“The use of social media by Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel could put the military’s reputation at risk”
Really?
Lets contrast the Minister’s position with that of the US Military:
This comment was taken from a recent issue of Harvard Business Review.
The difference here is quite astounding. On the one hand we’ve got one of the largest military forces in the world working hard to adopt an open mature approach to the opportunities and threats posed by social media. Yet on the other, we’ve got a Federal Government Minister questioning the use of social media by ADF personnel “in light of ADF values”…
Is the Minister worried about the reputation of the ADF? Or that the Government would not have (absolute) control over the “message”? And for the moment I’ll side-step the whole conflict-of-interest debate that this announcement has generated.
The approach being adopted by the Australian Federal Government smells of the command and control model that many organisations have tried and failed with.
And we really need the Australian Federal Government, the highest level of Government in Australia to get with the times – Social media is more than just Twitter and Facebook, and they hardly qualify as “new technologies” to quote our Defence Minister
