Department of Defense officials shed more light on the new agency-wide social media policy on Monday, saying that operational security was an ongoing concern as DoD opens up social media access, but that they hoped to see "more blogs, more tweets, more communication" between front line personnel and their families and friends back home.
"The default switch on access is to be open," said Mr. Price Floyd, the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary for public affairs, during a roundtable call with military and defense bloggers. Floyd said he wants to see "more, not less" blogging from the front lines and that the new policy should encourage communication by deployed personnel.
While social media presents new places where operational security can be compromised, Floyd noted that nothing is changing with respect to what servicemembers should and shouldn't be saying. The rule of "Don't say or do anything you wouldn't say or do in front of your boss" still applies.
Combatant commanders will be responsible for the security of the information infrastructure, but much as they might like to, they cannot shut down access to Facebook and Twitter. "Combatant
commands and bases cannot simply block access to all social media sites as a policy," Floyd said. "It has to be open."
The policy does allow for "temporary" shutdowns if intrusions or denial of service attacks are taking place. Details about the circumstances for and length of the temporary shutdowns will likely become known when the department issues the policy implementation guidelines in about 180 days.
Several other issues concerning the social media policy will be fleshed out in greater detail when the implementation guidelines are released. The preservation of official DoD records as shared on third-party sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter is an open question still, not just for DoD but across the federal government. It's not yet known how the government will archive information that is stored and published by private companies.
Being able to access and use social media sites like Facebook from DoD installations is another ongoing issue. A number of bases block access to the very sites that the department is now allowing and encouraging use of.
How Defense personnel will be trained on the particulars of complying with the social media policy is also to be determined. With thousands of personnel all across the country and globe, DoD faces an enormous challenge in both setting the right culture for communication via social media and getting its employees up to speed on the proper ways to use the sites, which are new and rapidly evolving.
To those commanders who might be reluctant to get involved with social media, Floyd points out that conversations are quite possibly already taking place across the Web, on Facebook and MySpace. "They might be surprised to know that they already are taking part," he said.
Mr. Sumit Agarwal, recently hired from Google to be the new deputy assistant secretary of Defense for New Media and Outreach, noted that the policy was about establishing a baseline, and that the final guidance might not be all that specific.
"Being prescriptive is a little antithetical for social media," said Agarwal. "That said, I understand that we do need to give people clarity in terms of what we would like to see and how they might go about making the right decisions."