Puffbox

It’s great to see the Foreign Office’s Stephen Hale raising his head above the parapet, and blogging about his job as ‘Head of Engagement’. (Quite a job title, by the way.) Makes sense for numerous reasons of course, not least as a means of setting a good example for colleagues. I mean, would you trust a ‘blogging expert’ who didn’t blog?

Stephen has already touched on the FCO’s choice of the rather obscure Roller blogging platform – ‘because of the ease with which we could integrate it with our web platform’. His latest post reveals something I hadn’t previously appreciated: ‘we opened up the blogs over the summer so that any member of staff with a valid business reason could start an official blog’.

That’s a remarkable move in itself, and perhaps unexpectedly, puts FCO on a par with hi-tech companies like Microsoft – but I’m still in two minds about the wisdom of people blogging in a personal capacity on an official platform (generally speaking). My instinct remains that corporate blogging is best done on a project basis, with more personal stuff (again, generally) kept separate.

In that respect, we should all be grateful to FCO for testing the water here; we’ll only find out what works – if anythying – by trying it, and they’ve certainly got the Boss most likely to give them the freedom to experiment.