Facebook and the Hatch Act

Marc Ambinder, who blogs for Nextgov sister site Atlantic.com, raises an issue for agencies that have created a Facebook page -- which seems like just about every agency.

Case in point: The State Department Facebook page had, up until very recently, two links to Web pages for Barack Obama as maintained by the Democratic National Committee and the one set for Joe Biden by his now defunct political committee. As Ambinder points out:

You can access these pages through, say, the Department's page for the Kabul embassy. It is the 21st century equivalent of putting up Obama for America yardsigns on the lawn of a U.S. embassy. Now -- this is a tiny and inconsequential violation of the rules, but it does seem to break the Hatch Act, which prohibits government from promoting political entities.

A State spokesperson said the pages would be removed.

It's not unrealistic to think that agencies will stumble over regulations and laws like this as they learn the social networking ropes.