Mayor Blogs . . . But What About the Rules?

So, cool, the Mayor is going to blog! Welcome to the blogosphere! But . . . At the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008, I sat on a committee that looked at what the alders could and could not do on the City website. We reviewed city policies and created additional rules . . . that don't apply to the Mayor! I'm glad the Mayor is blogging on the City website . . . but something seems a tad unfair about it . . . consider the following rules:

Web Policies, Standards, Guidelines Version 1.7a May 2006 Web Policies 2

Blogs, Chat Rooms, Forums, etc.
Creating blogs, chat rooms, forums, or any other avenues for content to be posted without prior review are prohibited on any sites associated with or hosted by the City of Madison. The City would be liable for the content and does not have the resources to review or monitor what gets posted. Current Network and Security Policies prohibit City employees from using personal email accounts, chat rooms, and instant messaging.

Minutes of Feb 5, 2008 President's Workgroup on Council Website Policies and Guidelines

Website Linking questions
The subcommittee questioned linking from the alder web pages to alder blogs and/or non-city organizations (e.g. Downtown Madison, Inc., Chamber of Commerce). Roger Allen recommended that alders, when linking from the alder City of Madison web page, follow APM 3-13 – Web Linking Policy: http://www.cityofmadison.com/mayor/apm/3-13.pdf

RECOMMENDATION:
Allow mention of blog in alder biography, but no linking to the blog. Alder can state within their biography that if someone wants the blog link, they can email that alder for the link.

The policy passed in March 2008.

So . . . do we need to reconsider our policies? Or did the City's rules change and if so, where are new rules?

Seriously Mayor, good call! Glad you're blogging, hopefully it will help with transparency in local government! I've got in over 1,000 posts and people seem to like it!