, the civil servant secret blogger, was silenced recently after Whitehall launched a hunt to find her. Whatever your political persuasion, and some of her posts were not flattering to her employers, one has to ask, surely, that isn’t a blog part of free speech? By definition, it is the opinion of an individual and therefore (currently) exempt from the powers of the Press Complaints commission. The Head of the Press Complaints Commission makes a valid point when he said that “if you want to see what the newspaper industry would be like unrestricted, take a look at the internet.”
Many bloggers have come out in Civil Serf’s defence. Dizzy Thinks is a big fan. But more surprisingly the newspapers across all political spectrums from the Daily Mail, Telegraph, Times and Guardian also made the point that she was doing a service to the tax paying public by lifting the lid on Whitehall. We deserve transparency, in order to build trust and understanding in the public sector, don’t we?
I saw an interesting debate on Guido Fawkes’ blog that made a good point. Many civil servants, especially senior ones (which Civil Serf seemed to be), are covered by the Official Secrets Act. Therefore, bloggers like Civil Serf had no legal leg to stand on when releasing official secrets. Of course I agree that secrets that affect national security should be kept secret and Civil Servants do have official channels they can pursue under the Whistle Blowing Act if they feel it necessary. But the sort of things that Civil Serf blogged about hardly fell into the official secrets category – embarrassing, yes, but top secret? No.
So where do we go from here? I would advise that as many big organisations such as Dell and Starbucks open up themselves to the blogosphere, the public sector should not shut up shop. If the public sector in the UK is to truly engage with the public, more transparency, interaction and therefore blogging is needed.
How do we do this? Well perhaps some “rules of engagement for blogging” would be a good start and blogging should remain encouraged in the public sector. One thing is for sure, blogs will not go away and as Civil Serf goes, others are springing up, such as “To Miss with Love”, about the trials and tribulations of a teacher in London.
