A bill which includes specific guidelines for use of social media by members of public boards or commissions
was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee with amendments last week and recommended for approval by the full Senate.

SB2859, drafted by the Office of Information Practices, is included in the governor’s legislative package.

There are several provisions that impact the public, but I’m focusing for today on the social media aspect.

Here’s the section dealing with social media as it appears in the original version of the bill. Neither the committee report nor the new Senate draft, with amendments, are publicly available yet.

(f) Two or more members of a board, but fewer than the number of members necessary to constitute a quorum for the board, may participate in a discussion on a social media website about matters relating to official board business; provided that no commitment to vote is made or sought and the discussion on the social media website:

(1) Is accessible at any time to any member of the public with an Internet connection,

(2) Allows participation by interested members of the public, and

(3) Remains available for public viewing for a reasonable period of time on the social media website.

Upon request by any person, the board shall provide a list of all board members using social media and their social media addresses or identifications. For the purpose of this subsection, “social media website” means a website that facilitates social interaction among unlimited numbers of persons for the purposes of friendship, meeting other persons, or information exchanges, and allows persons using the website to communicate with other users.

Surprisingly, there was very little public testimony concerning this attempt to formalize a general policy for use of social media by members of agencies, boards, and commissions that fall under the sunshine law.

And more surprisingly, to me at least, was that blogger Larry Geller (disappearednews.com)testified in opposition to the whole idea of letting public officials participate in discussions relating to public policy via social media, while Common Cause was cautiously critical of the bill’s provisions.

Several agencies already are already harnessing social media. Political campaigns are making major use of social media. Individual elected officials are making routine use of social media.

Applying the sunshine law to this kind of social media outreach appears to raise lots of issues, but they didn’t get much public participation in the form of testimony. That’s too bad.

The State Senate has a full-blown social media policy which begins with this statement: “The Hawaii State Senate supports the use of social media for authorized Senate committees to enable Senate members and committees, Senate staff, and citizens, to communicate and obtain information online in the timeliest manner in the performance of legislative functions.”

The Campaign Spending Commission has also started using social media to extend its reach, and adopted its own social media policy.

The Commission recognizes the value of social media and seeks to leverage its capabilities to increase, enhance, and supplement our communication efforts to inform our filers (candidate committees, noncandidate committees and corporations) and the public of important and time sensitive campaign finance information in our efforts to achieve better compliance.

The Commission will utilize Facebook and Twitter for this purpose but it asks that all questions and requests for information, filing assistance or advisory opinions be directed to our office in writing or by calling us at (808) 586-0285. Please do not use our Facebook and Twitters pages for this purpose.

There’s more to the policy, but you’ll have to read that on your own.

I’ll try to flag the SD1 when it becomes available.