Not sure that tweet is legit? GSA looks to help
New digital registry aims to offer a one-stop source for those looking to verify that a social media account is really run by an agency.
The General Services Administration's Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies is encouraging agencies to use social media sites to deliver government services -- and offering a new way to ensure that those third-party accounts are authentic.
The U.S. Digital Registry is a resource for agencies, citizens and developers to confirm the official status of government social media accounts, mobile apps and websites.
"The rise of third-party platforms in delivering modern public services required us to rise beside them with greater means of maintaining accountability over official government accounts, and make it as easy to follow all public services as it was to find one," GSA's social media program lead Justin Herman wrote in a blog post.
While official government websites are easy to recognize thanks to their .gov or .mil domain names, it's not as straightforward for third-party accounts.
The U.S. Digital Registry aims to take some of the guesswork out of the process. The repository generates application programming interfaces that confirm the authenticity of agencies' presence on third-party websites or mobile apps.
According to the blog post, GSA's social media experts hope agencies will use the registry to develop a new generation of services that deliver authenticated information across platforms, languages and topics; protect against phishing and fake accounts; and improve the data analysis of government services.