The DoD has recently released a department wide policy regarding social media use for official accounts. DODI 5400.17 provides guidance for social media use within DoD, records management procedures, and guidance to ensure personal social media accounts are not misrepresented or misinterpreted as official accounts.
This is significant because this is the first DOD policy to specify how social media should be used and what it should be used for. The previous policy, DODI 8170.01, only provides broad guidance on secure and appropriate use of social media.
The DoD states that official accounts should be used to advance the mission of the U.S. military and establish public trust of the DoD. The focus of this policy is to share the DoDs missions and the work they’ve done with the public.
This policy has been a long time in the making. The DoD is very large organization, it takes a substantial amount of time and resources to create a policy at this level. However, social media is constantly evolving; because of this most policies would be outdated by the time they are released. DoD 5400.17 was created with this in mind, the policy will be continuously updated and refined based on the current trends in social media.
