Public servants in the ACT have been banned from criticising the government, and will have to dob in colleagues that do.

New laws governing the territory's public sector workforce are on the table, with a bill that even restricts how bureaucrats behave outside of office hours.

If the parliament passes it, workers will be forced not to say or do anything “outside of the performance of official functions” to protect the reputation of the public sector or ACT executive.

Public servants would also have to tell on colleagues if he or she is harming the government's reputation.

The laws were drawn up to clamp down on bureaucrats’ social media posts, but the wording is broad enough to cover almost any conduct.

Legal experts have slammed the new rules as limiting free speech, and a Legislative Assembly scrutiny committee believes they may not be compatible with ACT human rights law.

But the Government says it needs to retain confidence in the public service, and that this need “outweighs any impingement on an individual's right to privacy, freedom of expression, or participation in democratic processes”.

Freedom of communication lawyer John Wilson has told Fairfax that rules forcing staff to rat on each other are unprecedented and draconian.

“All ACT public servants should also be alarmed at the ‘mandatory dob in’ obligation. So far as I know it is without precedent in Australian law,” he said.

“For example, it is misconduct for you to notice your friend making comments in his or her free time on social media that are damaging to the reputation of the service or the executive – again, no matter how true, reasonable, or arguably correct they are – and to not report him or her to your boss.

“That would include a situation where the comments were made anonymously or under a pseudonym, but you nonetheless know the identity of the author.”

ACT Commissioner for Public Administration, Bronwen Overton-Clarke, said the dob in obligation matched one in the Australian public service’s code of conduct.

Ms Overton-Clarke said public servants only had to make it clear when they made a post that they were doing so as a private citizen.

She said the rules were primarily designed to clarify that employees must “uphold the good reputation of the ACTPS at all times that they are identifiable as a public servant”.

“The government has a responsibility to manage the risk of reputational damage,” she said.

The Justice and Community Safety Committee's scrutiny report argued that the law “effectively burdens political communication in an extensive way”.

“It might be argued that public confidence is better maintained by the exposure by public servants (in contexts apart from acting as such) of matters that would in the short-term cause damage,” the committee said.

The committee has asked the minister to respond to concerns about the constitutionality of the laws, and their compliance with the territory's Human Rights Act.