Policies soon for engagement with social media, citizens

Hyderabad, April 5 (IANS) The union ministry of communications and information technology is drafting a policy for use of social media by various departments and another for engaging citizens in designing government programmes, a top official said Thursday.

J. Satyanarayana, secretary, department of electronics and information technology, said the frameworks were at the draft stage and hoped that very soon they would come out as policies.

He was talking to reporters on the sidelines of an international conference on 'Revisiting Internet governance lessons learnt and road ahead' being organized by the Institute of Global Internet Governance and Advocacy, NALSAR University of Law.

"We have created a draft framework for using the social media by various departments of government of India and the state governments," he said.

He noted that while some departments like Delhi Police have taken a lead, there is a need for all others to use the powerful medium effectively to enable people to interact and express their concerns or appreciation of their decisions.

Satyanarayana said there was no proposal under consideration at this stage to have a regulatory mechanism for social media in view of the recent incidents. "It is dialogue which is more important rather than regulation," he said in reply to a query.

"Our focus is on how to use social medium as a positive instrument. It is a powerful medium. There is a huge positive side. There may be some shortfalls here and there but we have to have a dialogue and correct them," he said when asked if the department would ask the social media like Google, Facebook and Twitter to tune their websites.

The ministry is drafting another framework to engage citizens in the design of various government programmes. This is aimed at plugging the gap between the field reality and what is being designed and planned.

The ministry already held consultations with civil society.

"We are hoping that very soon it would be published and then it would become a guiding factor for shaping various new schemes the government will be launching in future," he added.