As the Radar Turns

by on May 14, 2010 in Social Media

Yesterday I reported that the National Weather Service issued a memo prohibiting NWS employees from sharing weather information through personal social media accounts.

This memo has been confirmed by several different sources and the reports on the ground tell a very different story than the NWS.

The NWS Public Affairs office said the policy has long existed but strangely no one on the front lines were aware of it.

Here’s what I’ve seen

  • Personal twitter accounts of people associated with NWS nationwide have fallen silent in the past week.
  • Personal blog posts were taken down
  • An entire community of meteorologists expressing surprise that such a policy existed.

Do any of these factors lead you to believe that this policy was widely known or enforced?

Absolutely not.

All the conversations I’ve had point to the NWS initiating a crackdown on these activities. The stories sound nothing like an open government in the land of the free. I am aghast at how the NWS is treating people that have worked for them for decades and were just trying to save lives.

So why is the NWS so afraid of personal use of social media? Why are they dragging their feet when it comes to officially adopting social media?

Twitter accounts are free and we know you could register NWS_AR, and 49 other states in a matter of hours.

Why such a strong response? Why not move forward?

While I’m sure that policy and bureaucracy plays a role I think there is something deeper going on.

The Public/Private UNtrust

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is guided by a policy called “Policy on Partnerships in the Provision of Environmental Information”. In the weather business it is referred to as the Public/Private trust.

The goal of the document is to be a guide on the partnership that the NWS has with the private sector. I’m a big fan of the private sector and I’m all for governmental cooperation but here is the sticky part.

NOAA will not haphazardly institute significant changes in existing information dissemination activities, or introduce new services, without first carefully considering the full range of views and capabilities of all parties as well as the public’s interest in the environmental information enterprise.

I’m not a lawyer but that sounds like NOAA/NWS needs to clear these actions with big Weather business to avoid disputes.

The exact words said to me were, “The NWS is afraid of being sued by” XYZ. XYZ is a major weather enterprise and I’ll leave it undisclosed for now.

So if business XYZ is afraid that quick efficient dissemination of weather information by the NWS through social media might hurt viewership ratings or the purchase of premium weather products then they aren’t going to agree to a NWS endeavor to utilize these platforms.

Money trumps public knowledge.

Twitter Killed the Radio Star

To think social media will hinder viewership is patently ridiculous and shows that XYZ (and others) are clueless to the opportunity facing them.

  1. Any usage of social media for weather info would be supplemental. You can’t get the coverage through twitter that you can get via a TV or computer. No one is going to choose Twitter as a primary source of info until all the other sources are unavailable.
  2. Twitter will increase viewership and brand loyalty. When an organization or an individual is contributing information to Twitter and you are sitting in a shelter with a smart phone you suddenly become a very big fan of that organization and you’ll likely turn to their traditional outlets for weather info the next time.

An entire community is shocked to see the enforcement of this policy and the NWS is too chicken to allow its wonderful people to get the word out to their friends and neighbors over social media.

In addition, I’d like to say I think there is huge opportunity for private weather organizations and media outlets to capitalize on the NWS absence. I am a capitalist and for profit entities have every right to consider how social media can be a benefit to their bottom line. However, I don’t think anyone can adequately argue that asking the NWS individuals to remain silent is in the interest of the public.

So if you are part of a news station or private weather enterprise and you can get involved effectively the opportunity is wide open.

Next Steps

  1. FOI request for the NWS memo. Thanks for the feedback, I’m submitted an FOI request to the NOAA
  2. Contact your elected officials – Senators, Representatives, & Governor. If people start asking questions then perhaps we can help affect policy.
  3. Ask the candidates – It’s election season and many of the candidates are on Twitter and Facebook. Let’s ask them what their position would be and help make them aware of the policy.

Why should you care?

This isn’t about Twitter or Facebook or anything else. This is about people. I’ve heard time and time again of people that were without power that they were getting information from Twitter. One lady lost her house but because of the tweetstream she was taking cover and was safe.

That makes this important. We need the valuable resources of the NWS to be part of this community.

Join the conversation online. On twitter we are using the hashtag #NWSfail and on Facebook  you can join discussion on the NWS Facebook page.

Tagged as: #arwx, #NWSfail, Twitter

  • http://twitter.com/AshAhrens Ashli Ahrens

    Thanks for staying on top of this @tsudo! #NWSfail Employees' use of social media regarding the biz of a company/entity is an issue all employers face, but those who protect & serve have a unique opportunity & responsibility to embrace all available communications channels. Reasonable regs can be established to satisfy both viewpoints. I hope they try.

  • arkstfan

    I've seen this scenario play out often in my years in the government.

    I read the policy. Employees can still tweet warnings, they cannot do so in a way that implies they are doing so as a part of their job or that they are doing so behalf of their employer.

    If your bio says “NWS meteorologist” arguably violating policy. If your bio says “dog lover and master backyard griller” a violation would be hard to find.

    I also know how this works. Someone along the management chain takes a much broader reading than contained in the four corners of the document and tries to shut it down. At some point when questioned someone will throw at an utterly ridiculous suggestion of potential legal liability and everyone will nod nervously and defer to the fear based upon no legal expertise at all.

    The greater legal issue is that absent a specific statutory authorization to the contrary the NWS is prohibitted from restricting or regulating the redissemination of public information. In this case, I am free to retransmit warnings to my heart's content and NWS employees may do so with the caveat they cannot create the appearance of doing so on behalf of the government.

  • http://natejohnson.org Nate Johnson

    With regards to your observations:

    1) Some accounts have gone silent; others have not. Consider @ounwcm, and @jefflast, both of whom have updated within the last 24 hours.

    3) I think it's overstating it to say “an entire community of meteorologists” were surprised that this policy exists. There were quite a few of us who were aware that this was, at best, an unsettled grey area and for whom the recent clarification was not a surprise. Were the guidelines universally enforced? Clearly not, but that doesn't mean the existence of those guidelines (not as a “we don't do SM” but, as I argued yesterday, “we want to make sure we do SM correctly and consistently”) was a surprise to an entire community of meteorologists (c.f. http://digitalmeteorologist.com/2010/05/13/nws-…).

    If, you ask, Twitter accounts are free, why not register them? The response from NWS Public Affairs you got yesterday hints at part of the cause: The NWS needed to resolve some TOS issues with Twitter before moving forward. That can't be an excuse going forward, of course, but it points to one of the myriad issues of why things haven't happened before now.

    The Public/Private Partnership deal, on the other hand, is a longstanding issue between the NWS and various private companies. It centers around a difference of philosophy between private industries (who, at the extreme, say the NWS should only collect and quality control data and provide basic forecasts) and others within the so-called “weather enterprise” who think the NWS can and should play a broader role including specific event forecasting, warnings, and other communication functions.

    At the core is the private industry's assertion that no one company can compete in the free market against the full weight of the United States government. (Consider: The NWS annual budget is in the ballpark of $900M. How many private companies have an annual budget of similar magnitude? Nearly every private sector weather company could be bought simultaneously for what the NWS spends in one year.) This battle came up back in the late 1990s when the NWS began packaging their previously consumer-unfriendly zone forecasts in web pages with friendly icons and more easily-consumed text. I've also seen instances where NWS meteorologists were — at no cost to the radio station — doing weather updates on the air. For private companies that normally provide those radio forecasts for a fee, they are now competing for that station's dollars with the Federal government who is able to offer it for free.

    Not that I agree with this particular assertion, but you can see how private industries who have a PR/brand-building (if not directly pecuniary) interest in providing weather information might have an issue with the NWS (read: federal government) edging in on what they consider to be “their territory.” The Public/Private Partnership policy (http://www.nws.noaa.gov/sp/pubprivpolicy.htm) was the result the last time this came up and was an attempt to reassure players on both sides of each other's roles in collecting weather data, making forecasts, and communicating weather information, including warnings.

    Bottom line: The public/private partnership debate has been and continues to be a sticky issue with a lot of moving parts, of which Twitter and other social media use would be only one — and a small one at that.

  • arkstfan

    Thanks because with a little searching based on some of your links I found @iembot_lzk an automated Twitter account distributing the weather statements from our local office. Obviously not formatted in an ideal manner but the speed will be quite good since it is designed to redistribute the local releases with one second of initial transmission by the office.

  • http://twitter.com/AshAhrens Ashli Ahrens

    Thanks for staying on top of this @tsudo! #NWSfail Employees' use of social media regarding the biz of a company/entity is an issue all employers face, but those who protect & serve have a unique opportunity & responsibility to embrace all available communications channels. Reasonable regs can be established to satisfy both viewpoints. I hope they try.

  • arkstfan

    I've seen this scenario play out often in my years in the government.

    I read the policy. Employees can still tweet warnings, they cannot do so in a way that implies they are doing so as a part of their job or that they are doing so behalf of their employer.

    If your bio says “NWS meteorologist” arguably violating policy. If your bio says “dog lover and master backyard griller” a violation would be hard to find.

    I also know how this works. Someone along the management chain takes a much broader reading than contained in the four corners of the document and tries to shut it down. At some point when questioned someone will throw at an utterly ridiculous suggestion of potential legal liability and everyone will nod nervously and defer to the fear based upon no legal expertise at all.

    The greater legal issue is that absent a specific statutory authorization to the contrary the NWS is prohibitted from restricting or regulating the redissemination of public information. In this case, I am free to retransmit warnings to my heart's content and NWS employees may do so with the caveat they cannot create the appearance of doing so on behalf of the government.

  • http://natejohnson.org Nate Johnson

    With regards to your observations:

    1) Some accounts have gone silent; others have not. Consider @ounwcm and @jefflast, both of whom have updated within the last 24 hours.

    3) I think it's overstating it to say “an entire community of meteorologists” were surprised that this policy exists. There were quite a few of us who were aware that this was, at best, an unsettled grey area and for whom the recent clarification was not a surprise. Were the guidelines universally enforced? Clearly not, but that doesn't mean the existence of those guidelines (not as a “we don't do SM” but, as I argued yesterday, “we want to make sure we do SM correctly and consistently”) was a surprise to an entire community of meteorologists (c.f. http://digitalmeteorologist.com/2010/05/13/nws-…).

    If, you ask, Twitter accounts are free, why not register them? The response from NWS Public Affairs you got yesterday hints at part of the cause: The NWS needed to resolve some TOS issues with Twitter before moving forward. That can't be an excuse going forward, of course, but it points to one of the myriad issues of why things haven't happened before now.

    The Public/Private Partnership deal, on the other hand, is a longstanding issue between the NWS and various private companies. It centers around a difference of philosophy between private industries (who, at the extreme, say the NWS should only collect and quality control data and provide basic forecasts) and others within the so-called “weather enterprise” who think the NWS can and should play a broader role including specific event forecasting, warnings, and other communication functions.

    At the core is the private industry's assertion that no one company can compete in the free market against the full weight of the United States government. (Consider: The NWS annual budget is in the ballpark of $900M. How many private companies have an annual budget of similar magnitude? Nearly every private sector weather company could be bought simultaneously for what the NWS spends in one year.) This battle came up back in the late 1990s when the NWS began packaging their previously consumer-unfriendly zone forecasts in web pages with friendly icons and more easily-consumed text. I've also seen instances where NWS meteorologists were — at no cost to the radio station — doing weather updates on the air. For private companies that normally provide those radio forecasts for a fee, they are now competing for that station's dollars with the Federal government who is able to offer it for free.

    Not that I agree with this particular assertion, but you can see how private industries who have a PR/brand-building (if not directly pecuniary) interest in providing weather information might have an issue with the NWS (read: federal government) edging in on what they consider to be “their territory.” The Public/Private Partnership policy (http://www.nws.noaa.gov/sp/pubprivpolicy.htm) was the result the last time this came up and was an attempt to reassure players on both sides of each other's roles in collecting weather data, making forecasts, and communicating weather information, including warnings.

    Bottom line: The public/private partnership debate has been and continues to be a sticky issue with a lot of moving parts, of which Twitter and other social media use would be only one — and a small one at that.

  • arkstfan

    Thanks because with a little searching based on some of your links I found @iembot_lzk an automated Twitter account distributing the weather statements from our local office. Obviously not formatted in an ideal manner but the speed will be quite good since it is designed to redistribute the local releases with one second of initial transmission by the office.

  • arkstfan

    Thanks because with a little searching based on some of your links I found @iembot_lzk an automated Twitter account distributing the weather statements from our local office. Obviously not formatted in an ideal manner but the speed will be quite good since it is designed to redistribute the local releases with one second of initial transmission by the office.

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