NZ Government on Social Media

There has been a significant amount of commentary around 'Free Speech' and policies of various Social Media companies over the years with Twitter being the current centre of attention. As you know there are alternative Open Source social media platforms and in Twitters case the alternative is Mastodon. We have noticed a significant increase in the number of new users and consequent message traffic on the local Mastodon instances and one of the conversations asked 'Why doesn't the NZ Government have their own Mastodon Instance?'

Why not indeed!

So here is a call from the NZOSS to the New Zealand Government to set up a Government centric Mastodon instance to provide a conduit for Agencies, Departments, Entities, Schools, Councils, DHB's and any other central or local government organisation to disseminate pertinent information in real time.

Remember that this does not limit or lessen any of those other communication channels already in place. With all of the integration and cross-posting capabilities that have been developed over the years, messages that are posted on Mastodon can be automatically sent to other platforms. The average NZ citizen can still get their feed via Twitter if they choose but the Government can now publish the initial feeds without involving a US based corporation.

Catalyst Cloud (sponsors of the NZOSS website and services) would be an ideal host for this service having recently been added to the NZ Panel of Cloud suppliers to Government. This also keeps the instances local and pumping out information even in the event of a disaster in any of the overseas datacentres or communications links between NZ and the rest of the world.