New social media guidelines for public servants have been dubbed laughable, unworkable and backward.

The new rules, released by the Australian Public Service Commission, state that public servants have the same right to freedom of expression as other members of the community - with a few exceptions.

Workers are not allowed to make comments about the government or government policy "so harsh or extreme" that their impartiality would be compromised.

This includes comments which are made outside of office hours and unrelated to the employee's area of work.

Proponents of the guidelines say they merely lay the groundwork for how public servants should conduct themselves in an online forum, not whether or not they participate.

The changes have been dubbed the ''Jericho amendments'' by some staff, after The Australian newspaper outed then public servant Greg Jericho in 2010 as the author of an anonymous political blog.

The commission says the guidelines have merely been updated in response to staff feedback and questions.

But Mr Jericho, who is writing a book on the role of public servants in the social media sphere, says the new guidelines are "laughable".

"It seems to me to be a standard over-reaction, a bureaucratic thing that really doesn't fit with how reality works," he said.

He says public servants do need to maintain a level of impartiality but only when it is in relation to their area of work.

"If a public servant tweets that the government's asylum policy is terrible, it's not the same as someone who works for Westpac criticising Westpac for not lowering interest rates," he said.

"It's not like we are sending customers to someone else, it's just a personal criticism of a government policy.

"If it's done out of hours and you don't actually work in the Department of Immigration or on asylum policy, then it's got nothing to do with your job.

"For example, when I worked in the film area, if I was blogging about how the film policy the government was instituting is terrible and won't work, well then that makes it a bit difficult to deal with stakeholders and say you should be using this policy.

"But in terms of policies that I had nothing to do with, that my input one way or the other was irrelevant, I'm just a voter."

Retrograde step

He says the public service should be encouraging its workers to engage in social media rather than shy away from it.

"The public service is being pushed from above to be less risk-averse with things, to not be so bureaucratic, to interact with the public, and this seems a bit of a retrograde step," he said.

"It will just drive public servants to in their work retreat from using social media strategy to interact with stakeholders because there will be this fear that everything we tweet is going to be watched and so we will hang back.

"Given that social media is spreading and is only going to become more and more widespread throughout the community, if you've got a public servant who is retreating from that space then that's not a good thing for government programs or policy."

Mr Jericho admits there are several useful and informative aspects of the guidelines, but he says because the bulk of the new rules are so unworkable, they will either end up being rewritten or ignored.

"It'll become something that is ignored and only used in those cases where someone is rubbishing their minister and doing the things that would have got them in trouble prior to these guidelines, or they will have to re-do them because they get so many people charged with breaking the rules," he said.

'Phone call from mum'

Public Service Commissioner Steve Sedgwick says he fundamentally disagrees with suggestions the guidelines will make workers nervous and cause them to shy away from social media.

He says staff are encouraged to participate in the online arena and that the guidelines are there to help them understand what is acceptable and what is not.

"In some respects nothing has changed; what governs the engagement of public servants, whether online or in any other capacity, are the APS values and code of conduct," he said.

"This material simply teases out the implications of those requirements for the particular circumstances in which people might find themselves in."

Mr Sedgwick likened the updated guidelines to a "phone call from your mother".

"When you are out at that party and there were some photos taken at the end of the party and you posted them and you thought it was a good idea and then you get the phone call from your mother the next day and she says 'what were you thinking?'," he said.

"Well this is about encouraging people to think in advance.

"Public servants are in a slightly different world by virtue of their vocation, and it is important to maintain public trust in the capacity of the service to serve the public and to fairly and impartially and honestly serve whoever happens to be the government of the day, whether you agree with their policy or not, whether you vote for them or not.

"And so you might just like to think about that in the way that you conduct yourself in an online forum - not whether you conduct yourself - but in the way that you do it."

It seems those within the industry have mixed feelings on the guidelines.

"I work for DHS and I avoid talking about work online regardless. It's not worth the potential trouble you may land yourself in," Benjamin Steele said on Twitter.

"I start with the public service in a fortnight. I'd provide you my view but not sure I am allowed #workencroachingpersonallife," added Robert Griffin.