Help collaborate on Social Media Cyber-Vandalism Resource

[Justin Herman - XAAA]

Hello Open Government friends and colleagues, 

I hope this email finds everyone warm and productive. 

You might have noticed the release of the formal U.S. Public Participation Playbook is delayed a week or so, but rest assured its for good reason -- in light of recent cyber-vandalism incidents in government social media, we've had to quickly organize appropriate response -- as the playbook calls for -- to ensure we maintain public trust for digital services and accountable feedback loops. The same vulnerabilities that could lead a group to overtake a social media account and obviously graffiti it with content and images could be used to more subtly spread misinformation during emergencies, for example, and create a worse impact. 

In the same process we used for the U.S. Public Participation Playbook, this week we used the SocialGov Community to quickly assembled an inter-agency team including: 

Jordan Higgins, Defense Intelligence Agency

Jody Bennett, Department of State

Dan Kenny, GSA Emerging Leader Program

Kat Mullins, USAJobs

Alla Goldman, Information Sharing Environment, Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Dannielle Blumenthal, National Institute of Standards and Technology

Justin Herman, GSA

Darlene Meskell, GSA

Scott Horvath, U.S. Geological Survey

Jessica Milcetich, USA.gov

Natasha Lim, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

David Hamm, State of Minnesota

By tomorrow we'll have a draft resource that provides guidance on how to prepare for, react to, and of course respond to cyber-hooliganism in order to reassure citizens of the validity of an account. Same as the playbook, we're inviting expert communities to join us -- including groups like the National Cyber Security Alliance, AFCEA, ACT-IAC, Federal Communicators Network, as well as the social media platforms themselves. 

If you have a specialty to share in this development, or would otherwise like to be an expert collaborator, please let myself and Dan Kenny know. The turn around on this is quick and for good reason -- an extreme testament to the power of the open, collaborative development you champion. We'd like the living document live on Monday for open collaboration and enhancement from there, but are geared in for initial collaboration this week. Will Madison make a repeat appearance? Time will tell! 

Shortly after, the Playbook gets released... perhaps with one more case study.

Thanks everyone, and have a great week. 

Justin Herman

Federal-wide Social Media Program Lead

Office of Innovative Technologies: Department of DigitalGov

U.S. General Services Administration

Building the Government of the 21st Century

To join almost 900 digital managers across government in the #SocialGov Community, with training, resources and inter-agency collaborations led by feds across government for feds across government, please email me with "Subscribe to #SocialGov" in the subject.