Many Government 2.0 advocates are frustrated that government agencies and employees can’t use the services that citizens use every day- so government can’t interact with citizens where they already engage. GSA announced last week that this may be changing, and agencies can now choose to take advantage of some of these services.

The GSA has been quietly negotiating with popular service providers to create new contracts, otherwise known to the GSA as “no cost agreements,” that allow government to use these services. GSA has so far secured agreements with YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, and blip.tv. They’re also working on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, and I imagine that these contracts will be the basis of a larger contract. In addition, GSA found that Twitter’s standard terms of service are compatible with government use. Hopefully, GSA will come up with a service-independant agreement that agencies can use to base any terms of service on for third party services, opening the new media ecosystem.

The barrier to government embracing new media services revolves around the “terms of service” contractual obligations that come with the use of these services. You know these contracts, they are ones you likely never read, those seemingly endless screens of cramped type, written in prose that only a lawyer can love. And while you may choose to ignore them, federal agencies can’t. Typically, the terms of service that you agree to by using the service have provisions that the government cannot agree to. According to website Social Government, these are the new terms for the contracts:

- Idemnification: The government cannot agree to limit the service’s liability, because agencies cannot be tied to unlimited liability. The liability instead must be covered and limited by federal law.
- In the absence of other federal law, agreements between the services and the agencies must be subject to US and state law.
- Agreements must recognize the need to adhere to the Freedom of Information Act.
- Agreements must recognize that government content is in the public domain (often, services will reserve copyright).
- Service providers have agreed to limit or eliminate advertising on government channels.
- Previous governmetn users- before the contracts were negotiated- will be “grandfathered” in to the new agreements, so that they are covered by the new contract.

In addition, all the services that GSA negotiated with are free services for the public as well as the government. The GSA clarifies that these are not technically contracts; they are no-cost agreements. Services that are fee-based will be subject to the normal procurement process.

While we have not had the opportunity to take a look at these contracts (transparency please!), we are encouraged by the fact that the GSA has ensured popular services will be available for government use. Even better, they’re continuing to work on new agreements, in order to open the wealth of services available online.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 12:08 pm and is filed under CDT, Open Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.