Rep. Issa Calls for White House Social Media Transparency

When does social media traffic qualify as official government business? That question will be the subject of a congressional hearing next week on presidential record-keeping, the Washington Wire blog of The Wall Street Journal reports.

Darrell Issa

Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, will hear testimony on Tuesday from a White House information officer on what, if anything, the Obama administration does with its posts to Facebook, Twitter, and other, evolving forms of online communication.

“We need to ensure that this president and future presidents are free to use new technologies to interact with the public, but that we preserve transparency and accountability in those interactions,” said Issa.

White House policy currently requires archiving of messages sent to and from its official website, email accounts, and social media outlets.

The policies are either less clear, or nonexistent, when official White House business happens to be conducted on staffers’ personal email accounts and social-media profiles or through their personal text-messaging and instant-messaging capabilities.