Friday, August 17, 2012
Aug. 17, 2012
TO: All Agency Directors
Please share this message with your agency's general counsel and public information officer.
As you know, an increasing number of Oklahoma state agencies are using social media technologies, such as Facebook and YouTube, as an official communication channel. While an agency's business needs will determine the appropriate social media channel, the State Chief Information Officer (CIO) would like to remind agencies to carefully review the terms of service provided by each social media technology before using the site.
In January 2011, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) and several state CIO offices conducted negotiations with Facebook to accommodate governmental entities. These terms went into effect immediately for all state and local government entities with a Facebook Page. Subsequently, an agreement with YouTube on revised terms of service, titled Content License Agreement (CLA), was announced by the National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO) in January 2012.
There are two important revisions in the new YouTube CLA for state agencies: Indemnification and jurisdiction. Similar to the agreement currently in use with the federal government, the revised YouTube CLA no longer includes language on either of these two issues. Although there may be other issues important to your agency, these two were the most critical according to the NASCIO workgroup and the revised CLA represents a compromise between YouTube and the interest of most state agencies. YouTube has indicated that this current version is their final offer.
The CIO and the Oklahoma Office of the Attorney General have assessed the risk and legality of standard terms and regard the current terms as inappropriate in light of current law or regulation. Both parties have reviewed and approved the use and acceptance of the new CLA and the “brand” channels implementation.
For those agencies currently using, or planning to use, YouTube in the future, I strongly encourage you to review and adopt the new terms set forth in the CLA. For agencies that have been interested, but were unwilling to accept the previous terms of service, I encourage you to reconsider the new terms.
YouTube requires a simple process by which state agencies may agree to the new YouTube CLA. While the new CLA will be between YouTube and each state agency, the process requires the initial coordination with the state CIO. The process is as follows:
Agencies must provide the following information to the OSF Service Desk by completing an online form at http://go.usa.gov/wIX:
If the agency has an existing YouTube account, also submit the existing account name (web address).
Upon receiving this information, OSF/OMES will submit the request, along with the provided information, to NASCIO, who will then forward the coordinated requests from all states to YouTube on a monthly basis. YouTube will contact each agency directly to present the terms to be signed.
While there is no deadline for this process, I encourage you to you to submit the online form as soon as possible, if your agency has plans to use YouTube as an official communications channel. More information about YouTube, including an FAQ, may be found on the CIO website at http://www.ok.gov/cio/Policy_and_Standards/Social_Media/YouTube/.
If you have any additional questions regarding this or any other matters concerning social media, please contact the OSF/OMES Service Desk at HelpDesk@osf.ok.gov or by phone at (405) 521-2444.
Sincerely,
(original signed)
Alex Z. Pettit
Chief Information Officer and Cabinet Secretary of Information Technology and Telecommunications
cc: Cabinet Members
Agency IT Directors