Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg’s, European trip began in London, where he met David Cameron, the new Prime Minister. There talks included a discussion on improving digital engagement in the UK government’s policy making process.
Prime Minister, David Cameron, was accompanied by his Secretary of State for Culture and Media, Jeremy Hunt. Nobody has actually disclosed what they discussed in the course of the meeting.
Jeremy Hunt, however, sent out a tweet stating that Zuckerberg was a really smart guy with some good ideas. Mr. Hunt’s press office did make it known that the meeting had been organised by the Prime Minister’s office itself.
Just met Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook. Really smart guy with some good ideas on improvement digital engagement in policy making.
Mark Zuckerberg later praised the U.K.’s open data initiative, which had been launched by Tim Berners-Lee under the previous Labour government. He also found that the Prime Minister and his team were very “insightful”.
While Facebook’s social networking prowess is unchallenged, their record on consumer privacy is rather poor, at best. The Conservative government would need to tread with extreme caution when taking on any serious initiatives based on Facebook in order to avoid any privacy faux-pas akin to the Labour government employee losing CDs containing personal data of 25 million citizens.
On the whole, though, Cameron and his government’s intention to involve the public and open themselves and the workings of the government up a bit more is definitely commendable.
