In the Spotlight - To tweet or not to tweet?
At the most recent Council Meeting of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, those assembled voted to silence their own Communications Department. The reason? They were tweeting live from the meeting and telling the veterinary profession what was going on at an important event of their own regulatory body. A laudable objective, certainly, but this was not considered acceptable in light of the fact that the information published on Twitter would contain material not duly approved by those present.
This was, to put it mildly, a curious decision. The College's own Draft Interim Social Media Strategy document, authored internally by Head of Communications Lizzie Lockett and Communications Manager Ian Holloway, correctly identifies a fundamental point when it states that "Social media could be particularly important for an organisation such as the RCVS, where we have been identified through research as seeming stuffy and remote." Surely telling everyone what was going on without putting everything in the invariably somewhat stuffy and remote officialese of approved Minutes would help with this issue?
Also worthy of note is the stance of one Councillor, who argued that "We are a regulatory body – we are not chummy. Facebook and Twitter are media for chummy chats. You may say I'm an old fogey, yes we have got Twitter and Facebook, but I don't think they're appropriate for us as a regulatory body."
Wait a minute. Is having a Twitter feed unbecoming to the dignity of a prominent office? Well, the Crown has it's own Twitter feed. So does Downing Street. And the Vatican. Has anyone ever accused HM The Queen, the Prime Minister and Pope Benedict XVI of compromising the dignity of their respective offices because they have a Twitter feed? Parliament, the UK Government, the Scottish and Welsh Governments, the Northern Ireland Executive, the Cabinet Office, the Home Office, The Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Justice, HM Revenue and Customs, the Bank of England, the British Army, Royal Navy, Royal Marines and Royal Air Force all have their own Twitter feeds. It is scarcely unprecedented for a regulatory body to have a Twitter feed either. The Independent Police Complaints Commission, Ofcom, BBC Trust, Advertising Standards Authority and Nursing and Midwifery Council all have Twitter feeds. Indeed, it is now more remarkable if a public body does not have a Twitter feed than if it does.
This is not the first time questions have been raised about the RCVS' strategy on communications. Calls for greater transparency have been frequent and have come from senior figures in the profession, including no less a group than the BVA Council. The controversial redaction of a great amount of the McKelvey Report, for example, was even the subject of a Freedom of Information Request, again by the BVA, to get it overturned. Letters pages of veterinary publications regularly include open letters to the RCVS questioning decisions and raising important topics of concern, but responses are few and far between.
Ultimately, this incident is a symptom of a deeper issue. While openness is a stated aim of the RCVS, is it truly being put into practice? Let us test that - the McKelvey Report remains partially redacted, a full four items on the agenda of the most recent Council Meeting were controversially designated 'Confidential', and the Communications Department is being actively prevented from telling the profession what is going on by a Council vote. From the simple results of this brief test, only one conclusion is possible and a question is raised – shouldn't the RCVS be focussing on improving on its general culture on communicating with the veterinary profession before coming down so severely on well-meaning tweets?
But a diagnosis, as we all know, should not be the end of the line. Treatment, and successful treatment at that, is required too. So, what should be done? The issue at hand is not whether the RCVS should be tweeting, the true issue is in fact the state of the RCVS' general approach to communication with the veterinary profession. It is undeniably in the public interest that the veterinary profession should be well regulated and held to the highest standards, but this standard is also required of the regulatory body itself. That this standard is maintained by all must demonstrably be the case, and that means clear and open discourse instead of confidentiality and spin. Care should be taken to ensure that important information is not misrepresented, and communication with members (insert your own pointed reminder about 'fee-paying members' at your discretion) must improve so that the public whose interest the veterinary profession is regulated in may have a sound and justified confidence in the people charged with regulating those who help, heal and protect their beloved pets.
Furthermore, it must be remembered that the RCVS is only charged with regulating the profession, not representing it. The extent of the jurisdiction of a regulatory body is the task of discharging lawfully mandated duties, nothing more or less, and it should be remembered that the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 did not charge the RCVS with action and reaction on this issue or that. Instead, this function should be left where it rightfully belongs - in the capable hands of the British Veterinary Association.
Defra has published guidance for the vet sector ahead of a proposed UK-EU Sanitary and Phytosanitary agreement.
