USMS Web 2.0 Policy

Welcome to the U.S. Measurement System (USMS) Office of NIST. We are excited to offer Web 2.0 tools as part of our commitment to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the USMS. We want our site to serve as a portal for open and honest scientific communication with our partners, customers, and stakeholders. To further that objective, the following policy is in effect:

REGISTRATION

• The USMS website does not permit anonymous posting on our blog or forums. Therefore, registration is necessary to participate. Registration information is used solely for the purpose of logging comments and facilitating discussion, and is kept strictly confidential.

BLOG & FORUMS

• Comments are posted immediately, however, they are moderated. We review all comments and any that do not comply with applicable policies, regulations, and laws may be removed without prior notice.
• We expect participants to show respect and consideration to the authors and each other. Comments that: use profanity; include personal attacks; appear to infringe on copyright; are spam; are clearly off topic; make unsupported accusations; promote services or products will be removed.
• To protect your own privacy and that of others, please do not include phone numbers, personally identifiable information, or private medical information in your comments.
• The ideas presented in comments to the blog, or posts in the forums, do not necessarily represent NIST, or USMS Office policy. Reference to any specific commercial products, processes, or services by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the U.S. Government.

PRIVACY

• We do not collect personal information about you when you visit our site unless you choose to provide that information to us. We will gather certain information about your visit automatically, such as internet domain, IP address, date/time of the visit, and pages visited. This information is to help us make our site more useful to visitors, to learn about the number of visitors, and the types of technology our visitors use.
• If you provide us with personally identifiable information, for example, by sending an e-mail or by filling out a form and submitting it through our site, we use that information to respond to your message and to help us provide you with the information and services that you request. Submitting voluntary information constitutes your consent to the use of the information for the stated purpose.
• Electronically submitted information is maintained and destroyed according to the principles of the Federal Records Act and the regulations and records schedules approved by the National Archives and Records Administration, and in some cases information submitted to us may become an agency record and therefore might be subject to a Freedom of Information Act request. The USMS complies with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998.

If you have any questions about the USMS Web 2.0 Policy, email douglas.ward@nist.gov.