Ministers given social media guidelines following standards czar investigation

Ministers will no longer use public resources to produce material for their personal pages in social media, after the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life found that several ministers were using public money to generate material for their Facebook pages.

Commissioner George Hyzler concluded that this was an abuse because the ministers concerned are using public resources to raise their personal and political profiles.

The Commissioner said that material generated using public resources should only be uploaded to official sites. After its publication, the material may be broadcast from the personal page of a minister.

“However, they should not use public resources in the production of material that will be taken up directly on the personal page of the minister,” Hyzler said.

The Commissioner for Standards was investigating a complaint by Lovin Malta CEO Christian Peregin, who said ministers were curating their personal Facebook pages using public funds.

Hyzler issued guidelines on how to use social media to prevent abuse of public resources.

“In my view this very positive development indicates that the practices described by this report will soon become a thing of the past,” Hyzler said.

This is the second case on the use of social media decided by the Commissioner. for Standards. The first case involved Minister Konrad Mizzi and was decided in December 2019.