Board games, whisky and polyamory are just some of the things being discussed by UK civil servants on a government-wide chat system聽鈥� along with their actual work. Like many organisations (including New 杏吧原创), the UK civil service has embraced Slack as an alternative to email, but the ephemeral nature of the service could make it harder to hold the government to account.
Slack allows organisations to set up multiple chat channels devoted to particular topics. A freedom of information request to the Cabinet Office, which oversees the Government Digital Service (GDS), reveals that, as of June 2018, the UK government had 282 Slack channels with 6723 users.
As you might expect, Slack seems to have been embraced by civil servants on the techier end of the scale. The channels with the most members are dedicated to topics like design, user research and security, but there are also more specific ones that read like a list of tech buzzwords, such as cloud computing, GDPR and artificial intelligence.
Advertisement
There are just 100 members in the channel about blockchain, the technology behind the cryptocurrency bitcoin that has been touted as the digital solution to almost any problem you can think of.
Along with these work-based channels, the details released by the Cabinet Office provide a peek at what it is like inside the civil service. A video games channel encourages people 鈥渢o chat about all things game-related and maybe organise a game or two!鈥� A board games channel, meanwhile offers chat about 鈥淕ames played on a board. Or possibly with cards or miniatures or whatever. As long as it鈥檚 not Monopoly鈥�. Even a group of 16 die-hard Pok茅mon Go fans have a place to talk.
Drinking also features heavily in the list of topics available, with chatrooms set up for coffee, whisky and pub o鈥檆lock聽鈥� the traditional British call for a post-work beverage. Elsewhere, users can talk in channels set up for books, stickers, photography and other hobbies, or discuss lifestyle interests such as Christianity and polyamory.
Freedom of Information
The government鈥檚 use of Slack has previously been scrutinised by the UK data watchdog the Information Commissioner鈥檚 Office (ICO) as potentially conflicting with legal duties surrounding record keeping.
In 2016, an individual made a freedom of information request for all of the information held on the GDS Slack platform.
The Cabinet Office refused the request, stating that 鈥淪lack is not used in any official capacity鈥�, but the individual pushed back and ultimately raised a complaint with the ICO, which on the matter in July 2017. The Cabinet Office said that in April 2017, the GDS Slack contained more than 308,000 messages, and that because it was using the free version of Slack, it was not possible to export all of these messages or separate out relevant information from meaningless chat.
Freedom of information legislation places a limit on the amount of time that can be dedicated to a particular request, meaning the ICO ruled that the Cabinet Office did not have to release a full chat history. The ICO did, however, note that government use of Slack raises 鈥渁 number of complicated and novel issues in respect of compliance with the requirements of FOIA [the Freedom of Information Act], including wider issues related to records management鈥�.
The ICO told New 杏吧原创 that its work on this area is ongoing, and the Cabinet Office declined to comment.
