It has happened again. A senior government official, this time the Employment and Training Corporation’s CEO, has drawn severe criticism over his inappropriate use of social media.
Philip Rizzo posted what he later admitted were “facetious” remarks on a senior colleague’s Facebook page and drew the wrath of the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality which said the comments were unacceptable and condemnable. Mr Rizzo apologised.
In a rather hasty reaction, Education Minister Evarist Bartolo banned all the ETC’s senior management from having any Facebook presence at all. That move in turn drew criticism from the Malta IT Lawyers Association, which said the indiscriminate ban sent the wrong message and that it would be much better if the government advocated propriety and ethics instead.
Such incidents involving the use of social media by senior public officials are a continued cause of embarrassment to the government. When V-18 chairman Jason Micallef criticised the Public Broadcasting Services CEO, Culture Minister Owen Bonnici distanced himself from Mr Micallef saying he was speaking in his personal capacity.
Similarly, the government has had to distance itself from the Prime Minister’s special envoy to the World Tourism Organisation, Joe Grima, when he called NGO Aditus “cultural rapists”. More recently, Mr Grima made the headlines again for all the wrong reasons when he described former president and prime minister Eddie Fenech Adami as the biggest embarrassment to have ever walked in and out of the Maltese Parliament.
Malta Tourism Authority chairman Gavin Gulia too has been having problems containing himself on social media. After criticising rock legend Brian May over his appeal against hunting in Malta, Dr Gulia showed great insensitivityduring a recent blackout that affected the very industry he is meant to promote. He boasted that, during the outage, he had been sitting comfortably in his car enjoying the air conditioning.
These rants reflect a very poor understanding of the impact which a few words can have when using the powerful tool of social media. However, banning civil servants from using social and other digital media would be an opportunity lost because, as the UK government’s social media guidelines for civil servants say: “It [social media] helps the government to communicate with the public; to consult and engage; and be more transparent and accountable… Alongside all the benefits that this brings, we need to be aware of the responsibilities that come with it.”
Ironically, it often takes just a bit common sense to avoid most of the obvious pitfalls in social media, where the boundaries between the professional and the personal are often blurred. As the Malta IT Lawyers Association pointed out, many companies have successfully adopted social media policies for their employees without intruding upon privacy or free speech rights. There is no reason why the same cannot be achieved in the public sector.
Civil service head Mario Cutajar said a comprehensive policy on the matter will be drawn up and communicated later this year. Let us hope the new policy would be better communicated than the code of ethics for government ministers, which was published months after it came into force.
Guiding civil servants and holders of positions of trust on the proper use of social media would only be a start.
The government must also be prepared to vigorously enforce the code. If, despite clear guidelines, such incidents continue to occur, then the very job suitability and sense of judgement of the senior government officials concerned would have to be questioned.