Twittergate and the perils of social media

A colleague of mine has recently been disciplined for the use of his personal Twitter account by making statements that may be seen as inflammatory. Whilst he may have been a little exuberant by personally naming the managing director and his place of employment - his questions were actually technically and factually correct. This then begs the question, even though social media codes of practice are in place, if the correct questions are being asked in a public forum using your personal account, what is the issue?

In Western Australia, a state election has just taken place with a new government sworn in, this also means a new Minister for Training and Workforce Development has taken control of this important portfolio and needs to know from a grass-roots level what the issues are. Anyone who has been involved with governments of any form know that bureaucrats only like to take good and positive news upstairs. Now my colleague had the best interests of students and their employers at heart, if trying to look after the interests of our key stakeholders in a public forum, is this a problem? Then we had better start making decisions transparent that look after our key stakeholders instead of taking a short-term approach disadvantaging the very people we are supposed to help. My colleague removed the posts (questions) from the parliamentarian's Twitter feed and closed his account, but I fail to see how this has benefited anyone.