At its meeting last week the councillors passed a motion amending its IT policy and systems to allow them to have access to social media websites on council computers.

The motion was moved by deputy mayor Wayne Smith, who said the council could no longer afford to block social media.

"We've talked about this for a number of years," he said. "We are, in my basic research, one of the few councils that don't [have access]. There's an expectation that councillors should be contactable, and if that's how people want to get in touch with you, that's what you should do."

Cr Smith said councillors had always been told social media posed a security risk, but IT experts had told him that was not the case.

"If there is a risk, we need to do something about it. Not every councillor will want to use them - I have a Facebook page, but I rarely use it - but I know they're effective tools and we need to get with the times."

Cr Amanda Stapledon asked for LinkedIn to be added to the list of approved websites.

"It's a business-oriented website, and one of the things we're trying to do in Casey is foster business and bring in new ones," she said.

"I'm not part of Facebook, but the more I learn about it, I can see it'll be very beneficial for everyone to eventually be on it."

Mayor Sam Aziz supported the motion, and moved the deadline for the changes to be made forward from the end of February to the end of January.

Cr Simon Curtis suggested councillors be allowed to download apps for their smartphones. "There's the Yellow Pages and things like that that help us do what we do."

Councillors will be allowed to download free apps relevant to their duties, pending consultation with the council's IT department. Casey director of corporate services Steve Dalton said some smartphone applications posed "some risk".

Cr Curtis called for access to smartphone apps with a low cost of "one or two dollars", but this was ruled out by Cr Aziz.

"I think if there is a case to be made, we can revisit it in the future," Cr Aziz said.