Thread by @ifgevents

🚨 Starting soon: How is WhatsApp changing government?

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Tim Durrant opens the event. He asks Matt Warman how he used WhatsApp in government, and what the benefits of it were. Warman says that WhatApp is primarily a useful tool in government.
#IfGWhatsApp

Warman says that government uses WhatsApp, but not often for communication with civil servants. Government communication is very structured and formal. There is no shadow government running on WhatsApp. WhatsApp is a new channel, not a fundamental change.

Warman says that it isn't good for governments to have to be concerned that their WhatsApps to their private office, or whoever else, will end up on the front cover of newspapers.

Durrant asks Emily Walch about what the equivalent was of WhatsApp when she was in government, during the Coalition. WhatsApp emerged towards the end of the Coalition, few of her colleagues can remember using it for work communication.

Walch remembers emails and text messages being the central modes of communication. One of her first jobs in government was preparing Vince Cable for the Leveson Inquiry. The private office drummed into them that they should be careful what was put on email.

Durrant asks Henry Zeffman how WhatsApp has changed government in the last few years. He remembers WhatsApp being the primary medium through which he would communicate with people in government, after he began reporting on Westminster in 2016.

Zeffman says it has changed government, but it changed parliament first. In the post-Brexit referendum period, it became relevant for journalists to group MPs into factions within political parties. MPs did this for themselves - e.g. the ERG. Journalists then wanted screenshots!

Zeffman says, in the USA, people do not use WhatsApp in government. Conversations all happen by email. This suggests that WhatsApp might be convenient but not absolutely irreplaceable.

Zeffman says that, increasingly, workplace conversations happen via instant messenger rather than on the phone. People's communication styles have changed. Government is part of that.

Durrant asks Alice Lilly to talk about what has changed since the IfG's work on WhatsApp last year. They found that previously some conversations that would have taken place in "smoke-filled rooms" were now written down, so theoretically easier to preserve.

Lilly says there's inconsistency across government in how WhatsApp is used. Processes haven't kept up. Some departments issue WhatsApp guidance, others don't.

Lilly says that we don't need new legislation, necessarily, to cover WhatsApp - it should already be governed by existing guidance, which needs updating.

Warman says that most pandemic DCMS business took place on video call, but other departments may have used WhatsApp more in crisis. You need to distinguish between how a technology is used in crisis, and in general.

Warman adds that guidance is helpful, but it can be so strict as to be wishful thinking.

Walch agrees that existing guidance probably covers WhatsApp. When she was in government, she felt that there were issues with being able to access the records she needed.

There is also a security issue - WhatsApp is a Meta product, even though it's end-to-end encrypted, Meta is interested in advertising. Is that the best tool for government to use? In the corporate world, a CIO would look in detail at the tech being used to communicate.

Walch adds that there is a huge amount of inconsistency between, e.g., FOI responses. That's an issue with cross-cutting in government generally. There's also a disparity between the rules that political actors and civil servants are governed by.

Walch says that, while WhatsApp is an evolution of an existing conversation, we need to ask why it's so heavily used. Part of it is the speed of communication necessary in government. We should think about how government processes information and makes decisions.

Durrant asks Zeffman whether WhatsApp makes political journalism easier, because it creates written evidence. He says it speeds it up a lot - which can make it harder to see the wood for the trees. In other respects it makes it easier - it's easier to communicate with busy people

Zeffman says there's also a transparency issue, but that's not about WhatsApp itself, it's about broader transparency obligations which aren't followed in Whitehall.

Durrant asks Warman whether he was ever asked to look into his WhatsApps for an FOI request. He says he wasn't, but that he knows of Cabinet Office inquiries where he was asked whether an individual had been in touch with him via any means - e.g. WhatsApp.

Durrant asks Lilly to talk more about security concerns. When you are using WhatsApp, Signal, etc, you are using products which are outside the control of government. E.g. if WhatsApp permits disappearing messages, government can't control that.

There's also a privacy concern. If a screenshot gets leaked of a large group chat, it might not be obvious who leaked it. In an email chain it's easier to know.

Durrant adds that there's a performative angle - people sometimes want things leaked! He then opens the event up to questions.

Audience questions:
(1) Everyone wants good policymaking, and that might be an ugly business. If we want free conversations to take place, surely we should permit disappearing messages?
(2) Do we need a more open and forgiving culture around use of WhatsApp?

Zeffman says that underlying both those questions is the assumption that these conversations formerly happened aloud. But if they formerly happened in meetings with minutes, or even on email, then auto-deletion is inappropriate.

Warman agrees with Zeffman, that if WhatsApp has fundamentally changed the conversation, it needs to be thought about differently. But large WhatsApp groups are typically too cumbersome to replace meetings for decision-making.

Warman adds that his wife is a doctor, and she needs to use WhatsApp to coordinate wards sometimes. This is a similar challenge, using WhatsApp to work around institutional structures that haven't necessarily caught up.

Walch asks if anything ever gets deleted these days. She deleted her Facebook when she entered government. In politics, you're caught up in the whirlwind of making decisions so you aren't thinking about what platform you're using.

Whereas if you have experienced something like a public inquiry, you have learned from experience how to treat your records. She adds that, on foreign trips, she would take her security briefings very very seriously because it was the security services doing it.

During WikiLeaks, she was pulled aside by a security official to ask her to ask her minister not to say something for security reasons. Again, the messenger of that advice is really important for ensuring it's listened to.

Lilly says it's useful to think about WhatsApp in terms of different types of messages. Substantive decisions probably shouldn't be made on WhatsApp, but those conversations must also be preserved.

Durrant asks a question from online: if WhatsApp is used extensively, how can government get hold of information from people who leave government?

Warman says the gift of disclosure has always been, to some extent, with the individual - that's why people write memoirs. But the extent has changed. The problems are primarily very practical - who is making the decision about which WhatsApps are relevant and which aren't?

Warman suggests there might be a tech solution - if everything is uploaded to a 'black box' which is searchable but not browsable, would that be a solution? It might be better than just uploading everything, including personal conversations.

Warman says that he would often be asked to sign off FOI refusals, and would think "this is really boring and there is no reason why you need to refuse it." Those kinds of refusals undermine faith in the system.

Walch says she did not have any kind of technology/information debrief when she left government, except by ACOBA. Lots of the information on WhatsApp is personal, but we are equipped with technology e.g. AI that could help solve this problem.

Lilly adds that WhatsApp doesn't only include text - how do you store videos, gifs, emojis, etc? Durrant adds that the Information Commissioner had talked about how voice notes are considered relevant for storage.

@jillongovt asks if the use of WhatsApp changing the way decisions themselves are made.
@Gilesyb says that government has become far less efficient in recent years. WhatsApp is a huge waste of time. Does government efficiency require being more analogue?

Another audience member asks government use of AI/ChatGPT might mushroom in a similar way to WhatsApp?

Warman says that there is a temptation to think that fast decision-making is better, and instant messaging increases that sense. But ultimately it comes down to the judgement of the people involved.

Warman adds that AI is being used in parts of government already. Transparency and oversight are key to that.

Lilly says that there are some positive efficiencies with WhatsApp - texting someone can help get a document signed off more quickly. But there's a balancing act with all the competing demands on policymakers' time, and dealing with communications can take too long.

Lilly adds that WhatsApp feels more informal, which might affect the mentality in which decisions are made. Also, if you need detailed data, or similar, to make decisions, that can be more challenging on a phone.

Zeffman says that Covid hit just after a period of political turmoil, meaning a lot of ministers were really new to government. So there was a coincidence of the pandemic forcing decisions to happen on WhatsApp, and people being new to government thinking 'this is how it's done'

Walch disagrees with @Gilesyb - WhatsApp reflects the speed of communication needed. But that platform doesn't need to be WhatsApp, it could be something bespoke. We don't want to be so beholden to speed that we lose quality - as some worry about on Twitter.

Tim Durrant closes the event. Thank you for following along!