Acas studies HMRC social media strategy
A series of interviews carried out with the Department earlier in the year have revealed HMRC’s development of an online and social media strategy.
The findings have been published in the Workings and social networking report, which is available on the Acas website.
According to the report only half of all employees at HMRC currently have access to the internet in the workplace, though plans are currently underway to deploy access to all staff “as part of the process of centralising the HR functions of civil service departments”. The Department already implements an acceptable use policy, which blocks access to certain websites.
As an organisation holding huge amounts of sensitive data, the report says HMRC feels it needs to control the types of sites employees can access from its IT system in order to maintain “extremely tight data security procedures”.
“We’re part of the government and have to be very secure. We don’t like people using sites that might bring in viruses or malware,” the HR adviser at HMRC told Acas.
HMRC is currently in the process of developing a strategy on digital engagement, including social media, “[including] how the press office might use social networking sites in order to communicate with the public”.
Further reading
Social media - what's your policy?
Continued...
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Not so much social media strategy as social media policies
I found the title of this piece confusing. Anyone using social media for a business purpose needs to have a strategy as to what they hope to achieve.
That is very different to the way that social media usage policies are developed and the strategy around this. This is an HR issue rather than a business/marketing related issue.
It's important to be clear on the difference as sole practitioners, for example, don't need a usage policy but DO need to be clear as to their business objectives and strategy when they start to experiment or to use social media.
Mark
Masks the real issue
The real issue is not HMRC employee use of social media such as Twitter, the real issue is "corporate" use that sees HMRC promulgate their usual "fear, uncertainty and doubt" modus operandi tacticts. Then we still have the ploy of continuing their attempt to blur the distinction between avoidance and evasion to promote the overtly political view of "fair share" of tax.