New Terms of Service Open Door for Federal Agencies to Use Web 2.0 Sites
Specialized terms of service agreements with new media providers will allow federal agencies to have a presence on YouTube, Flickr and other sites while still complying with legal requirements, the General Services Administration announced last week. The agreements are the culmination of nine months of work by a coalition of some 17 agencies, led by GSA. “Millions of Americans visit new media sites every day. The new agreements make it easier for the government to provide official information to citizens via their method of choice,” said GSA Acting Administrator Paul Prouty.
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The Library of Congress, which jumped onto Flickr last year (WID Dec 15 p3), will expand its outreach with YouTube and iTunes channels in the next few weeks, it said. The new channels will show historical audio and video content from the Library, like films from the Thomas Edison studio and early industrial films, as well as current content like book talks and tours of the Library’s holdings. A spokesman said the Library signed its agreement with YouTube a year ago. It’s taken time to work on internal policies, content and workflow, he said, before the Library was ready to launch. Some of the content is already floating around on the Internet, he said, but it lacks context or the curatorial information the Library can provide.
The use of free new media sites by government agencies has raised questions about privacy, advertising, access by the disabled, and some of the boilerplate language in terms that require users to accept indemnification provisions and the application of state law to resolve disputes. GSA said sites were willing to reconsider their terms, but didn’t want to separately negotiate agreements with hundreds of agencies. The new agreement, already signed by 21 agencies, gives agencies a centralized place to go for acceptable terms with Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and blip.tv. GSA is still working with MySpace, Ning, Facebook and others, and is willing to work with any new media provider that’s interested, a spokeswoman said.
The new agreements remove the indemnification clauses and ensure liability is covered by federal law, according to the spokeswoman. The agreements are covered by state law only in the absence of relevant federal law. They make clear that federal agencies must adhere to the Freedom of Information Act and that content is in the public domain. In the case of advertising, “providers have assured that they will eliminate or minimize advertising and that they have no intention of adding advertising that they do not currently display.” The new agreement supersedes old agreements for YouTube, so any agencies on the site can keep their existing accounts.
So far, providers have agreed not to charge federal account holders. If any agency wanted a premium service on a site, it would need to proceed under traditional procurement processes, the spokeswoman said. The agreement doesn’t address provisions that require federal Web sites to provide comparable access for people with disabilities because the information is placed on private sites. Any information on the third-party sites is essentially re-purposed from federal sites and should be available to people with disabilities on federal sites, the spokeswoman said. The agencies couldn’t force third-party sites to be accessible, she said.