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Mathew Smith

Submission: 

As part of the APS, I am held accountable according to the APS Code of Conduct, as established, interpreted and communicated by the APSC.

According to the APSC's Social Media Guidelines, I am unable to submit anything that might be considered critical of my agency or its management:

Does it criticise the work of your current agency?

Criticising the work, or the administration, of your agency is almost always going to be seen as a breach of the Code. The closer your criticism is to your area of work, the more likely this will be.

As an employee of your agency, people will assume that you have a high level of knowledge about what your agency does, and that you may have access to sensitive information. They will think that you know ‘what’s really going on’.

As an employee of your agency, your comments have a strong capacity to affect your agency’s reputation.

If you have serious concerns about the way in which your agency is being run there are proper ways to report these. Posting on social media is not the answer.

This doesn’t stop you making a positive comment on social media about your agency or using social media to explain the policy and services that it delivers. Agencies have their own policies about how they engage with the community on social media; read yours and talk to your manager about your options. Make sure you’re on safe ground before you post.

https://www.apsc.gov.au/making-public-comment-social-media-guide-employees

As much as I may wish to assist in this review, establishing how we might do things better requires first to understand and identify those things we need to improve upon.
And this would be criticism of, if not my agency, at least the APS as a whole.

I, and all like me, should therefore not comment further.