Dave Moskovitz (((❤️)))Is anyone aware of NZ Government agencies or SOEs making an appearance in the Fediverse?
Dave Lane 
🇳🇿@davemosk a few of us have been working on this, Dave. Watch this space.
donkey@lightweight That sounds promising, Dave. I'm going to be helping out with a discussion paper to MBIE on allowing use of social.govt.nz as a domain for this - can we include your work in that paper? @davemosk
@lightweight That would be awesome! And that’s exactly the sort of thing I’m thinking for the social.govt.nz instance - central and local govt agencies, parties, MPs etc - all on an official govt instance - less need to worry about impersonators etc.
@donkey it's remarkably discouraging that gov't agencies haven't *led* this initiative. Similarly political parties. Shows how disconnected our public service (esp education) and political parties are. It's very concerning & disappointing.
@lightweight Indeed! I’m trying to do it ‘from the inside’ - of local govt at least. Turns out the Govt CISO has also been pushing this from the central govt side.
We shall see. 😊
Open Policy NZ@donkey @lightweight @davemosk I saw a reference in another reply to you about the German Information Commissioner hosting the instance for German government departments. We should consider Archives NZ hosting the NZ government instance so it ensures compliance with the Public Records Act from the start. Since Archives NZ is a branch within DIA it should be able to draw on their capabilities too. cc @jet
@openpolicynz That’s a really great idea - our discussion paper was going to propose having the instance hosted on #CatalystCloud so it remains within NZ borders. Having it actually looked after/administered by Archives is very cool. I’ll add that to the list of ideas. :) @lightweight @davemosk @jet
Michael U@donkey @openpolicynz @lightweight @davemosk interesting! Re the scope of what it is used for, there is a thing in here about being party political or not. There’s no way, for example, a political party can show up on a .govt.nz domain. And I assume individual MPs’ social media accounts are treated as political comms rather than the voice of government, whether that makes sense? On Twitter they had the “authorised by” thing yeah?
@jet Yes, I believe that all that “authorised by” thing in their Twitter bio. I guess if there are some rules around parties/MP’s then it might be best for each party to host their own instance. Very handy info - thank you! @openpolicynz @lightweight @davemosk
@jet Excellent, I agree too. The discussion paper (first baby step) is just getting MBIE approval for the social.govt.nz domain. @openpolicynz @lightweight @davemosk
@donkey @openpolicynz @lightweight @davemosk on Archives’ stake in it, such communications and MP’s papers are not public records. So that’s also a consideration
Zeborah@jet If public records isn't an issue, another option might be National Library - they manage the NZ Web Archive: https://natlib.govt.nz/collections/a-z/new-zealand-web-archive/
@zeborah Thanks! Noted that idea too.
@donkey @zeborah yeah nice thought, I was thinking about them as well since they certainly harvest of-interest Twitter content and such, and there is a relationship between them and Archives because a govt agency can meet its web archiving requirements by confirming the Library has got it all... but I don't think administering an active service fits their remit.
another bit of DIA is the Digital Public Services branch, who put this out among other things...
@jet Sure... though it'd be a new thing for any department to host something like that. NatLib at least have experience running other large (albeit non-social-media) web sites/services/collections. But even if they're not the right people to host/admin, it'd still be worth discussing with them the web archiving side of it and how that'd work ethically in the Mastodon context. (Eg posts *from* govt depts is one thing, but what about replies to others, or boosts?)
@jet @donkey @lightweight @davemosk Yes, I’d see a .govt.nz Fediverse instance as being only for public servants and Ministers in an official capacity. Ministers in a party political capacity, and non-minster MPs could be on a Parliamentary instance.
@jet @donkey @lightweight @davemosk However, they’d also need to have pretty tight integration with departments’ records of who is employed by a department, otherwise people could create an account while being employed by a government agency and it would still exist after they left. Would also need to handle people moving to a new job in a different department, so accounts are only temporarily suspended not deleted during such moves.
@openpolicynz @donkey @lightweight @davemosk keep it role based and update the profile fields if needed? It would be quite a change to things now if public servants had a named social media presence. Not commenting on whether that’s good or bad, just saying the norm now is an anonymous department or perhaps function account
@jet @donkey @lightweight @davemosk True - would most likely be agency or function accounts to begin with. I was getting ahead of myself. 😉
@openpolicynz @jet @lightweight @davemosk Yeah - I was thinking along the lines of @[email protected], @[email protected], @[email protected] - that sort of thing. Agency level, on an authoritative domain etc.
@donkey @lightweight @davemosk @jet Yes, I said ‘hosting’ but perhaps should have said ‘administering’, because it could be hosted by Catalyst, but run by Archives NZ.