The excitement this week follows DoD’s highly anticipated release of their new social media policy. Amazingly enough, it is quite expansive and states that the default for DoD’s non-classified network is for open network, allowing DoD users access to use new media across the board. Inappropriate content and sites will continue to be banned (eg: pornography, gambling, hate crimes sites, etc…)
Earlier this week, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Mr. Price Floyd and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for New Media and Outreach, Mr. Sumit Agarwal hosted a
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to discuss the new social media policy. The release of the new social media policy is quite significant in that this is the first time DoD has had an across the board policy. Before this, each of the services had been developing their own policies and they varied greatly. It’ll be interesting to see how this new policy is implemented and how the security issues are addressed.
As leaders check out the landscape and decide whether or not they want to engage, Mr. Floyd cautions that whether or not they choose to engage, the conversations are already taking place around them, ”Question isn’t whether or not they want to participate, the question is whether or not they want to impact what is already being said about their unit or command.” As people move forward and begin to get engaged with these new communications tools, DASD Price Floyd also encourages folks to continue to be mindful of OpSec considerations and utilize common sense in determining what kind of information to share, “Don’t say or do anything you wouldn’t say or do in front of your boss or your grandmother.” More information on utilizing social media sites can be found at the DoD Social Media Hub.
In other news, MyCAA suspension continues to generate a lot of interest. This past weekend, Representative Glenn Nye (D-VA) held a roundtable in Virginia Beach bringing together military spouses affected by the MyCAA suspension to share their stories. Back on Capitol Hill, members of the Congressional Military Family Caucus sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates asking his help, “to better understand the basis for this “pause,” how long this “pause” will be in effect and the impact it will have on spouses.” The link to the letter includes the signatures of the representatives who signed in support of military spouses, so if you’re interested in whether or not your congressional rep signed on the dotted line, you can check that here. Spouses continue to look for answers and unfortunately, the new information coming out is serving to fan the fires. The surge in websites, roundtables, articles and demonstrations around the MyCAA suspension tells us that this is not an issue that’s going away anytime soon. I’ll continue to keep you updated.
Short newsletter this week as I’m penning it from the road. I picked up one my milspouse pals in Virginia Beach and we are trekking it down to Ft. Stewart, GA to visit with friends and check out the Armywifenetwork Field Exercise. Tara and Star have always been so gracious about extending an invitation to their contributing writers to join them on the road, so it seemed like a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone – visit friends and participate in a Field Exercise. Can’t wait to tell you all about it next week.
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