President Kenyatta's tweets are public records and must be preserved

What you need to know:

  • Rather than pull back in the face of the obvious online backlash, the Digital team at State House decided to meet fire with fire
  • Do we realise that communication from government offices, be it print, electronic or broadcast, is part and parcel of official government records?
  • In short, when communicating as the President of the Republic of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta loses the right to be forgotten

Last week, President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Twitter handle was involved in a heated exchange.

The voter registration numbers, particularly from young voters, it seemed, needed a boost.

So the State House digital team, which runs @UKenyatta, the President’s Twitter account, figured they could help drive up the voter registration numbers.

They managed to get the President to participate in a sleek dance video that urged the youth to register to vote.

The President did not disappoint. He moved flawlessly in what some of us old folks came to know was the new ‘Dab’-style dance.  

Using the hashtag #RegisterToVote, the digital team at State House unleashed the video clip on Twitter, sat back and waited it to go viral, as they would expect.

The video clip indeed went viral, but largely with a negative effect.

HAPPILY DANCING AWAY

Many Kenyans on Twitter (#KOT), felt the President’s dance was out of touch with current realities in Kenya,  including the doctors' and lecturerss strikes, drought and Al-Shabaab attacks, among other crises.

Rather than pull back in the face of the obvious online backlash, the digital team at State House decided to meet fire with fire. 

They pushed the video all the more, inviting Kenyans to an online challenge in which they would record and upload their versions of the ‘Dab’ dance craze.

They promised a State House visit to the makers of the most popular video, calling the contest #UhuruDabChallenge. From here, things suddenly went south. 

Using a counter-hashtag #DabOfShame, scores of Kenyans on Twitter chose to participate in the challenge, but in a negative, sarcastic way. 

They posted pictures that graphically depicted a President in high spirits, happily dancing away, while his citizens continued to wallow in misery under the crises bedevilling the country.

Somebody high up at State House must have finally noticed the PR disaster and stepped in to order that the #UhuruDabChallenge invitation be deleted, but by then, it was too little, too late. 

Many Kenyans on Twitter had already captured screenshots of the deleted message and were gleefully sharing it around.

All this brings us to the ICT policy question: Do we have a data retention policy for government social media and other digital records?

Put differently, do we realise that communication from government offices, be it print, electronic or broadcast, is part and parcel of official government records?

Well, it is, and online communication from government offices should therefore fall under the same policy measures that define the creation, storage, dissemination, deletion and archiving of hard-copy data.

CORRECTIVE TWEET

The need to preserve public financial data for future reference by researchers or law enforcement agencies is well known and practiced, be it electronic or paper. Digital communication from the Head of State should enjoy the same level of protection.

Further, that communication should be preserved in the public interest, irrespective of whether that communication was correct, in error, popular or otherwise.

In cases where the communication is in error, State House should issue a corrective Tweet, rather than deleting the earlier one. This is the same practice that is observed with government hard-copy circulars. 

The originals are never wished away but can easily be corrected or replaced by subsequent circulars.

Randomly deleting government records denies researchers and future generations the opportunity to understand the realties of the Kenyan nation as it struggles along its journey towards being a developed nation.

In short, when communicating as the President of the Republic of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta loses the right to be forgotten. Whatever he says, writes or posts in that capacity is the property of the people of Kenya.

His communication, digital or otherwise, cannot therefore be wished away or deleted at the whims of some operative in State House. Such communication is part and parcel of government records and must be treated accordingly.

Mr Walubengo is a lecturer at the Multimedia University of Kenya, Faculty of Computing and IT. Email: [email protected], Twitter: @jwalu