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NASCIO Negotiates Govt-Friendly ToS Changes with Facebook
January 6, 2011 By Bill Greeves
Yesterday, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) announced that their Social Media Legal Workgroup, along with the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) had successfully negotiatedseveral key changes to Facebook’s Terms of Service. Facebook’s standard click-through agreement language has traditionally caused many government agencies to shy away from the social networking behemoth due to several clauses that have traditionally been absolutely non-negotiable in any government contract.
Although the group’s efforts were primarily focused on state government needs, the clauses they’ve resolved are also common sticking points for local governments as well.
According to the NASCIO news release, “Facebook has specifically agreed to modify the provisions of its terms and conditions to:
- Strike the indemnity clause except to the extent indemnity is allowed by a state’s constitution or law;
- Strike language requiring that legal disputes be venued in California courts and adjudicated under California law;
- Require that a public agency include language directing consumers to its official Web site prominently on any Facebook page; and,
- Encourage amicable resolution between public entities and Facebook over any disputes.
State and local government agencies who are already on Facebook are immediately grandfathered in to these changes.
These changes come after over a year of “lengthy discussions”, but NASCIO expects that this will serve as a model going forward, hopefully usable with other social media services. Back in March of 2009, the General Services Administration successfully negotiated Terms of Service amendments with several social media services, including Youtube, Flickr, Vimeo and Blip, yet most state and local governments did not find the changes particularly helpful to their needs (which, generally speaking, are very different from those of federal agencies). So this success by NASCIO is likely going to be a much more pivotal move for state and local government adoption of social media services!
The MuniGov2.0 blog contains case studies, discussions and reviews from the convergence of Web 2.0 tools such as social media, virtual worlds and collaborative work sites and the local government sector. This blog will highlight the pros, cons, success stories and lessons learned from the field, designed to stimulate discussion, visibility and consideration for the use of 2.0 tools in the public sector local government level. Hopefully, the content of this blog will put readers directly with the theories and practice of 2.0 in local government and the people who are pushing the envelope in each sub-category or technology.
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